Adventures in the Ransom Trade

On the revolutionaries, highly-paid negotiators, former spies, foreign businessmen and their families, who all played roles in the massive Colombian kidnap and ransom industry during its 1990s heyday.

The case for general excellence

In his new book, Range, David Epstein argues that although specialization has its virtues, businesses need people with wide horizons and ranges of interests in order to succeed.

LisaDziuba/Awesome-Design-Tools: The best design tools for everything ?

The best design tools and plugins for everything 👉 - goabstract/Awesome-Design-Tools

Designing Data-Intensive Applications (DDIA) — an O’Reilly book by Martin Kleppmann (The Wild Boar Book)

https://aux.avclub.com/ted-chiang-the-mind-behind-arrival-returns-with-anoth-1834449060

The Camera as the App Layer

Your phone increasingly knows what you’re taking a picture of. And which apps you have installed. So…

How the Hell Has Danielle Steel Managed to Write 179 Books?

The author works a 20-hour shift, loves chocolate, and writes best in her cashmere nightgown.

Buy Me a Coffee

Buy Me a Coffee is the best way for creators and artists to accept support and membership from their fans.

Squirrel King

The city didn’t put stop signs at our suburban corner until I was thirteen. Despite the reckless driving, no one was ever killed. Pet dogs and stray cats weren’t so lucky. Neither were the squirrels.

During the Cold War, the CIA Secretly Plucked a Soviet Submarine From the Ocean Floor Using a Giant Claw

The International Spy Museum details the audacious plan that involved a reclusive billionaire, a 618-foot-long ship, and a great deal of stealth

Hundreds of Bodies, One Nurse: German Serial Killer Leaves as Many Question

A nurse, Niels Högel, admitted to dozens of murders but might have killed as many as 300 patients. So what prevented colleagues from stopping one of the world’s deadliest serial killers?

MIT CSAIL details technique for shrinking neural networks without compromis

Researchers at MIT's CSAIL have developed a new technique that identifies high-performance subnetworks within neural networks.

China’s rust belt cities shrouded in uncertainty as exhausted natural resou

As the natural resources that gave rise to heavy industries in China’s northeast run dry, the cities that developed around coal mines are struggling to modernise.

Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail

During a month hiking Muir's "Range of Light," three young women traversed snowy mountain passes, ran out of food, confronted a gendered wilderness, and learned to deal with each other.

Average Cost: One Ounce of High Quality Marijuana

This is not surprising, but still kind of interesting: The three least expensive states for marijuana, however, are all in the West region and all allow for legal recreational use: Oregon ($210.75), Washington ($232.90), and Colorado ($241.74). The national average is $326.06…

An Airplane’s Extraordinary Story Recalls Bygone U.S.-Russian Amity

Abandoned in the Arctic for seven decades, the last remaining Lend-Lease Douglas airplane in Russia is museum-bound, at a time of tensions with the United States.

Amazon and Target race to revolutionize the cardboard shipping box

The box has never looked better.

The Mystery of the Millionaire Hermit

He spent years scrimping and saving. But without a will, where’s his money going?

The Mysterious Disappearance of Sam Sayers

They've spent 8,000 hours searching for Sam Sayers.

This Is What Happens to Your Body on a Thru-Hike

The secret to ultimate fitness isn't all that complicated—just spend a month outside, hiking eight hours per day.

Announcing JupyterHub 1.0

Today, we are pleased to announce the 1.0 release of JupyterHub. We’ve come a long way since our first release in March, 2015. There are…

A CEO Who Can Write — Part II

by Jean-Louis Gassée

A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

Some lawmakers in Colorado tried so-called quadratic voting—and it worked.

How I Write Online Articles

I like to write, and when I do, I prefer writing in markdown. Lately, people have been asking my writing process involves, so I decided to write it down in this short post. This is my process and in no way should you feel obligated to use it. Hopefully, this

Renewables generated more electricity than coal for the first time in US hi

King Coal is being dethroned, and faster than forecast.

How America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery (Published 2019)

When a secretive private equity firm bought Remington, sales were strong and the future bright. A decade later, the company couldn’t escape its debts.

Playing with model trains and calling it graph theory

You’ve probably played with model trains, for instance with something like the Brio set shown below.1 And if you’ve built a layout with a model train set, yo...

How to Create a Great Team Culture (and Why It Matters) - ACM Queue

As leader of the team, you have significant influence over your team

Why is RV design so boring?

Some begin high and end low, others boldly swoop into half circles and curves; but somehow, on RVs big and small, decorative swoops are the go-to design element of choice.

Giannis Antetokounmpo Is the Pride of a Greece That Shunned Him (Published 2019)

As the son of African immigrants, Antetokounmpo was unwelcome in Athens. Then he showed promise as a basketball star.

Deepfakes for good

These entrepreneurs are playing with fire.

She Hunted History’s Worst Arms Dealers. Now She’s Taking on Rhino Poachers

Kathi Lynn Austin is on a global chase to stop the flow of guns threatening to wipe the rhinoceros off the face of the Earth.

Marcus Aurelius: 3 Rules For Life

The Emperor-Philosopher Marcus Aurelius, once the most powerful man on earth, was also a practitioner of Stoicism. He had 3 rules for life.

How I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape

In my previous blog post, I explained how I take lecture notes using Vim and LaTeX. In this post, I’ll talk about how I draw figures for my notes using Inkscape and about my custom shortcut manager.Some examples First, let me show you some examples of figures…

The Raisin Situation (Published 2019)

One man wanted to change the raisin industry for the better. He got more than he bargained for.

The North Star Approach to Goal Setting

This approach radically improves your chances of success.

What Seven Years at Airbnb Taught Me About Building a Business

Create strong culture, stay laser-focused on problems, and set wildly ambitious goals

The Psychology of Writing and the Cognitive Science of the Perfect Daily Routine

How work schedules, rituals, and writing environments affect the amount and quality of time invested in trying to write.

The 3 most effective ways to build trust as a leader

Based on data from 597 people, the best ways to build trust as a leader aren’t what you think they are. How do you build trust as a leader? The answer seems intuitive enough. For many of us, …

Why are so many people getting rare cancers in this small Georgia town?

After multiple rare cancers have been diagnosed in Waycross, Georgia, the city grapples with a profound question: What if the industries that gave us life are killing us?

Why Isn’t Hulu Better?

When Hulu was launched, in 2008, it had the backing of three major motion-picture studios—21st Century Fox, NBC Universal, and Walt Disney Studios/ABC Television. The service seemed poised to dominate video distribution online—but today it ranks only 8th among streaming…

Just a Spoonful of Siouxsie

Surviving seventh grade with a practically perfect punk nanny.

A Dispatch From the Fast-Paced, Makeshift World of High-End Catering

The unsung heroes of the food world battle against time and chaos, cooking haute cuisine over lit cans of Sterno in the gloomy back hallways of New York's civic landmarks.

The Wild Carnival at the Heart of Skiing’s Most Dangerous Race

The punishing Hahnenkamm downhill brings street-party revelry to a medieval town in the Tyrolean Alps, Nick Paumgarten writes.

TurnKey GNU/Linux | 100+ free ready-to-use system images for virtual machines, the cloud and bare metal

The Best 'I Don't Know the Answer' Jeopardy! Answers

A photo essay of delight and despair

The Anatomy of a Great Decision

Making better decisions is one of the best skills we can develop. Good decisions save time, money, and stress. Here, we break down what makes a good decision and what we can do to improve our decision-making processes.

32 incredibly useful things you didn't know Google Sheets could do

Ahead of Its Time, Behind the Curve: Why Evernote Failed to Realize Its Pot

Evernote has been plagued by a series of managerial missteps and failed product launches. The company’s future is far from certain.

kognise/water.css: A drop-in collection of CSS styles to make simple websites just a little nicer

A drop-in collection of CSS styles to make simple websites just a little nicer - kognise/water.css