Jessica Plautz

annfriedman:

One year ago, we found out that we were all getting fired. Most of us were drunk at the time. (Turns out there are some upsides of finding out you’ll be fired while at a party you planned for your employer.) We took it as well as can be expected.

Being a boss is the closest I’ve ever come to parenthood. I took it very seriously. Although these people were (and are) my colleagues and friends and equals, I hired most of them and felt a very maternal amount of responsibility for their financial well-being, their professional growth, their happiness. Several of them moved to Los Angeles—a city not exactly known for journalistic opportunity—to work with me. And we worked really hard together. We made great things. 

Tomorrow magazine, which is the thing we made in the wake of our unceremonious exit from the world of full-time journalistic employment, was billed as a chance for us to work together on one last project. It was that. But it was also a way to seize the narrative about our firing. Let me tell you, it’s really tempting to talk shit about your ex-employer. (Reeeeally tempting.) Tomorrow gave us something not-shitty to talk about at a time when people were hounding us to be bitter and gossipy. Rather than talk about the past, we chose to do what we’d always done together: work. The process was stressful and emotional and rewarding, and the product was the best possible résumé, an example of what we were all capable of both collectively and individually. 

These days we’re all making incredible journalism at Quartz and Gawker and Fast Company and Slate and The Verge and ESPN: The Magazine and New York magazine and Marie Claire. We’re writing books and traveling the country on speaking and reporting trips. We’re stoked to be moving the needle and raising the bar and changing the world and engaging with our community. (LOL, you guys. But really.) We’re still friends. 

In retrospect, the only thing that seems sillier than firing such a great group of people is how worried I was that they wouldn’t land on their feet. I will always love this crew, and I’m beyond proud of them. 

This: 

“The only thing that seems sillier than firing such a great group of people is how worried I was that they wouldn’t land on their feet.”

This tumblr is too good.

Early 1930s Map of Trolleys in and around Brooklyn

(via kategardiner)

ladypuns:

Hampered by an avian respiratory system, a reptilian resting-metabolism and four left feet, Charlotte Brontosaurus wasn’t too fond of physical activity, and instead passed the time writing. Her indoor dino ways led to the creation of the most critically acclaimed book of the Toarcian period, Jane Eyre. Originally publishing the novel under the pseudonym Currer Belodon to avoid sauropod discrimination, Charlotte eventually revealed herself and spent the rest of her days sipping decanted swamp water among high society megareptiles. 

Brilliant.

getacollegelife:

Holy fucking shit. I just turned in CS32 Project 3. The BATTLESHIP project. Make a computer Battleship game.

Holy shit, that consumed my life for a week and a half. Day and Night. The design necessary now looks so straight-forward to me, but only NOW. It took me a week and a half of intense trial and error to get there. Christ. I slept 4 hours the night before and another 4 hours last night because of the time spent on this. And I STILL didn’t finish the whole thing. There was one recursive function that I had saved for last and just couldn’t get to. (Recursion is a function that calls itself. Think the film INCEPTION and you get how difficult they are to write.) The project was due at 9pm tonight, so, Hell. I had just enough time to also write the report that had to accompany it.

Damn. I am wiped out mentally. I also, like I needed more stress/work, intensely finished writing my part of the 50-page team research paper for my Engineering Ethics class this morning. I thought my portion was due today, but, even though it says as much on the syllabus, it turns out  the TA wasn’t collecting them. Just as well as I only had 4 of the 6 pages ready that I need. HA!

Justine Bateman enrolled at UCLA and is blogging about computer programming. She is so awesome.

sarahlcomics:

Afternoon lull quickie chart.

I’m going with “more coffee.”

(via ilovecharts)

english2english:

When Brits say they eat jelly with their ice cream, most of us here are uncomfortably grossed out — until we see the actual packets of “jelly” and realize it’s just the good old wobbly gelatin stuff we remember from kiddie birthdays and backyard picnics. 

- @juliaccarpenter

From Guardian U.S.’s amazing new Tumblr on the cross-Atlantic fascination.

pewresearch:

Our new poll surveys nearly 8,000 respondents in 8 countries and explores views of political leaders, the European Union, and the euro as currency. We also asked about stereotypes of other countries.

In every country except Greece, people consider Germans the most trustworthy. At the same time, in six of the eight nations surveyed, people see the Germans as the least compassionate.

 Greeks consider the Germans to be the least trustworthy, the most arrogant and the least compassionate. But the Greeks themselves do not fare that well. They are considered the least trustworthy by the French, the Germans and the Czechs.

Also note: every country chose themselves as the most compassionate, but only Italy selected itself as least trustworthy.

(via pacificstand)