
Whimsical Wednesday #3: Travel to the Solar Eclipse, Chipotle Conspiracy, Node Robots, Microchips for Employees, Art Spotlight
At Pandera Labs, we dedicate our Wednesday morning stand-ups to sharing things that we’ve learned over the past week. We like to call it Whimsical Wednesday — Anything that piques one’s curiosity is fair game to share, the topics tend to span a plethora of categories. Here are a few highlights of what we were curious about this past week.
A Rare Solar Eclipse and Small Town Infrastructure

Dylan Raleigh says space is incredible and a constant reminder of how much more we have to explore and learn. Most of the time we have to imagine how everything is piecing together and refer to dense theories in order to wrap our head around our universe. Rarely do we have a chance to really experience some of the amazing cosmic events that are our occurring. A complete solar eclipse within a days drive is almost as rare as the Cubs winning the world series. Seeing how the US is responding to a potentially once in a lifetime experience seems like a great example of how people are constantly striving to have new experiences . The impact on how traditional infrastructure makes this so much more accessible for people to experience the event, much like digital mediums have scaled the ability for the world to other unique events, is interesting in how we continue to grow towards a shared range of knowledge/insight/experiences to draw upon for future advancements.
International NodeBots Day
July 29th is this years NodeBots Day. It’s all about controlling the physical world with JavaScript and Robots!
Mike Rourke found this interesting because people keep finding new and imaginative ways to use JavaScript to solve their problems. Atwood’s law says that any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript. NodeBots took it a step further and brought the language into the field of robotics. I think we still have a long way to go before we find something that JavaScript can’t be used for.
Chipotle Stock Short Sellers and a Norovirus Conspiracy
Michael Gohl is not normally a conspiracy theorist, however these scenarios seem possible and even probable to him. It is feasible to think that investors can conspire to create a real or fake event that dramatically effects the company’s stock prices. Corporations can sabotage a competitor to hurt a competitor or gain a perceived advantage.
Microchips are “optional” for now…
Mallory Haack says “My mom sent me this article because it reminded her of the book we both really love called ‘The Circle’ by Dave Eggers. It blows my mind that people might implant chips into their bodies just for the purpose of using the copy machine at work or buying snacks from the vending machine. Like the plot of ‘The Circle’, I’m very curious to see how this type of bio-technology advances in the future, and where the balance between personal privacy and innovative tech lands.”
Psychedelic Art by El Huervo w/ Music to Match

G says: “I really enjoy El Huervo because the aesthetic of both his visual arts and music is so well matched and the feeling I get from both is this kind of fever dream nostalgia which makes no sense maybe, but I dig it. I am always incredibly impressed when I find out that an artist works on multiple types of creative projects and even if they come from the same inspiration they can stand up on their own.”
