3 July

Bits for the Weekend is a bi-weekly roundup of links we’re sharing and discussing in the office. Keep up with the daily buzz and follow us on Twitter.

The heat may be getting to us in the office. We’ve dug up some strange things in the past few weeks — computers tripping out, a bedtime story that’s likely to induce nightmares, and weird things that DuoLingo asks you to translate.

Google Images Gets Trippy

In case you were wondering what it would like if a computer took a few tabs of acid, Google has started playing around with their image recognition network.

Jonas: Digital neural dream pictures :) http://googleresearch.blogspot.de/2015/06/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-neural.html

Goodnight Dune

Grab yourself a glass of warm Spice and settle in for a night with the fedaykin, Shai-Hulud, and a young muad’Dib.

Vojta: This thing. I don’t even…

Alicia: Well the film does always put me to sleep…

The Untranslatable

A nice follow up to the list of made up words or *The Non-English Words (and Principles) You Should Learn and Use* — Vojta

Vojta: Also, a lot of them would work perfectly describing a company or product philosophies :wink:
*mudita* (n) taking delight in the happiness of others, vicarous joy; opposite of shadenfreude.
*meraki* (v) to do something with soul, creativity or love; when you leave a piece of yourself in your work.
*lagomi* (n) just the right amount.
*hygge* (n) an absence of anything annoying, taking pleasure from the presence of gentle or soothing things. — _This is usability 101_ :)
*nunchi* (n) the ability to gauge mood of others, read the atmosphere, and react appropriately.

Alicia: Prozvonit? Is that a commonly used term in Czech?
Vojta: Not that much anymore, but yeah, everyone knows what it means. Although the use is wider — you could ask someone to do that when he arrives at some spot or similar. It means to let the phone ring without the intention of it being picked up in order to convey a pre-negotiated message.

Shit DuoLingo Says

A twitter with funny sentences generated by Duolingo. Stuff like: “During my birth, my parents ate custard.” My favourite that I’ve been asked to translate was “My penguin doesn’t drink beer in the morning.” — Vojta

Alicia: “Cad a deir an sionnach?” or “What does the fox say?” in Irish. Crucial ;)
Vojta: The woman is in the fridge :D

Emojinate

I’ve recently turned to emojis to fight writer’s block ;) Emojinate generates five random emojis, you write a little story, and vote for the ones you like best. — Alicia

Getting Things Done

Interesting, ideas of GTD still have a strong voice in my approach to productivity, but it’s crazy 80s style outdated for a significant part of the book. Now the guy decided to rewrite it from scratch. Not sure I will read it, but still looking forward to how it will turn out. — Jakub

How Tesla Will Change the World

Digging deep into energy, climate change, and fossil fuels, author Tim Urban digs into how Tesla could be the answer to some key issues. Because like he said: “I did what I do when my tortoise shits when I’m out of the apartment and then spends hours walking through it and tracking it across everything, including the walls somehow — I rolled up my sleeves, took a deep breath, whispered, ‘Be a man, Tim.’”

Vojta: Started reading this in the morning, it’s long, but so far entertaining, and it’s supposed to be pretty educative.
“That’s how food is invented — plants know how to take the sun’s joules and turn them into food.
At that point, all hell breaks loose as everyone starts murdering everyone else so they can steal their joules.
We use “the food chain” as a cute euphemism for this murder/theft cycle, and we use the word “eating” to refer to “stealing someone else’s joules and also murdering them too.” A “predator” is a dick who always seems to want your joules over everyone else’s, and “prey” is just some sniveling nerd you particularly like to bully and steal lunch money from.”

Greek Bailout Fund

Apparently, Greek bailout fund is a thing. — Mirka

Jakub: “How much have you personally put in?
I’ve put in for a bottle of Ouzo, which is just €10 — if 1 in 3 Europeans did the same, we’d get to the target!”
The guy running it is a 29 year old shoe shop employee. 800,00 euros already. This is crazy.

Alicia: I’m pretty intrigued by a future where IndieGoGo campaigns can bail out a country.

Are you donating to the Greece bailout? DuoLingo ask you anything peculiar? Or, bottom line, do you drive a Tesla? Because then we really want to hear from you. Shoot us a tweet @sleighdogs.