The Thursday Ten: Ten articles I found on Mashable

I’ve recently become familiar with Mashable, the “leading source for news, information, and resources for the Connected Generation.” They’re active on all major social media outlets, so you can hardly go anywhere without running into them. Even if you don’t actually follow them on Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else, chances are someone you know will repost something from the site.

The idea for this Thursday Ten came from Ava Jae, who shared a story on her Tumblr that caught my attention. After the story there were hundreds of links to other articles, so I kept clicking on anything that looked good. It was like being at Ryan’s: everything looked good. I said to myself, “hey, this would make a great Thursday Ten!”

So, here you go:

1. Photographer Profiles the Generation Moving Back in With Parents After College: This was the link Ava provided. Damon Cazarez took pictures of young people in so much debt, mostly student loans, that they’ve moved back in with their parents. These kids are lucky. My mom’s attitude was “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.” Come to think of it, maybe I was the lucky one…
2. 7 Hot Majors That Didn’t Exist When You Were in College: This was linked within the previous page. There are a couple of inaccuracies here: Biomedical energy did exist back in 1974 when I started. There was a guy walking around registration trying to convince people to take the introductory course. Nanotechnology is treated as a branch of mechanical engineering, and that’s been around forever. But the others are relatively new to me.
3. 7 Unexpected Majors That Can Get You Into Tech: Careers in technology are huge now, as they have been for the last forty years, but there are some students that either don’t have the academic prowess or the inclination to major in a technology field. I was a real whiz in statistics in college, but it wasn’t a major. A career in statistics and data science would have been perfect for me…
4. These Kids Have Hilarious Reactions to Using Typewriters: I think they’re more hilarious to those of us that suffered through the days when the IBM Selectric was state-of-the-art. I’d like to see their reaction to a slide rule… heh heh heh…
5. 14 Weird Al Covers Illustrated in One Amazing White Board Video: This was just cool: Someone drew the album covers from all 14 of Weird Al Yankovic’s albums, and the pictures are disturbingly accurate. Even knowing that these were sped up to make it look like they took 15 seconds each to draw, it’s remarkable. This is one talented illustrator.
6. 45 Most Annoying Office Habits: And they are. I worked with a woman who brought fish every day for lunch, which she would cook in the microwave. I think they let her go just so she wouldn’t do it anymore.
7. The Top 14 Guilty Pleasure Songs You Can’t Get Enough Of: The things I do for my readers… This one required that I sign up for Spotify (and you’ll have to as well, if you want to listen). Actually some goodies here, such as Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” and MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.” For some reason. Wham!s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” is on the list but doesn’t play…
8. 45 Jazz Numbers for Smooth Listening: Same deal as before: you have to either sign on to Spotify or sign up for it. Some real classics here by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, and Thelonius Monk, among others.
9. My Company Adopted a Holacracy. It Kind of Sucked: I had never heard of a holacracy before reading this article, so I went to look at its Constitution on Holacracy.org. There is the formal wording on the left, and the translation into “plain English” on the right. One has to wonder why they didn’t just write it in plain English to start with. There’s also a link to a page containing an introductory video. When you have an hour and fifteen minutes to sit through it, you might be interested. Slightly shorter, and slightly more confusing, is the page that explains How It Works. Read the article and understand why I said that this would be a better world if everyone worked and no one had a job.
10. How to Escape Being Too Busy to Get Anything Done: A good article that breaks “busy” down into five types, and gives some suggestions on how to deal with each type. There’s one that’s missing: “Cultural” busy. This is the kind of busy that is imposed on you by the culture of the company you work for. But we all know the cure for that…

Okay, so those are just the ones I found. If you go over and look, you’ll find a bunch more that appealed to you. Feel free to link to them in the comments. This could be fun!