Stephen Lybeck

This guy is super inspiring. I need to see him speak soon.

With a new mobile contracts foregoing the undervalued unlimited data plans, I for one would like to put it out there that I am satisfied with my choice. I have never had a lost call, and if I really think long and hard, I can only remember one place where my data service has been truly slow. I suppose I can thank my will power to simply “deal” with the dumbest smartphone (blackberry tour) that has ever been on the market, because while others flocked to the iPhone immediately, I held off until Apple made a contract with verizon, very fortunately avoiding what will forever be known as the Curse of AT&T!

It’s about time someone works on a more efficient design for health records. This area has been an incredible mess for the past decade. I think that creating one system for use between all healthcare providers would promote anti-competitive, monopolistic potential, but why do we not have a regulated framework of healthcare platforms that implement universal filetypes? Microsoft and Apple are gigantic rivals, yet documents like word processing, data spreadsheets, images, and video can be viewed and edited cross-platform. This is a HUGE, and beyond that, an important industry to promote continual innovation for. I have been wanting to see changes for years and I think that this is a great start.

With the growth in the use of cloud technology, I would really like to see file archiving and transfer work a lot more like social media. There should be one private location that every persons specific health records are stored. This should be automatically updated the moment the doctor enters any records and these files should be available to any healthcare provider. The days of having to request files to be sent between providers are behind us. Let’s be honest, the fax machine is incredibly obsolete. It is like using the telegraph after the invention of the phone. Time to move on. 

I found this chain of torts to be incredibly amusing. We begin with a blog post (http://lat.ms/AhZ4dL) by Kim Murphy, a foreign and national correspondent to the LA Times, Orange County edition. The story ruthlessly speaks of the lazy attributes seen in Seattle natives. With Midwest origins, I completely understand her frustration with the range of the shutdown that this minute amount of snow can cause in Seattle, but one must also consider the amount of resources that must be set aside in case of a winter storm. When you expect to be living in snow and ice for over a third of the year, you tend to allot more resources into that emergency fund. This point leads me to our first response (http://bit.ly/zgSVNo) by Art Thiel, a self-professed Seattleite and weathered travel writer.

The tort is well-written, fact-backed, and wittier than an entire season of Archer, but the real fun comes in when you scroll down to the behemoth of a comment written by “FrequentPoster.” He is just screaming, “take responsibility you lazy ass!” And I’m attracted to unbiased writers who tell it like it is. You don’t have to be politically correct, in fact, sometimes it takes from the greater picture.

So a big thank you to Kim, Art, and Mr. Frequent for a solid fifteen minutes of enjoyment in my day as I am snowtrapped in my house drinking coffee and watching netflix with two inches of slush preventing me from getting my shambled life back together.

thingsappleisworthmorethan:

This one’s gonna mess you up…according to First Research, there are about 100,000 retail clothing stores in the US although it is a very concentrated industry.

The 50 largest companies - like TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Gap, Limited Brands, Abercrombie & Fitch and Ross Stores - account for about…