Recode:

The principle of the idea is that the speech of 300 million Americans is more important than the profit-making activities of four or five companies.

Unfortunately all too often “principle” falls to “commerce”.

Today I Found Out:

Before a story about toys, before monsters went corporate, before anyone went searching for Nemo, and before twenty seven Academy Awards, Pixar was a high-end computer hardware company whose clients included the government and the medical community.

Many think Pixar sprung fully formed from the genius of Steve Jobs. This story does a good job of showing the history of the company long before Jobs was ever involved.

Washington Post:

Consider this, then, a collection of maps meant to inspire your inner map nerd. I’ve searched far and wide for maps that can reveal and surprise and inform in ways that the daily headlines might not, with a careful eye for sourcing and detail.

Maps have always fascinated me and the ones pictured here cover the span from “Cool!” to “Oh, that’s not good.”

TIME:

A gigantic percentage of what makes the trek to Vegas worthwhile for those 150,000 participants is what I think of as Shadow CES — the show beyond the show, largely carried on behind closed doors.

The average encounter at Shadow CES is probably more interesting than the average CES one, for several reasons.

I’d venture to say more deals are made and more meaningful work is done at “Shadow CES” than on the actual show floor of CES.

Quartz:

Given that CES has become the preferred exhibition venue for a burgeoning category of advanced home technologies, why is there such a total absence of disruptive toilet innovation at the show?

I want my Internet of Things Toilet!

ESPN:

Seismologists say Seahawks fans shook the ground under Seattle’s CenturyLink Field during Saturday’s defeat of the New Orleans Saints, causing another fan-generated earthquake.

The scientists believe the small earthquake during a Marshawn Lynch touchdown was likely greater than Lynch’s famous “beast quake” touchdown run three years ago, which also came against New Orleans during a playoff game.

I went to a couple of Seahawks games in the late nineties in the old Kingdome and even though the team sucked, the fans loved to make noise.

Fast Company:

Samsung’s program known as “White Glove.” It’s a marketing effort designed to convert Apple-slinging celebrities and business influencers into Samsung evangelists. When Beyoncé whips out her phone on the street in Brooklyn, Korea’s largest business conglomerate wants the paparazzi to see that she’s playing Words With Friends on a Samsung.

The White Glove program is a cross between the social marketing of Tupperware parties (minus the pressure to buy something), the house calls of Mormon missionaries (minus the pressure to give up smoking), and the persistence of Green Eggs and Ham–but for gadgets.

It may seem like a lot of time, energy and money on Samsung’s part but, for better or worse, celebrities are “influencers”. And before you knock the program, keep in mind this is something else Apple has done that Samsung has copied. Apple’s program in the Nineties was called “Apple Masters“.

Quartz:

My wife and I had 12 children over the course of 15 1/2 years. Today, our oldest is 37 and our youngest is 22. I have always had a very prosperous job and enough money to give my kids almost anything. But my wife and I decided not to.

I will share with you the things that we did, but first let me tell you the results: All 12 of my children have college degrees (or are in school), and we as parents did not pay for it.

Congratulations to the Thompson family. Maybe not a blueprint for everyone but there are some good ideas in the article for new parents.

Homes and Hues:

These seventeen bookcases and bookshelves can clear away the cluttery piles of books you may have laying around while adding some extra style to your home.

I’m a big fan of books and therefore, of bookshelves. Most of these designs are actually available (if expensive) and not just design concepts.

Failblog:

“Hey. Can we use your pool? There’s a moose in ours…”

Happens all the time in Canada.

For those of us who are fans of the movie, this old “behind the scenes” video is fascinating.

Wall Street Journal:

TV is stuck in an innovation cul-de-sac. There are no new ideas in TV hardware that are worth paying for, so, thanks to competition and production efficiencies, good TVs keep getting cheaper. The cheaper they get, the more desperate TV makers become, filling their sets with more and more useless piffle.

From 3D to 4K to curved screens to Sony’s strange “wedge-shaped” sets (don’t ask), we are witnessing an industry out of ideas, a business desperately casting about in the dark for something—anything—that might persuade us to part with our money.

For most of us, the TV we already have in our living rooms is perfectly good for what we watch. There’s little compelling in the offerings at this year’s CES.

Mashable:

We’ve found 10 of the most interesting and interactive real-time visualizations on the web. Feast your eyes on these awe-inspiring pages for a fresh look on what’s happening on the planet right now.

I don’t know about “put the world in perspective” but the Tweetping and FBomb_co data is fascinating.

The Week:

if you wanted to improve your Canadian accent, you would do better to just use your Californian accent. In some important ways it is closer to the real Canadian accent and vice versa than other American accents are.

Canada actually has many regional differences in accents. The most extraordinary ones are of the people native to Newfoundland but mine and Jim Dalrymple’s home province of Nova Scotia has some very distinctive accents too.

Jalopnik:

People on two continents mourn the death of 92-year-old William Overstreet Jr. He was a resident of Roanoke, Virginia, a retired accountant, and like many men from his generation, a veteran of World War II. And in the spring of 1944, Overstreet did something people in France and the U.S. still talk about.

Overstreet, who died Sunday at a Roanoke hospital, is remembered for being the U.S. Army Air Corps pilot who flew underneath the Eiffel Tower’s arches in his P-51 Mustang during an aerial battle while in hot pursuit of a German fighter plane, which he ultimately shot down.

Stones. Great, big stones.

Vulture:

Vulture corralled legendary rap-rock producer Rick Rubin, Sir Mix-a-Lot (real name: Anthony Ray), the video’s director Adam Bernstein (also of Breaking Bad fame), and others to bring you the story behind the behind-centric classic.

Somewhere on the internet is a hilarious video of myself, John Welch, Sam Crutsinger and (I think) Andy Ihnatko lip-syncing this song.

Re/code:

Apple confirmed to Re/code that it has bought SnappyLabs, but declined to comment further on the deal.

SnappyLabs had sold the SnappyCam app — which allows the internal iPhone camera to take high-resolution images rapidly — in the Apple Store. It was founded by John Papandriopoulos.

Best part of this story was the snotty last line.

The Washington Post:

Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos suffered a kidney stone attack while vacationing in the Galapagos Islands over the New Year’s Day holiday and was flown back to the United States for treatment.

“Galapagos: five stars. Kidney stones: zero stars,” Bezos said through a spokesman.

Ow ow ow ow.

Mashable: We gathered up some of our favorite flicks from the year George Orwell warned us all about. Sorry in advance for making you feel old. Sigh. So very, very old.

Reservoir Dogs on Twitter:

Eight men dressed in BLACK SUITS, sit around a table at a breakfast cafe.

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, “Reservoir Dogs” is a great movie. This Twitter account recreates the movie in 140 character chunks. Interesting experiment in what Twitter can do.

Deadspin:

Hello. My name is Chris Kluwe, and for eight years I was the punter for the Minnesota Vikings. In May 2013, the Vikings released me from the team.

I honestly don’t know if my activism was the reason I got fired.

However, I’m pretty confident it was.

Kluwe became famous off the football field back in September of 2012 when his letter to a politician went viral. It’s a sad end to his NFL career.

Vocativ:

The truffle. It’s the hallmark of haute cuisine. Sorry, caviar, but you’re no match for the truffle’s earthy-flavored tastiness, beloved by chefs and epicures alike. The specialty comes in several varieties, including black and burgundy, but Italian white truffles are the most revered, and in turn, the most valuable. Alba, a hilly area in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, is especially famous for its culinary gems, and it’s the place to look if you are hoping to find some.

I had never had real truffle (I thought it was a chocolate treat) until I went to Italy and was blown away by how even a little bit thinly shaved over a simple pasta dish could create such an explosion of flavour.

CBC News:

In terms of astonishing weather facts, it doesn’t get much more impressive than being as cold as a distant planet for a day.

The Manitoba Museum is reporting Winnipeg’s temperatures on Tuesday were actually as cold as the surface of Mars.

According to the Curiosity Rover, Mars reached a maximum temperature of -29 C on Tuesday, a temperature Winnipeg only reached shortly before 3 p.m.

If asked the question, “Why will you never live in Winnipeg?”, I will simply point to this.

Gizmodo:

Behold the first self-propelled ice sculpture ever—a truck made of ice that actually works! It’s a real truck, using 11,000 pounds of ice over a regular truck chassis complete with engine and electrical system. Check out the videos to see how they built it—and how it melted.

This commercial is in heavy rotation here in Canada.

Today I Found Out:

This tradition is mostly thanks to Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadian Band. While their work is largely unknown to those born in the last few decades, the band has sold over 300 million records to date. Guy Lombardo himself has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he was once the “Dick Clark” of New Years before Clark and his “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” attempting to appeal to younger audiences, started supplanting “Mr. New Year’s Eve,” Guy Lombardo.

“Auld Lang Syne” is another one of those songs most of us don’t know the words to – like the Canadian National Anthem.

Death and Taxes:

A Reddit sleuth posted this list of movies and TV shows that will be purged from Netflix in January, 2014. If you have time off from work between now and January 1, it might not be a bad use of your time to binge-watch some blockbusters (“Braveheart,” “Top Gun,” “Platoon”), art house flicks (“Being John Malkovich”) and the entire series run of “The Kids in the Hall.”

I wonder if it’s less a “purge” as is being reported (it really doesn’t make any sense for Netflix to remove movies) or rather, Netflix’s contracts/agreements for those films are expiring.

Regardless, some of you may have some Netflix binge-watching to do New Year’s Day!

Bored Panda:

When the weather forecast announced unexpected cold from -9°C to -12°C last week, photographer Angela Kelly decided to take an advantage of it in one truly creative way. Together with her 7-year-old son, Kelly combined the home-based remedies – dish soap, karo syrup, and water – and went out to blow bubbles and take pictures as they freeze and melt.

-9°C is 15+°F. Or as we Canadians call it, “The month of May”.

BuzzFeed:

Like many casual fans, we assumed we could immediately pick it up and dominate. We were very wrong.

Check the article out if for no other reason that the GIFs.

And the “tip” at the end? Not gonna happen!

Bored Panda:

Nina and Gramps have been married for 61 years, however, all they’ve got from their wedding day is a single photograph. On one of the most important days of their life, the couple got stood up by their photographer. In order to fix this, their caring granddaughter, an event designer Lauren Wells, organized a beautiful anniversary photo session, inspired by the famous Pixar animation movie “Up“.

61 years of marriage. Most of us haven’t even been on the planet that long, let alone married. Congratulations to them!

TIME:

King Wenceslas didn’t start Boxing Day, but the Church of England might have.

During Advent, Anglican parishes displayed a box into which churchgoers put their monetary donations. On the day after Christmas, the boxes were broken open and their contents distributed among the poor, thus giving rise to the term Boxing Day.

Maybe.

Even though TIME doesn’t answer its own headline question, the article still might be instructive to our American friends who have heard about “this weird Canadian Holiday”.