Good deal on Titanium quasi-spork

Over the past decade or so, Lauren McLaughin (previously) has written a handful of outstanding YA novels, each dealing with difficult issues of gender, personal autonomy and the casual cruelty of teens, starting with Cycler (and its sequel, Re-Cycler) (a teenaged girl who turned into a boy for four days every month); Scored (a class-conscious surveillance dystopia); The Free (a desperate novel about a teen car-thief in juvie) and now, her best book yet: Send Pics, a gripping thriller about sextortion, high school, revenge and justice. READ THE REST

Wendy Liu grew up deeply enmeshed in technology, writing code for free/open source projects and devouring books by tech luminaries extolling the virtues of running tech startups; after turning down a job offer from Google, Liu helped found an ad-tech company and moved from Montreal to New York City to take her startup to an incubator. As she worked herself into exhaustion to build her product, she had a conversion experience, realizing that she was devoting her life to using tech to extract wealth and agency from others, rather than empowering them. This kicked off a journey that Liu documents in her new book, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism, a memoir manifesto that's not just charming -- it's inspiring. READ THE REST

Matt Ruff is one of science fiction and fantasy's most consistently brilliant and innovative authors, whose recent work includes The Mirage (an incredible alternate history in which the Global War on Terror is kicked off when Christian crusaders from the blighted, tribal USA fly a plane into the United States of Arabia's Twin Towers in Dubai, giving the hawkish CIA chief Osama bin Laden the chance to launch the all-out war he's been champing for), and Lovecraft Country (an anti-racist reimagining of Cthulhu set in Jim Crow America where the real horror is white supremacy -- now being adapted for TV by Jordan Peele). In his new novel, 88 Names, Ruff adds to the canon of MMORPG heist novels (Charlie Stross's Rule 34, Neal Stephenson's Reamde, and my For the Win, to name three) with a unique take that he dubbed "Snow Crash meets The King and I." READ THE REST

Bridging the gap between the analog and digital worlds is a lot tougher than it seems. If you write notes on a piece of paper, you carry that paper with you until you need those notes. Generally, if an image, document, or even just information is created in the analog world, somebody literally has to… READ THE REST

Learning isn't just about understanding a skill like figuring out how to code or mastering a foreign language. Learning is about taking in everything happening in the world around you, listening to smart, informed sources, and letting that experience guide you to better, smarter, more informed decisions in your life. Learning doesn't just happen in… READ THE REST

Unless you're a ravenous clockwatcher, it's easy to work, tinker with a project, or do a basic activity, then realize the hour you thought you'd spend on it has turned into 2…or 3…or more.  Of course, we're all busy people, so heavy time spent in one area usually means something else is getting the short… READ THE REST