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☆ The Capitalist Generation’s Space Race
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Mark Gimein | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Worden’s foes think nothing of siccing federal investigators on him and his team in an intramural death match. To put it succinctly, in Vance’s telling, NASA and its usual-suspect corporate partners were basically devoted to doing very little — or ideally, nothing — at maximum expense. So Worden’s team went in the opposite direction: The simpler and cheaper the better. Will Marshall, a physics prodigy and space expert, became the informal leader of a group of Ames recruits living in a Silicon Valley group house, known as the Rainbow Mansion. The housemates started working on the smallest satellites they could come up with — shoebox-size contraptions they would eventually call Doves.

☆ Many in U.K. Greet King Charles’s Coronation With a ‘Take It or Leave It’ Shrug
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Mark Landler | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When King Charles III is crowned on Saturday, he will undergo a ritual so rare in modern British history that it last occurred 70 years ago, roughly the wait between sightings of Halley’s comet. And yet the coronation has yet to capture the imagination of a Britain preoccupied by other concerns. Images of the new king — in chocolate, in Legos and in wax — are popping up in bakeries, toy stores and at Madame Tussauds wax museum. Ancient relics of coronation, like the Scottish stone of destiny, are being delivered to Westminster Abbey for the ceremony. They love the royal family.

☆ A 13-year-old boy was groomed publicly on Twitter and kidnapped, despite numerous chances to stop it
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Ben Goggin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +19 min

On the Hunter Fox Twitter account, the adult interacted directly with the boy's account, where he posted selfies of himself on a school bus and in other locations. Their teen son had plenty of friends, his parents said, and liked to play golf and build Legos. Heather McConney's teen son communicated with the man accused of grooming him through an Apple iPhone. The suspect's primary Twitter account appears to have been @HunterFloofyFox. After the worst day of their lives, the McConneys' son was recovered early on the morning of Dec. 28 in Nebraska.

☆ This could've been an email: If MLB can speed up games, bosses can shorten meetings. Here's how.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Rebecca Knight | Josée Rose | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

If new rules can improve game speed, surely bosses can make meetings run more efficiently. If Major League Baseball can speed up games, surely bosses can make meetings more efficient, right? Try, for instance, forcing yourself to cut meetings by half: Your weekly meeting becomes an every-other-week meeting; your hourlong meetings become 30-minutes ones. Ask for adviceJust as MLB needs to consider the fan experience of being at the ballpark or watching a game on TV, bosses need to think about their workers' experiences in meetings, Rogelberg said. "Instead of putting people in hours of meetings without ever asking them about what they're accomplishing, you need to engage," he said.

☆ I made over $10 million in revenue on Amazon last year. Here's how my husband and I became sellers and earned enough to buy our dream home.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Julie Peck | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

In 1999, My husband Andy and I became house parents at the Milton Hershey School. The decision for us to eventually go back and become house parents was an easy one. Throughout our 15 years as house parents, we helped raise around 100 junior high- and high school-aged boys while also bringing up our two biological children. While Andy worked for the Amazon business full-time, I stayed at Milton Hershey School and wrote curriculum. Last year, we made more than $10 million in sales, and we have a team of 47 people who we can comfortably pay to run our Amazon business.

☆ 99% of Big Projects Fail. His Fix Starts With Legos.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Ben Cohen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

One way to learn how the world’s biggest building projects work—or don’t—is to start with some of the smallest building blocks: Legos. In the 1950s, when Lego decided to make one product the centerpiece of its business, the Danish company went looking for a single toy that could be the foundation of an empire. It picked the colorful plastic bricks that have captured the imagination of children ever since. It was a wise choice. It was also a fitting corporate strategy: Lego turned a small thing into something much bigger.

☆ The Lego Approach to Building the World’s Biggest Projects
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Ben Cohen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ 'Kidults' age 12 and up are buying more toys than ever, with teens and adults driving significant growth for the industry thanks to the pandemic and TikTok
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( Bethany Biron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

'Kidults' age 12 and above are comprising a growing sector of the toy industry, according to NPD Group. NPD Group's Juli Lennett told Insider the growth is largely due to the pandemic and social media. "Now many of them are hooked," Lennett said of kidults who purchased toys early in the pandemic. Today, Lego now sells 100 adult Lego sets, according to the Associated Press, including a replica of Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night and a functional roller coaster. "We make LEGO sets specifically for adults with more detail, challenging building techniques, and cool ways to display."

But, across the country, affordable housing is becoming increasingly rare to find. That is until they discovered a Civil Rights era approach that helps promote home ownership, particularly among minority groups, who are disproportionately impacted by the affordable housing crisis. This year they joined the Beverly-Vermont CLT, one of at least five in Los Angeles and more than 200 nationwide. While CLTs are a solution, Ventura admits there are — and should be — other affordable housing options to adequately address the crisis. However, efforts to transform them into affordable housing in some neighborhoods have proven controversial among existing homeowners.

☆ I burned out trying to juggle a side hustle and full-time job. Here's the 5-step plan I used to decide when it was time to go all-in on my business.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Leah Phifer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

She left her job in the government in May to focus exclusively on her small business. This plan was based on financial advice I derived from a variety of reputable sources, including the Forbes Expert Panel and Harvard Business Review. About three months into my plan, I was working 15 to 20 hours a week on my business while also juggling a 40-hour workweek. I was nervous, as we'd spent so much time putting together the financial plan to take my business full-time. Focusing on my business full-time allowed me to better assess the market, illuminating needs my original business plan didn't address.

Consumers took advantage of heavy discounting by online retailers to kick off the holiday shopping season in high gear. According to Adobe Analytics, record online spending on Thanksgiving and Black Friday drove Cyber Week — Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday — to $35 billion in total sales. Even with inflation looming in the background, consumers were motivated by the hunt for deals, Adobe Analytics said. While the company's figures are not adjusted for inflation, even if online inflation were factored in, there would still be growth in underlying consumer demand, it said. Consumers have shown their willingness to keep shopping, thanks in part to the resilience of their pandemic savings.

The toy industry needs a Christmas miracle. Stores are overflowing with Legos and Barbies. Retailers are slashing prices and in some cases tapering orders from manufacturers to clear their shelves. Shoppers have pulled back on purchases amid high costs of gas and food, many of them waiting until after Black Friday for toy prices to drop further or spread out their spending.

☆ To Give Dementia Patients a Voice, She Asks Them to Speak With Legos
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Julie Halpert | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Loretta Veney, an author and speaker, is focused on improving care for those with dementia. Loretta Veney, who is 63, spent most of her career in security management and training, where she helped teach and give shape to security procedures and rules in the public and private sectors. But the seeds of her next career began in 2006 when her mother was diagnosed with dementia. That was when Ms. Veney started learning everything she could to become the best caregiver possible for her mother.

☆ Cryptovoxels is an artist-dominated metaverse featuring wearable blunts and eclectic locales like the Temple of Doge. Here's why OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer named it one of his favorite growing NFT proje
▼ + stars: | 2022-04-25 | by ( Lisa Kailai Han | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +18 min

As the self-described "first non-engineer hire" to join Cryptovoxels, Robinson was brought on to fix these kinds of user nuisances. As part of the next rollout of features, Robinson tells me that Cryptovoxels will allow users to sell custom dances. According to Robinson, users can make money in other ways, like selling mini-game scripts and renting land for events like dances or NFT collection releases. For some reason, the Cryptovoxels world is also abundant with shrines, like the ancient Greece-inspired Frenetik Temple and the Jedi-themed Dark Junction. It's reminiscent of attending a presentation in the real world, except instead of pinning name tags to our shirts, they're superimposed over our heads in large white letters.

☆ Meet the Ghanaian Canadian Lego sculptor building a Black universe
▼ + stars: | 2022-01-11 | by ( Amarachi Orie | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

CNN —For 42-year-old Ghanaian Canadian artist Ekow Nimako, Lego is more than just a kids’ toy. “I started realizing that not only did I enjoy making art with Lego, but it was important that I made Black art very specifically,” he said. Nimako uses black Lego bricks specifically for three main reasons. Nimako is a futurist who used approximately 100,000 Lego pieces to construct a reimagining of the medieval kingdom of Ghana, titled "Kumbi Saleh 3020 CE." Sam EngelkingIn his “Building Black: Civilizations” series, Nimako reimagines medieval sub-Saharan African narratives.

Persons: Ekow, “, ”, It’s, it’s, there’s, Sam Engelking, they’ll, Nimako, didn’t, ’ Nimako, Africanfuturism, Kumbi Saleh, ” Nimako Organizations: CNN, Museum, Lego Locations: Ghanaian, Canada, Ghana, Toronto, West Africa

☆ I've played Santa for 17 years. Here are the answers to 8 questions everyone asks about my job.
▼ + stars: | 2019-12-23 | by ( Ed Taylor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Ed Taylor started playing Santa in 2003 when his friend got a cold and needed a stand in. So yes, adults do frequently ask: "Do you play Santa Claus?" I've been playing Santa for the past 17 years. Here are my answers to eight other burning questions people have when they find out I play Santa. I was a volunteer Santa for seven years, and a paid Santa for two years before attending a Santa School.

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