It’s no secret that Betabeat is a big fan of the stranger side of futurism, but we would not advise avoiding minimal routine surgery just because of the Singularity. A Redditor named imememine posted to r/Futurology wondering if he should skip having his hemorrhoids removed since in a few decades we’ll all be transported to cyborg bodies, anyway. Read More
If Wall-e has anything to say about it, Segways–or, a form of wheeled transportation for people too busy to use their two legs to walk–are the symbol of the great American downfall. In the future, we’ll all be wheeled around while we snort potato chips and play Tetris with our minds.
Not content to just discourage people from using their bodies, the inventor of the Segway now has a new genius ploy to incentivize completely giving up: it’s a pump that sucks all the food you just ate right out of your stomach, allowing people to eat whatever they want without facing the caloric impact. So … kind of like scientifically-sanctioned bulimia, minus the puking part? Read More
Derek Flanzraich, the 25-year-old Harvard grad founder and CEO of Greatist, has had a pretty productive summer. Greatist, the online health and wellness hub he launched a little over a year ago just skipped past one million monthly uniques. And Mr. Flanzraich, whose PR rep pointed out that he “looks like an Abercrombie model,” (duly noted) procured himself a set of six-pack abs, albeit temporarily.
“It took me six weeks to get a six-pack and one-and-a-half weeks to lose it,” Mr. Flanzraich told Betabeat last week of the “#Absperiment,” he documented on the site. Read More
One week ago, Betabeat rolled out a story about the dangers of depression among young founders in the startup world: ‘U CAN’T HAZ SADZ: The Hushed Dangers of Startup Depression.’ We’d be lying if we wrote that we didn’t expect some kind of response to the story. That said: We didn’t even remotely expect the scale of the response to the story, in size or intensity.
Over the last week, we’ve seen everything from openly empathetic comments to blisteringly cynical retorts; founders and startup celebrities penning posts about their own experiences with the matter; nitpicks about everything from the cover to individual lines, and then some. It also, on the first day, became one of the most read stories on Betabeat since the blog’s inception.
As such—and without further ado—we thought we’d do a follow-up on the story: crash notes on everything from the reactions the participants received for coming out to speak on the matter, to the lines they felt were missing from the story, and of course, some of the behind-the-scenes editorial notes on how the story came together. Read More
