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Daily Bafflements

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Sean Parker

Justin Timberlake/Sean Parker photo illustration by Mike Cicchetti

• “Starting a company was once an urge felt only by the blindly ambitious and slightly unsound, but in the Valley it’s been ostensibly transformed into a scheduled path one can simply elect and apply for, rather as one might choose law school or Wall Street. And the promise of professionalized entrepreneurship has had a particular allure in recent years, since finance has been tarnished and a career in law made increasingly uncertain. Starting a company has become the way for ambitious young people to do something that seems simultaneously careerist and heroic.” – from “No Exit,” a bleak and sordid Silicon Valley tale by Gideon Lewis-Kraus.

• Check out “Iraq Keeps Drunk Texting CENTCOM,” a selection from Duffel Blog, a strange and actually pretty funny military humor blog.

• We’re feeling sorry for Josh Frulinger today, who had to research the origins of all of the world’s worst tech buzzwords for this IT World slideshow. But without his noble efforts, we wouldn’t have known whom to blame for such garbage as “crowdsourcing,” “phablet,” and (shudder) “the bleeding edge.”

• A truly forward-thinking blog called Fit Pregnancy has listed the best “Hipster Baby Names,” so that’s good. For girls: Brisieda, Farrah, Inez, Liora, Minnie, Odette, Pandora, Romy, Suzette, Tessie, Wren, and Zola. For boys: Auden, Byron, Enoch, Gulliver, Ignatius, Lennon, Murray, Nico, Orson, Roman, Salinger, and Zane. Hahahahahahaha. Happy Friday!