Netflix

• Who wouldn’t want to run a company just like Netflix’s after reading this leaked internal memo?
• Considering Slate’s habitual contrarianism, you’d think their readers would come up with more interesting end-of-America scenarios than these. Arab-Israel war will end America? I wasn’t aware America had been relocated. The toy these uncreative types used to come up with the seeds of the apocalypse is pretty fun to fiddle with for at least three minutes, but here’s the real prize: a social network that shows which scenarios were linked to each other. Apparently, Robot Overlords connects to Alien Invasion. Does that mean the robots are in charge of the aliens, too? The future is rich with intrigue. Still, this week’s finest mother lode of semi-useless data: How Different Groups Spend Their Day. Speaking of spending time, if you can’t waste a solid twenty minutes with this chart, then you are just not cut out for charts of any kind.
• Surely you happened to see this Coke vs. Pepsi logo nonsense about 26 times this week. It intends to show, for some reason, that Pepsi’s logo changes every eight minutes while Coke is a solid rock. Here’s the real story: Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi, Revised Edition. Survey says Coke changes its logo every bit as often as Pepsi does. And Coke even changed, uh, Coke itself at one point, lest we forget. Who knew Coke had fanboys?

• The continuing saga of this post likening the hassles of being Jay-Z to the diplomatic challenges that face a global superpower. Specifically, how does The Big Guy deal with annoyances from The Little Guy? Not the first time somebody’s compared rapper spats to international conflict, but this one really sparked a wide discussion. This followup listed reactions from bloggers and journalists in various fields. But wait, there’s more — interviews, NY Times articles about the original blog post, etc. (Tangentially related: Nas lost.)
• Did you know Zenith Radio invented a service that was pretty much Netflix, pay-per-view, and Hulu… in 1951?
• Henry Louis Gates’ 1995 article on race and crime in modern America.

SPECIAL 40th Anniversary BONUS: The Times’ post-moon-landing retraction of its polite 1920 claim that space travel is impossible.