NextDraft

The Year’s Hottest IPO: A Pasta Chain

The most fascinating news from around the web on July 2, 2013

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  1. Flour Power

    What has been the hottest IPO of the year so far? Some new-fangled technology perhaps? Or maybe a trend-setting company from one of the coasts set to take its product offering national and then global? Nope, it was a Denver-based, pasta-centric restaurant chain called Noodles & Co. The company’s IPO bucked a lot of trends (including, it seems, the war on flour). Here’s The Daily Beast on how a pasta chain punked Wall Street.

    + A carb company raising big dough shouldn’t be that surprising. They are selling something that many people can’t get enough of. Question: What is the best food to pair with refined carbohydrates? Answer: More refined carbohydrates.

    + Speaking of the public markets, the Winklevoss twins have filed a proposal with securities regulators “that would allow any investor to trade bitcoins, just as if they were stocks.” I’d invest, but I just put all my money into Google Reader.

  2. Born Free, Expensively

    It doesn’t take long for a person to realize that the United States has ridiculously expensive health care. By the time a doctor is cutting your umbilical cord, you’ve already fallen victim to the costliest birth in the world. And let’s face it, until you get a bath, beanie, and bottle, you’re really in no position to negotiate.

  3. Get In Line

    “Even with new technology, the essential weapon in the fight against flame are the Hotshots, an elite group of wilderness first responders who head straight for the heat.” Shortly before tragedy struck a group of 19 Arizona firefighters, Outside’s Kyle Dickman wrote of his experience embedded with the Tahoe Hotshots: In the Line of Wildfire.

    + From the NYT: An Elite Crew That Rushed In.

  4. Don’t Wanna Live Like a Refugee

    Forty-three million. That’s how many people in the world are living as refugees or “as ‘internally displaced’ (refugees within their own countries).” For millions of them, this means living in UN provided tents. But in the future, those tents could be replaced by solar-powered huts, designed and manufactured by Ikea.

  5. Breaking Through the Ass Ceiling?

    There are not enough women CEOs and the gender-based pay gap across many industries continues to be a national embarrassment. But as Bloomberg reports, American women are quickly “closing the gap on at least one measure: cheating on their spouses.”

  6. Juke Box Hero

    Ever heard of a rocker named Jason Everman? He was the guitarist for Nirvana and Soundgarden — but was kicked out of both bands before they went on to sell a cool 100 million albums. So what became of this victim of Rock & Roll? According to Clay Tarver, he became a war hero.

  7. Just Do It

    Living a happy life seems like a reasonable goal. But there’s a chance that setting that goal might reduce the chances of achieving it. According to Ruut Veenhoven, Director of the Database and Emeritus professor of social conditions for human happiness at the Erasmus University: “Unhappy people are more aware of their goals, because they seek to change their life for the better … Although there is some positive correlation between seeing meaning in life and being happy, studies suggest this is not a necessary condition for happiness. In fact, studies suggest leading an active life has the strongest correlation with happiness … In order to lead a happy life, a rewarding life, you need to be active. So involvement is more important to happiness than knowing the why, why we are here.”

    + A quote from a recent WSJ profile of Woody Allen (who basically makes a movie a year) supports a similar notion: “It’s the therapy of moviemaking that has been good in my life. If you don’t work, it’s unhealthy — for me, particularly unhealthy. I could sit here suffering from morbid introspection, ruing my mortality, being anxious. But it’s very therapeutic to get up and think, Can I get this actor; does my third act work? All these solvable problems that are delightful puzzles, as opposed to the great puzzles of life that are unsolvable, or that have very bad solutions.”

    + Another study suggests that people with a lot of self-control are the happiest. Someone should study the happiness levels of people who do studies on happiness. There sure are a lot of them.

  8. Life in the Amazon

    “It’s shockingly quiet there.” Photographer Ben Roberts takes us inside a massive Amazon fulfillment center where the workers “are effectively human robots.”

  9. Scream Therapy

    “Here they can scream and scream and let everything out. That’s why I always say that Lucha Libre is the cheapest therapy there is.” This NYT video piece takes you inside wrestling matches where “a self-proclaimed defender of Mexican immigrants, does battle against wrestlers who portray United States border patrol agents.”

  10. The Bottom of the News

    In The Times of India, Santosh Desai provides an interesting look at the awkwardness of the tie in his country. “On a sales executive, the tie is an admission of submission, of the acceptance of an individual of the power of a dominant collective to which obeisance must be paid in order to gain entry. It is a confession of one’s inherent inability to belong to an exalted group, and needing the help of external props that convey one’s willingness to play the game by the rules.” In the Internet industry, that’s basically how we feel about wearing a laundered T-shirt.

    + Are you in the middle of heat wave? If so, here’s a great time-lapse video of San Francisco’s fog to cool you off.

    + If you’re seeking business wisdom / You don’t need no MBA / Look no further than the beauty / That surrounds us every day. Groupon’s former CEO Andrew Mason is out with a motivational business-rock album (one assumes it’s a joke?).

    + This is what it looks like when you run 25 mph on a treadmill.