What I’ve Been Reading

1) A little love letter about my favorite video game. My friends can affirm that no pretext is too thin for me to invite myself over to play!
Why Rock Band 3 is One of the Greatest Games Ever Made

"Rock Band 3 is the epitome of a party game. No other co-op mode has captured crowd-pleasing entertainment as impeccably as Harmonix’s definitive rhythm title; no other rhythm game could so magnetize and entrance its onlookers, or make them so eager to join in the fun."

2) I'm really impressed by this blog post from Etsy's VP of Technical Ops about recent site outages:
Demystifying Site Outages

"I wrote this blog post to give you the confidence you deserve that we take outages seriously, are willing to give detailed information about them, and that our aim is to learn from each one in order to lessen the possibility of another in the future."

3) I’m occasionally a science nerd, and found this article about the connections between the evolution of human speech and snoring / sleep apnea really fascinating. Also possibly related, and this is something I do with embarrassing frequency, getting food or liquid “down the wrong pipe”. I feel vindicated.
Generation Apnea

"Homo sapiens differed from Neanderthals by developing a flatter face, a smaller jawbone, and a tongue that descends deeper into the throat than in any other mammal. With this new hardware, humans were able to move beyond making simple grunts… But the positioning of the tongue in the Homo sapiens mouth complicates the acts of eating, drinking, and breathing. Food could literally go down the wrong pipe, a biological problem unique to modern humans… The longer tissues of the soft palate at the back of the throat made it possible for the airway to become blocked after a routine exhalation, which could start the cycle of sleep apnea."