Dan Chruscinski

Mark of Athena, the newest book in the Percy Jackson series has consumed my train ride this past week. Anyone who is anyone knows the series is like Harry Potter if everyone didn’t cry so much and deny their feelings for one another. Plus there is tons of action and an epic plot that pits the demigods of the Greek gods against their Roman counterparts. Where else are you going to read about the goddess Nemesis changing fortune cookies to tell people they will die in horrible yet expected ways?

Dominick Mayer

So if you haven’t heard by now, hip-hop crazies Death Grips leaked their new album (and second for this year), NO LOVE DEEP WEB, online this week after record label Epic supposedly shelved it until “sometime next year.” And the record is excellent. Adding live drums to offset the glitchy chaos of this year’s The Money Store, it’s one of the year’s most  confounding, excellent records. Here’s a taste:

Ben Kessell

I used to be an avid Pandora user. I’d bookmark the things I’d never heard before and then head on over to eMusic or my favorite music “trading” site and add it to my collection. Recently I’ve taken to the all-powerful Reddit to start finding new music. While there is a generic Music subforum, I find it bland and, well, generic. While paging through the Dubstep (yeah I like it, wanna fight about it) subforum. I stumbled upon MΞLΔTONIN‘s SoundCloud. What’s more, I found out that it is comprised primarily of 45+ minute long mixes, which makes for a fun workday. Most notably the mix “Cosmology” is the perfect blend of 2-step, chill-out, and breakbeat. Kudos, dude! I cannot stop listening to this mix and your easter-egg Breaking Bad sound clip of Heisenberg explaining his penchant for knocking certainly helps.

Michael Alexander

Remember when you thought that self driving cars was a thing of fiction? Well, Google is working towards making their very own autonomous vehicles. Take a look.

Marissa Morales

The Sesame Street version of “Boardwalk Empire” happened this week and it gave me the warm fuzzies. I give you: “Birdwalk Empire.” I’m pretty sure Sesame Street was this cool when I was little.

Seetha Sankaranarayan

I was cracking up over this article by Tracie Egan Morrisey on Jezebel. She’s discussing how she entered her baby in a beauty pageant to offer a raw, firsthand account of what the experience is really like when TLC’s cameras are off…but basically gets caught up in the politics of it and loses her shit. My favorite parts are her description of what “anything goes” entails and the photos of her infant in a Judge Judy costume. I’ve been following Tracie since she went by “Slut Machine,” and it’s really refreshing to see that her wit and style have remained on point even as she becomes domestic.