Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track.

Welcome to The Monday List.

Each Monday, we’ll link you up with some of the most insightful, informative, and socially-relevant stories to keep tabbed, bookmarked, reading listed, pocketed, or what have you. Be sure to check in each Monday morning for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight from the source of your favorite homegrown ‘Smack.

What We’re Reading This Week:

How Intel Makes a Chip
The development of a microprocessor is one of the riskiest, costliest, and most technically complex feats in business.

The Lonely Transatlantic Journey of Self-Sailing Solar Ship
Nearly 400 miles off the Massachusetts coast, a self-sailing, solar-powered, boat is bobbing along all alone. Looking like a very lonely, very miniature cargo ship, it’s at the start of a voyage that will hopefully take it more than 3,000 miles across the Atlantic and into the record books.

Why the Maker Movement Matters: Part 1, the Tools Revolution
Just like the internet before it, the Maker Movement is revolutionizing manufacturing, with implications for startups and jobs.

Could a College Degree in Comedy Be Anything Other Than a Joke?
There’s a maxim about comedy typically attributed to Lucille Ball, although it’s one whose essence you hear echoed by almost any professional comedian: “People either have comedy or they don’t,” the saying goes. “You can’t teach it to them.”

Uncanny Silicon Valley
The absolutely definitive, supremely authoritative, person-to-person mapping of “Silicon Valley” characters to real tech world personalities.

Say Goodbye To Your Highly Skilled Job. It’s Now a “Human Intelligence Task.”
Digital crowdworkers don’t only do menial tasks like data entry. They’re smart, capable, and hungrier than any algorithm. And they work for cheap.

I Quit Showering, and Life Continued
We spend two full years of our lives washing ourselves. How much of that time (and money and water) is a waste?