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Thailand Celebrates Loi Krathong (ลอยกระทง) and Yi Peng (ยี่เป็ง)

Want to see more photos of Loi Krathong and Yi Peng? Visit the ธุดงคสถานล้านนา, สะพานนวรัฐ (Nawarat Bridge) and Chiang Mai location pages.

Loi Krathong (ลอยกระทง), one of Thailand’s most beautiful annual festivals, is in full swing. Thai celebrants, as well as some Laotians and Burmese, pay homage to the goddess of waters in November each year to coincide with the full moon of the twelfth lunar.

The name Loi Krathong means floating cup of leaf, and describes one of the festival’s biggest events. Participants release small rafts, or ‘krathong’, decorated with flowers and topped by a flickering candle into the waterways of Thailand as a way to seek forgiveness for past sins.

Fair warning: you may tear up after reading this letter from 10-year-old Sophia Bailey Klugh to President Obama about her two dads and his response.

“When I joined Facebook in 2004, it became the place where I was my best self, not my real self; where I curated a life that seemed like one big success, fantastic party and exotic vacation after another. So did you (be honest), and so did your friends. While we might have felt guilty checking up on each other, the voyeurism was enticing enough to attract 900 million people and keep us glued to Facebook.com for hours each month. These days, my life according to Facebook looks less fabulous and more consumption-filled than ever before. We’re encouraged to share not only engagements, birthdays, deaths and births, but also, right alongside them, the equivalent of each time we flip through a catalog or pick up a pair of socks. Having a record of what sales I browsed or what purchases I’ve made — precisely what Gilt Groupe will share with Facebook if you allow it to — doesn’t benefit my social media experience nearly as much as it helps a retailer’s. We’re in the midst of a Jekyll-and-Hyde moment in the evolution of online social networks: sharing that will get us to shop is taking precedence over sharing that can strengthen social ties. We’re made to share our business because it’s good for business. And this suggests a looming identity crisis for “social media” that, more and more, appears to be “marketing media,” a tech-fueled hunt for ways to leverage our friendships, interests and activity to produce a “ching” at the register.”

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Great post from HuffPost Tech's Bianca Bosker on what e-commerce means in an age of super sharing.

China’s Liu Xiang provides the single most agonizing and inspiring moment of the Olympics so far. Liu had previously won the gold medal for 110m Hurdles in 2004 but was sidelined by an injury in his Achilles tendon in 2008.

Just watch. It’ll be the best two minutes you spend today.

He had this smile on his face as he settled into his block before the gun went off. I assumed he knew this was his time. This was his chance at redemption. Little did we all know, he realized it was not going to happen.

Will Smith brings back his Fresh Prince rap, reminds us why we still love him.

Fixed iPhone Rock God Commercial

No, Siri won’t email all of your contacts about your upcoming show again, asshole.

My favorite passage on love. From the Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. “What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?” “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”