December 2011
Retro-futurism from the former Yugoslavia.
Daniel Day-Lewis, as Lincoln. Now excited about this movie.
One afternoon in 1985, two Irish kids went on an adventure. They ended up in New York City.
Last week, it was goo. Today, a Pennsylvania highway was covered with money.
The Twitter account @Breaking says:An estimated 250,000 people were in NYC’s Rockefeller Center for the Christmas tree lighting No way. Let’s assume that everyone uses, at minimum, six square feet of space: three feet wide by two front-to-back. That would mean that 250,000 people would use 1.5 million square feet - or 34 acres. A city block in New York is a fifth of a mile wide by...
This Thai guide to American slang is so hot, it can’t make a snowman! You know, like we say!
The makers of Franzia wine-in-a-box trademark “Wine for the 99%.”
Do we live in an era where encryption makes surveillance difficult - or is this a golden age for oversight?
A Baptist church in Kentucky won’t allow interracial couples to attend (well, except funerals).
November 2011
North Korea is mad at the Occupy crackdowns - in a totally non-self-serving way, probably.
Love Hanson? Love beer? Good news, weirdo!
The Obama campaign made it exactly 1,402 days before I had to cut off their text messages. Maybe a record!
I am as thrilled to link to an Angelfire page as I am for the content: Morrissey Gets A Job.
A polar bear pushes against the icebreaking ship that threatens to destroy the floe it’s on.
New York will soon get new, aesthetically-pleasing scaffolding. Huh. I always assumed existing design was simply done for utilitarian purposes, and not mandated.
Alexis Madrigal, on the LAPD’s pooling the media before its raid last night. Or, asked another way, does allowing one side to define who the media is respect freedom of the press - particularly with the advent of ubiquitous recording and relaying devices? @OakFoSho covered the raid and had a gun pointed at him. He wasn’t in the press pool.
Cain’s puerile map of America’s international buddies is probably using the illustration of the world’s Facebook connections without approval.
Inside New York City’s largest banana distributor. Per the wonderful book The Works, the city consumes 100 million bananas a year.
Probably goes without saying that unlocking and democratizing the data associated with music is brilliant. For decades, it was firewalled; Spotify introducing the ability to play with it should be amazing.
NASA can use satellites to determine groundwater levels by noting gravitational variances caused by water. The drought in Texas is very apparent in the imagery.
Sotheby’s will be auctioning a selection of Brooke Astor’s art and jewelry. The Childe Hassam isn’t not included.
The Times looks at the Romney campaign, summarizing the candidate thusly: “a socially awkward Mormon with squishy conservative credentials and a reported worth in the range of $190 million to $250 million.”
The problem with American inequality is less about income and more about opportunity, status, and fairness.
Atanacio Garcia collects aluminum cans in his neighborhood, takes them to the recycler, and donates the money to pay off the national debt.
Yahoo has a tool that lets you filter searches by political orientation, as gauged by click-throughs to blogs. The methodology is certainly worth exploring more, but interesting nonetheless.
Jon Huntsman declares allegations of sexual misconduct by Cain to be “bimbo eruptions”.
Port workers in Egypt refuse to sign for a large shipment of tear gas from the United States.
A conservative former sheriff is put in the jail that bears his name after trying to trade meth for gay sex.
Adorable, smart concept for hands-free city guides for kids.
Here’s a fun game: identify if the quote is from Politico’s scathing review of Cain’s candidacy, or the New York Review of Books’ scathing review of his memoir. Cain is so serene, so certain of his superiority to most of those around him, so assured that he is carrying out GodÂ’s plan for him and for America (a conviction that solidified after he survived stage-four colon...
Sixty-eight years ago today, FDR, Churchill, and Stalin met in Tehran to plan D-Day. Hard to imagine Obama, Cameron, and Medvedev there now.
For those eager to increase drilling: the US will likely be a net exporter of fuel this year. First time since the ’40s.
Photos of the surprisingly light final twelve hours of Chinese women on death row, mostly for drug crimes.
An earlier version of the article called Mr. Frank the first openly gay member of Congress. He was the first member of Congress to voluntarily acknowledge he was gay. The Times makes a correction.
Using physics to assess the validity of an NFL penalty.
CNN laid off a number of photojournalists today - victims, in part, of iReport.
Who knew that porcupines made such adorable noises?
In which a fire alarm goes off during the NBC Nightly News. BriWi is a pro.
The economics behind the taxi medallion. Advanced supply-and-demand in a government-created market.
Global warming may mean that the only place in America buckeyes will grow is in… Michigan.
Today in conversations: whales, ravens, Martians.
The heartbreaking, torturous story of the second chimp America sent into space.
How Romney lost his race for President. George Romney, that is - Mitt’s father.
At the bottom of the stairs in my grandparents’ split-entry in Penn Yan, New York, was a bookshelf. It held a random assortment of books - I remember the bold spine of Sho-Gun in particular - and was behind the armchair where my grandfather sat and smoked his pipe. Mixed in with the books - maybe on that shelf, maybe another; it’s hard to remember - were some that my father and his...
The architect of Rick Perry’s much-heralded data-driven campaign system has left the campaign. Even data has its limits.
The government of Mexico commissioned its own typeface. Throwback blockiness, Aztecan.
Using the USA Today logo to promote yourself: worse than using nothing.
Ten things Siri can help with, in lieu of an abortion.
How to drum up goodwill for an oil company? Canada’s Paramount Resources renamed its oilsands division “Pixar.”
For kicks, here are pie charts of 2011’s most shared articles on Facebook, by outlet and topic. By outlet Yahoo and CNN top the charts. I think this is a reflection of audience make-up as much as size, though I have nothing to back that up. By topic …Except this. “Parenting” is very general, of course, but I think it is indicative. Bear in mind that 25 to 44 year olds...
