Archives > Did You Read About... > June 2008

June 26, 2008

Laundry detergent maker mailed t-shirt wrapped boxes that contained product samples
The t-shirts arrive dirtied by their trip through the postal system. And if the recipients wanted their free t-shirts to look as good as new, all they had to do was wash it once with the product sample. How clever. That is, if the detergent can actually get out postal system gunk.

Renderings of the High Line's Phase Two designs
Phase One looks completely underwhelming.

June 24, 2008

Ricoh GX200 announced
12mp replacement for GX100. Nothing too exciting feature-wise, and the choice of a 12mp sensor, while expected, is disappointing. I would much rather have seen a lower-noise 10mp sensor. Official site here.

China's new visa restrictions are severely reducing tourism as the Olympics approaches
Tourism should be increasing, not decreasing. What's wrong with the Chinese government? Apparently, plenty of rooms are still available during the Games.

June 19, 2008

Confused about Chinese family relationship titles?

June 18, 2008

Stewart Butterfield's resignation letter to Yahoo!

Flickr co-founders join mass exodus from Yahoo!

June 15, 2008

A 10' x 7' Astro Boy pixel art made from 138,000 recycled Tokyo Metro tickets is on temporary display on the 2nd floor of the Shinjuku Takashimaya

NY Times has a story about the struggles between the landlords and tenants of a 15-unit five-story tenement which the landlords want to turn into an obscenely large 11,000 sq ft home for themselves
When I lived on East 9th, I've often daydreamed about having the entire building to myself and what I would do with all that space. But that was just some idle fantasy. This couple is actually doing it. Craziness. The tenants claim that the owners are only saying they will use it themselves to exploit a loophole in the law allowing landlords to displace rent-stabilized tenants if the landlords will use the space as their primary residence. First of all, that law is crazy if it has no reasonable limit on the size of the intended residence. And second of all, even if the landlords really are planning to live in an entire five-story building themselves, they should not be allowed to do it. I don't want to sound like a communist, but nobody should have that much space in Manhattan if it means displacing a bunch of poor people.

June 14, 2008

Islands of the world sorted by population

June 13, 2008

A mind-numbingly long, but convincing, argument that Tony Sopranos died in the final scene of The Sopranos
The last "shot" of the series (10 seconds of black and silence) is from Tony's POV. The implication being that Tony sees "blackness" and "nothingness."

The crystal radio receiver is a very simple kind of radio receiver that needs no battery or power source except the power received from the radio waves

Exposure for iPhone sounds amazing
This iPhone app shows you geo-tagged photos from Flickr based on your location. So you are standing somewhere, perhaps on a trip to a new city, and you can whip out your iPhone and browse all the photos taken at that location taken by other people. How awesome is that?

United and USAir joins American in charging $15 for 1st checked luggage
And $25 for second. I like this quote from a disgruntled passenger: "Pretty soon they'll be making us pay to go to the toilet on the plane."

June 12, 2008

A story about how an architect secretly built an elaborate scavenger hunt complete with ciphers and hidden compartments into a client's apartment
The hunt even comes with its own book and soundtrack.

Scans of a 1984 New York magazine cover story on the gentrification of the Lower East Side and East Village

June 11, 2008

BMW concept car that is covered in fabric
Watch the video. The headlights "blink" open. Very cool stuff.

June 10, 2008

More than one-fourth of adult New Yorkers are infected with the virus that causes genital herpes

June 7, 2008

Interactive map of what to eat and not to eat at all 30 Major League stadiums
Under U.S. Cellular Field where the White Sox plays: eat nothing, avoid everything. Ha. I'm surprised that is the only stadium with no edible food. I would think there would be more.

June 5, 2008

The Photographer's Right: A downloadable flyer explaining your rights when stopped or contronted for photography

The June 9 & 16, 2008, Summer Fiction Issue of The New Yorker features "Natasha," a story by Vladimir Nabokov, published for the first time in English

June 2, 2008

The geographic center of the United States

June 1, 2008

Yves Saint Laurent died on Sunday