It’s not a balloon, it’s a Zeppelin Bansky!
Art, damn it, art! watch. (#42 in a series)
November 7th, 2013Dig if you will the picture.
November 6th, 2013Daring Fireball had two links yesterday to stories about the shutdown of Everpix.
I hadn’t heard of Everpix, either, but Gruber praises it pretty highly: “Everpix is how photo storage should work.” It might have been something I would have tried, if I had known about it. But I’d never seen even a mention of it anywhere until Gruber’s posts yesterday. This might explain why they are shutting down.
Everpix sponsored the DF RSS feed twice this year, which is how they first came to my attention.
I guess that demonstrates how effective sponsoring the RSS feed of a notorious Yankees fan is. Seriously, why were they not advertising on places like the On Taking Pictures podcast as well?
I don’t want to rub it in. It is sad that these people are losing their jobs and their money, especially if Everpix is all that and a bag of chips. But I do want to note one other thing from one of Gruber’s linked articles:
Here’s the Shaker website.
What differentiates this from, say, Second Life? A lack of giant dicks?
Here’s their blog. Enough said.
They got $15 million out of investors for this? I have got to work harder on schemes for separating fools from their money. Hmmmmmm…maybe a cross between Groupon and Second Life?
Edited to add: Ooooooh! Ooooooh! I know! Warcraft meets Google Offers! You kill monsters, and when they die, they drop special offers like “$15 for $30 worth of food at Mom’s“!
VC investors, the email address is on my contact page.
Banana republicans watch: November 6, 2013.
November 6th, 2013Politics depress me. In general and in specific. (I’m not sure how I feel about the Astrodome being declared dead.)
But there is at least one bright spot. Voters in the bankrupt municipality of San Bernardino threw out several elected officials in a recall election.
Those given the axe:
- “Longtime councilwoman” Wendy McCammack. This is interesting because Ms. McCammack was also the top vote-getter in the San Bernardino mayor’s race. However, there were a total of 10 candidates, and she got “just under” 25% of the vote. I wonder how many of the eight other candidates are going to throw their support to her, and how many will support “Carey Davis, an accountant and political newcomer”.
- City attorney James Penman. City attorney is an elected rather than appointed position? Interesting.
- Robert Jenkins, “charged with more than 30 felony and misdemeanor counts related to allegedly posting ads on Craigslist for sex partners and directing them to a former partner and another man”.
I haven’t been giving much attention to the Angela Spaccia/Bell trial. Most of what I’ve seen in the LAT has been the usual back and forth we’ve seen in the other trials: “City council approved!” “Did not!” “Did too!” “Rizzo’s a big poopy head and it was all his fault!”
(There have been a few amusing bits I missed covering. Among them:
The contracts in question being those for Spaccia and Robert “Ratso” Rizzo. This is interesting: while I can’t find the story now, I do recall reading that former Bell finance director Lourdes Garcia slipped contracts for Spaccia and Rizzo into stacks of other documents that were signed blindly by city officials.)
Things are getting a little more interesting. Randy Adams, the former police chief of Bell, is testifying for the defense today. You may remember former chief Adams from such hits as “I’m looking forward to see you and taking all of Bell’s money?!”, “Hire me and give me my disability pension“, and “I don’t know why he is not a defendant in this case”.
Note to self: stop off at grocery store on way home, stock up on popcorn.
Obit watch: November 6, 2013.
November 6th, 2013Charlie Trotter, “celebrity” chef and PBS cooking show host.
NYT. Chicago Tribune. Sun-Times.
I never ate at a Trotter restaurant, though I did watch some of “The Kitchen Sessions” on PBS. I think you can make an argument that Trotter was among the first, if not the very first, in the new wave of “celebrity chefs”. My perception is that he was in the public consciousness earlier than Thomas Keller or Grant Achatz, for example. Certainly I was aware of Trotter before I’d heard of Anthony Bourdain (who I’d argue isn’t really a “celebrity chef”, but that’s a digression).
But it also seems that he struggled in the new environment. I remember this NYT profile from 2011 that claimed “Mr. Trotter hardly seems to figure in the national food conversation anymore.” And last year, he closed his restaurant, stating that he wanted to pursue graduate degrees in
“philosophy and political theory”.
He was 54 years old, which seems awfully young to me. I don’t have any evidence to support this theory, but I wonder if he knew his time was short and wanted to wind things down gracefully.
Edited to add: tribute from Jonathan Gold in the LAT:
TMQ Watch: November 5, 2013.
November 5th, 2013Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone. Let’s just get into it, shall we?
This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
Matango, Fungus of Terror!
November 5th, 2013By way of the YCombinator news feed:
(You know, I’d read about Mantango in one of the Golden Turkey books, but it wasn’t until I read the Wikipedia entry that I became aware it was based on a William Hope Hodgson short story.)
Your loser update: week 9, 2013.
November 4th, 2013NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Jacksonville (bye week)
Tampa Bay
(What the heck, Seattle?)
You can’t touch this.
November 2nd, 2013So Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, former city manager of Bell, is going to prison. He’s expected to be sentenced to somewhere between 10 to 12 years (the actual sentencing is scheduled for March), and he’ll probably do about half that time.
Ratso also has to pay compensation to the city of Bell. As far as I can tell, there hasn’t been a final decision on the amount (I’m guessing that will be part of his sentencing) but it could be up to $3.2 million.
Where will that money come from? Rizzo sold his house at a loss, and it looks like the same thing is happening with his ranch.
Two places the money won’t come from: Rizzo’s retirement account, and his pension of $116,628 a year.
More:
Go Pods!
October 31st, 2013I was looking at my “Squid” tag the other day (no, really, I am not making this up) and thinking “I don’t use this tag nearly enough”.
Well, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI for short) has their own YouTube channel. And they have a tradition of posting themed videos for Halloween.
This year’s video is “Spooky Eyes”, and it is chock-full of squidly goodness. (There are also some non-squid creatures in it.)
I also kind of like the music in this video. It sounds a little like a toy piano or maybe a child’s keyboard. The title of the piece is “Halloween Sputnik” by Richard Desilets, in case it catches your ear as well.
There’s a playlist of MBARI’s other Halloween themed videos, including “Big Teeth” and “Predators and Scavengers”.
And if you don’t want to watch the video, the LAT has a slideshow based on it.
Texas flood.
October 31st, 2013It rained pretty hard last night. The Lower Colorado River Authority actually opened floodgates on Tom Miller Dam, which caused Lady Bird Lake to rise like excessively yeasted bread dough.
Reagan Hackleman, who used to work for KXAN and is a freelance photographer, went out and got some photos.
His gallery is here. I won’t even hotlink; just go over and look at the photos, especially that first one.
Bad Idea Jeans.
October 31st, 2013Available scents are claimed to include:
Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it in action. But even if this does turn out to be real, and not a hoax, I still think it is a damn stupid idea. (Anyone remember the iSmell?)
Also:
Almost as cool as making the theme song to “The Wire” (the Season 5 version) your ringtone … almost.
Oh, bullshit. Everyone knows the Season 1 version (with the Blind Boys of Alabama) is the best version.
Edited to add: I have been challenged to provide support for the above statement.
Here’s a handy page that contains YouTube versions of the theme song from all five seasons.
Big dismal science.
October 31st, 2013Happy Halloween, everyone.
Dean Karlan lives in New Haven, Connecticut. He gets a lot of trick-or-treaters in his neighborhood: “Residents say the area’s popularity is because the houses are so close together, minimizing the door-to-door travel time for trick-or-treaters.”
Dr. Karlan is also a behavioral economist. So why not combine the two and do science experiments on children?
In other experiments, Karlan has found that the more generic the costume is, the more likely it is that the child will choose a see-through bag with candy in it over a non-transparent bag. Karlan has also found that…
I’d like to see a follow-up to this experiment where children get equal amounts of candy, but those who identify as Democrats have more of their candy confiscated by the researchers.
One more thing I’d like to know: why isn’t Dubner interviewing Karlan, instead of doing a re-run this week? With all due respect, guys, it seems like you’ve been doing a lot of re-runs recently, and that doesn’t really motivate me to give you money.
(This also reminds me that my youngest niece has gotten to the age where I can start doing science experiments on with her. She’s still a little young for the economics based ones, though.)
Two for your consideration.
October 30th, 2013PetaPixel reprints a post (from the LensRentals blog) about a WWII story I’ve never heard before.
Jay Zeamer was a pilot. But he wasn’t a great one. He had problems passing his check tests, especially when it came to the “landing” part. He managed to get into B-17s and started flying as a “fill-in” pilot and on photoreconnaissance runs.
But nobody wanted to fly with him. So he created his own crew by gathering up every…
But they didn’t have a plane. So they grabbed onto a dilapidated B-17 that had been flown in for spare parts and somehow rebuilt it into flying condition. The base commander thought this was a pretty good thing, and intended to assign the plane to another crew.
Zeamer and crew called the plane “Old 666”. And yes, they took on the missions no one else wanted.
My kind of guys.
This would make for one heck of a movie. Especially in light of what eventually happened to “Old 666” and her crew. But for that you should go read the rest of the story at PetaPixel or LensRentals.
Meanwhile, by way of Insta (who draws a different conclusion than I do): W. Joseph Campbell, author of Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism
That ’70s post.
October 30th, 2013Ah, the 1970’s. What a time.
Remember Alexander Calder, the noted sculptor? Died in 1976? Well, he had a dealer, Klaus Perls, that he worked with exclusively. It was, by all accounts, a close and very friendly relationship.
Was.
It looks like the Perls family stipulates at least part of these claims, specifically the parts about the Swiss bank accounts. But they also claim that part of the reason Perls had a Swiss bank account is so he could transfer profits to Calder’s Swiss bank account.
I knew there was a reason I liked Alexander Calder’s work.
The 1970’s were also a time when it was much easier to get your hands on explosives. Especially if you were 17 years old. And if you were peeved at the California Department of Water and Power.
The blast ripped apart a 4-foot-wide steel gate that regulates the flow of water to the aqueduct. Windows were blown out of the gatehouse atop the spill gates and its concrete floor buckled.
About 100 million gallons of water meant for Los Angeles were instead flushed into Owens Lake, which had been dry since the Department of Water and Power opened the aqueduct in 1913.
Nobody was injured. Mark Berry, one of the two men responsible, spent 30 days in juvenile detention. And he now works for the DWP.
(I love this telling detail: “The air was filled with the banana-like smell of nitroglycerin.”)
(And this one: “Berry said his father, as yet unaware that his son was one of the culprits, boasted to a neighbor, ‘If I ever find out who bombed the gates I’ll buy him a steak dinner.'” Gardner Dozois and Edward Abbey, please call your offices.)
(Since I made a “That ’70s Show” reference, I believe I have to link to this Penny Arcade. Especially since I am all about fish out of water prison dramas.)
TMQ Watch: October 29, 2013.
October 29th, 2013Did you know that you can find much of the 90s British sitcom “Chef!” (it was all over PBS for a while) on YouTube?
What does that have to do with TMQ? We’ll find out in this week’s TMQ after the jump…