List of NYC's outdoor summer movies  May 15 2013

There are a lot of outdoor movies showing in NYC this summer: here's a listing of the whats, wheres, and whens. Movies include The Goonies, Jaws, Duck Soup, Moonrise Kingdom, Grease, and Blade Runner.

Extreme settlements  May 03 2013

A list of the northernmost, southernmost, easternmost and westernmost cities/towns/villages in all 50 US states.

Vermont -- Northernmost: Derby Line. Southernmost: Vernon (specifically South Vernon area). Easternmost: Beecher Falls. Westernmost: Chimney Point.

California -- Northernmost: Tulelake (note: Fairport is more northerly but is considered a "former settlement") Southernmost: San Diego (San Ysidro District). Easternmost: Parker Dam. Westernmost: Ferndale.

New York -- Northernmost: Rouses Point. Southernmost: Staten Island-New York City (Tottenville Neighborhood) Easternmost: Montauk. Westernmost: Findley Lake.

(via @jessamyn)

Seinfeld and NYC  May 03 2013

A list of the most New York episodes of Seinfeld.

4. "The Rye" (Season 7, Episode 11)
This episode's titular breadstuff-which Jerry steals from an old lady who refuses to sell it to him, even for 50 bucks-supposedly comes from Schnitzer's, a great New York bakery name if we've ever heard one. The real place was called Royale Kosher Bake Shop. Unfortunately, it's now closed. A Jenny Craig branch stands in its place at 237 W. 72nd St. Also in this episode: Kramer leads Beef-a-Reno-fueled hansom cab rides through Central Park. His skills as a tour guide are questionable, though, as his historical "facts" are impressively inaccurate. For example, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux-not former New York Yankee Joe Pepitone-designed the park.

Already good, Seinfeld got 100 times better when I moved to NYC and got 10 more of the jokes per episode.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: 20 things I wish I'd known  May 03 2013

Basketball Hall of Famer and "secret nerd" Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shares a list of 20 things he wish he'd know when he was 30 years old.

18. Watch more TV. Yeah, you heard right, Little Kareem. It's great that you always have your nose in history books. That's made you more knowledgeable about your past and it has put the present in context. But pop culture is history in the making and watching some of the popular shows of each era reveals a lot about the average person, while history books often dwell on the powerful people.

Yesteryear's newspapers of tomorrow  Apr 26 2013

From Paleofuture, a review of past predictions of what newspapers might look like in the future.

In the 1920s it was radio that was supposed to kill the newspaper. Then it was TV news. Then it was the Internet. The newspaper has evolved and adapted (remember when TV news killed the evening edition newspaper?) and will continue to evolve for many decades to come.

Visions of what newspapers might look like in the future have been varied throughout the 20th century. Sometimes they've taken the form of a piece of paper that you print at home, delivered via satellite or radio waves. Other times it's a multimedia product that lives on your tablet or TV. Today we're taking a look at just a few of the newspapers from the futures that never were.

My favorite is this radio that prints newspapers:

(via @H_FJ)

A list of horrible business ideas  Apr 17 2013

Here's a list of business ideas that seemed outlandish, ridiculous, and even downright stupid. See if you can match some of them to the billion dollar businesses they became before you click through.

Airlines are cool. Let's start one. How hard could it be? We'll differentiate with a funny safety video and by not being a**holes.

It will be ugly. It will be free. Except for the hookers.

We are building the world's 20th search engine at a time when most of the others have been abandoned as being commoditized money losers.

Give us all of your bank, brokerage, and credit card information. We'll give it back to you with nice fonts. To make you feel richer, we'll make them green.

It is like email, SMS, or RSS. Except it does a lot less.

The world needs yet another Myspace or Friendster except several years late. We'll only open it up to a few thousand overworked, anti-social, Ivy Leaguers. Everyone else will then join since Harvard students are so cool.

On the 40th anniversary of the first cellphone call  Apr 03 2013

I still remember the first time I saw a guy at a restaurant talking on one of those prehistorically massive cellphones. My dad leaned over and said, "Look at that poor guy. Never let that happen to you. Never take a job that's so all-consuming that you have to carry a phone around, even during lunch." A lot has changed since then (although I still often see a lot of validity in my dad's initial response to these devices) and in the forty years since Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first cellphone call. Wired takes a look back at the twelve cellphones that changed our world forever.

The 25 least visited countries in the world  Mar 28 2013

A somewhat surprising list of the least visited countries in the world in that North Korea is not even in the top 15. Somalia, with 500 annual tourists, is #2:

Why so few?
War, lack of a government for many years, violent muslim extremists, sharia law. The reputation of Somalia is extremelly close to rock bottom.

Why you may still want to visit
The government has started to function again. Mogadishu is now relatively safe and businesses are thriving. Turkish Airlines has even opened a direct twice weekly route from Istanbul.

What else
Go to the beach just outside Mogadishu or visit the Bakaara market where you can even buy your own semi-genuine Somalian passport. You may not want to use it anywhere, though. Your travel experience doesn't extend beyond the Bahamas, Paris or Gran Canaria, you say? First of all; Why are you reading this blog post? Secondly, do not go to Somalia!

The author of the list, Gunnar Garfors, has visited 196 of the 198 countries in the world; he's hitting the last two in the next few months: Kiribati and Cape Verde. (via @DavidGrann)

Typographica's favorite typefaces of 2012  Mar 22 2013

Stephen Coles of Typographica says that 2012 was "a strong year" for new typefaces. He asked dozens of designers and font makers to nominate their favorite 2012 typefaces and here's what they had to say.

The independent foundry has also cemented its place as the new foundation of the industry. Most of this year's selections are from very small shops, several of which are entirely new to the market. It's also significant that, in addition to offering their fonts through retailers like FontShop, MyFonts, and the newly revived Fonts.com, most of these indie foundries now sell directly to customers through their own sites. In some cases they have eschewed outside distribution altogether. The "majors" have not simply laid down, however. Monotype, Linotype, Font Bureau, FontFont, and H&FJ are all represented in this year's list, each with releases that are remarkably characteristic of their respective brands.

(via df)

Reading all the popular books  Mar 06 2013

Matt Kahn is reading every bestselling novel from each of the past 100 years.

For this blog I plan, among other things, to read and review every novel to reach the number one spot on Publishers Weekly annual bestsellers list, starting in 1913. Beyond just a book review, I'm going to provide some information on the authors and the time at which these books were written in an attempt to figure out just what made these particular books popular at that particular time.

A few things. The Silmarillion?! Was the top selling book in 1977? John Grisham appears on the list 11 different times; the guy is a machine. And it's interesting to see when popularity and critical acclaim part ways, when the Roths, le Carrés, and E.L. Doctorows give way to the Clancys, Grishams, and Dan Browns.

Unreleased celebrity perfumes  Feb 18 2013

From Sarah Marshall, a list of celebrity fragrances that didn't quite make it to market.

Goldbloom by Jeff Goldblum: This fragrance, meant to be drizzled down the wearer's forearm (preferably while in a moving car) is redolent of warm eyeglasses, tanning oil, and Velociraptor musk. Perfect for work or leisure.

Wintour Harvest by Anna Wintour: Peppery, balsamic, indecisive, and fresh. Notes of warm blood and Galliano Sequin enliven this fragrance designed for the gal on the go.

Grand Central Terminal is 100 years old  Feb 01 2013

To celebrate Grand Central's 100th birthday, The Daily Beast has 100 facts about the NYC landmark.

1. Grand Central Terminal opened its doors at midnight on February 2, 1913.

9. To commemorate the centennial on Friday, shops and eateries will price their goods as if it were 1913. [Ed note: I doubt this applies to the Apple Store.]

39. A secret trap door in the kiosk below the clock leads to a spiral staircase down to the lower level info booth.

50. M42 connects to a secret underground platform at the Waldorf Astoria.

93. In 1978's Superman, Lex Luther's lair is located under the terminal.

Update: Another fact: Grand Central's clocks are purposefully off by a minute.

The idea is that passengers rushing to catch trains they're about to miss can actually be dangerous -- to themselves, and to each other. So conductors will pull out of the station exactly one minute after their trains' posted departure times. That minute of extra time won't be enough to disconcert passengers too much when they compare it to their own watches or smartphones ... but it is enough, the thinking goes, to buy late-running train-catchers just that liiiiiitle bit of extra time that will make them calm down a bit. Fast clocks make for slower passengers.

Top five truths you won't hear any US official admit  Jan 30 2013

Stephen Walt on what truths US foreign policy officials will never admit in public.

#2: "We don't actually care that much about human rights." Presidents, diplomats, and other politicians talk about human rights all the time, and both Congress and the Executive Branch often bully small countries over their human rights performance, especially when we have other differences with them). But when human rights concerns conflict with other interests, our ethical concerns take a back seat nearly every time. Most Americans didn't care when the U.S.-led sanctions program against Iraq caused the deaths of several hundred thousand Iraqis (many of them children), and none of the senior officials who authorized torture during the Bush administration has faced indictment or even serious investigation (Just imagine how much we'd be howling if we suspected some foreign government had been waterboarding captive Americans!). The United States has plenty of allies whose human rights performance ranges from questionable to awful, and we continue to trade and invest in China despite its own lax human rights standards. I'm not suggesting that the U.S. government is totally indifferent to such concerns, of course; what I'm saying is that we are rarely willing to do very much or pay significant costs in order to advance human rights, unless our strategic interests run parallel. Like most countries, in short, we talk a better game on human rights than we actually deliver. But you're not going to hear many American politicians admit it.

(via digg)

The 20 most influential beers of all time  Jan 18 2013

Martyn Cornell took issue with First We Feast's list of the 20 most influential beers of all time and came up with his own list.

I mean, Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye is more influential in the history of beer than Bass Pale Ale or Barclay Perkins porter? Don't make me weep. Allagash White trumps Hoegaarden and Schneider Weisse? (You may not like Hoegaarden or Schneider Weisse, but I hope you won't try to deny their influence.) Gueuze, Saison and Kolsch are such important styles they deserve a representative each in a "most influential beers of all time" list, while IPA and porter are left out? I don't think so. And the same goes for Schneider Aventinus: where are the hordes of Weissebockalikes? Sam Adams Utopias has influenced who, exactly? "Generic lager"? I see where you're coming from, in that much of what has happened over the past 40 years in the beer world is a reaction against generic lager, but still ... And I love London Pride, but it's not even the third most influential beer that Fuller's brews.

I like arguments about beer way more than drinking beer.

100 greatest sports photos  Jan 02 2013

From Sports Illustrated, their picks for the 100 greatest photos of sports.

Designers pick their favorite book covers of 2012  Dec 28 2012

The NY Times asked a bunch of designers for their favorite book cover designs of 2012. Lots of nice work here.

The 100 best lists of all time  Dec 27 2012

The New Yorker, with shots across the bows of The Awl and Buzzfeed, offers up a list of the 100 best lists of all time. A sampling:

94. Benjamin Franklin’s “Thirteen Virtues”

90. McDonald’s Big Mac-ingredients commercial

80. Dr. James Naismith’s original 13 Rules of Basket Ball

61. Fortune 500

41. The Dewey Decimal System

19. The Fibonacci Sequence

6. Martin Luther’s "95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences"

1. The Periodic Table of Elements

Gun trends explain US gun culture  Dec 18 2012

Emily Badger highlights some trends in gun ownership, gun violence, and public opinion related to gun control over the past several decades.

A handful of charts paint a remarkable picture of some key shifts over the past 30 or 40 years. During that time, gun violence nationally has declined significantly even as aberrant mass shootings have grown less so; public sentiment for regulating the weapons has fallen steeply, too. Mother Jones has estimated that we're approaching a demographic reality where our population of firearms will outpace our population of people. But hard data on the total number of civilian-owned guns in America is hard to come by, and so much of what we know on the topic is based upon what gun owners themselves say in surveys.

Ten pro-gun arguments and why they are wrong  Dec 17 2012

Paul Waldman from The American Prospect outlines ten arguments that gun advocates typically make and why they are wrong.

6. The Constitution says I have a right to own guns.
Yes it does, but for some reason gun advocates think that the right to bear arms is the only constitutional right that is virtually without limit. You have the right to practice your religion, but not if your religion involves human sacrifice. You have the right to free speech, but you can still be prosecuted for incitement or conspiracy, and you can be sued for libel. Every right is subject to limitation when it begins to threaten others, and the Supreme Court has affirmed that even though there is an individual right to gun ownership, the government can put reasonable restrictions on that right.

And we all know that if this shooter turns out to have a Muslim name, plenty of Americans, including plenty of gun owners, will be more than happy to give up all kinds of rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Have the government read my email? Have my cell phone company turn over my call records? Check which books I'm taking out of the library? Make me take my shoes off before getting on a plane, just because some idiot tried to blow up his sneakers? Sure, do what you've got to do. But don't make it harder to buy thousands of rounds of ammunition, because if we couldn't do that we'd no longer be free.

The best reporting on guns in America  Dec 14 2012

From Pro Publica back in July, the best reporting on guns in America.

In the wake of last week's shooting in Aurora, Colo., we've taken a step back and laid out the best pieces we could find about guns. They're roughly organized by articles on rights, trafficking and regulation.

Facts about guns and mass shootings in the US  Dec 14 2012

More facts about guns in America from Ezra Klein, beginning with the sad fact that "shooting sprees are not rare in the United States".

If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation's security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it.

Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. But that's unacceptable. As others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn't "too soon." It's much too late.

The 50 greatest hip-hop songs  Dec 07 2012

Rolling Stone asked a panel of experts (Busta Rhymes, Questlove, Rick Rubin, etc.) to vote on the best hip-songs ever produced. Here's the list of their top 50 picks. Dre and Snoop's Nuthin' But a "G" Thang comes in at #6.

Climbing to Number Two on the singles chart in early 1993, "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang" made Dr. Dre the undisputed flag bearer of West Coast rap, while also ushering that genre into the pop mainstream. The song's secret weapon was a relatively unknown pup named Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose verses are packed with effortless quotables. The song also introduced Dre's masterful "G-Funk" style of production, which updated George Clinton's legacy with slow, rubbery funk and layered synth hooks. "We made records during the crack era, where everything was hyped up, sped up and zoned out," Chuck D explained. "Dre came with ' "G" Thang' and slowed the whole genre down. He took hip-hop from the crack era to the weed era."

Listen to the entire list on Spotify. (via @gavinpurcell)

NY Times' list of 100 notable books of 2012  Nov 28 2012

And so it begins, the end of the year lists. Love 'em or hate 'em, you've got to, um, ... I've got nothing here. You either love them or hate them. Anyway, the NY Times' list of the 100 notable books of the year is predictably solid and Timesish.

BRING UP THE BODIES. By Hilary Mantel. (Macrae/Holt, $28.) Mantel's sequel to "Wolf Hall" traces the fall of Anne Boleyn, and makes the familiar story fascinating and suspenseful again.

BUILDING STORIES. By Chris Ware. (Pantheon, $50.) A big, sturdy box containing hard-bound volumes, pamphlets and a tabloid houses Ware's demanding, melancholy and magnificent graphic novel about the inhabitants of a Chicago building.

I absolutely demolished Bring Up the Bodies over Thanksgiving break and loved it. I haven't had a chance to sit down with Building Stories yet, but that massive and gorgeous collection is a steal at $28 from Amazon. And as far as lists go, another early favorite is Tyler Cowen's list of his favorite non-fiction books of the year. Cowen is a demanding reader and I always find something worth reading there. (via @DavidGrann)

Kurt Cobain's favorite albums  Nov 14 2012

From Kurt Cobain's journals, a handwritten list of the late Nirvana frontman's 50 favorite albums, including those from Sonic Youth (duh), Pixies (double duh), and Mazzy Star.

The worst passwords of 2012  Oct 26 2012

I cannot believe these are some of the passwords people actually use:

1. password
2, 123456
3. 12345678
4. abc123
5. qwerty
6. monkey
7. letmein
8. dragon
9. 111111
10. baseball
11. iloveyou
12. trustno1

I feel more secure than ever with my "password2" password.

99 life hacks to make your life easier  Oct 18 2012

I've never seen so much household organizational porn collected in one place before. Tumblr should get a Nobel Peace Prize for propagating such useful information so far and wide. A couple of examples:

(via hacker news)

25 richest people of all time  Oct 17 2012

From a site called Celebrity Net Worth (I know, blech), a list of the 25 richest people of all time, adjusted for inflation. Gates, Buffett, and Rockefeller all make the list but the big cheese is Malian emperor Mansa Musa I, with a net worth of $400 billion in today's dollars.

Mansa Musa I of Mali is the richest human being in history with a personal net worth of $400 billion! Mansa Musa lived from 1280 - 1337 and ruled the Malian Empire which covered modern day Ghana, Timbuktu and Mali in West Africa. Mansa Musa's shocking wealth came from his country's vast production of more than half the world's supply of salt and gold.

(via @DavidGrann)

The most powerful TV shows of the past 25 years  Oct 16 2012

This is a really interesting and eclectic list of 25 TV shows that have had an impact on society beyond the water cooler. There are a few obvious choices, but most of these I hadn't heard of.

In 2003, 24-year-old machinist Juan Catalan faced the death penalty for allegedly shooting a key witness in a murder case. Catalan told police that he couldn't have committed the crime -- he was at a Los Angeles Dodgers game at the time. He had the ticket stubs and everything!

When police didn't buy his alibi, Catalan contacted the Dodgers, who pointed him to an unlikely hero: misanthropic comedian Larry David. On the day in question, David had been filming an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm in Dodger Stadium. It was a long shot, but maybe Catalan could be seen in the background. When his attorney watched the outtakes, it took just 20 minutes to find shots of Catalan and his daughter chowing down on ballpark dogs while watching from the stands.

Thanks to the footage, Catalan walked free after five months behind bars. And Larry David found one more thing to be self-deprecating about. "I tell people that I've done one decent thing in my life, albeit inadvertently," joked David.

(via @fimoculous)

Unexplained sounds  Oct 15 2012

Every once in awhile, something somewhere will make a sound and no one really knows where it came from. Among the unexplained sounds listed on Wikipedia are mistpouffers, The Bloop, The Hum, and Julia.

The NOAA's Dr. Christopher Fox does not believe its origin is man-made, such as a submarine or bomb, or familiar geological events such as volcanoes or earthquakes. While the audio profile of the Bloop does resemble that of a living creature, the source is a mystery both because it is different from known sounds and because it was several times louder than the loudest recorded animal, the blue whale.

Note: Illustration by Chris Piascik...prints & more are available.

The 50 best films of the 1990s  Oct 11 2012

The AV Club has compiled a list of the 50 best films of the 1990s, which decade, when you look at this list, is starting to feel like a bit of a film golden age compared to now. Here's part one, part two, and part three.

Few talk about the '90s as a filmmaking renaissance on par with the late '60s and early '70s, but for many of the film critics at The A.V. Club, it was the decade when we were coming of age as cinephiles and writers, and we remember it with considerable affection. Those '70s warhorses like Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman posted some of the strongest work of their careers, and an exciting new generation of filmmakers -- Quentin Tarantino, Joel and Ethan Coen, Wong Kar-Wai, Olivier Assayas, David Fincher, and Wes Anderson among them -- were staking out territory of their own.

I've seen 35 of the 50 films and some of my favorites are Election, Eyes Wide Shut, Fargo, Groundhog Day, Boogie Nights, Being John Malkovich, Rushmore, Reservoir Dogs, Dazed and Confused, and Pulp Fiction. Some films I'm surprised didn't make the list: Iron Giant, Three Kings, Babe: Pig in the City, and The Insider.

Filmmakers and the typefaces they love  Sep 14 2012

Flavorwire has a quick look at some noted directors (Kubrick, Wes Anderson, Fincher) and the typefaces that they often used. (via @curiousoctopus)

The scale of startup ambition  Sep 13 2012

Over at Hacker News, npguy asked Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham about "the most frighteningly ambitious idea" he'd ever been pitched. Graham declined to answer, citing confidentiality, but Eliezer Yudkowsky responded with what another commenter called the Yudkowsky Ambition scale:

1) We're going to build the next Facebook!

2) We're going to found the next Apple!

3) Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level of change as this.)

4) Our product is the next nuclear weapon. You wouldn't want that in the wrong hands, would you?

5) This is going to be the equivalent of the invention of electricity if it works out.

6) We're going to make an IQ-enhancing drug and produce basic change in the human condition.

7) We're going to build serious Drexler-class molecular nanotechnology.

8) We're going to upload a human brain into a computer.

9) We're going to build a recursively self-improving Artificial Intelligence.

10) We think we've figured out how to hack into the computer our universe is running on.

An epic tour of American sandwiches  Sep 04 2012

Serious Eats put together an extensive guide to the regional sandwich cuisine of the US that covers everything from the universally available sloppy joe and grilled cheese to the spiedie, the hot brown, and the dutch crunch.

An international edition is also available (gyro! banh mi! bocadillo! chip butty!).

People you didn't know were on Seinfeld  Aug 03 2012

If you're anything like me, you take things like 34 People You Probably Didn't Know Were On Seinfeld as a challenge. It's been awhile, but I've seen every episode of that show (most of them at least twice) so I thought this would be easy but I totally had forgotten or didn't realize that Jon Favreau, Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Denise Richards, and James Spader were on the show. Guess I'm not the Seinfeld fan I thought I was.

Sight & Sound's 50 greatest films of all time  Aug 03 2012

Every decade since 1952, Sight & Sound has polled film professionals to determine the greatest films of all time. Citizen Kane is always the winner, except for the first year. This year, however, S&S expanded the number of contributors dramatically and included online critics as well resulting in Citizen Kane's unseating. They've released the list of top 50 films now, and will release a top 100 in about a month.

About a year ago, the Sight & Sound team met to consider how we could best approach the poll this time. Given the dominance of electronic media, what became immediately apparent was that we would have to abandon the somewhat elitist exclusivity with which contributors to the poll had been chosen in the past and reach out to a much wider international group of commentators than before. We were also keen to include among them many critics who had established their careers online rather than purely in print.

To that end we approached more than 1,000 critics, programmers, academics, distributors, writers and other cinephiles, and received (in time for the deadline) precisely 846 top-ten lists that between them mention a total of 2,045 different films.

I (Aaron) have seen 4 of the movies in the top 50 because I am, apparently, a Luddite philistine. Topping the list this year is Vertigo.

After half a century of monopolising the top spot, Citizen Kane was beginning to look smugly inviolable. Call it Schadenfreude, but let's rejoice that this now conventional and ritualised symbol of 'the greatest' has finally been taken down a peg. The accession of Vertigo is hardly in the nature of a coup d'etat. Tying for 11th place in 1972, Hitchcock's masterpiece steadily inched up the poll over the next three decades, and by 2002 was clearly the heir apparent. Still, even ardent Wellesians should feel gratified at the modest revolution - if only for the proof that film canons (and the versions of history they legitimate) are not completely fossilised.

There's also a directors' list of top 10 films. (via @chrissandoval)

Six policies economists love that politicians hate  Jul 25 2012

A list of economic policies that, according to economists, would benefit the economy but would never fly for political reasons.

Four: Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For everyone. Taxes discourage whatever you're taxing, but we like income, so why tax it? Payroll taxes discourage creating jobs. Not such a good idea. Instead, impose a consumption tax, designed to be progressive to protect lower-income households.

Five: Tax carbon emissions. Yes, that means higher gasoline prices. It's a kind of consumption tax, and can be structured to make sure it doesn't disproportionately harm lower-income Americans. More, it's taxing something that's bad, which gives people an incentive to stop polluting.

17 tips to make your life easier  Jul 18 2012

For some reason, I am a huge sucker for this type of stuff...some of these are really clever! Aren't they?

3. Expanding Frosting
When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.

10. Reducing Static Cling
Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and - ta da! - static is gone.

Well, aren't they? (via a cup of jo)

Carl Sagan's reading list  Jul 11 2012

From a collection of his papers recently acquired by The Library of Congress, a 1954 reading list from physicist Carl Sagan. Huxley, Plato, Shakespeare, and the Bible are all on there among many others. If I understand mathematics properly, and I think I do, using the associative property, if you read all these books, you will become as smart and cool as Carl Sagan was. Or is it the transitive property?

Wes Anderson's best commercials  Jul 03 2012

Adweek has a list of some of the best commercials Wes Anderson has made. It's tough to beat his two-minute spot for American Express.

"Can I get my snack?"

"You're eating it."

Documentaries to see before you die  Jun 22 2012

I was reminded earlier today of True Films, Kevin Kelly's collection of must-see documentaries, educational films, etc.

As dogged as I have been in tracking down great true films, I have seen only a fraction of the estimated 40,000 that have been made. So I am ready for more. However I will only list true films and documentaries that are available as VHS tape or DVDs at consumer prices. In other words, films that are easy for most people to see upon request. I won't include films that are only shown in theaters, or available via high-priced rentals, or simply out of print.

The site hasn't been updated in over a year but the content is evergreen. True Films is also available in book and ebook formats.

Best tall buildings in the world for 2012  Jun 21 2012

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has released their list of the best tall buildings in the world for 2012.

Business Insider has a nice one-page view of the winners.

A chronology of computers from 1938-1988  Jun 12 2012

From Ptak Science Books, a list of every different kind of computer ever made. Ok, I'm sure not every single kind of computer ever made is on there (the list only goes to 1988 for one thing), but it is a very extensive list. Some highlights:

Zuse, Z1, Germany, 1938
Bletchley, Colossus Mark I, Great Britain, 1943
Moore School, ENIAC, United States, 1947
IBM, 360, 30, USA, 1965
Intel, 8080, USA, 1974
Cray, Cray-1, USA, 1976
DEC, PDP-11, 34, 1977
Apple, Apple II, USA, 1977
IBM, PC, AT (and clones), 1984
Apple, Macintosh, USA, 1984

NY Times Magazine Innovation issue  Jun 03 2012

I kinda hafta link to this, don't I? From the NY Times Magazine, 32 Innovations That Will Change Your Tomorrow...the actual or spiritual successor to their Year in Ideas issue.

The electric light was a failure.

Invented by the British chemist Humphry Davy in the early 1800s, it spent nearly 80 years being passed from one initially hopeful researcher to another, like some not-quite-housebroken puppy. In 1879, Thomas Edison finally figured out how to make an incandescent light bulb that people would buy. But that didn't mean the technology immediately became successful. It took another 40 years, into the 1920s, for electric utilities to become stable, profitable businesses. And even then, success happened only because the utilities created other reasons to consume electricity. They invented the electric toaster and the electric curling iron and found lots of uses for electric motors. They built Coney Island. They installed electric streetcar lines in any place large enough to call itself a town. All of this, these frivolous gadgets and pleasurable diversions, gave us the light bulb.

Salts of the earth  May 09 2012

From Food52, a round-up of ten different kinds of salt you might run across in recipes, including table salt, fleur de sel, and Himalayan salt.

Hand-mined from ancient sea salt deposits from the Khewra Salt Mine in Pakistan, Himalayan salt is rich in minerals and believed to be one of the purest salts available -- hence its frequent use in spa treatments. It ranges in color from pure white to shades of pink and deep red. Hand cut into slabs, Himalayan salt is frequently used as a surface for serving food. Due to their ability to hold a specific temperature for an extended period of time, these slabs can be used for anything from serving cold ice cream to cooking fish, meats, and vegetables. Himalayan salt can also be used as a cooking or finishing salt. Or use it to rim the edge of a glass for a warm-weather cocktail.

What would the realists do?  May 01 2012

Stephen Walt wonders how US policy might have been different over the past 20 years if realists (as opposed to the neocons or liberal interventionists) had been in charge.

#2: No "Global War on Terror." If realists had been in charge after 9/11, they would have launched a focused effort to destroy al Qaeda. Realists backed the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and a realist approach to the post-9/11 threat environment would have focused laser-like on al Qaeda and other terrorist groups that were a direct threat to the United States. But realists would have treated them like criminals rather than as "enemy combatants" and would not have identified all terrorist groups as enemies of the United States. And as noted above, realists would not have included "rogue states" like Iran, Iraq, and North Korea (the infamous "axis of evil") in the broader "war on terror." Needless to say, with realists in charge, the infamous 2002 National Security Strategy calling for preventive war would never have been written.

Ebert's greatest films of all time  May 01 2012

For Sight & Sound magazine, Roger Ebert came up with his picks for ten best films ever.

"Citizen Kane" speaks for itself. "2001: A Space Odyssey" is likewise a stand-along monument, a great visionary leap, unsurpassed in its vision of man and the universe. It was a statement that came at a time which now looks something like the peak of humanity's technological optimism. Many would choose "Taxi Driver" as Scorsese's greatest film, but I believe "Raging Bull" is his best and most personal, a film he says in some ways saved his life. It is the greatest cinematic expression of the torture of jealousy -- his "Othello."

(via df)

101 spectacular nonfiction stories  Apr 19 2012

Conor Friedersdorf has published his annual list of the best nonfiction writing from the past year.

Each year, I keep a running list of the most exceptional nonfiction that I encounter while publishing my twice-weekly newsletter The Best of Journalism. Along with my curating work for Byliner, this hoovering of great stories affords me the opportunity to read as many impressive narratives as any single person possibly can. The annual result is my Best of Journalism List, now in its fourth year. I could not, of course, read every worthy piece published during the year. But everything that follows deserves wider attention.

Tips for traveling the world  Apr 09 2012

From Jodi at Legal Nomads, a list of 21 practical tips she's gleaned from traveling the world for the past four years. One tip is to take oranges with you on public transportation:

I started bringing a bag of oranges with me for long bus rides, primarily because they quench thirst and smell delicious. I quickly learned that many Thai and Burmese busgoers sniff the peels to stave off nausea, and that kids love oranges. Really: kids LOVE oranges. So for those who want to bring something for the bus ride but rightfully worry about giving sweets to kids, oranges are your friend. You will win over the parents, make the kids happy, occupy your hours and eventually get fed by everyone on the bus. Trust me. You should always have a bag of oranges on hand, the smaller the orange the better.

She also lists the five things she always carries with her while traveling...one of which, unusually, is a doorstop. I'm guessing that's for keeping people out of rooms without door locks?

Ten photographers to ignore  Apr 03 2012

If you're an aspiring photographer, here are ten photographers that you should ignore, presumably so that you can develop your own voice and style instead.

Robert Frank was a one-man revolution. Before him pictures for the most part were pretty and clean and pre-visualized, and shot from a tripod. Frank came along and tore a new A-hole in that aesthetic. Fortunately he had something to replace it with: a strong personal vision. Most young photographers who follow in his footsteps don't. They mistake grain, guts, and verve with substance. Sorry folks, but hitting three out of four doesn't count. I know it took cajones to shoot that cowboy bar at 1 am pushing your film to 3200, but that doesn't keep your photo from being boring. Time to shoot something you care about, and don't try to convince me it's flags or the underclass.

This follows a list of "harmful" novels for aspiring writers.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
Mark Twain made the American vernacular a literary language; Salinger tried to do the same for the American adolescent whine. We who read Catcher as teenagers in the 1950s and '60s at once considered ourselves free to babble on paper just the way we did over coffee and cigarettes. It was certainly easier than learning how to write a straightforward sentence expressing something more than teen angst.

I wonder if there might be a similar list for designers or artists?

The rules of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons  Mar 27 2012

Speaking of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, animator Chuck Jones and his team were said to follow these simple rules when creating the cartoons:

1. The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going "meep, meep."

2. No outside force can harm the Coyote -- only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products. Trains and trucks were the exception from time to time.

3. The Coyote could stop anytime -- if he were not a fanatic.

4. No dialogue ever, except "meep, meep" and yowling in pain.

5. The Road Runner must stay on the road -- for no other reason than that he's a roadrunner.

6. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters -- the southwest American desert.

7. All tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.

8. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy.

9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.

10. The audience's sympathy must remain with the Coyote.

11. The Coyote is not allowed to catch or eat the Road Runner.

The rules are made only slightly less interesting by their fiction; according to Wikipedia, long-time Jones collaborator Michael Maltese said he'd never heard of the rules.

The 50 greatest cartoons  Mar 27 2012

A book written by Jerry Beck in 1994 called The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals does indeed contain a list of the 50 greatest cartoons as chosen by industry professionals. The list is filthy with Warner Bros cartoons, particularly by the recently aforementioned Chuck Jones (four of the top five are by Jones). I don't know how many are available on YouTube, but I tracked down a couple to show my 4-year-old son, Ollie: Duck Amuck and Rabbit of Seville.

By the time we were finished with Rabbit of Seville, Ollie had literally peed his pants from laughing so hard. I think I'm gonna get the Looney Tunes collection on Blu-ray so we can watch more but I'm a bit afraid of what the hijinks of Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner might do to my boy's pants.

Ten commandments for con men  Feb 29 2012

Con man Victor Lustig shared a list of commandments written for aspiring con men. Among them:

1. Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con-man his coups).

8. Never boast. Just let your importance be quietly obvious.

Martin Scorsese's film school  Feb 27 2012

Fast Company recently interviewed Martin Scorsese and jotted down all 85 movies he mentioned.

The Player: "In the years before this movie, the age of the director who had a free hand came to an end. And yet Altman kept experimenting with different kinds of actor, different approaches to narrative, different equipment, until finally he hit it with this movie, which took him off onto a whole other level."

All the World Press Photo Contest winners  Feb 22 2012

Buzzfeed has a collection of every World Press Photo Contest winner from 1955 to the present. Some amazing photos but in general they do not paint a very kind picture of humanity.

The world's best designed newspapers  Feb 17 2012

The Society for News Design recently posted their picks for the best designed newspapers in the world.

Henry Miller's writing commandments  Feb 14 2012

From Henry Miller on Writing, his 11 commandments:

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring."
3. Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can't create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it -- but go back to it the next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

(via lists of note)

A list of medieval occupations  Feb 06 2012

What jobs did people do in medieval Europe? Here's a list, broken down by category. Criminals had jobs too:

silk-snatcher - one who steals bonnets

stewsman - probably a brothel keeper - "since the words stew and stewholder both mean a bawd, I'm guessing that a stewsman would be a brothel-keeper as well. Whether bawdry counts as a criminal activity varies at different times and places."

thimblerigger - a professional sharper who runs a thimblerig (a game in which a pea is ostensibly hidden under a thimble and players guess which thimble it is under)

(via @zachklein)

Best movie posters of 2011  Feb 06 2012

From MUBI notebook, a selection of great movies posters from 2011, including Chris Ware's lovely one for Uncle Boonmee.

(via dooce)

Notable typefaces of 2011  Jan 26 2012

Typographica shares their favorite typefaces of 2011.

The idea is simple: I invite a group of writers, educators, type makers and type users to look back at 2011 and pick the release that excited them most.

(via ★essl)

Tarantino's favorite films of 2011  Jan 17 2012

Quentin Tarantino released a list of his favorite films of last year. His number one choice? Midnight in Paris. Here's his top five...click through for his other choices:

1. Midnight In Paris
2. Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
3. Moneyball
4. The Skin I Live In
5. X-Men: First Class

(via moviefone)

The best "best of" lists of 2011  Jan 03 2012

Still cleaning out some tabs from over the break...this list of the best "best of 2011" lists is worth looking at, even if you've got list fatigue. It includes lists like "10 Films Hypothetically Starring Ryan Gosling", "Top 10 Classical Performances", and "Top 10 Films of John Waters".

The most important events of 2011  Jan 03 2012

The Morning News got a bunch of writers and thinkers to name the most important event of 2011.

While they may not yet have a common name, and their causes overlap but are hardly identical, the worldwide protests that began in December 2010 in Tunisia and swept through Egypt, the Middle East, Spain, Greece, the United Kingdom, every state in the U.S then thousands of worldwide cities -- these, collectively, are the single most important event of 2011. It was so significant that the year itself may be the only possible name for these people's revolutions and protests: the same way we talk about 1968 or Sept. 11 or Feb. 15, 2003: perhaps just "2011."

As Joanne McNeil noted, hindsight provides clarity with questions like this. Events that are invisible at the time become important five or ten years later. Take 1993 for instance. At the time, the European Community eliminating customs barriers or Bill Clinton's swearing-in or the first bombing of the WTC might have seemed most significant, but with hindsight, Tim Berners-Lee's quiet invention of the World Wide Web in an office at CERN is clearly the year's most significant and far-reaching happening.

Update: TBL invented the WWW in 1991, not 1993. '91 was a bit busier news-wise, what with the first Iraq war and Gorbachev's resignation, but the Web's invention ranks right up there in hindsight. (thx, sean)

Eight sure-fire weight loss tips  Jan 03 2012

From New Scientist, a list of eight different ways to lose weight that actually work. Because science!

If your idea of a holiday workout is lifting glasses of beer late into the night, then it's not just the extra calories you need to worry about. Randy Nelson and his team at Ohio State University in Columbus found that mice exposed to light at night weighed 10 per cent more at the end of the eight-week study than mice that had experienced a standard light/dark cycle, even though they ate the same total number of calories and did the same amount of exercise.

(via @daveg)

A Year in Reading  Dec 14 2011

The Millions presents their annual A Year in Reading for 2011, where they ask a bunch of people their favorite reads of the year.

With this in mind, for an eighth year, we asked some of our favorite writers, thinkers, and readers to look back, reflect, and share. Their charge was to name, from all the books they read this year, the one(s) that meant the most to them, regardless of publication date. Grouped together, these ruminations, cheers, squibs, and essays will be a chronicle of reading and good books from every era. We hope you find in them seeds that will help make your year in reading in 2012 a fruitful one.

Contributors include Duff McKagan, Mayim Bialik, Jennifer Egan, Colum McCann, and Rosecrans Baldwin.

Yet more best longreads of 2011  Dec 14 2011

These are from the Longreads Tumblr. You'll never want for 3000-word reading material ever again.

More best longreads of 2011  Dec 13 2011

Longform has their top picks of 2011 up too.

Best longreads of 2011  Dec 13 2011

Load up yer Instapaper for the holidays: Give Me Something To Read's favorite longreads of 2011.

Ten things everyone should know about time  Dec 06 2011

From Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance, a list of facts and very strong opinions about the nature of time.

4. You live in the past. About 80 milliseconds in the past, to be precise. Use one hand to touch your nose, and the other to touch one of your feet, at exactly the same time. You will experience them as simultaneous acts. But that's mysterious - clearly it takes more time for the signal to travel up your nerves from your feet to your brain than from your nose. The reconciliation is simple: our conscious experience takes time to assemble, and your brain waits for all the relevant input before it experiences the "now." Experiments have shown that the lag between things happening and us experiencing them is about 80 milliseconds.

5. Your memory isn't as good as you think. When you remember an event in the past, your brain uses a very similar technique to imagining the future. The process is less like "replaying a video" than "putting on a play from a script." If the script is wrong for whatever reason, you can have a false memory that is just as vivid as a true one. Eyewitness testimony, it turns out, is one of the least reliable forms of evidence allowed into courtrooms.

Five best toys ever  Nov 30 2011

Jonathan Liu over at GeekDad compiled a list of the five best toys of all time.

2. Box
Another toy that is quite versatile, Box also comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. Need proof? Depending on the number and size you have, Boxes can be turned into furniture or a kitchen playset. You can turn your kids into cardboard robots or create elaborate Star Wars costumes. A large Box can be used as a fort or house and the smaller Box can be used to hide away a special treasure. Got a Stick? Use it as an oar and Box becomes a boat. One particularly famous kid has used the Box as a key component of a time machine, a duplicator and a transmogrifier, among other things.

Love it. (via @jsnell)

Golden rules to live by while travelling the world  Nov 30 2011

Lists of travel tips usually suck (get to the aiport early! make sure your passport is up to date!) but this list contains a number of good ideas that I haven't really seen before.

13. Buy your own fruit. It sounds simple. It is simple. Just do it. You'll love it. And I don't mean, if there happens to be a fruit stand outside your hotel door you should buy some, because you need to have 9 servings a day. What I mean is, find fruit and buy it. Make it a daily task that you're going to track down a fruit stand, a farmers' market (they're not just in San Francisco) and get some good fresh fruit. The entire process will expose you to elements of daily life you would have otherwise ignored. Trust me: You'll have memories from your trips to buy fresh fruit.

Obsolete sounds  Nov 18 2011

Mental Floss has a collection of clips of familar sounds from 20-30 years ago that are no longer around, including the TV channel selector clunk-clunk, manual typewriter clicking, and one of my favorite sounds: that of the rotary telephone dial. One I would have added: the manual credit card imprinter.

NYC etiquette  Sep 20 2011

From Quora, some good answers to the question What are some cultural faux pas in New York?

This one is absolutely vital -- don't interfere with others' privacy. New York is a very crowded place. The way people deal with it is to create their own space. Thus, what outsiders often see as aloofness and isolation is, in fact, a sign of community; there is a shared ethos that everyone respects others' privacy and expects others to respect his own. This is chiefly communicated through eye contact. If you stare at someone on the subway: if you linger in looking out your window into someone else's bedroom; if you react to or interrupt a celebrity; or if you seem to be intentionally listening in to another's conversation, you are violating one of New York's most sacred unwritten rules. Keep yourself to yourself, buddy, and let others do the same.

The world's funniest analogies  Sep 15 2011

Well, I don't know about that, but as an analogy enthusiast, I did enjoy reading through this list. Some favorites:

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

That first one...I can't decide if it's bad or the best analogy ever.

Ten photography lessons learned from Henri Cartier-Bresson  Sep 07 2011

A few things you might learn about photography by following Henri Cartier-Bresson's example.

4. Stick to one lens
Although Henri Cartier-Bresson shot with several different lenses while on-assignment working for Magnum, he would only shoot with a 50mm if he was shooting for himself. By being faithful to that lens for decades, the camera truly became "an extension of his eye".

Update: That link is having some trouble so here's the cached copy from Google.

Fifty must-see documentaries  Sep 06 2011

Current TV has compiled a list of the fifty contemporary documentaries that you must see before you die. Lots of familiar names on the list...here are my personal favorites:

The Kid Stays in the Picture
When We Were Kings
Dogtown and Z-Boys
Man on Wire
Capturing the Friedmans
Touching the Void
The Fog of War
Grizzly Man
The Thin Blue Line
Hoop Dreams

101 ways to not save Apple  Aug 10 2011

Rafe Colburn revisited Wired's June 1997 cover story on 101 Ways to Save Apple.

A lot of the suggestions were to be more like Microsoft and embrace the Windows platform. Apple, obviously, rejected that path and has benefitted greatly from doing so. It's hard to remember now, but many people thought that Apple should drop their operating system and instead turn to making high end Windows PCs. I think we're all glad they never went that route.

(via @anildash)

What did Stringer Bell do wrong?  Aug 03 2011

A great question over at Quora: What were the biggest tactical mistakes that Stringer made in Seasons 2 and 3? Why did he make these mistakes?

5. Not using a knowledgeable intermediary to deal with Sen. Clay Davis. He was clearly out of his league with Davis and had he used an attorney with the correct political connections, he could have likely gained all that he sought with fewer complications than he did.

Best introductory books  Jul 06 2011

A site that provides the best introductory books for dozens of topics. (thx, david)

Ten myths about introverts  Jun 20 2011

Myth #5 - Introverts don't like to go out in public.
Nonsense. Introverts just don't like to go out in public FOR AS LONG. They also like to avoid the complications that are involved in public activities. They take in data and experiences very quickly, and as a result, don't need to be there for long to "get it." They're ready to go home, recharge, and process it all. In fact, recharging is absolutely crucial for Introverts.

Here's the full list.

NYC summer movies  Jun 16 2011

Today's service journalism: here's a simple one-page list of outdoor movie screenings in NYC this summer. The lineup includes Rosemary's Baby, Airplane!, and Spiderman. (thx, matthew)

100 greatest non-fiction books  Jun 15 2011

The Guardian compiles their list of the 100 best non-fiction books ever written.

Seinfeld's sneakers, a complete guide  May 24 2011

Jerry Seinfeld seemingly wore a different pair of sneakers (mostly Nikes) on his TV show each week...here are 50 pages of analysis of Jerry's shoe choices. For 90s athletic shoe and Seinfeld superfans only. (via @cory_arcangel)

Ten design lessons from Frederick Law Olmsted  May 24 2011

Olmsted designed NYC's Central Park and Prospect Park and was the father of American landscape architecture. 37signals recently collected some lessons from Olmsted's approach to his work.

Olmsted believed the goal wasn't to make viewers see his work. It was to make them unaware of it. To him, the art was to conceal art. And the way to do this was to remove distractions and demands on the conscious mind. Viewers weren't supposed to examine or analyze parts of the scene. They were supposed to be unaware of everything that was working.

Ten modern movies that are better in black and white  May 24 2011

Last month, Steven Soderbergh's list of what he's been watching and reading told us that the director watched Raiders of the Lost Ark in black & white three times in one week, presumably to emphasize the film's structure and cinematography. Flavorwire's Jason Bailey wondered what other films might be better in black & white and compiled a list of ten, with video examples and commentary of each. Included are Raiders, Fargo, and A Christmas Story.

For your reading list  May 12 2011

Conor Friedersdorf, an associate editor of The Atlantic, has compiled his list of the best journalism of 2010. Sure, it comes six months after everyone else's list, but this is a good one and annotated to boot.

Why don't more people live in liveable cities?  May 09 2011

Those lists of most liveable cities...why don't any of the vibrant big cities of the world ever make the list? Because the lists don't take into account many important reasons why people choose to live in a certain place.

I spoke to Joel Kotkin, a professor of urban development, and asked him about these surveys. "I've been to Copenhagen," (Monocle's Number 2) he tells me "and it's cute. But frankly, on the second day, I was wondering what to do." So, if the results aren't to his liking, what does he suggest? "We need to ask, what makes a city great? If your idea of a great city is restful, orderly, clean, then that's fine. You can go live in a gated community. These kinds of cities are what is called 'productive resorts'. Descartes, writing about 17th-century Amsterdam, said that a great city should be 'an inventory of the possible'. I like that description."

Joel Garreau, the US urban academic and author, agrees. "These lists are journalistic catnip. Fun to read and look at the pictures but I find the liveable cities lists intellectually on a par with People magazine's 'sexiest people' lists."

Ricky Burdett, who founded the London School of Economics' Cities Programme, says: "These surveys always come up with a list where no one would want to live. One wants to live in places which are large and complex, where you don't know everyone and you don't always know what's going to happen next. Cities are places of opportunity but also of conflict, but where you can find safety in a crowd.

"We also have to acknowledge that these cities that come top of the polls also don't have any poor people," he adds. And that, it seems to me, touches on the big issue. Richard G Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's hugely influential book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (2009) seems to present an obvious truth -- that places where the differential in income between the wealthiest and the poorest is smallest tend to engender a sense of satisfaction and well-being. But while it may be socially desirable, that kind of comfort doesn't necessarily make for vibrancy or dynamism. If everybody is where they want to be, no one is going anywhere.

(via stellar and many emails)

Update: That Decartes quote above? He never said it.

Soderbergh's media diet  Apr 11 2011

Steven Soderbergh recently shared a list of all the movies, books, TV shows, plays, and short stories he watched and read over the past year. Among the movies he watched were The Social Network (at least five times), Raiders of the Lost Ark (three times in one week), Network, Idiocracy, and both worthwhile Godfather films. (via studio 360)

How to steal like an artist  Apr 07 2011

That's the title of a talk given by Austin Kleon on how to do good creative work. Most of it is of the no-nonsense "don't worry and just work" variety of which I am a big fan.

9. Be boring. It's the only way to get work done.

As Flaubert said, "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

I'm a boring guy with a 9-5 job who lives in a quiet neighborhood with his wife and his dog.

That whole romantic image of the bohemian artist doing drugs and running around and sleeping with everyone is played out. It's for the superhuman and the people who want to die young.

The thing is: art takes a lot of energy to make. You don't have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.

(via ★bryce)

Fifty books every child should read  Apr 07 2011

From the UK newspaper, The Independent, a list of fifty books every eleven year old should read.

How to write a Twitter bio  Feb 18 2011

Alex Blagg, social media 2.0 ideator, shares 15 top tips for crafting the perfect Twitter bio.

5. If you go out to bars like every night of the week, you're not alcoholic. You're a Foursquare Ambassador.

6. You can add "-ista" to the end of literally any word to make yourself sound approximately 47 times more stylish and savvy. (ex. Digitalista or Barista or Unemployista)

The Middle Way of social media  Feb 15 2011

From Tricycle, a magazine about Buddhism, here are ten mindful ways to use social media.

9. Practice letting go. It may feel unkind to disregard certain updates or tweets, but we need downtime to be kind to ourselves. Give yourself permission to let yesterday's stream go. This way you won't need to "catch up" on updates that have passed but instead can be part of today's conversation.

Nice SEO-friendly listicle headline there! (thx, zg)

Metagames  Feb 01 2011

Andy Baio has compiled a listing of metagames...video games that are about video games.

Over the last few years, I've been collecting examples of metagames -- not the strategy of metagaming, but playable games about videogames. Most of these, like Desert Bus or Quest for the Crown, are one-joke games for a quick laugh. Others, like Cow Clicker and Upgrade Complete, are playable critiques of game mechanics. Some are even (gasp!) fun.

The most loathsome Americans  Jan 24 2011

Always a fun read: The Beast's list of the 50 most loathsome Americans of 2010. The idiot Alaskan lady is a mere sixth on the list; #1 is "you":

Your brain's been cobbled together over millions of years of blind evolution and it shows. You're clumsy, stupid, weak and motivated by the basest of urges. Your MO is both grotesquely selfish and unquestionably deferential to questionable authority. You're not in control of your life. You wear your ignorance like a badge of honor and gleefully submit to oppression, malfeasance and kleptocracy. You will buy anything. You will believe anything. You believe that evolution is a matter of belief. You likely scrolled down to #1, without reading the rest, because you're an impatient, semi-literate Philistine who's either unable or unwilling to digest more than 140 characters at a time.

Five emotions invented by the internet  Jan 19 2011

My favorite of the bunch is the first one: "A vague and gnawing pang of anxiety centered around an IM window that has lulled."

During this time an individual feels unsure whether they have offended the IM recipient, committed a breach of IM etiquette, or have otherwise spoilt the presentation of themselves carefully crafted thus far thanks to the miracles of the textual medium. The individual must be at least vaguely aware that they are being vaguely paranoid, and must tell themselves things like 'he probably just stepped away from the keyboard' or 'I know she is at work right now so perhaps she has stopped replying because she is busy.'

A possible sixth emotion might be "Unnecessary pagination irritation", which emotion I experienced reading this otherwise fine article. :(

Quentin Tarantino's favorite films of 2010  Jan 10 2011

1. Toy Story 3
2. The Social Network
3. Animal Kingdom
4. I Am Love
5. Tangled
6. True Grit
7. The Town
8. Greenberg
9. Cyrus
10. Enter The Void

The rest of the list is here.

A year of learning  Jan 06 2011

In 2010, Giles Turnbull learned one thing each day...here's his list.

Jan 14. Carbon monoxide kills you by getting into your bloodstream and occupying the space inside red blood cells that would normally be filled with oxygen.

Jul 24. Every hour of every day, a billion tons of rain falls on the Earth. Much of it falls on Wales, the wettest place in Europe.

Nov 6. When your son asks "What is electricity?", it's wise to stop and think for a moment-or consult an encyclopedia-before launching into an answer that may grind to an unfortunate and, for the questioner, unsatisfying halt.

Best movie posters of 2010  Jan 05 2011

Two very different lists of the best movie posters from last year: the more indie-oriented list from Mubi and the mainstream one from FirstShowing. The Mubi list is better but you may recognize more of the films from the FirstShowing list.

The best of 2010  Dec 29 2010

The mega list of best of 2010 lists is up and running at Fimoculous. Prepare to lose yourself in this for several hours.

Songs of the years playlist  Dec 13 2010

Patrick Filler took Ben Greenman's New Yorker holiday party playlist (one song for each year from 1925 to 2010) and made a Rdio playlist out of it so that you can listen to the whole shebang online.

Pimp business plan  Dec 10 2010

Items on this pimp's handwritten business plan -- aka "Keep It Pimpin'" -- include:

- my word is my bond
- take my game to the next level (from the concrete streets to executive suites)
- take care my bitches more better
- minimize my budget (cash cars, houses, etc.)
- keep a good photographer

Songs of the years  Dec 10 2010

For the New Yorker holiday party, Ben Greenman whipped up a music playlist containing one hit song from each year of the New Yorker's history, from 1925 to 2010.

At the party, the mix worked like a charm. Jazz and blues greeted the early arrivals, and as the party picked up, the mood became romantic (thanks to the big-band and vocal recordings of the late thirties and forties), energetic (thanks to early rock and roll like Fats Domino and Jackie Brenston in the early fifties), funky (James Brown in 1973, Stevie Wonder in 1974), and kitschy (the eighties), after which it erupted into a bright riot of contemporary pop and hip-hop (Rihanna! Kanye! M.I.A.! Lil Jon!). It was rumored, though never proven, that party guests were leaving right around the songs that marked their birth years.

Where the hell is Hey Ya!? Oh, right. Crazy in Love.

A Year in Reading for 2010  Dec 08 2010

The Millions annual Year in Reading mega-feature is back for 2010 and features contributions from Al Jaffee, Margaret Atwood, and Stephen Elliott.

For a seventh year, The Millions has reached out to some of our favorite writers, thinkers, and readers to name, from all the books they read this year, the one(s) that meant the most to them, regardless of publication date. Grouped together, these ruminations, cheers, squibs, and essays will be a chronicle of reading and good books from every era. We hope you find in them seeds that will help make your year in reading in 2011 a fruitful one.

How to edit a magazine  Nov 12 2010

From The Atlantic, twelve timeless rules for making a good publication.

3. Don't over-edit. You will often estrange an author by too elaborate a revision, and furthermore, take away from the magazine the variety of style that keeps it fresh.

7. A sound editor never has a three-months' full supply in his cupboard. When you over-buy, you narrow your future choice.

Alphabetical list of Foursquare badges  Nov 11 2010

...and how to get them.

Epic Swarm badge: Check in to a venue that has at least 1,000 people checked in. Yes, if you are number 950, you will get the badges when person number 1,000 checks in.

Greatest movie drug scenes  Nov 03 2010

Without even looking, you could probably guess that scenes from Pulp Fiction and Requiem for a Dream would make a list of film's greatest drug scenes. But there are 28 other worthy scenes on there as well.

Tips for the near future  Oct 14 2010

Douglas Coupland's list of 45 tips for the next 10 years is excellent; even the stuff that seems wrong makes you think. Some of my favorite bits:

In the same way you can never go backward to a slower computer, you can never go backward to a lessened state of connectedness.

You may well burn out on the effort of being an individual. You've become a notch in the Internet's belt. Don't try to delude yourself that you're a romantic lone individual. To the new order, you're just a node. There is no escape.

It will become harder to view your life as "a story". The way we define our sense of self will continue to morph via new ways of socializing. The notion of your life needing to be a story will seem slightly corny and dated. Your life becomes however many friends you have online.

You'll spend a lot of time shopping online from your jail cell. Over-criminalization of the populace, paired with the triumph of shopping as a dominant cultural activity, will create a world where the two poles of society are shopping and jail.

Much of this list seems Cowen-esque, particularly this for some reason: "musical appreciation will shed all age barriers".

Essential skills you didn't learn in college  Oct 13 2010

Wired has a go at defining liberal arts 2.0.

It's the 21st century. Knowing how to read a novel, craft an essay, and derive the slope of a tangent isn't enough anymore. You need to know how to swing through the data deluge, optimize your prose for Twitter, and expose statistics that lie.

Food myths debunked  Oct 12 2010

Kenji Lopez-Alt busts six stubborn food myths.

4. Searing "Locks In" Juices. This is the oldest one in the book, and still gets repeated-by many highly respected cookbook authors and chefs!-to this day. It's been conclusively proven false many times, including in our own post on How to Cook a Perfect Prime Rib, where we found that when roasting a standing roast, it in fact lost 1.68% more juice if it was seared before roasting rather than after! The same is true for pork roasts, steaks, hamburgers, chicken cutlets, you name it.

Mad Men reading list  Oct 04 2010

The NYPL blog has compiled a list of books ripped from the scenes of Mad Men.

Some of the titles are featured prominently in the series and others are mentioned in passing. Remember the book Sally read with her grandfather at bedtime? The book on Japanese culture the agency was told to read? The scandalous book the ladies passed between each other in secret? You can find all these and more!

(via mad men unbuttoned)

Tips for travelling with kids  Oct 01 2010

A great list of tips, tricks, and advice for travelling with kids.

18. Don't do too much BUT don't do too little either. I think the biggest mistake parents traveling with kids make is doing too little not too much. Get out there. Enjoy. Experience. Wear the kids out and get them tired.

(thx, meg)

On opinions  Sep 29 2010

Robin Hanson lists 20 reasons why your opinions "function more to signal loyalty and ability than to estimate truth".

2. You have little interest in getting clear on what exactly is the position being argued.
9. You find it easy to conclude that those who disagree with you are insincere or stupid.
16. Your opinion doesn't much change after talking with smart folks who know more.

(via mr)

Five best movie villains of the 2000s  Sep 23 2010

Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men is on the list...click through for the rest. (via @tcarmody)

Habits of mind  Sep 10 2010

Originally written for mathematics students, this list of useful habits of mind is applicable to nearly anyone doing anything.

100 great movie moments  Sep 09 2010

A collection by Roger Ebert from 1995. The moments include:

Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta discuss what they call Quarter Pounders in France, in "Pulp Fiction."

Jack Nicholson trying to order a chicken salad sandwich in "Five Easy Pieces."

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning," dialogue by Robert Duvall, in "Apocalypse Now."

Top ten lost technologies  Aug 30 2010

The list includes Roman concrete, Damascus steel, and a napalm-like weapon called Greek fire. (via @ebertchicago)

Top ten typefaces of the 2000s  Aug 30 2010

A list of the most important typefaces of the last decade.

It is not a list of my favorite typefaces, nor is it a list of the most popular typefaces. Instead, it is a list of typefaces that have been "important" for one reason or another. However, I am not going to provide my reasons. Instead, I am going to let the readers of this blog see if they can figure out the contribution that each of these ten faces makes.

Famous last words  Aug 07 2010

The Guardian has the famous last words of 10 authors. As I am fundamentally opposed to lists in slide show format, especially lists with one list item per slide, the quotations are below. Click through to see the pictures. The chance all of these last words are 100% accurate is something much less than 100%. Points to the Guardian for including 2 women on this list. A lot of lists like this would be male-only.

Samuel Johnson - 'Iam moriturus' (I who am about to die)
Lord Byron - 'Come, come, no weakness; let's be a man to the last!'
Emily Dickinson - 'I must go in, the fog is rising'
Robert Louis Stevenson - 'What's that? Do I look strange?'
Anton Chekhov - 'It's a long time since I drank champagne'
Mark Twain - 'Death, the only immortal, who treats us alike, whose peace and refuge are for all. The soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved'
Leo Tolstoy - 'We all reveal ... our manifestations ... This manifestation is over ... That's all'
Franz Kafka - 'Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, (is) to be burned unread'
Virginia Woolf - 'I feel certain that I'm going mad again ...'
James Joyce - 'Does nobody understand?'

(Via Sagatrope)

50 Highest paid athletes  Aug 05 2010

Sports Illustrated is out with its list of 50 highest paid AMERICAN athletes. (This distinction is important because there's also an international list.) I wouldn't say I was surprised by the list, but there were several 'huh' moments. For instance, close your eyes. Close them. Now picture the 3rd highest paid athlete on the planet. What sport is he playing? If you said boxing, you're right. Floyd Mayweather made $60m last year. I'm curious if I were to make a list of the 50 highest paid American athletes how many of these names I would have come up with.

Other tidbits:
$28,847,406 separates #1 Tiger Woods ($90m) from #2 Phil Mickelson.
$73,733,163 separates Tiger from #50 A.J. Burnett.
Shaq still makes more than Kobe, which must really bug Kobe.
#2 highest paid QB is Matthew Stafford, who is the 2nd year QB of the Lions.
#28 Darrius Heyward-Bey is the first player I hadn't heard of on the list.
There are 15 football players on this list, not one of whom is Tom Brady or Drew Brees.
Maria Sharapova is the only woman on either list, #20 on the international list with around $19m.

There is an international list, which is filthy with soccer players and Formula 1 drivers. For some reason non-American athletes (Ichiro, Pau Gasol) that play in the US are on the international list.

Etymology of musical genre names  Aug 04 2010

Flavorwire has a post on the etymology of 10 musical genre names. This is the type of thing that you wonder about from time to time, but probably never bothered to look up.

Punk: While "punk" was once (and still, occasionally) catch-all slang for a young delinquent, "punk rock" first appeared in a 1970 Chicago Tribune article, uttered by Ed Sanders of The Fugs. Although the band was one of punk's immediate ancestors, Sanders went on to define the term as "redneck sentimentality." The next year, Dave Marsh of Creem used "punk rock" to describe ? and the Mysterians. Its meaning evolved from there, originally encompassing a slew of Nuggets-era garage-rock bands and eventually solidifying into a more rigid description of the mid-'70s bands we think of as "punk."

(Via @tcarmody and @brainpicker)

Comedy MVPs  Jul 27 2010

Bill Simmons recently compiled a list of the MVPs of comedy from 1975 to the present. Here's a portion of the list:

1989: Dana Carvey
1990: Billy Crystal
1991: Jerry Seinfeld
1992: Jerry Seinfeld, Mike Myers (tie)
1993: Mike Myers
1994: Jim Carrey
1995: Chris Farley
1996: Chris Rock

Unlikely Words has the full list and you can go to Simmons' site to read the list with annotations. Such as:

1982-84: Eddie Murphy
The best three-year run anyone has had. Like Bird's three straight MVPs. And by the way, "Beverly Hills Cop" is still the No. 1 comedy of all time if you use adjusted gross numbers.