Russian Sledges

Pope Benedict XVI sends his first Twitter message in Latin, referring to Christian unity and the need to do justice.

Photographer Fubirai has spent the last five years documenting the lives of the semi-wild cats that roam the island in Fukuoka, Japan. The cats are fed by local fishermen and wander freely through the streets, boatyards, porches, and houses of the city.

Once they show up in late January, I foist them on friends, sing their praises and am always surprised at the blank looks I get. For many people, an orange is an orange is an orange. But the temple is worth seeking out. Start with the peel, which is thin and tight to the pulp yet zippers off as cleanly as that of the tangerine. The segments have little pith, and though their skin is delicate, they separate neatly, sparing your shirt. Pop a sector, fat and pulpy, into your mouth, and the thing just bursts. Temples are far juicier than most oranges, with a tarter, more complex taste. They’re cheaper than many of their cousins: five for $2 at Fairway. And like all things beautiful, they are ephemeral, at least in New York, where they are long gone by March.

andone-hodgepodge:

Turlough/The Tardis

If flu shots, nightly tequila bodyshots and life lessons in health from non-doctor Deirdre Imus have failed to keep those evil influenza germs at bay, you might be one of the many New Yorkers holed up in their apartments rocking out to "Dear Doctor" with a 102 degree fever and willing your achey head to explode. But while there's no real cure for the flu, an Ohio-based ice cream company may have just come up with the next best thing: influenza sorbet! [ more › ]

A masked man threw acid in the face of Sergei Filin, the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, on Thursday night, leaving him with third-degree burns and possibly threatening his eyesight.

Last month, a 31-year-old woman was accused of fatally shoving a man onto the subway tracks in Queens in one of two very high-profile subway shovings. The NY Post sat down for an exclusive jailhouse interview with Erika Menendez, who has been accused of shoving 46-year-old Sunando Sen into the path of a 7 train, allegedly because she hates "Hindus and Muslims" because of 9/11. She expanded on that in the long, confusing interview; among other things, she said she self-medicates for her bipolar disorder with pot: “If I smoked a blunt that day, I wouldn’t have pushed him.” [ more › ]

Boston Public Library posted a photo:

File name: 10_03_001050a
Binder label: Home Products
Title: Aikin, Lambert & Co. gold pens [front]
Date issued: 1870-1900 (approximate)
Physical description: 1 print : chromolithograph ; 15 x 11 cm.
Genre: Advertising cards
Subject: Pens; Boats
Notes: Title from item. Item verso is blank.
Statement of responsibility: Aikin, Lamber & Co.
Collection: 19th Century American Trade Cards
Location: Boston Public Library, Print Department
Rights: No known restrictions.

Follow @drewtoothpaste on Twitter or join the TFD Facebook Page.

(NEW!) Drew's blog is The Worst Things For Sale.

Boston Public Library posted a photo:

File name: 10_03_001048a
Binder label: Home Products
Title: Look on this picture! Poor Mrs. Brown has all day long been trying to color with old-fashioned dyes and has spoiled everything she touched. In comes bright Mrs. Jones who says: 'Why don't you use Diamond Dyes?' [front]
Date issued: 1870-1900 (approximate)
Physical description: 1 print : chromolithograph ; 9 x 13 cm.
Genre: Advertising cards
Subject: Women; Dyeing
Notes: Title from item. Retailer: John Sutherland, Bath, N. Y.
Collection: 19th Century American Trade Cards
Location: Boston Public Library, Print Department
Rights: No known restrictions.

Boston Public Library posted a photo:

File name: 10_03_001043a
Binder label: Home Products
Title: Carnival writing tablet [front]
Date issued: 1870-1900 (approximate)
Physical description: 1 print : chromolithograph ; 18 x 14 cm.
Genre: Advertising cards
Subject: People; Angels; Cats; Pens; Beverages
Notes: Title from item. Retailer: R. Walsh & Co's, Newark, N. J.
Collection: 19th Century American Trade Cards
Location: Boston Public Library, Print Department
Rights: No known restrictions.

Boston Public Library posted a photo:

File name: 10_03_001043b
Binder label: Home Products
Title: Carnival writing tablet [back]
Date issued: 1870-1900 (approximate)
Physical description: 1 print : chromolithograph ; 18 x 14 cm.
Genre: Advertising cards
Subject: People; Angels; Cats; Pens; Beverages
Notes: Title from item. Retailer: R. Walsh & Co's, Newark, N. J.
Collection: 19th Century American Trade Cards
Location: Boston Public Library, Print Department
Rights: No known restrictions.

Boston Public Library posted a photo:

File name: 10_03_001047a
Binder label: Home Products
Title: Eagle Pencil Co's colored slate crayons. Eagle colored slate crayons. Easily erased, bright & attractive. 955 blue, 956 red, 957 green, 958 yellow and other colors. [front]
Created/Published: N. Y. : Lith. by Emil Steffens
Date issued: 1870-1900 (approximate)
Physical description: 1 print : chromolithograph ; 9 x 16 cm.
Genre: Advertising cards
Subject: Pencils; Chalk drawings
Notes: Title from item.
Collection: 19th Century American Trade Cards
Location: Boston Public Library, Print Department
Rights: No known restrictions.

Designed by Alexander Kischenko | Country: Russia

“The task was to create a package design using only typography. I decided to create a packaging for a Swiss beer from Helvetica province brewery. So the font choice was pretty obvious.

The large numeral identifies the alcohol percentage in the beer, and the can color tells about a beer type – lager or stout.”

Inventory of this letterhead: crazy cool type (check) stripes (check) boat (check) Mercury (check) woman holding book while holding a snake (check) Native American (check) while watching train go by (check). 1912, Wm. R. Warner & Co. The “&Co” is ridiculously awesome.

The most polluted cities of the world's largest economies

BEIJING is frequently shrouded in dense, yellowish smog so thick that the other side of the road is obscured. But the deadly smog that enveloped the city over the past weekend was so bad that air-quality readings from a monitor on the roof of the American Embassy said simply: "Beyond Index". The embassy uses the US Environmental Protection Agency's air-quality index (AQI), which measures the concentration of PM 2.5 (total mass of particulate matter of 2.5-micron diameter or smaller per cubic metre). Such particles are small enough to be inhaled and can damage lungs. The AQI range ends at 500; at one point a reading of 886 was recorded. A reading above 100 is deemed “unhealthy for sensitive groups” and anything above 400 is rated “hazardous” for all. These independent readings have put pressure on the authorities to release more detailed data of their own. A year ago Beijing's municipal officials bowed to public pressure and started reporting data on PM 2.5 for the first time. But Beijing is not even the most polluted city in China. Using a different but more widely used measure collated by the World Health Organisation of larger particulate matter called PM 10 (total mass of particles of 10-micron diameter or smaller per cubic metre), which allows cross-country comparisons, that dubious honour is bestowed on Lanzhou in the north-western province of Gansu (and the city of Ludhiana in India is more polluted still). Better data may soon be available. This month China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection announced that 74 cities were to begin monitoring and reporting the levels of multiple pollutants, including PM 2.5, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone.

Correction: The original version of this post wrongly suggested that the chart showed the number of particles per cubic metre, rather than their total mass. This was corrected on January 17th.

typeworship:

Happy Birthday Johnston and the London Underground

This week London sees the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. To commemorate the occasion a stream locomotive used in the 19th century made a journey through the modern tunnels of the Metropolitan line. See more on the BBC

It is also 100 years since its iconic typeface Johnston Sans was released as the the ‘Underground’ typeface. Dan Rhatigan, type director at Monotype and forthcoming interviewee of 8 Faces talks about Edward Johnston and the typeface here.  

The structured, based on a calligraphic nib held at a 45 degree angle, is emphasised by Johnston’s diamond tittles shapes (the dots over the i and j), one of it’s most recognisable characteristics.

That drawing for the old London Underground roundel (or “bullseye” as they called it then) is just beautiful. I’m a little divided about Johnston Sans itself: while it’s a distinctive and integral part of the Underground’s identity, it’s not a very versatile font and is pretty wide, taking up a lot of space, even for something simple like station labels on the tube map.

No, I was not always a feminist. As I've said before—and I genuinely mean this—becoming a "tech industry female" eventually changed my mind.

The marketing wizards for Dead Island settled on one hell of an advertising scheme: as a "bonus," in the UK, you can "win" a mutilated female torso.

If she were a person, you might say she is wearing a Union Jack bikini. But thankfully she is not a person. She lacks arms, legs, and a head. She has no hands, brain, or face. She can't hug you, and she sure can't talk back.

This dismembered torso is a blob of vinyl you can display on your desk like some sick trophy. She is made of boobs and groin. I spent part of the morning tweeting incredibly offensive "no arms and no legs" jokes.

The torso isn't actually a zombie, mind. It's called "Zombie Bait." If it had any connection to reality, which it graciously doesn't, this dismembered torso would represent a totally still-human torso.

Disturbingly, this torso could be anyone. If you follow forensics television procedurals (I do!), you'll remember that, to ensure there are no dental records, you've got to decapitate. No hands mean no identifiable fingerprints. Ultimately, this torso is anonymous.

Ultimately, this torso looks like approximately 51% of the human population.

Stop right there. Stop in your tracks. No. Wrong. No, we would never do this to a male torso. Maybe some of us would like George Clooney to shut up and be pretty, but that is no mainstream fantasy. The rest of us actually do like him with a head and arms. We expect him to be heroic and masterly in movies, and we pay him for it.

Meanwhile, we define femininity by quiet neediness.

We have finally found a way, aesthetically, literally, to reduce a woman's identity to her own pair of tits.

Dehumanization requires a certain amount of reductionism, and let me go on to explain it: the Dead Island torso is problematic because it has literally shorn off everything we ordinarily hold valuable in a human being, leaving behind tits, ass, and abdominal muscles. We have finally found a way, aesthetically, literally, to reduce a woman's identity to her own pair of tits. Congratulations.

Apologists initially defended the Dead Island: Riptide torso with quaint invocations of Greco-Roman statues, statues that actually lost their defining features to time itself. Nifty.

But you might be amazed to learn we already have a real legacy of dismembering women and putting their disparate parts on display as exhibits. Her name was Sarah Baartman. Colloquially known as the "Hottentot Venus"—one website quickly underscores that "hottentot" is another word for "person with cattle," while other websites indicate that word as a slur—Baartman was a black woman whose feminine proportions were so astonishing to the white men observing her, she was shown in London and Paris as a type of freak show.

But more inflammatorily, when Baartman died, they took a cast of her corpse, extricated her skeleton, then put her magnificent organs into separate bottles.

In short, we have been dismantling women's bodies for years.

A fan could make the case that this product, this dismembered torso, somehow "celebrates" the perfect female form. Unfortunately—and I say this as someone who actively celebrates examples of human beauty—whether you celebrate or sneer, the outcome is the same. You have otherized a person or a group of people, have balked, have divided her, have created categories and taxonomies for her discrete parts.

As an objet d'art, the Dead Island torso fails. I have sold better works of art suited for your desk, and as I said this morning, there is nothing that irks me more than something that is offensive plus boring.

Professionally, also wrong. You knew people would hate this. You absolutely counted on it. You did this on purpose. You live in a post-#1reasonwhy, "new sincerity" world. You knew the average sane person would hate this. You knew it was a shitty product to release, too, and you went through every possible hoop to approve it, manufacture it, distribute it anyway. This was premeditated, and your "apology" sucks.

More importantly, you knew the conversation you'd create. You knew you were creating a "men versus women" dialogue, even though some women won't have a problem with the dismembered torso, some men don't want to implicitly condone it.

It isn't "men versus women," it's "human" versus "sociopath," versus "incredibly bored."

On top of everything, this debate just isn't fair. It isn't fair to demand that gamers choose sides.

It isn't "men versus women," it's "human" versus "sociopath," versus "incredibly bored."

Stop demeaning us? Please? Please. And here I don't mean women; I mean all of us. We're smart, informed buyers. What you've created isn't daring; it's idiotic. What you've created sure doesn't represent games in 1984, or 1979, or 1995, and stop belittling the medium now. I'll thank you to not turn "video games!" into a mangled female torso as a mantlepiece. That isn't what I've worked for all my life. Thanks, though.

If you have a child who plays video games, think twice about what a marketing department thinks is acceptable to give fans for being "superfans." Why aren't more women electing for technology jobs? Gosh, I have no idea! But it might have something to do with being 11 and seeing this horseshit.

This type of marketing principally relies on your being quiet. Or else it expects you to be shouted down.

But it isn't okay, and it never will be. 

An 'exceptional actor' and 'essential part of community,' David Simon says

An 'exceptional actor' and 'essential part of community,' David Simon says

Deadspin hits it out of the park for the second time this week

Think you can finish a 168-page novel in a month? It might pay to opt for Amazon's new Kindle rental feature, now available on an incredibly limited number of titles. A few options published by Princeton University Press appear to represent the site's introductory offering. The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking isn't exactly a bestseller -- we weren't able to locate any eligible books from that list -- but it's a popular enough title, with a current rank of 1,432 (if the rental option takes off, that position's likely to change). You can buy it outright for $9.99, or you can instead opt for a 30-day rental. Prices there start at $5.50, increasing by pennies each day until you reach the buy price (in this case, that'll happen at the end of June).

This new rental option certainly seems appealing, unless you're the type who slowly makes your way through a text over the course of a year. The feature appears to be open to any US-based Kindle owners, though you'll need to do quite a bit of digging before you locate any titles with the rental option affixed. In fact, if you wouldn't mind, do us a favor and share your findings in the comments section after the break -- we have quite a few bookworms on staff who wouldn't mind saving a buck or two.

Update: It's likely that the book rentals currently available have been internally categorized as textbooks, which is prompting such an offer to appear. We've reached out to Amazon and are awaiting confirmation.

Filed under: Internet, Amazon

Comments

Via: Zatz Not Funny

Source: Amazon

Already given up on those New Year's resolutions? Well, there's still time to make a new one: Experiment behind the bar in 2013.

For years, archaeologists studying Viking remnants and artifacts in Britain had assumed that certain stone structures were bathhouses, or a kind of primitive sauna. But a husband-and-wife team has now thrown this thinking into question by suggesting that they weren't bathhouses at all — that they were brewhouses where the Vikings made their beer. More »

On the casting process for New York’s cult leader-like spin instructors.

Alex Morris | New York Magazine | Jan 2013 [Full Story]

All About the Guerrilla Moscow Metro Map - in English!:

My previous post about the “map bombing” of the Moscow Metro has had a lot of interest, so I thought I’d pass on the fact that the original partizaning.org article about it has been translated properly into English on their site. Well worth a read.

And as a bonus, you can download your own PDF of the map, or the Illustrator .ai file and fonts required to edit it yourself.

SO YOU THINK HE’S CHEATING ON YOU?

NO, IT’S NOT THAT. I THINK HE’S UNSATISFIED IN THE RELATIONSHIP SO HE’S PUTTING HIMSELF IN SITUATIONS WHERE THAT SORT OF THING COULD HAPPEN. JUST KIND OF TESTING THE WATERS, YOU KNOW? I DON’T EVEN KNOW IF IT’S A CONSCIOUS MANEUVER. HE MIGHT HAVE CONVINCED HIMSELF IT’S ALL HARMLESS, FRIENDLY SOCIAL INTERACTION. IT’S NOT CHEATING BECAUSE HE DOESN’T INTEND TO CHEAT, BUT THAT’S STILL WHERE IT’S ALL HEADED, YOU UNDERSTAND?

I GUESS SO, YEAH.

IF I TRY TO CONFRONT HIM ABOUT IT HE’LL USE THAT AS AN EXCUSE TO MAYBE CROSS THE LINE, RIGHT? OR TO END THE RELATIONSHIP. HE’LL SAY I’M BEING JEALOUS, OR CONTROLLING, BUT I’VE TRIED TO BE MORE LOVING AND ATTENTIVE AND IT DOESN’T WORK. HE’S DISENGAGED, EMOTIONALLY, AND IT’S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE THINGS GO SOUTH. MY WINGS ARE TIED ON THIS ONE. I DON’T HAVE ANY VIABLE OPTIONS, BUT I DON’T WANT TO LOSE HIM, SO …

SO YOU WANT ME TO EAT THE GIRLS HE WORKS WITH.

YES. IF I DO ANYTHING IT WILL JUST TURN INTO ANOTHER FIGHT, WHICH I’M TRYING TO AVOID. IF THEY DON’T SHOW UP ON MONDAY … WELL, SHIT HAPPENS, RIGHT? AND MAYBE IT BUYS ME ENOUGH TIME TO REMIND HIM WE’RE IN LOVE.

YOU’RE GOING TO OWE ME BIG TIME. YOU KNOW THAT.

I KNOW, ABSOLUTELY. THANK YOU, CHRISTINE. I MEAN IT. YOU’RE A GOOD FRIEND.

Being injured in the NFL.

Tom Junod | Esquire | Jan 2013 [Full Story]