Following a pair of explosions Tuesday that killed more than 20 and put the Brussels Airport (BRU) on lockdown, air traffic controllers diverted an estimated 50 planes. The airport, which averaged 56,000 passengers a day in February, had been expecting about 650 flights Tuesday.
Five hundred flights were canceled or rerouted, and 100 arrived or departed before the airport closed Tuesday morning, according to EUROCONTROL estimates.
Using flight position data from Plane Finder, the animation shows flights arriving at BRU early Tuesday morning. In the moments after the attacks at 8 a.m., inbound flights enter holding patterns and divert to nearby airports.
I’m a simple man. I work hard, I love my family, I love my country. I’ve been the foreman at the dildo factory for fifteen years. I started when I was just nineteen, when my buddy Phil helped me get a job sweeping the shop floors. I put in the hours, I kept my head down, I respected my bosses, and pretty soon I was promoted up the ranks. First, I started helping stir the vats of liquid silicone, and then I moved up onto the assembly line, packaging the dildos into their plastic packaging. Soon I was doing quality assurance, helping Acme Dildos turn out more and higher quality dildos than ever before.
As the foreman, it’s my job to keep the workers on the factory floor safe. Sure, you might think when you get your dildo that it’s all fun and games, but you might not realize how hard someone worked to make that. When you’re gash-jacking away at your holes with one of our dildos, you’re probably not thinking of the men and women who helped mix the color dyes and tossed out any dildos from the batch with even the smallest imperfection. And that’s okay—we don’t need you to thank us while you de-louse the crawlspace. We want you to enjoy yourself. That’s what keeps us going. That’s what makes us rest easy at night when we go to bed, knowing that the work we do is bringing someone joy.
So, when one of the silicone mixers accidentally gets the pH balance off, we’re not going to let you end up with one of those defective space invaders in your poop chute. We take quality seriously. I take it seriously. That’s why as foreman, I made the call that we needed to throw away that entire run of dildos. Sure, Acme Dildos is going to take a bit of a loss today. Seeing so much product go to waste hurts our bottom line. You know what hurts worse? Imagining that we might have let our customers down with an inferior product.
You might see a dumpster full of dildos. But I see hope. Hope that caring about your customers still means something in this country. Hope that an honest day’s work creating something—actually making a great product—still means something important in this country. Hope that pride in your work still means something, hope that hard work is a lesson you can pass onto your kids.
I recently finished a 6 pack of Top Ramen Chicken Flavor noodles that someone gave me. I don't eat meat, so I just made vegetarian stock and cooked the noodles in that. I didn't want to throw the flavor packets away because what if someone out there (someone like you!) really loves the Chicken Flavor packets and has always wished for some extra that they didn't have to use to flavor their noodles. . .
TODAY IS YOUR DAY
You can nab these Chicken Flavor packets and use them to flavor popcorn, different noodles, marinade, etc. Maybe you just want extra flavor in your Top Ramen Chicken Flavor noodles! Or maybe you want to mix the Chicken Flavor with the Beef Flavor or the Shrimp Flavor! I even know some folks who used Flavor Packets like these to create a more intense obstacle course by filling kiddie pools with Ramen Water (maybe wait till Spring to try out this idea though(oh man, Chicken Flavor Snow Balls!!))! These are 6 extra Chicken Flavor packets of possibilities!
E-mail me and I can put them out on our front porch for you. OR if you seem really stoked there's a possibility I could drop them off somewhere convenient for you.
If you want to leave me a list of things you're thinking about doing with them, that would be awesome!
Police arrested an on-duty mailman last week in Crown Heights after he objected to their driving, according to Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. Adams held a press conference on Tuesday afternoon to decry the arrest of Glenn Grays, which took place on the afternoon of March 17th. [ more › ]
who wants to parachute out of a balloon like that?
Tom Lovell was a superb American illustrator who was active through much of the 20th century.
His style ranged from straightforward, classically delineated realism to dramatically composed pulp magazine action to the more graphically designed illustrations often associated with cutting edge mid-century styles.
Lovell was particularly influenced by his friend and fellow illustrator Harry Anderson, with whom he shared a studio early in his career
Since I first wrote about Lovell for Lines and Colors back in 2008, new resources for images of his work have become available, most notably a terrific collection over 200 of Lovell’s illustrations from all phases of his career put together by Jim Pinkoski.
This is maintained as part of Pinkoski’s even larger site on Harry Anderson, which I wrote about here; Pinkoski also maintains a site on work by John Berkey (my post here).
I’ve listed other resources for Lovell’s work below, including an excellent Flickr set and articles by the ever resourceful Leif Peng.
When you're packing for the long flight from Los Angeles to NYC, remember the essentials: a neck pillow; the latest edition of SkyMall; and a nice, 69 lb. stash of cocaine. [ more › ]
The BP gas station at East Houston and Lafayette Streets is closing next month. April 14. And with it, one of the last links to the “Gasoline Alley” of yore. After all, this was formerly the southern border of the nicknamed neighborhood, which was, at one point, a destination for automotive servicing. Back in 2004, […]
by Copyright 2016 Yasmina Boustani. All rights reserved.
At a seaside facility in Beirut, Lebanon, “two old-time friends,” writes photographer Yasmina B., “enjoy life by the beach.” Once called the Paris of the Middle East, Beirut’s glamorous image was shattered by a 15-year civil war that ended in 1990. Rebuilding efforts have taken place in the decades since.
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now >>
I’m kind of a nitwit in social situations. Consider last spring (or was it summer?), when I was at a party in New York, I met Justin Chapple. A bunch of us chatted casually over cocktails in our friend’s backyard, but I found out later he is the Mad Genius over at Food & Wine and he’s on television and all that good stuff. After I found that out, I’d hoped that I didn’t have any stray ear hairs or say something inappropriate, which happens a little too-often to me at parties. (Hence the dwindling lack of invitations in my mailbox.)
But he’s got some serious feathers in his cap, including being an absolute genius for his recipe for Cacio e Pepe Pasta Pie, which looked amazing on the Food & Wine website. For some reason, I had a bag of spaghetti in my kitchen cupboard which I’d been looking at for the past few months. I think I was planning on making spaghetti and meatballs, but the project eventually moved to the back burner – or drawer. So I decided to give the Spaghetti Pie a try.
You’re a farmer coming from the vast countryside of Manhattan or a traveler from Albany or Boston, and you’re trying to get to the actual city of New York, which is concentrated below Canal Street.
Roads aren’t so great, and travel by wagon or stage takes a long time. Good thing that when you need to eat, rest, or take a bed for the night, there are taverns that will welcome you.
One of those taverns is the Buckhorn (or Buck’s Horn), which since 1812 stood on once-bucolic Broadway and 22nd Street. (Below, today, not so bucolic)
Described by one 1911 book as “an old and well-known tavern,” this rustic outpost “was ornamented with the head and horns of a buck and was set back a short distance from the street about ten feet higher than the present grade.”
This short description of the tavern also offers a glimpse of the few roads surrounding it.
“It was a favorite road-house for those who drove out upon the Bloomingdale Road (Boston Post Road) … the drivers of the day used to come as far as the Buck’s Horn, then turn through the quiet and shady Love Lane to Chelsea, and thence by the River Road through Greenwich Village and back to the city across the Lispenard meadows.”
Buckhorn Tavern “was the stopping-place for the butchers and bakers,” reminisced one New Yorker in 1866, who recalled the cock fights there.
Oh, and it had a ten-pin alley for bowling, a popular pastime in the post-Colonial city.
The Buckhorn met its end in an early morning fire, which consumed the entire building in 1842 along with four stabled horses.
Luckily another popular roadhouse, Madison Cottage (above), was just a few blocks away at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street—by 1850 a much more populated area.
Collect fares, hand out transfers, navigate traffic—like most jobs, driving a city bus is pretty routine.
That’s why William Cimillo, 37, a married father of two from the Bronx who had been driving a bus for 16 years, became fed up.
“Day in and day out it was the same old grind. He was a slave to a watch and a schedule,” reported the Brooklyn Eagle.
Boredom led to daydreaming. Cimillo (left), who strangely looked like Ralph Kramden, wondered what it would be like if he “disobeyed the rules and forgot to look at his watch and did not get to that street corner at the right time,” wrote the Eagle.
One morning in March 1947, something came over him as he pulled away from the garage to start his shift on the BX15 route along Gun Hill Road.
“‘All of a sudden I was telling myself, baby, this is it. I left that town in a hurry. Somehow, I didn’t care where I went. I just turned the wheel to the left, and soon I was on Highway 1, bound for Florida.'”
So began Cimillo’s joy ride. Instead of taking nickels from passengers, he drove across the George Washington Bridge to Hollywood, Florida.
He parked the bus on a side street, called the bus company to ask them to wire him $50 so he could refuel and return home, and then went to a local racetrack. Police arrested him there and transported him back to New York in his bus (below).
Cimillo was indicted for grand larceny, but instead of throwing him in jail, the bus company seemed to be on his side. They paid his bail, after all.
Once his busman’s holiday made the newspapers, he generated sympathy from the public. Even his fellow bus drivers held a fundraiser to pay for his legal fees.
Charges were later dropped. He became something of a mini-celebrity, with passengers asking for his autograph and plans for a movie about his adventure announced.
Cimillo continued driving a bus for years. When asked by one newspaper why he took his detour to the Sunshine State, he replied that he “just started out and kept going … the fellows at the bus company will understand, I’m sure.”
[Top iamge: AP; second, New York Times; third: Brooklyn Eagle headline; fourth: British Pathe film clip]
A group of daring masters of deception hacked into Bangladesh's central bank and used stolen credentials to transfer $81 million from the country's account at the New York Federal Reserve to the Philippines, then disappeared with the loot. [ more › ]
Do you have a trash disposal inferiority complex? Don't worry, I didn't think that was a thing, either—until I saw video of this sweet setup that Roosevelt Island's got going on, which sucks trash out of homes at 60 miles per hour and whisks it to a centralized collection facility, eliminating any need for garbage trucks or dog urine-soaked piles of trash bags awaiting pickup. "Cat litter, glass, cans, pipe, whatever"—it all gets ferried through the same vacuum tubes, as chief engineer Jerry Sorgente explains here: [ more › ]
My desert island food is corned beef. Hot, piled up on a sandwich, between two pieces of rye bread with spicy brown mustard smeared liberally inside, corned beef is the one food that I could find myself being happily enjoying if trapped on a desert island. (With unlimited ice-cold pitchers of tropical cocktails, of course.) I also want cole slaw and half-sour pickles, too. Although if truth be told, I’m okay with just fat slices of corned beef, warmed, served on their own. Or simmering in a pot with potatoes and carrots with a bottle of French wine alongside.
Many French people know pastrami, but don’t know corned beef as most of us know it. (What they get is a canned version, which looks from photographs to be closer to Spam than to actual corned beef.) Romain can’t seem to get enough pastrami and once we went to a not-so-good restaurant in Paris where I’d heard they had it on the menu. When he was served two slices of bread with only two meager, thin slices of pastrami hidden in between, he walked back into the kitchen with his sandwich in hand and told them it needed to be really, really thick. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he was demonstrating how thick it needed to be with his hands to the astonished cooks.
Growing up in New England, my mother sometimes made a boiled dinner of corned beef with cabbage, potatoes and carrot. I can’t say I was a big fan of the cabbage and it wasn’t until recently that I learned that it’s actually called a New England boiled dinner, but the potatoes and carrots were great along with slices of the moist, pink meat always served with a dollop of spicy brown mustard alongside.
Mayor de Blasio's vision for a dramatically expanded ferry system in New York City is about to be realized: he announced today that the ferry service will launch as soon as summer 2017. That ferry will be operated by Hornblower, Inc., a California-based cruise, yacht, and ferry company that's operated in the New York harbor for the past 10 years. [ more › ]
Susan Edelman, reporting for the New York Post back in September:
Master keys for every elevator in the city, major construction
sites, subways and skyscrapers are being freely sold online,
despite a city law that makes it illegal for unauthorized persons
to possess them.
A New Jersey-based lock company is peddling an unlimited supply
of New York City’s “1620” fire service keys on eBay at $15.50
for two.
Access to the Big Apple keys is sharply restricted. It’s
unlawful for anyone other than firefighters, law-enforcement
personnel, elevator contractors or inspectors and building
owners to have them.
But a Post reporter bought two keys to the city with no questions
asked from UltimateSecurityDevices.com, an online arm of Northeast
Lock Corp. in Clifton, NJ.
This is, effectively, what the Department of Justice wants for the iPhone.
A jury didn't believe a defendant's claim that he was brainwashed into committing a brutal attack and instead convicted him of attempted murder. Jacob Nolan, 23, was found guilty of using a sledge hammer to bludgeon his cousin's ex-boyfriend in a Manhattan apartment building. [ more › ]
0 [ 
The NYPD plan to rid the city of face slashings is called “Operation Cutting Edge.” If it is as effective as most initiatives under the De Blasio administration, one might consider a new summer commuting outfit.
Police arrested an on-duty mailman last week in Crown Heights after he objected to their driving, according to Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. Adams held a press conference on Tuesday afternoon to decry the arrest of Glenn Grays, which took place on the afternoon of March 17th. [ more › ]
When you're packing for the long flight from Los Angeles to NYC, remember the essentials: a neck pillow; the latest edition of 
Described by one 1911 book as “an old and well-known tavern,” this rustic outpost “was ornamented with the head and horns of a buck and was set back a short distance from the street about ten feet higher than the present grade.”
Oh, and it had a ten-pin alley for bowling, a popular pastime in the post-Colonial city.
Collect fares, hand out transfers, navigate traffic—like most jobs, driving a city bus is pretty routine.
Boredom led to daydreaming. Cimillo (left), who strangely looked like Ralph Kramden, wondered what it would be like if he “disobeyed the rules and forgot to look at his watch and did not get to that street corner at the right time,” wrote the Eagle.
He parked the bus on a side street, called the bus company to ask them to wire him $50 so he could refuel and return home, and then went to a local racetrack. Police arrested him there and transported him back to New York in his bus (below).
Once his busman’s holiday made the newspapers, he generated sympathy from the public. Even his fellow bus drivers held a fundraiser to pay for his legal fees.
A group of daring masters of deception hacked into Bangladesh's central bank and used stolen credentials to transfer $81 million from the country's account at the New York Federal Reserve to the Philippines, then disappeared with the loot. [ more › ]
Do you have a trash disposal inferiority complex? Don't worry, I didn't think that was a thing, either—until I saw video of this sweet setup that Roosevelt Island's got going on, which sucks trash out of homes at 60 miles per hour and whisks it to a centralized collection facility, eliminating any need for garbage trucks or dog urine-soaked piles of trash bags awaiting pickup. "Cat litter, glass, cans, pipe, whatever"—it all gets ferried through the same vacuum tubes, as chief engineer Jerry Sorgente explains here: [ more › ]
My desert island food is corned beef. Hot, piled up on a sandwich, between two pieces of rye bread with spicy brown mustard smeared liberally inside, corned beef is the one food that I could find myself being happily enjoying if trapped on a desert island. (With unlimited ice-cold pitchers of tropical cocktails, of course.) I also want cole slaw and half-sour pickles, too. Although if truth be told, I’m okay with just fat slices of corned beef, warmed, served on their own. Or simmering in a pot with potatoes and carrots with a bottle of French wine alongside.
Mayor de Blasio's vision for a dramatically expanded ferry system in New York City is about to be realized: he announced today that the ferry service will launch as soon as summer 2017. That ferry will be operated by Hornblower, Inc., a California-based cruise, yacht, and ferry company that's operated in the New York harbor for the past 10 years. [ more › ]
A jury didn't believe a defendant's claim that he was brainwashed into committing a brutal attack and instead convicted him of attempted murder. Jacob Nolan, 23, was found guilty of using a sledge hammer to bludgeon his cousin's ex-boyfriend in a Manhattan apartment building. [ more › ]
