Russian Sledges

Photo Courtesy of My Day Shoes

Coming to think about it, Florence is probably the most populated city in all of Italy for bespoke shoemakers. Off the top of my head, I know 5, but I am sure that there are a few other small ones that exist that I never managed to come across. Of those 5 is one Japanese gentleman by the name of Hidetaka Fukaya, known in Florence as Il Micio. For those that don't speak Italian, Il Micio translates into 'The Cat.' I always liked that about him, the fact that he had a pseudonym. Why don't more shoemakers have them? I guess it's not that commercially viable?? But I think that it gives a mysterious attraction about him. Anyway, this is a great photo, full of beautiful shoes. What first attracted me to it was the shortwing balmoral that had a unique medallion on it. It's quite catching. But then upon second inspection, what really caught my eye is the absolute razor sharpness of that chisel toe on the bottom left. It's so sharp and the light captured its angle so nicely that it looks like it might be able to slice through an apple like a ginsu knife! Another thing that you might just overlook is the amazing boxes that the shoes come in. Surprisingly enough they were the exact same ones that Stefano Bemer used. For me, they really fit the idea of receiving a bespoke pair of shoes, only that I am sure that they made the shipping costs dreadful!!

Ralph Lauren, Fall 2012 RTW

I wandered down to Manhattan’s Union Square today to hang out with my old friends in Occupy Wall Street, and I found a very different group than I saw in 2011. My report is here. Here are a few pictures to give you an indication of the general political bent:

“PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech Republic plans to donate 4 million koruna (some $200,000) to help the Texas town of West recover from a devastating fertilizer plant explosion.
The government decided to the provide aid in solidarity because a significant number of people in the town of 2,700 have Czech roots. The blast damaged numerous homes in the town.
The Foreign Ministry says Czech Ambassador to the U.S. Petr Gandalovic visited West last week and talked to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, West Mayor Tommy Muska and other officials about how to help.
A ministry statement Wednesday said the money will go toward repairing property in the town.
Thousands of Czechs, mostly from the eastern part known of Moravia, settled in Texas more than 100 years ago.”

- Czechs to send funds to blast-hit Texas town

Instapaper founder Marco Arment has just announced that he doesn't own his creation anymore. Betaworks, which also owns Digg, has acquired a majority stake in the read-it-later service.

Developing...

• Via The Next Web
• Source Marco Arment
• Related Items instapaper

The #FreeJahar movement is a strange hybrid phenomenon—part conspiracy-mongering, part gushing fandom, part political movement, part self-promotional tool, structured by social media, populated almost entirely by teenagers and stubbornly resistant to argument.

KaleidoPope is an interactive site by Michael Silber that creates colorful kaleidoscopic papal images. Silber describes it as a “visual pun that’s compelling to engage with.”

I composed a photo collage of historic portraits, which is then abstracted when viewed in repeated slices. The lavish textile patterns and mosaic textures provide a rich material for the abstraction.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

It appears that gradually, over time, editors have begun the process of moving women, one by one, alphabetically, from the “American Novelists” category to the “American Women Novelists” subcategory.

And one man's quest to bring hundreds more back.

Holly Jacobs has finally come forward and is filing the first ever criminal case against an alleged revenge porn distributor, who she believes to be her ex.

“Gay adoption is an idea he now supports, although the former GOP VP candidate still opposes gay marriage.”

- Paul Ryan gay adoption: Is his support a big deal? - CSMonitor.com

JodyDigger/flickr

Marissa Mayer took a lot of flak when she nixed telecommuting at Yahoo yet built a private nursery for her own baby next to her office, on the heels of her earlier statement that she intended to work through a meager two-week maternity leave.

This week, however, she announced a decidedly family-friendly policy for Yahoos who become parents: doubling paid maternity leave for mothers (from eight to 16 weeks) plus granting eight weeks for fathers. New parents also can expect to receive a gift of $500 to welcome baby and spend on things like groceries, babysitters, house cleaning, and laundry.

The policy sends the message that Yahoo seeks to keep up with its Silicon Valley peers—especially Google and Facebook—in the competition to hire and retain top talent. It also signals that Marissa Mayer realizes not every working parent, even super-smart Yahoo engineers, possesses her super-human drive, so Yahoo will try to be one of those great places to work—for both moms and dads of newborns.

Related Story

Marissa Mayer's Job Is to Be CEO

The dad part of the policy merits notice. It appears Mayer absorbed one key response to Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg's command for women to "lean in" to their jobs and careers. Dads need to lean in at home and share diaper duty, said mothers, journalists, and scholars. That would encourage equally shared parenting particularly and gender equality generally.

The new Yahoo policy holds potential not only to change a father's behavior during the eight weeks he spends with the baby while on paternity leave, but also to inch the country toward parity between the sexes in parenting. Catherine Rampell, in The New York Times, explains how a family-friendly policy can potentially change social expectations and norms about acceptable "father" and "mother" behaviors:

One area where there seems to be a lot of potential is paternity leave, which still has a stigma in both the United States and Europe. To remedy this bad rap, countries like Sweden and Norway have recently introduced a quota of paid parental leave available only to fathers. If dads don't take it, they're leaving money on the table. In Germany and Portugal, moms get bonus weeks of maternity leave if their husbands take a minimum amount of paternity leave. All these countries have seen gigantic increases in the share of fathers who go on leave.

This might not sound like such a big deal, but social scientists are coming around to the notion that a man spending a few weeks at home with his newborn can help recast expectations and gender roles, at work and home, for a long time. A striking new study by a Cornell graduate student, Ankita Patnaik, based on a new paid paternity-leave quota in Quebec, found that parents' time use changed significantly. Several years after being exposed to the reform, fathers spent more time in child care and domestic work—particularly "time-inflexible" chores, like cooking, that cut into working hours—than fathers who weren't exposed to the reform. More important, mothers spent considerably more time at work growing their careers and contributing more to the economy, all without any public mandates or shaming.

Even more important, fathers' heightened engagement with their newborns ignites a process of role evolution. In other words, change behavior first and changes in expectations follow—not just wives' expectations of husbands but husbands' expectations of themselves. New roles are "enacted" this way and, at a social system level, new norms emerge. Dads doing more at home—even taking charge—becomes accepted and then expected. All because an employer like Yahoo offered—and dads took—a few weeks of paternity leave.

Happy May Day

Black Fax

“Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov had entered the United States on student visas and lived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, according to court papers. Phillipos is a resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

-

Boston bombing investigation takes 3 friends of suspect into custody - chicagotribune.com

NECN is saying Phillipos lives in an apartment building right next to the Memorial Drive Shell where the carjacking occurred

I will spare you my usual introductory paragraph this morning since you all know what Facebook is and what it does and get right to the point. Last month, without much fanfare, Facebook introduced a revised version of its "f Logo" which is meant to be used to promote an organization's or person's presence on Facebook. It's ubiquitous — yet I had never realized there was, officially, a lighter blue line at the bottom of it. Along with the new "f Logo" also comes an official brand page and a revised set of icons for all the different services/pages found throughout the Facebook universe. Obviously this is not the most earth-shattering change in the history of logo changes but it's my duty to report on it, since, like, a billion people use Facebook.

The "f Logo" in detail. You probably don't need to see it that big but there it is.

For the record, these are the official "Thumbs Up", "Like Button", and "Find Us on Facebook Badge" assets.

Interestingly, you can't download the Facebook logo from the assets page.

So, yeah, there is no more lighter blue line. And the world keeps chugging along. I don't even know why it was there in the first place. In the new version the "f" bleeds out and becomes bigger, which is very helpful since people are using the social sharing icons in really tiny dimensions now that there is dozens of icons to share stuff with. What's more interesting about this whole story is Facebook making a more conscious effort to establish what's right and wrong since so many people have just grabbed unofficial icons off Google image searches or just created their own (I know I have) — and also now that Twitter has upped its game graphically, Facebook can't rest on its laurels. And for a site that changes design every other month and where every platform experience feels different (and almost alien to each other) perhaps this is a sign that things are about to get more consistent. The icons shown below are also a good indication of a graphic standard being set in place. And that can only be promising. Unless they change everything again in a few months, which wouldn't be surprising.

Logos/icons for other large pages/sections/services from Facebook. Gathered first by Tom Waddington.

Thanks to Erik Weiss for first tip.

Don't forget to cast your vote about this post online

Mystic River, Connecticut Birdseye Map (1879)

O.H. Bailey's map of Mystic River and Mystic River Bridge, Connecticut. From 1879. Mystic River, Conn Birdseye Map Date: 1879 Author: O.H. Bailey Dwnld: Full Size (10.3mb) Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map isn't part of any series, but we have other featured maps that you might want to check out. Prolific birdseye artist Oakley H. Bailey's depiction of Mystic [gmap], Connecticut. The image is...

the BIG Map Blog - Interesting maps, historical maps, BIG maps.

With the help of Commander Chris Hadfield aboard the ISS, the Bank of Canada yesterday launched its new robot- and astronaut-themed five dollar bill. Hadfield had been keeping the new bill under wraps for months.

Read more...

via cityofrlyeh

Original Source

katisque:

Kristofer Kongshaug

What the living dick??

(Ron Newman is a local treasure.)

Twenty-five minutes ago, a constable delivered to me an unexpected package. It is a lawsuit by Jonathan Graves Monsarrat, alleging that he was libeled by me, Deb Filcman, and "John and Jane Does 1-100, presently unknown individuals". He is seeking $500,000 in compensatory damages, $5 million in punitive damages, and deletion of various LJ posts and comments.

I am called (incorrectly) "the moderator" of this forum.

Many participants here are named by LJ handle. "Plaintiff intends to identify the Doe Defendants through means of discovery and will amend this lawsuit to identify the Doe Defendants by proper legal names upon obtaining such information"

If I don't reply within 20 days, a default judgment will be entered against me.

All possible advice and help would be greatly appreciated right now.

In particular, if anyone here is or knows an appropriate attorney who'd be willing to help out at least a bit pro bono, let me know. Tags: community announcements, community issues, legal, lj community housekeeping

Original Source

Life is only on earth. And not for long.

As a teenager, I ate the wrong thing at a black-tie dinner, went into anaphylactic shock, and nearly died. Probably would have, too, if it weren’t for a medical technician at a nearby table who leapt to action. Fortunate, too, was the setting — Kansas City’s River Club, a swank private club perched on bluffs overlooking the churning Missouri River. Over the years, this or that member has required an emergency dose of oxygen; tanks of the stuff were squirreled away behind the bar for just such times. Thank god for old men in failing health. That night, one of those canisters helped save my life. Although it’s no longer an event that springs to mind often, I’ve kept a relaxed view of my own mortality ever since.

Ein Gartenzwerg aus San Diego

But now and again, memories of that brush with death gurgle to the surface, especially when I pass The Alibi, a San Diego bar known for its cheap drinks and low-key clientele. The Alibi, in other words, is a dive. Along its western side, a long stretch of wall is painted like a chalkboard. Stenciled, column after column, is the phrase “Before I die, I want to ____________.” Chalk is there for anyone who wants to express their hopes, dreams, jokes, and rude comments about mothers. Passersby have noted that they want to learn to surf, own a monkey, move to France, travel to all seven continents, and vote for a candidate they can believe in. It's a reminder that we, too, need to take steps to make us happy. Especially that monkey thing.

The Before I Die project is not indigenous to San Diego. Rather, it is the creation of New Orleans artist Candy Chang who painted a chalkboard wall on an abandoned house in her neighborhood in early 2011. The wall struck a nerve. Similar walls have sprung up around the world — Denmark, Germany, the Philippines, South Africa, Korea, China, Ireland, and across the USA.

As I walked by The Alibi yesterday, an employee washed off the night’s comments. “Every day I wash off the old and make room for the new,” he told me. “On the weekends, sometimes twice a day.” Dougie was dressed as a garden gnome for the job, but his tone was respectful, even reverent. “People write funny stuff, or hopeful, or whatever. Sometimes, it’s heartbreaking. One time, this lady wrote 'Before I die, I want to see my daughter survive cancer.' She told me ‘I know she’s not going to make it, but it makes me feel better to write that.’ I nearly cried.”

Clearing away old dreams, making room new.

He nodded to the first column, now blank from his scrubbing. “Go on. You can be the first.” I declined.

That night in Kansas City when I was certain I was dying gave me clarity I’ve never relinquished. As consciousness faded, I regretted committing various stupid and cruel acts — and not pursuing things I wanted. After reviving, I made amends for my cruelty and started ticking off those missed opportunities. I learned not just how to drink whiskey, but how to make it; learned to shoot guns; published one good book and contributed to a bunch of others; got a fist full of degrees; traveled a lot more; backpacked through Europe (and still return as often as I can); taught myself several languages and software programs (none fluently, but each enough to do what I need); learned how to cure bacon and make sausages; and finally figured out how to fold a contour sheet.

I've achieved other goals both momentous and mundane and will knock out more before I'm gone, but even if I drop dead of a massive heart attack this afternoon, I will die knowing that my friends are genuinely good people, that my finances are in order, and that my family loves me. Everything else is gravy.

Goes well with:

• More about Candy Chang’s Before I Die project, including photos and directions for starting a wall in your town. 
• A visit to The Alibi: 1403 University Avenue, San Diego, CA 92103

(Disclosure: I used to intern at Fast Company.) A #longform written by Fast Company’s Austin Carr dropped today, revealing the painstaking process toward making the Doritos Locos Taco a reality and not just a sorely failed Shark Tank idea. The piece is astonishing for two reasons: 1) The concept was not dreamed up by workers in a marijuana test kitchen 2) Carr gets through thousands of words without asking the real question: What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you make this a thing? Haven’t Americans suffered enough under the scourge of Crunchwraps Supreme, congealed nacho cheese, turquoise-stained Baja Blast containers left empty by our bedsides? Did you really need to increase your profit margins that badly to keep ensuring a fuller, fatter us?

Apparently so. But the article is also great for how deeply it delves into the shadowy world wherein Taco Bell does its culinary brainstorming, a metaphorical series of Tijuana abortion clinics where dirty deeds are done in secret. No, it was mostly just a bunch of dweebs obsessing over how to get the Doritos crunch just right. Some of the highlights, split off in quote form:

The big problem: The type of workplace that enables millionaires to sit around thinking about taco shell innovation.

“If you look at all the buns the burger boys sell, and the bread at Subway, they are forever coming up with a new bread bun. The crunchy taco: It was yellow and made of corn. We sold a couple billion of them, but there had been no innovation.”

The bigger problem: The type of workplace that enables millionaires to get unreasonably hyperbolic when they figure out taco shell innovation.

“It was like, ‘Holy crap!’ Nobody had ever done this before: turning a Dorito into a taco shell. It was just mind-blowing at the idea stage.”

“But in all my years as a product developer, I’ve never seen a concept like this. The product didn’t even exist yet, and already people knew this idea was going to be huge.”

“This idea of merging a chip and a shell together–it sounds simple, but it’s very hard to make a reality. To tackle this huge challenge, for months we shared know-how between the technical teams at Frito-Lay and Taco Bell.”

“It’s really one of those breathtakingly simple but huge ideas. I remember trying to sell guacamole in the Midwest and people were like, ‘What’s all this green stuff in my burrito?’ But this was a fastball, down the middle. It’s what you’d expect from Taco Bell, but supercharged.”

Genuine™ Doritos™ Experience™, Exclusive Sponsor of South by Southwest 2014

“So we had to get that formula changed, then we had to find a way to deliver the flavoring, and then the seasoning. I mean, it was actually important that we left the orange dusting on your fingers because otherwise, we’re not delivering the genuine Doritos [experience].”

Thank God for American workplace standards, I guess?

“We realized pretty quickly that we had to seal that all in, because in the facilities, we couldn’t have all that stuff in the air. It would’ve been too much seasoning and flavor for our workers. We had to enclose it so the seasoning wouldn’t escape. It would’ve been overpowering.”

Difficult dilemmas

“A Doritos chip is a flat triangle, and it gets seasoned by being tumbled around in a huge seasoner barrel that rotates. But we couldn’t do that with a taco shell because they would break. We could get the seasoning to stick to the top but we couldn’t get it to stick to the bottom–we just couldn’t get it evenly coated. You don’t want to take one big bite at one end, and it has flavor and the other end has nothing. We had to make sure it was evenly distributed.”

“We realized we needed more capacity, because we couldn’t slow down the Nacho Cheese line in order to create capacity for Cool Ranch.”

The final word: We’re fucked. Taco Bell uber alles.

“When it launched, there was a significant impact–Taco Bell’s [sales] numbers were up 13% in the second quarter of last year, which is big. Brands like Taco Bell or McDonald’s or Wendy’s–you just don’t see double-digit [growth] in same-store sales.”

“The Cheesy Gordita Crunch people are asking us to make one with either a Nacho Cheese or Cool Ranch shell.”

There’s little debate over what actually happened at a Minnesota club on Friday night, or at least the actual outcome: while on stage, a fan pulled down rapper Danny Brown’s pants, and attempted to perform oral sex on him. So far so gross. What there has been a lot of debate over, however, is whether or not this incident should be read as some sort of stereotypical display of hip hop masculine bravado, or, what we might normally call it if something like this happened in the real world, rape. See the picture here if you must.

It was the latter, Brown’s tour-mate and friend Kitty Pryde explains today in a convincing piece on Noisey, in which she addresses the slate of condemnations from both sides of the issue.

I’m mad that a person thought it was okay to pull another person’s pants down during their performance in front of about 700 other people. I’m mad that a person thought it was a good idea to perform a sex act on another person without their consent. I’m mad that nobody made her leave. I’m mad that Danny had to actually wonder what he was supposed to do at that point. I’m mad that when I went home and said I had no respect for that girl, I was attacked for being a “slut-shamer” (after literally leading a girl to his hotel room at 3AM at her request) and, even more outrageously, for being jealous of the girl who sucked his dick. I’m mad that when two dudes pulled my pants down onstage, other people got mad too, but when it happened to Danny the initial reaction was like one big high-five. I’m mad that people are treating “The Thing” like it’s some legendary event. I’m mad that even though they know exactly who the girl is, nobody in the media will even talk to her. I’m mad that I get a bunch of emails a day asking me to talk about my best friend’s “misogyny” and “classless behavior”, from people who have heard only rumors and seen only one very blurry and inconclusive iPhone photo.

There’s no question that someone performing an unwanted sex act on a person who isn’t interested in it is rape. The question of what is and isn’t appropriate contact at a hip hop or rock show, however, muddy the waters in a situation like this. Reaching out in desperation to grab the hand, or the arms, or the chest or leg of someone in the street is rightfully considered insane. But at a concert that’s just excitement. So where do we draw the line? Here’s a pretty good place to start: if your expression of fandom involves pulling off someone’s clothes and putting your mouth in their crotch, you’re probably way over the line. Don’t do that. Not only because it’s rape, but because wanting to have sex with someone whose songs you like very very much, so much so that you’ll perform said sex act in front of of other people, is gross and pathetic. I’m sure there are people who could argue that that sort of opinion constitutes slut-shaming. In this case the shame is well deserved. Get your shit together people.

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milesjai:

princerogersnelsons:

Prince on The Today Show ‘96

my favorite Prince moment in Prince interview history. just flawless. 

ME.

cat doesn’t want to get out of nice warm bath [x]