August 2008
22 posts
Illustrated Typography on Dark Backgrounds →
via Drawn.ca
All told, domestic capacity nationwide is... →
GOP Discovers This Internet Thing; Uses It →
The Republican Platform Committee is your shot at telling the Republican party what you really think they should be doing. In anticipation of their 2008 convention, the GOP is doing something for the kids and jumping on the User Generated Content bandwagon in an embarrassingly blatant way.
The site claims to be an historic opportunity for the you—the common man—to “share your...
Grand Army Suds →
Someone put soap in the Grand Army Plaza fountain yesterday. Probably it needed it.
The Future of Suburbia Quorum →
“What will U.S. suburbs look like in 40 years?
Their answers are informative and often fascinating. As always, Kunstler is vastly entertaining as he advocates what one critic calls “apocalyptic utopianism,” while Antus gets a bit Swiftian on us. Brueckner and Archer are far more measured (and, if I had to lay money on the future, closer to reality), although Archer borders on his own...
Jan Svankmajer in Bushwick →
Jan Svankmajer, if you need a refresher, is an animator from the Czech Republic who is responsible for creating a ubiquitous and amazing style of stop motion films in the Surrealist tradition. They are at once dark and saturated, and highly tactile. Definitely worth checking out.
via Williamsburg is Dead
My Stupid Neighborhood →
“Unfortunately the NYPD decided that pandas having fun in the street were a threat and made several arrests angering the panda mob.”
Police vs. PANDAmonium. Via Gothamist
Kaiju Big Battel →
What is Kaiju, you ask? Technically the Japanese word refers to Godzilla-like monsters from movies of yore. But Kaiju Big Battel is so much more than that:
Whoa! Kaiju Big Battel is a modern conflict of epic proportions. Evil villains, menacing alien beasts, and giant, city-crushing monsters threaten...
Tony Dusko Animates Learning
It’s a time-honored elementary school cliche: when the semester is slow, vacation fast approaching or there is a substitute teacher, the class watches a video to kill time. But Tony Dusko, a Pennsylvania-based 5th-grade teacher by day and animator by night, has bigger aspirations for what his students watch. Beginning with a short cartoon of a grilled-cheese sandwich telling his class to get...
Russia vs. Georgia, Redux →
Dealbreaker puts together a comprehensive roundtable to answer everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask.
via Gawker
American Apparel Uses Real Porn Star for Fake-y... →
Normally you might think that the above ad is just another status-quo dispatch from the giant penis of Dov Charney’s American Apparel. But what may not be immediately obvious (depending on how much time you spend on the internet) is that the ad’s subject, Faye Valentine, is actually an honest-to-god working porn star.
I’m sure there’s an intellectual argument somewhere...
I am Rich →
It’s an iPhone app. It costs $999. It does nothing.
via Core77
UPDATE: Evidently this app has been removed from the store at Apple’s discretion. But not before 8 people bought it.
City Weighs Extent of Concrete Retesting →
This is shocking and not shocking at the same time: New York City’s largest concrete testing company has been falsifying results, and now the city is looking into extensive retesting. According to the Times:
“As prosecutors analyze evidence seized from Testwell’s offices in June, including detailed computerized records of concrete compression tests, the potential scope of the...
US plans NYC flight auction next month →
Can someone please explain the ramifications of this to me?
“There will be no minimum bid for the round-trip slot, and officials aren’t sure exactly what it is worth, but Gribbin said it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on Monday said it would block any flights resulting from an auction, by not allowing them to use terminal gates...
Consider subscribing: Hi-Fructose Magazine →
Between this and Juxtapoz, you’ll have your lo-fi art locked down.
Repo Men →
“Nationally, car repossession rates rose 10 percent in 2007, says Tom Webb, chief economist for Atlanta’s Manheim Consulting, the nation’s largest car-auction company.”
Google on Privacy →
In court papers filed in response to a Pittsburgh couple’s suit regarding pictures of their house on Google Street View, the search conglomerate had this to say:
“Today’s satellite image technology means that even in today’s desert, complete privacy does not exist.”
This is technically true, but a pretty brazen statement for a company that makes its money off the...
The Demographic Inversion of the American City
The New Republic has an interesting article discussing how American urban centers are undergoing a quiet but potentially massive demographic shift: a wholesale reversal of the mid-century migration to the suburbs. Downtowns are completing their long transformation from low income post-industrial zones to affluent upper-middle-class residential developments. Referring to this phenomenon as...