June 2011
86 posts
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Google+ Is As Cool and Exclusive As Facebook Used to Be (So I’ve Heard.) The buzz over Google+, billed as Google’s Facebook-killing venture, has me reliving all my Gmail invite social anxieties all over again. It also has me thinking back to the day or two of Google Wave hype, before it crashed my browser and I completely forgot about it. Anthony De Rosa was one of the few who had the...
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“The researchers found that mice fed chow containing aspartame and corn oil for...”
– So diet soda can make you fat now, and that paragraph from the New York Post sort of explains why. If the mice get fat drinking Diet Dr. Pepper then we do, too; except for Karl Lagerfeld, who lost close to 100 pounds and still drank only Diet Coke for every beverage.
-KH
[NYP, h/t @thisisjendoll]
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Banner Ads Are Everywhere, But Don’t Really Work. A study done by Solve Media, which places ads in those annoying CAPTCHAs, shows that despite banner ads existing on almost every website you visit, they aren’t all that successful. It’s very rare for a person to click on one of these ads—so rare, in fact, that a person is more likely to get into Harvard or climb Mount...
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NYC Wants Your Apps. Do you have an idea of how to make this city better? And can you put that idea in the form of an app for your phone? NYC Big Apps, partially sponsored by the EDC, is currently asking for submissions for your best app ideas. People can submit them and then they’ll be voted on—and the winning app gets made, I think? Some examples: an app that shows social services...
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Food Truck Crackdown. Living in this police state of a city has cramped my style in so many ways. Smoking in bars is gone, and my hair no longer has that day-after-drinking stench. I can’t park in Times Square anymore, and it’s getting harder to buy a nutcracker on the A train. But the one thing that kept living and working here worth it was the abundance of food trucks, everywhere I...
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“Like any 7-footer loosed by the NBA, Eaton’s sports afterlife has been by...”
– Pablo Torre writes about the tallest people he could find, those who played in the NBA and those who resisted. When you’re 7’4”, the scouts come and find you (when you can dunk a basket with your heels on the court, it’s sort of a given.) Even for those who claimed to hate...
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“This year the budget dance wasn’t a waltz, it was a mosh pit.”
– City libraries are “safe” from a shut down with the release of the new city budget, despite threats to shut many down. But it seems like déjà vu. It’s an irritating game played by the institutions and people that rely on funds from the city—the budget dance that happens each...
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“When he applied, Battle was rejected by police surgeons, supposedly because of a...”
– Samuel Battle faced discrimination, threats, and harassment from fellow officers when he became the first black officer to join the New York Police Department. He later became the NYPD’s first black first black sergeant, lieutenant, and parole commissioner. A century after he joined the force,...
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“Weiner, who became a national dirty joke after he was caught sexting young...”
– In this Post story, insiders and sources are saying that Anthony Weiner, last seen eating Baskin Robbins in Manhattan with his wife, is reaching out to people interested in running for his old seat in Congress. The list of interested candidates seems to grow overnight, and the source says Weiner is...
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Everybody Getting Married, For Free! On Friday, same-sex marriage became legal in New York. And they did it with the best timing ever, since this weekend was Pride Weekend (note to all legislators thinking of legalizing marijuana: do it on April 19th.) This is great for those same-sex couples looking to get married, but even better for those with their eye$ on the prize. Let’s just imagine...
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“Guess I learned the hard way that crabs do not discriminate but cross over all...”
– So that’s actress Florence Henderson writing in her new memoir about the parting gift she received from a one-night stand with former NYC mayor John Lindsay. Turns out Lindsay was a friend of the Brady mom (he’s described incorrectly in one story as an “unattractive” friend,...
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“Yet Harlem’s overall influence in black politics is waning. Harlem proper...”
– Once considered the epicenter of black power, Harlem’s influence in the political landscape in New York had been shrinking even before Rep. Rangel’s ethics investigation. This story in Crain’s examines the shift of power from Harlem to Central Brooklyn, where a trio of ambitious...
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“If you’re reading the tabloids, you can put your little headset on and...”
– Although Gay Talese spends about four paragraphs of his media diet in The Atlantic explaining how phenomenal The New York Times is, he admits to a surprisingly more low-brow habit: he watches Mike Francesa in the gym!
-KH
[The Atlantic]
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Watch#BikeNYC. That’s Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson (follow him on Twitter!) riding his bike around the city. Kermit the Frog even makes a cameo. Wolfson’s been an outspoken advocate in favor of bike lanes around the city, and practicing what he preaches by biking to City Hall as often as possible (maybe he “rides his bike to work” the way Mayor Bloomberg “takes the subway...
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“…I think they’re pandering to people who want a long shelf life and who...”
– That’s Mimi Sheraton, a “connoisseur” of bagels and bialys and who has written on a topic near and dear to so many New Yorkers. This week, H&H announced they would be closing their Upper West Side location, which opened up this year’s edition of The Great Bagel Debate....
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“Lured out to the vacant Woodside rental, Guldensuppe opened a closet door — and...”
– The New York Post wrote about the historical murder that “plunged New York into scandal”, bringing a new style of journalism—sensationalism—into newspapers across the country. It was 1897; there was a love triangle, a murder, a headless body in the river. Basically, all stuff...
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What Does The Sky Look Like? I’ve mentioned before something about dark, windowless offices. Do you sometimes forget what the sky looks like, too? One guy put his picture window view of nature to good use by creating NSKYC, which displays the color of the sky in HTML color codes. The site creator, Mike Bodge, told New York Magazine that the view from his window overlooking NoHo and the East...
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Jon Hamm Locked In For Three More Seasons Of Smolderin’. Jon Hamm signed a contract with AMC making him one of the highest paid actors on cable television. The move ensures there will be at least three more seasons of “Mad Men,” which almost makes up for one season of “The Killing.” WOOHOO MAD MEN IS COMIN’ BACK SOON!
-DM [Warming Glow, the20s]
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The Ultimate Summer Playlist. Greg Gillis, the man behind Girl Talk, shared with New York Magazine his 154-song summer playlist, perfect for grillin’, chillin’, and beachin’ with your friends now that the weather is warm. He has a bunch of gems on here: Aaliyah, Billy Joel, Grateful Dead, even ZHANE is on here. And NY Mag even did you the favor of organizing all the songs into...
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“People watch so much C-SPAN in Washington, and why can’t you eat on the Metro...”
– That’s from an article in the Washington Post on a group of ex-New Yorkers now (begrudgingly) living down in our nation’s capital. They miss the usual stuff: the bagels, the cheap food options, the guys selling the paper on the corner. One member of FUME—which stands for Fellowship...
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WatchAndrew Siff caught up with Jimmy Vielkind, who covers politics for the Albany Times-Union, to discuss the same-sex marriage vote in the senate. Vielkind’s been covering the vote extensively, and tweeting his insights from inside the Capitol. And this is our first on-location segment of The 20—I dig the natural light!
-KH
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More Political Insights Through Signatures. The New York Times took a cue from the Staten Island Advance by having a handwriting expert analyze Anthony Weiner’s handwriting, as seen in his resignation letter. It was hard to tell what the signature said; it consisted basically of a squiggle and a big bump. The Handwriting analyst determined that his reckless signature shows a sign of a...
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You should watch this video of a bear stuck in a... →
Make sure you have the sound on!
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The Original Pandora. The Library of Congress has been cataloging sound recordings (some date back to 1901!), and they’ve now made a large portion of their database available on line, for free. So much for getting work done today. The National Jukebox features recordings from the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing archives and libraries, and will increase...
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Confessions of a Ghost Tweeter. When Weinergate broke what surprised me the most was that the former Congressman was apparently the only person running his Twitter and Facebook pages. I always assumed political figures had interns or aides helping out. Of course if Anthony Weiner did have an intern helping out he might still have a job, but that’s another issue. Yesterday a “ghost...
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“A tie is the only true way men can make some sort of statement. I can tell when...”
– That’s—well, let’s play a guessing game. Is it Kanye West? Is it Tom Ford? Simon Doonan? No. It’s Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, quoted in a profile piece in Women’s Wear Daily. Turns out, when he’s not looking at ways to lower crime in the city he’s...
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“I’m sure it was a sweet and genuine idea by someone who meant well, but we’re...”
– That’s from a commentator on a Google message board discussing the “Call Dad” reminder that popped up as a status for the Google Voice option in Gmail. I saw it yesterday morning and thought it was sort of weird. Who is Gmail to even assume I speak to my dad? Or that I didn’t...
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Oops. The Lehman High School Lions have never had a home field, forcing them to play every game at away fields and seriously inhibiting school spirit. Their athletic field, though, finally went through the long-awaited renovations the school hoped would give the team a home-field advantage. The only problem is that the Department of Education made the field 20 yards shy of being the right size for...
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WatchIs This The Last We’ll See of Anthony Weiner? Rep. Weiner announced he was stepping down from Congress on Thursday, twenty days after misfiring a photo on Twitter. Late Thursday, Politico’s Maggie Haberman told Chuck Scarborough that she still thinks Weiner has his ambitions and that the former Congressman “believes he can come back in some form.”
-LB
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“Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked...”
– It’s Bloomsday today, which celebrates the date on which the entirety of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” takes place. And if you find it both trivial and somehow epic that someone would write a zillion-page book detailing a single day of an Irishman, you should know that that’s the entire point of the...
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“All too often, Bloomberg, when challenged, has folded like a beach chair.”
– That’s from an op-ed in the New York Post grading Mayor Bloomberg’s legacy as the self-professed “education mayor.” More kids are in summer school this year—but Bloomberg says they want to be there. Studies have shown that only 21 percent of last year’s graduating seniors were prepared for college...
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M.I.A: Crusty Punks. The New York Times writes today about the decline in travelers known as “crusties” or “crusty punks” that usually inhabit Tompkins Square Park once the snow melts. The crusties roam the country year-round, going where the weather’s good, usually ending up in New York by the spring. While some neighbors in the cleaned-up East Village appreciate...
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“Suddenly there’s a sense of—what the hell is that?—optimism in the air, along...”
– That’s Village Voice writer Jen Doll, positing 33 reasons why summer in New York City is awesome. And as someone who tolerated six summers living in Manhattan with no fancy summer share to go to, I can tell you the reasons to dislike summer in NYC outpace her list by a factor of about ten, with the...
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“As of now, not only have we failed to fix these three problems, but we’ve made...”
– Felix Salmon says Wall Street is bigger—and badder—than before, and wrote about it for The Atlantic as one of the 14 Biggest Ideas of the Year. Wall Street pay is back at record highs, he says. It’s big-money gambling back like it was before the crash, and Salmon can only tell us...
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Don’t Know Much About… A national assessment quiz has found just 13 percent of high school seniors have a “solid grasp” on American history. Wow. Thirteen percent is very, very close to zero percent. The students were quizzed on many topics from American history, from the Revolutionary War to current civics topics. One example of student failure: only 44 percent of students...
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Sad Poll Results. Dating in New York City is hard, maybe harder than dating in another city because some people have Sex and the City-like expectations from living here. (That’s the reason, right?) Now the fun, activity-specific dating site How About We is proving just how much harder it is to find any sort of love or companionship in this big city by asking this question: Would you date...
