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"The bridge comes into the lives of all Bay Area residents sooner or later, and it often stays. Dr...."

Fri, 24 May 2013 07:44:12 -0700

“The bridge comes into the lives of all Bay Area residents sooner or later, and it often stays. Dr. Jerome Motto, who has been part of two failed suicidebarrier coalitions, is now retired and living in San Mateo. When I visited him there, we spent three hours talking about the bridge. Motto had a patient who committed suicide from the Golden Gate in 1963, but the jump that affected him most occurred in the seventies. “I went to this guy’s apartment afterward with the assistant medical examiner,” he told me. “The guy was in his thirties, lived alone, pretty bare apartment. He’d written a note and left it on his bureau. It said, ‘I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.’ ””

- Jumpers, The fatal grandeur of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Read: The New Yorker (via brooklynmutt)

UpWorthy: Image created by unknown persons and inspired by a...

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:03:02 -0700

UpWorthy:

Image created by unknown persons and inspired by a quote from Banksy, which was inspired by Sean Tejaratchi’s 1999 essay, “Death, Phones, Scissors.”

A note on LA politics.

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:29:09 -0700

coketalk:

For those of you who give a shit, Los Angeles just elected a new mayor.

The tiny fraction of Angelinos who bothered to show up to the polls yesterday got to choose between Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel, two bureaucratically entrenched mid-level municipal politicians, both of whom were competent, but neither of whom were particularly galvanizing. The best thing you could say about either of them is that they weren’t Antonio Villaraigosa.

Garcetti won. I knew he would. I knew it all along for one simple reason. His last name sounds mayoral, and Wendy’s last name does not.

I’m totally serious about this. If Wendy’s last name had been Garcetti, and Eric’s last name had been Greuel, the results of the LA mayoral election would have gone the other way.

If you don’t believe me, ask our departing mayor why he changed his name from “Tony Villar” to “Antonio Villaraigosa” before getting into local politics. That’s the kind of stupid shit that makes a difference in Los Angeles.

No one else will say it, but the brutal truth is that Wendy was fucked from day one because she has a shitty sounding last name. Mayor Greuel just doesn’t have a ring to it, and Mayor Garcetti sounds slick.

That’s really all that matters in this town.

Um.

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:40:11 -0700

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:29:18 -0700

staceythinx: You may have seen MRK’s amazing videos, but did...

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:13:14 -0700

staceythinx:

You may have seen MRK’s amazing videos, but did you know that you can buy prints of his digital creations?

World peace? Sometimes you have to break a few eggs, Jesuits....

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:44:42 -0700

World peace? Sometimes you have to break a few eggs, Jesuits. Sheesh.

dear david karp,

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:30:15 -0700

notentirely:

thanks for tumblr, a platform i have grown to love over the 6 years that i’ve been here.

i understand this is your project and i’ll understand if you sell it. but i wanted to point out, you left money on the table when it came to me.

i’d have paid a small fee to have a “no-ads” dashboard. you could have added all the ads you wanted ($$) and i’d have given you money ($$) to have them not show up for me. money in your pocket both ways.

i also would have paid a small fee for premium features ($$). all that time wasted on trying to get me to not use ‘missing e’ could have been put to better use asking me to pay a small fee ($$) for a better user experience within tumblr itself.

there are several other ways you missed making some solid dough on a tumblr fan such as myself, but i think the point is made.

you left money on the table with me. i hope you don’t do that with yahoo, or whomever you may sell to.

tumblr is a neat place. you did something really great in creating this software. however, we did something great in being the community that used it. you made tumblr worth something, and we’ve made it worth more.

good luck and thanks again.

respectfully,
notentirely

Cosigned.

“Tweeting your vines, hashtagging your Spotifys and...

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:54:54 -0700

“Tweeting your vines, hashtagging your Spotifys and Snapchatting your YOLOs. Your generation needs everything to be about you, and that’s very upsetting to us baby boomers because self-absorption is kind of our thing. We’re the original ‘me’ generation. We made the last 50 years all about us. We took all the money. We soaked up all the government services. And we deep-fried nearly everything in the ocean.”

-Stephen Colbert

"Let’s face it, the Dow is so high not because the economy is great, or even because it is projected..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:33:10 -0700

“Let’s face it, the Dow is so high not because the economy is great, or even because it is projected to be great soon. It’s mostly inflated out of a combination of easy Fed money for banks, which translates to easy money for people who are already rich, and the fact that world-wide investors are afraid of Europe and are parking their money in the U.S. until the Euro problem gets solved. In other words, that money is going to go away if people decide Europe looks stable, or if the Fed decides to raise interest rates. The latter might happen when the economy (or rather, if the economy) looks better, so putting that together we’re talking about a possible negative stock market response to a positive economic outlook. The stock market has officially become decoupled from our nation’s future.”

- mathbabe (via azspot)

vegansanfrancishet: So, I paint my nails pretty regularly these...

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:31:02 -0700

vegansanfrancishet:

So, I paint my nails pretty regularly these days. I also work as a barista/cashier pretty regularly these days. A few weeks back, I had a customer come in, a fairly typical, sheltered, suburban soccer mom, and she ordered a latte from me. She saw my brightly colored nails and said, “Wow, you’re so brave! My son asked me about painting his nails, and if it’s okay for boys to do that. Now I’ll tell him there’s a cool guy who does it too!” It was a nice moment, very cute.

Then, last week, she came in again, and said, “Hey, I’m so glad you’re here! I want you to meet someone!” She then brings her son forward, and says, “Okay sweetie, show him what you did!” And he throws his hands up, showing off his bright, sparkling blue nails. He shows them off, and I show mine off to him. He smiles. We fist bump.

Guys, I’ve only wanted to cry once at work before, and that was when someone ordered a large dry soy cappuccino on ice.

This time, though. This was a good cry.

zoestagg: I saw these all over town this weekend, on bus stops...

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:26:10 -0700

zoestagg:

I saw these all over town this weekend, on bus stops and the like—and while I intellectually appreciate they spent $100 million on this ad campaign, and what do I know from ad men, I do have a question:

Are you selling us special active-teen tampons? Because that’s the only conceivable product Y!ou can possibly be, especially given this lovely stock photo you chose. Yay. I’ll pick some up with my Teen Spirit Sparkling Salsa deodorant next time I’m out.

Discovery: Ancient lore has suggested that the Vikings used...

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:57:27 -0700

Discovery:

Ancient lore has suggested that the Vikings used special crystals to find their way under less-than-sunny skies. Though none of these so-called “sunstones” have ever been found at Viking archaeological sites, a crystal uncovered in a British shipwreck could help prove they did indeed exist.

The crystal was found amongst the wreckage of the Alderney, an Elizabethan warship that sank near the Channel Islands in 1592. The stone was discovered less than 3 feet (1 meter) from a pair of navigation dividers, suggesting it may have been kept with the ship’s other navigational tools, according to the research team headed by scientists at the University of Rennes in France.

A chemical analysis confirmed that the stone was Icelandic Spar, or calcite crystal, believed to be the Vikings’ mineral of choice for their fabled sunstones, mentioned in the 13th-century Viking saga of Saint Olaf.

Today, the Alderney crystal would be useless for navigation, because it has been abraded by sand and clouded by magnesium salts. But in better days, such a stone would have bent light in a helpful way for seafarers.

Because of the rhombohedral shape of calcite crystals, “they refract or polarize light in such a way to create a double image,” Mike Harrison, coordinator of the Alderney Maritime Trust, told LiveScience. This means that if you were to look at someone’s face through a clear chunk of Icelandic spar, you would see two faces. But if the crystal is held in just the right position, the double image becomes a single image and you know the crystal is pointing east-west, Harrison said.

These refractive powers remain even in low light when it’s foggy or cloudy or when twilight has come. In a previous study, the researchers proved they could use Icelandic spar to orient themselves within a few degrees of the sun, even after the sun had dipped below the horizon.

soupsoup: tiffany: Tumblr meetup at Fat Cat. I remember...

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:51:44 -0700

soupsoup:

tiffany:

Tumblr meetup at Fat Cat.

I remember meeting a lot of the people I came to know on Tumblr, in person, this night, I think March 13 in 2008. This was long before Tumblr was much of a thing outside of New York. I spent a lot more time on Tumblr back in those days.

It seems pretty likely that Tumblr, this weekend, is at a turning point.

Tumblr as a product simply stop attempting to evolve over the last couple of years, perhaps by design. Despite that, growth has continued, it’s a massive success in terms of size and scale. It even managed to generate a few million dollars, but not likely enough to sustain itself as a business and I suspect there’s not much runway left to try.

Whatever happens, this place was something special for me, and continues to be for many others. I really enjoyed the time I spent here.

Who is your favorite Giant to watch? “Buster Posey,...

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:12:38 -0700

Who is your favorite Giant to watch?

“Buster Posey, obviously. It feels like we’re in the fever dream of a six-year-old playing pretend baseball with his Transformers, and Posey is the Optimus Prime figure that gets every big hit.”

-Grant Brisbee

Any living creature that can move through the air at 242 miles...

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:46:00 -0700

Any living creature that can move through the air at 242 miles per hour is terrifying.

"The millennials are the people who’ve inherited the hangover from the baby boomers’ party: a warming..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:33:27 -0700

“The millennials are the people who’ve inherited the hangover from the baby boomers’ party: a warming planet, a dysfunctional global financial system that rewards the rich and screws the poor, a polarized political class that’s moved so far to the right that a centrist like Barack Obama can be described with a straight face as “a socialist.” Millennials may be “narcissistic, materialistic and addicted to technology,” as Stein alleges early in his article; they’re also drowning in college debt, slaves to an internship “system” that demands ever-increasing work for no pay, and entrants into a job market that’s replaced employment rights with the “flexibility” of never being able to afford health insurance.”

- Why Time’s Millennials Cover Story Says More About Joel Stein Than It Does About Millennials

(via iaccidentallythepatriarchy)

"Republicans think by a 74/19 margin than Benghazi is a worse political scandal than Watergate, by a..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:07:06 -0700

“Republicans think by a 74/19 margin than Benghazi is a worse political scandal than Watergate, by a 74/12 margin that it’s worse than Teapot Dome, and by a 70/20 margin that it’s worse than Iran Contra.

One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don’t actually know where it is.”

- Public Policy Polling (via brooklynmutt)

So… yeah.

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:04:00 -0700

So… yeah.

"I’ll give you the most logical conclusion kids are ditching Facebook—one that none of the articles I..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:26:41 -0700

“

I’ll give you the most logical conclusion kids are ditching Facebook—one that none of the articles I read on the Great Teenage Facebook Exodus mentioned. And the evidence that supports the theory is right there in the Piper Jaffray survey. But first let’s define Facebook.

What is Facebook to most people over the age of 25? It’s a never-ending class reunion mixed with an eternal late-night dorm room gossip session mixed with a nightly check-in on what coworkers are doing after leaving the office. In other words, it’s a place where you go to keep tabs on your friends and acquaintances.

You know what kids call that? School.

”

- Cliff Watson (via soupsoup)

The kids are alright.