do dot that thing dot org

"We definitely are trying to reduce allergy-producing trees where we can,” says Leif Fixen, an urban..."

Sat, 19 May 2012 01:08:32 -0400

“We definitely are trying to reduce allergy-producing trees where we can,” says Leif Fixen, an urban forester with the city of Boston.”

- Just wanted everybody to know that’s his real name. Allergic Tree Action

They rushed the lion into townThe doctor shook him up and down...

Tue, 08 May 2012 12:09:00 -0400

They rushed the lion into town
The doctor shook him up and down
And when the lion gave a roar
Pierre fell out upon the floor
He rubbed his eyes and scratched his head
And laughed because he wasn’t dead
His mother cried and held him tight
His father asked—Are you all right?
Pierre said—I am feeling fine
Please take me home, it’s half past nine

—Maurice Sendak, Pierre (a Cautionary Tale)

I am going to go home tonight and slowly eat every page of my copy of Where the Wild Things Are. Maurice Sendak is another one of those people, like Jim Henson, whose work for children has contributed significantly to who I am as an adult, and losing him closes the book on a huge part of my childhood.

One of the first books I ever remember reading, or having read to me, is Maurice Sendak’s Pierre. While I don’t think I was ever that child outwardly, reading Pierre (and Where the Wild Things Are) evoked a sense of protest for me as a child that was a great outlet; it showed me that I could survive disagreement—even thrive from it—and emerge somehow as a Greater Person. The imperative expressed in all of Sendak’s books, to do otherwise, is woven into the fabric of my personality and has quietly informed so many of the choices I’ve made in my life.

On a shelf in my office are gently-read copies of Where the Wild Things Are and Pierre, signed by Sendak at a rare appearance in a local bookstore. I stood in line for hours to see him, and when I got to the front, I nearly cried. For a man with a very thorny reputation, he was surprisingly kind as he listened to me yammer about how much I loved his books. Someday, I’ll read them to my kid, and I really hope she eats the signature page—he’d obviously have loved that.

npr:

nprfreshair:

hwentworth:

Internet’s over, people. Maurice Sendak just won.

Fresh Air remembers Maurice Sendak

Higher praise there could not be. —Wright

“Guys, you don’t need to over-think it; it is what...

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:07:00 -0400

“Guys, you don’t need to over-think it; it is what it is. People pay me money, I send them a really sharp pencil—that’s about it.”

thenearsightedmonkey:

How to sharpen a pencil.

Suggested by the Seven of Diamonds

Barista Joke for your Friday

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:51:32 -0400

Sara: How many baristas does it take to make an Americano?
Me: Six. And you can't have milk--it's an Americano. That'll be $5.50. Next customer.

Y U NO UNDERSTAND ENO CAT staceynightmare: I made this, because...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:40:02 -0400

Y U NO UNDERSTAND ENO CAT

staceynightmare:

I made this, because someone had to.

"Rule 1: go on your normal walk routine, to school, the store, the best most traveled routine works..."

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:42:04 -0400

“

Rule 1: go on your normal walk routine, to school, the store, the best most traveled routine works best and the object is to try to notice things you have never noticed before.

Rule 2 Always state before the thing you are noticing with the phrase ” I never noticed…¨ followed by thing you are noticing.

Rule 3. It has to be something that is relativley permanent or something that has been there for awhile and has never been noticed. eg, It can´t be a new piece of trash on the ground, but could be a sticker or graffiti mark. Also, very small things or insignificant marks usually considered not fair game. It is up to the players to decide if it warrants a true ¨I never noticed” score.

Rule 4 When something is ” I never noticed….” and you or any other player present at the time also has never noticed that particular thing, the player or noticer receives 10 points for noticing something unique and never noticed before— usually celebrated and acknowledged with “Wow , I never noticed that! ” or “Man, I wish I noticed that!”

On the other hand if one of the players has also noticed that before either from silent observation and or past games of I never noticed, The fellow player must state “I already noticed that before” and no points are awarded

Rule 5 first person to 100 points wins. If the full 100 points are not attained durring the routine they should be noted and continued until another day.

Please feel free to add and collaborate useful rules.

Saludos

”

- This is my favorite kind of game. Kudos for the rules about phrasing.

Mark (via eliotshepard)

“This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when...

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:52:48 -0400

“This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, ‘The hand that wrote it is no more.’”

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

theatlantic:

laphamsquarterly:

“I am very cold”

“The parchment is very hairy.”

“Oh, my hand.”

—Notes from medieval monks and scribes in the margins of their work

Our latest issue “Means of Communication” is now online. Take a break from the scriptorium to check it out!

This is awesome.

"It’s just very difficult to end a series,” he said. “For example, ‘Seinfeld,’ they ended it with..."

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:41:09 -0500

““It’s just very difficult to end a series,” he said. “For example, ‘Seinfeld,’ they ended it with them all going to jail. Now that’s the ending we should have had. And they should have had ours, where it blacked out in a diner.””

- David Chase, on final scenes in television drama, in a New York Times article about Matthew Weiner.

Jessica Eaton’s Cubes for Albers and DeWitt is seriously....

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:44:31 -0500

Jessica Eaton’s Cubes for Albers and DeWitt is seriously. blowing. me. away. From the press release:

The images are constructed on sheets of 4 x 5 film. The subject is in reality monochromatic. The photographs use a set of cubes and ground options painted white, two tones of grey, and black. Through multiple exposures the colour hues in each image have been made by exposing the film to additive primaries of red, green and blue.

I can’t even with this. It’s amazing. It appears I missed this show by a few months, but you can still check the images and be bamboozled anew.

jessicaeaton:

••• cfaal (mb RGB) 21, 2011

"In the rush to gamify enterprise websites, a number of SaaS companies have sprung up almost..."

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:54:17 -0500

“In the rush to gamify enterprise websites, a number of SaaS companies have sprung up almost overnight, including BadgeFarm, Bunchball, and the self-proclaimed leader in gamification, Badgeville. Their business model is to enhance enterprise websites with “social loyalty” platforms that turn content, commerce, and community branding into a self-directed experience that exploits the psychology of gaming to keep users coming back for hours at a time. These are the same characteristics that get users to spend hours on end in massive multi-player online games like “World of Warcraft.””

- Try to imagine where this kind of stuff leads. Highly-optimized dopamine candies, strewn around every app and website you frequent. “Games” to incentivize your consumption of gossip or the purchase of additional text-message plans for your phone. Death by badge.

For the record, the way this is discussed is exactly the mistake, precisely the error. You rarely see it spelled out in such specific language, but there it is.

Gamification Boosting Enterprise Websites - Social Business

(via slavin)

Greg Leuch: iaminlikewithmybike: A jury in a civil trial just found a driver...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:24:16 -0500

Greg Leuch: iaminlikewithmybike: A jury in a civil trial just found a driver...:

Speaking as somebody who was actually run over by a traffic cop on my commute, I can attest to the general antipathy that the NYPD has for cyclists and their limbs. I was raised to trust in the blanket trustworthiness of cops’ defense of rights and laws, but the NYPD, of late, has begun to betray that trust in incremental and worrisome ways.

iaminlikewithmybike:

A jury in a civil trial just found a driver mostly responsible for the negligent death of a cyclist in 2008. While this sort of thing is sadly common, the alarming part is not only that the NYPD officers responding to the incident originally found no reason to charge…

I have been whistling this song all day. This is not a...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:35:22 -0500

I have been whistling this song all day. This is not a coincidence.

slavin:

every once in a while, an amazing signal arrives through the noise.

discoverynews:

jtotheizzoe:

Apollo 17 astronauts singing on the moon.

This is real.

(via Boing Boing)

Amazing how a photo with so few details—the vast whiteness...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:59:25 -0500

Amazing how a photo with so few details—the vast whiteness of the tray table, the bevel of the glass, a straw, the position of the woman’s wrist in the frame—can so accurately portray how much more pleasant flying used to be. It was like a goddamn country afternoon up there.

slavin:

Eggleston.

"This is how it works,” he said, as he peeled a yellow sticker with the name of a Teen Vogue editor..."

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:15:50 -0500

““This is how it works,” he said, as he peeled a yellow sticker with the name of a Teen Vogue editor from her place in the front row to a seat in the back. “You move people around like this.””

- Oh, dang, anonymous Teen Vogue editor!

[“The Man Who Says No”, New York Times]

Object Cancers

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:05:00 -0500

Object Cancers:

In any case, what seems more provocative here, on the level of design, would be to appropriate this protective stance and reuse it in the design of future objects, but emphasizing the other end: to allow for the scanning of any object designed or manufactured, but to to insert, in the form of watermarks, small glitches that would only become visible upon reprinting.

We could call these object cancers: bulbous, oddly textured, and other dramatically misshapen errors that only appear in 3D-reprinted objects.

It’s super fun (slash-super-horrible) to consider the implications of DRM in the world of 3D printing, if only because it’s the first major form of replication that has come to life in a world that ASSUMES creations are licensed and not owned.

[via @kellan]

This martini, and the accompanying post, is why we started...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:03:31 -0500

This martini, and the accompanying post, is why we started Fastest Possible Drawings of Everything in the first place. Our coat of arms, if we had one, would read:

RUSH AND INSTRUCT

fastestpossible:

a Martini, by Laurea, in 6.7 seconds.

We’re always a little disappointed to see a martini glass with anything other than a martini inside it. Think about it: the Fastest Possible Martini is the fastest possible identifiable cocktail, as long as you assume that there is only one permissible use of a martini glass (and you should).

We won’t take sides in the great “gin versus vodka” debate, other than to point out Jim Coudal’s perfect description of the perfect martini. Fortunately for us, when working with a single pen, a blank card, and as little time as possible, all alcohols are clear. Other than that, there is only an olive here, small and perfect, speared with a toothpick; if you have identified it as a maraschino cherry, you have made a mistake, as—again—only a martini can be served in a martini glass, and no martini is served with a cherry.

To that end, does our tautological argument about the quintessential martini-ness of the martini glass hold water? [ed: No.] Could the Fastest Possible Martini be the simple elevated wedge profile of the glass itself? Understand this, reader: We hold ourselves to a higher standard; we are not simply depicting, but instructing. A martini glass holds a martini—there must be a martini within it, and a martini is [either gin or vodka], [shaken or stirred], with only the distant memory of vermouth and an olive (or two). If you did not know this, now you know. You also know that it takes 6.7 seconds to draw it.

Perhaps it is a bit early to put this out there, but it’s always noon somewhere, and history requires that I mention it: This, thrice over, makes a killer lunch. Enjoy them slowly, and converse.

Advanced exasperated sigh maneuvers: When things get really...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:08:00 -0500

Advanced exasperated sigh maneuvers: When things get really hairy, you can deploy the stretched face.

Per Mike’s tweet, the classic “exasperated developer...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:00:00 -0500

Per Mike’s tweet, the classic “exasperated developer sigh”. I encourage you all to post your own.

Open Distribution of iBooks Author Books

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:31:00 -0500

From the Terms and Conditions for iBooks Authors, an interesting note on open distribution of books built with the application, so long as you do not charge for them (which opens up a whole possible ecosystem of book sharing/creation/modification):

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:
(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;

(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.

So basically, as long as you don’t charge, you can release your book however you want, which is partly because: if we don’t like it, we won’t distribute it for you. Github for iBooks, anyone?

"But to eat at Romera New York is to be told repeatedly that you are in the presence of greatness,..."

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:39:44 -0500

“But to eat at Romera New York is to be told repeatedly that you are in the presence of greatness, while the evidence of your senses tells you that you are in the presence of, at best, okayness.”

- Pete Wells’ New York Times review of Romera, which sounds like a $245/person Portlandia episode.