TripIt →
I forgot to mention TripIt months ago. It’s one of my favorite travel services. Forward all of your trip intinerary emails to plans@tripit.com and it compiles one pretty little comprenhensive itinerary to print out or access online.
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Not for hire - Alaska's Sarah Palin (password required) →
In Monocle’s first issue back in March 2007 they published an interview with Palin who was just a year into her governorship. Back then Rudy Giuliani was dropping hints that he’d like her to be his running mate. Of course, she deflected the rumor saying, “I think it is so far in outer space, the possibility that he would ever want a hockey mum from Wasilla to be his running mate, that I haven’t considered it.” Later, the reporter circled back around, “Say the Democratic ticket is Clinton-Obama, a woman and a black man, you can see why the party might approach you?” Palin replied:
Wow! And who do the Republicans have? Good old rich white boys. I think that’s another factor that has to be considered by Republicans, that in some way their candidates are a reflection of more politics as usual. Not to slam good old rich boys, but it sure wouldn’t hurt for new energy and new perspective to be enveloped by the Republican Party.
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I could watch Obama’s stadium speech tonight OR catch the last showing of the Little Mermaid Sing-Along at The Castro.
Which event would be most flamboyant is unclear.
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TextMarks: Make information accessible from any cellphone via text messages. →
Txt whereiszach to 41411 and it will do as you ask, plus serve you some crappy ads.
Courtney told me about it. She uses it to trade her contact information instead of handing out business cards.
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What Could Make Someone Want to Leave New York and Move to Buffalo? →
We’re going to see many more articles like this in the next few years. While the housing market remains relatively stable in NYC, prices elsewhere are plummeting. Simultaneously, more and more of us have jobs that aren’t tethered to physical locations.
How much longer will people hold out in expensive megametropolises when affordable and fulfilling lifestyles exist elsewhere?
Says one Buffalo transplant: “I don’t miss my old life in New York. I only miss the life in New York I know I never would have had.”
This article couldn’t be any more relevant to me because I lived in Buffalo for 10 years, and when my parents moved our family they took us to another rust-belt city, Fort Wayne. And I love both of them — as much as I wanted to get out, I knew it then.
I smiled when that article referred to Buffalo as having the romantic aura of a faded empire, because for me while growing up, never having been to a major city until I was teenager, downtown was the capital of an empire. My empire. Now when I return and see the delapidated, once-glorious buildings, I see my childhood imagination turned into a possibility. These cities and their neat little piles of ashes are ready and willing to be reconstituted. I see little cracked panes and think how easily the windows could be replaced. I see cheap rents, where young chefs, DIY fashionistas and aspiring electrical engineers could afford to experiment and flourish. I see a frontier and that’s astonishing, because ever since we landed on the moon the American psyche came to accept that there was nowhere else to go — and I’ve been depressed for 20 years believing it. But I’m sitting here in NYC or SF, feeling comfortable and bored, and thinking: “There! There’s somewhere to go!”
Now if I could just get my friends to come with me…
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I designed this in collaboration with Patrick Moberg. We’re happy you enjoyed it — very little earns your approval these days! ;)
Apes and Androids UI
The shopping cart on the Apes and Androids site is total UI porn. Try dragging a t-shirt to the cart.
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Great introduction to Joseph Biden and his capability for impassioned oratory.
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Outside Lands
William, I love your recap of the show — especially the conclusion with signal strength searchers. How quickly it was lost on Us.
8:00 pm - 10:00pm: …
A band that is truly of my times. A band that reflects upon thoughts and feelings that most of us only can catch slight glimpses of. Thoughts and feelings that normally remain shrouded in the shadowy peripheals of our life.
It is spooky music. Uncanny and sublime. Like a sunset mountain vista suddenly losing a rendering engine, its plastic reality suddenly snapping in to view. Or like the most beautiful face you’ve ever seen, only as you stare at it you realize the skin is synthetic and has started to bubble and boil in the sunlight.
They weave through media, masters of all of their instruments, but not only of the voice, guitars, and the multitude of synthesizers, but also the strategically placed digital video cameras and lighting units. They seem to be simultaneously reveling in technological breakthroughs while equally scared shitless of the questions raised.
I had true aesthetic experiences a number of times. The suffocating masses that had been surrounding me for the last few hours seemed to drift off in to and become the mists that rolled through the park.
And then, as the tape loops and modular synths ran in their endlessly out-of-sync loops, forever generating new music, the stage lights glowed bright, the illusion was gone, and what had become a field of calm disciples was once again a hoard of youngsters searching for signal strength on their mobile phones.
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Learned two new SF-exclusive concepts last night
1. The phrase Vesting in Peace, which means you work for stable company increasing in value, and you’re doing as little as possible until your stock options are worth something — just enough to be percevied as functional, but never to the point of exertion.
2. The Black Sock Coverup. Ever make the mistake of wearing your Rainbows to a shoes-required club or restaurant? Apparently, San Franciscans are known to bum their buddies’ black socks and slip them on their feet OVER their sandals. At night, doormen can’t tell the difference between your handycraft and a pair of Prada loafers.
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Chad Johnson Finds Genius Way Around Fines →
Love this story.
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I heard from an employee close to the deal that the Mormon church’s genealogy business made an unsolicited bid to acquire Facebook.
While maintaining the country’s largest ancestral database, they certainly have a motive to control this generation’s biographical data, and they certainly have the cash to do it. In 1996, Time Magazine estimated the church’s annual revenues to be $5 billion, with total assets at $25 to $30 billion.
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One of my favorite photographs of all time: Tour de France cyclists smoking on their way to the Champs-Élysées.
Ah, a time when athletes were men first.
