vobios.tumblelog

i hate the internet, but these are the pieces i like

[vobios]

“It’s a little bit of an empty nest syndrome. I need something to take care of. My younger son doesn’t like her. He hasn’t touched her, hasn’t petted her, and doesn’t want to be photographed with her. He hates her. It’s funny—I think he thinks I’m replacing him. He’s jealous of a pig.”

[vobios]

The Legend of Prince's Special Custom-Font Symbol Floppy Disks

How do you get magazines and newspapers to suddenly start using a brand-new symbol?

In 1993, Prince frustrated contract lawyers and computer users everywhere when he changed his name to glyph known as “The Love Symbol.” Though he never said so explicitly, it’s generally understood that the name change was attempt to stick it to his record label, Warner Bros., which now had to deal with a top-tier artist with a new, unpronounceable, untypeable name. But it wasn’t just Warner Bros. that had a problem: The Love Symbol proved frustrating for people who wanted to both speak and write about Prince. Writers, editors, and layout designers at magazines and newspapers wouldn’t be able to type the actual name of the Artist Formerly Known As Prince. So Prince did the only thing you could do in that situation: He had a custom-designed font distributed to news outlets on a floppy disk.

[vobios]

Over the past four seasons, the Huskies have scored a little over 1.0 points per offensive play and allowed a little under 0.6 points per defensive play — meaning that the Huskies have netted nearly half a point from their opponents for every possession exchanged.

[vobios]

[vobios]

The city, it turns out, has a law against tasteful restraint in Times Square. ... In a way, the zoning code governing the signs is wonderfully ironic. The bright lights of Times Square, one of the most visible and iconic testaments to the city’s hyper-capitalist verve, are maintained not by Adam Smith’s invisible hand but by little-known government regulations. For those with the stomach to navigate the bureaucratic language, the zoning regulations make for interesting reading. What appears totally haphazard to the untrained tourist’s eye is actually planned down to the last square foot, with copious rules about how much of any surface must be covered in signage. Own a building on Broadway but detest the flashing lights? Too bad. As the code states: There shall be a minimum of one #illuminated sign# with a #surface area# of not less than 1,000 square feet for each 50 linear feet, or part thereof, of #street# frontage.

(via Good Taste in Times Square? It’s Illegal - Metropolis - WSJ)

[vobios]

While the rescued dogs have plenty of room to run and play on Bostick's farm, the retiree thought it would nice to be able to take them on little trips to other places as well. That's about the time he was inspired to build a canine-specific form of transportation just for them. "One day I was out and I seen this guy with a tractor who attached these carts to pull rocks. I thought, 'Dang, that would do for a dog train,'" said Bostick. "I'm a pretty good welder, so I took these plastic barrels with holes cut in them, and put wheels under them and tied them together." And with that, the dog train was born.

(via Man Builds 'Dog Train' To Take Rescued Pups Out On Little Adventures)

[vobios]

Gene-edited 'micropigs' to be sold as pets at Chinese institute

Cutting-edge gene-editing techniques have produced an unexpected byproduct — tiny pigs that a leading Chinese genomics institute will soon sell as pets. BGI in Shenzhen, the genomics institute that is famous for a series of high-profile breakthroughs in genomic sequencing, originally created the micropigs as models for human disease, by applying a gene-editing technique to a small breed of pig known as Bama. On 23 September, at the Shenzhen International Biotech Leaders Summit in China, BGI revealed that it would start selling the pigs as pets. The animals weigh about 15 kilograms when mature, or about the same as a medium-sized dog.

[vobios]

“First I thought it was a dolphin and I thought, ‘What the hell is he doing?’ ” she said. “And he kind of landed on my board. Then I realized he had taken a chunk. And I was, like, that’s not what dolphins do.”

Surfer unhurt after shark takes a bite out of her surfboard in Morro Bay

[vobios]

[vobios]

The Life and Untimely Death of Technology's Weirdest Logo

When he designed their logo, he didn’t even have a PC. “I didn’t even know what a cursor looked like,” he told me, saying that the red cursor in the corner was originally a plus sign. Instead, he listened to the founders talk about their business. “Their description of a future in which Logitech would play a vital role in we human being’s increasingly common, everyday interactions with our evermore familiar computers, was intoxicating.” he said. That intoxicating vision of the future, where computers were woven into the fabric of every day life, and where hardware was the extension of the human body, was what Wilkinson wanted to express in the company’s logo. He drew it by hand, on a drawing board, describing it as part sculpture, part face, with hand-cut type that was inspired by the seminal design magazine of the 1980s, Emigré.

[vobios]

A vast body of evidence links sun exposure to skin cancer. What is lacking, however, is any evidence that sunlight is bad for you, if by "bad for you" we mean it shortens life. Ask a dermatologist about the evidence that sunshine raises your risk of dying and there will be an embarrassing silence. After a century of knowing the link between sunshine and skin cancer, this is not good enough. In fact, there is increasing evidence that keeping out of the sun may be killing you – and in more ways than you think.

Thought for Food: Don't shun the sun!

[vobios]

The regularity of mass killings breeds familiarity. The rhythms of grief and outrage that accompany them become—for those not directly affected by tragedy—ritualised and then blend into the background noise. That normalisation makes it ever less likely that America's political system will groan into action to take steps to reduce their frequency or deadliness. Those who live in America, or visit it, might do best to regard them the way one regards air pollution in China: an endemic local health hazard which, for deep-rooted cultural, social, economic and political reasons, the country is incapable of addressing. This may, however, be a bit unfair. China seems to be making progress on pollution.

Charleston massacre: The latest American mass killing | The Economist

[vobios]

Follow Up To Apple, Love Taylor

I write this to thank Apple for changing its music pricing policy, to announce that I will be streaming my new album on their upcoming music service, and to provide an explanation to those remaining institutions from which I will still be withholding my album, 1989.

[vobios]

The Village and The Village

Baarle-Hertog is an enclave, a chunk of Belgium completely surrounded by the Netherlands. The main Dutch-Belgian border lies nearly 5 km to the south of here. Baarle isn't a simple enclave either. It is a cluster of twenty-two different Belgian land parcels inside the Netherlands. And inside two of the larger Belgian enclaves are seven Dutch counter-enclaves (an enclave within another enclave). Pockets of the Netherlands nested inside Belgium, nestled inside the Netherlands. It is one of the world's more complex international borders.

[vobios]

Thomas described what he did this way: "I hit the gas, squealed the tires and bang — we went through the door." Thomas says he doesn't know what he could do to top that.

[vobios]

Inside the rent is an educational game intended to help the player better understand how a building’s construction costs and first-year operating expenses affect the rent that tenants pay, and how those costs can be partially offset through government subsidies and tax abatements. Different policy debates come into play throughout the game and the player is tasked with making choices that will affect the final rent –for instance build in high-cost neighborhoods, pay workers prevailing wages, expend public money to subsidize the building, or to give in and accept higher rents than desired. The model is built upon a simplified development and first-year operating budget and relies on a series of assumptions, which we have researched, contrasted and vetted thoroughly with a wide array of industry professionals. The model first uses these assumptions to calculate the total development cost based on the options selected by the player. It then calculates the net operating income (NOI) required for the building, and adds operating expenses in order to solve for the necessary rent required for the building to be financially sustainable through its first year of operations.

[vobios]

How 77 Metro Agencies Design the Letter 'M' for Their Transit Logo

The universal symbol for a city’s Metro system is a big “M.” If you see one, wherever you are, you know what to do. It’s like the world got together and agreed on a Bat Signal for mass transportation. But transit agencies also go to some great lengths to render the letter in a way that’s uniquely theirs. With the help of the Metrobits blog we’ve identified at least 77 different M logo designs that are currently (or were recently) in use—gathered here in no special order (and listed in full at the bottom of this post). Considering that an M consists of a mere four straight lines, the group is a pretty impressive feast of diversity.