Yelp reviewers in NYC review the recent earthquake. They were unimpressed. Some examples:
Huh? That was it? I fart harder then that.
I didn’t even feel it. Earthquake fail.
I was on the subway so I didn’t even notice. Going to the west coast for all my earthquakes from now on.
There was a little bit of an earthquake on the East Coast today, and while I didn’t feel a thing, many of my office mates did. While we sort of attributed the vibrations to the office construction on the floor below ours, a friend of mine in Philadelphia IM’d me to tell me that she just had an earthquake, and at almost the same time, a friend of mine, in an office building two blocks away, called me to ask if I had felt an earthquake, and was disappointed that I hadn’t. My astute ability to piece two-and-two together led me to conclude that there might have been an earthquake, and my first reaction was to check Twitter to see if anyone else felt it.
Apparently, I was the only one who hadn’t.
The comic xkcd, in April 2010, predicted how, based on the speed of seismic waves and the speed of the Internet, the speed of Twitter would overtake and surpass the speed of the waves from an earthquake, and people would hear about them from Twitter before feeling the actual waves:
People outside this radius may get word of the quake via Twitter, IRC, or SMS before the shaking hits.
On my way home I was reading about the quake, and came upon a USA Today article that indicates that xkcd was correct:
One Twitter user, @allisonkilkenny, a blogger and contributing reporter for The Nation, wrote: “Weirdest moment: Seeing the people I’m following in DC tweet ‘earthquake’ seconds before I felt it here in NYC.”
It’s rather fascinating when you realize that for a lot of people their first stop for breaking news is Twitter. It may not be accurate, but you get it very quickly.
Update: Twitter produced an ad related to this.
(You can follow me on Twitter…I’ll be the one chiming in late if there’s an earthquake.)
Malcolm Gladwell at Grantland takes a look at owning a professional sports franchise and ‘psychic benefits’:
The best illustration of psychic benefits is the art market. Art collectors buy paintings for two reasons. They are interested in the painting as an investment — the same way they would view buying stock in General Motors. And they are interested in the painting as a painting — as a beautiful object. In a recent paper in Economics Bulletin, the economists Erdal Atukeren and Aylin Seçkin used a variety of clever ways to figure out just how large the second psychic benefit is, and they put it at 28 percent. In other words, if you pay $100 million for a Van Gogh, $28 million of that is for the joy of looking at it every morning. If that seems like a lot, it shouldn’t. There aren’t many Van Goghs out there, and they are very beautiful. If you care passionately about art, paying that kind of premium makes perfect sense.
Photographer Stephen Wilkes blended photographs together to depict one day in NYC.
Photographer Stephen Wilkes took pictures of the same spot in Manhattan for 10 hours.
He then blended the thirty to fifty individual images together to make seamless collages showing some of the city’s most famous landmarks from day to night.
I think the Flatiron Building is my favorite.
Abercrombie & Fitch is willing to pay the cast of MTV’s “Jersey Shore” to stop wearing their clothes because they believe the association hurts their brand:
“We are deeply concerned that Mr. Sorrentino’s association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image. We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans,” an Abercrombie & Fitch spokesperson said in a statement. “We have also extended this offer to other members of the cast, and are urgently waiting a response.”
I thought there was no such thing as bad publicity?
Back in 2006, in the span of four months, I attended both the opening of Apple’s flagship store in NYC and U2′s book signing. At U2′s book signing, I thought one of the members of the press looked familiar, and I made a mental note to go and check my Apple Store opening day photos to see if he was there as well. It’s been about five years, so I guess it’s time to do that.
In a world full of novelty Twitter accounts, the T-800 pretty much wins.
@Sarah_PellePas Sarah Conner?
@xsarahjade Sarah Conner?
@sarahcation Sarah Conner?
A English man was arrested for driving his horse drawn carriage through a red light. He might have been a bit drunk, but the police report details his excellent excuse:
“The defendant was struggling to control the horse and trap. He was shouting and had slurred speech. His eyes were red and watery and he smelt of drink. He was also staggering around. When asked why the horse and carriage had gone through the traffic lights he said the horse was colour-blind.”
They didn’t mention if they gave the horse a breathalyzer.
Photographer Carli Davidson takes pictures of pets as they shake. I’d love to know how she got them to stare at the camera while shaking, and to see them side-by-side with what they look like normally.
This one almost looks like something you would find stuffed and mounted at Obscura.
I got home a little while ago and noticed that my neighbor (the Steelers fan) had taped the bottom of his apartment door with masking tape as seen in the picture below:
Door bottom with tape
This is the second time that I’ve seen his door taped in this fashion, and I have no idea why.
Researchers have found a ship off the coast of Panama that may have belonged to Captain Morgan, yes, that Captain Morgan, the one the rum is named after.
The cargo has yet to be opened, but Captain Morgan USA — which sells the spiced rum named for the eponymous pirate — is clearly hoping there’s liquor in there.
“There’s definitely an irony in the situation,” Fritz Hanselmann an archaeologist with the River Systems Institute and the Center for Archaeological Studies at Texas State University and head of the dive team told KVUE Austin. The Captain Morgan rum group stepped in on the quest for Captain Morgan after team — which found a collection of iron cannons nearby — ran out of funds before they could narrow down the quest.
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