☯ @zeb

Stone Footprints by Iain Blake

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:58:43 -0400

Stone Footprints by Iain Blake

lizlime: Jim Henson || September 24, 1936 - May 16, 1990

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:27:09 -0400

lizlime:

Jim Henson || September 24, 1936 - May 16, 1990

Taken with instagram

Tue, 15 May 2012 22:24:53 -0400

Taken with instagram

Tue, 15 May 2012 22:10:01 -0400

Taken with instagram

Grilled corn (Taken with Instagram at Cafe Habana)

Tue, 15 May 2012 21:26:33 -0400

Grilled corn (Taken with Instagram at Cafe Habana)

Great dance vid. via 5 Mind-Blowing Dance Videos...

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:49:49 -0400

Great dance vid.

via 5 Mind-Blowing Dance Videos http://bit.ly/JmMAca

The Shop at Cooper-Hewitt | Tax-free online shopping | The best in design

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:28:22 -0400

The Shop at Cooper-Hewitt | Tax-free online shopping | The best in design:

Vote Honky #streetart (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 13 May 2012 10:20:39 -0400

Vote Honky #streetart (Taken with instagram)

Obey (Rivington and Bowery) (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 13 May 2012 09:37:28 -0400

Obey (Rivington and Bowery) (Taken with instagram)

One Way (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 13 May 2012 09:28:29 -0400

One Way (Taken with instagram)

Berlin lingerie label takes on the French capital with a model...

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:36:43 -0400

Berlin lingerie label takes on the French capital with a model walking through Paris in a pink blush lingerie set - making eyes pop and heads turn.

Infographic: In 80 Years, We Lost 93% Of Variety In Our Food...

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:46:18 -0400

Infographic: In 80 Years, We Lost 93% Of Variety In Our Food Seeds

thedailywhat: Supercut of the Day: Jeff Smith goes “Oops!”...

Tue, 08 May 2012 09:14:07 -0400

thedailywhat:

Supercut of the Day: Jeff Smith goes “Oops!” upside your head with “Glove, Actually 2: Glove Harder,” the sequel to his all-slapping, all-the-time supercut “Glove, Actually.”

(Sorta not safe for work, slap-happiness.)

[thd.]

theatlantic: The Pernicious Myth That Slideshows Drive...

Tue, 08 May 2012 08:57:54 -0400

theatlantic:

The Pernicious Myth That Slideshows Drive ‘Traffic’

For a time, people measured site ‘traffic’ by the number of page views on that site. So, any time someone opened a page on that publication, it counted as one. Shortly thereafter, people started juicing the pageview stats by throwing up a bunch of pictures and asking people to click through them. It was a lot easier to generate 20 pageviews with 20 photos than it was to bring 20 people to the site by other means.

Of course, the fact that these pageviews are not all worth the same is obvious to everyone: readers, writers, editors, advertisers, advertising agencies, etc. So, many forward-looking media companies like Gawker went away from pageview metrics back in early 2010. The company’s head Nick Denton wanted to focus on unique visitors to his site. Many of us have followed suit.

And yet still, today, nearly halfway through 2012, we find this story on The Atlantic Wire. The president of the Washington Post, Steve Hills, told his team that “awards ‘don’t matter’ [and] urged more traffic-driving slideshows.”

Now, I’ve got nothing against slideshows. At their best, I see them as a kind of horizontal storytelling. They are a tool you can deploy to tell certain stories. In fact, as storytelling widgets, I think they’re actually underexploited. You can embed them as a sidebar to convey some complicated set of ideas without interrupting the main flow of a narrative. And I’ve got nothing against a well-curated set of images a la our own In Focus or BuzzFeed’s random weirdness.

But that’s not what the WaPo’s slideshows are all about. Instead, they are seen as a cheap and fast way to produce “traffic.” The problem is that they are not producing “traffic” — which in any other context would mean the number of people in a space — they are producing page views. This is not a simply academic distinction. The company’s president is calling on his workers to juke the stats, effectively. These companies want you to think that more pageviews equal a larger, more engaged audience, but that’s a quantitatively and qualitatively shaky proposition.

Read more.

kickstarter: We’re in love with the imaginative artwork of Sean...

Tue, 08 May 2012 08:13:20 -0400

kickstarter:

We’re in love with the imaginative artwork of Sean Andrew Murray, who’s using Kickstarter to make the ultra-mystical Book of Wizards. It’s an illustrated field guide to the most famous practitioners of wizardry in the make-believe world of Gateway, written as though it were published in the time and place of its narrative. Phew! For the laymen among us, Murray describes his work as “a little bit steampunk, a little bit fairytale, and a big helping of fantasy.” Sounds downright magical to us.

jayparkinsonmd: I absolutely love bike shares in cities. If you...

Tue, 08 May 2012 07:29:19 -0400

jayparkinsonmd:

I absolutely love bike shares in cities. If you haven’t been to London or Paris to see them absolutely working and creating a whole new layer of healthy transportation within a city’s infrastructure, well, you’re missing out. It’s a beautiful thing to see. And it puts a city on the right path toward legitimizing cycling as an accepted and safe means of transport. As we all know, it is imperative that we get out of our cars and get off our asses and use our own energy to move us around.

I’m happy to hear that NYC had a major breakthrough today:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and Citi CEO Vikram Pandit today announced that Citi will be the title sponsor for New York City’s new bike share program, “Citi Bike.” The $41 million agreement will allow the nation’s largest public bike share system to be provided at a low cost to users and at no cost to taxpayers. The program will provide a new, affordable, 24/7 transportation option for New Yorkers and will launch in July 2012 in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. As part of the sponsorship agreement, Citi Bike branding will be displayed on the system’s 10,000 bikes and 600 bike docking stations.

Wonderful stuff.

The photo is my bike this weekend in Prospect Park. So lovely…

explore-blog: NYT data artist in residence Jer Thorp...

Tue, 08 May 2012 06:44:57 -0400

explore-blog:

NYT data artist in residence Jer Thorp visualizes the history of the Marvel comic The Avengers, 1963-2010

photojojo: Moonbow: a rainbow made by the light of the...

Mon, 07 May 2012 19:34:38 -0400

photojojo:

Moonbow: a rainbow made by the light of the moon.

Our pal Mcheung tells us all about how he shot this one this past weekend!

This weekend was the best moonbow-photographing weekend of the year!

A moonbow is essentially the same thing as a rainbow, except that it happens at night. It’s a pretty rare phenomenon that only occurs in a few places on earth.

Photos of Super Moon Rainbows

The Art of Motorcycle Tipping (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 07 May 2012 15:33:28 -0400

The Art of Motorcycle Tipping (Taken with instagram)

"Alternate Take: Levon Helm I’ve been beating my head all day long on the same six lines, Snapped..."

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:41:17 -0400

“

Alternate Take: Levon Helm

I’ve been beating my head all day long on the same six lines,

Snapped off and whittled to nothing like the nub of a pencil

Chewed up and smoothed over, yellow paint flecking my teeth.

And this whole time a hot wind’s been swatting down my door,

Spat from his mouth and landing smack against my ear.

All day pounding the devil out of six lines and coming up dry

While he drives donuts through my mind’s back woods with that

Dirt-road voice of his, kicking up gravel like a runaway Buick.

He asks Should I come in with that back beat, and whatever those

Six lines were bothered by skitters off like water in hot grease.

Come in with your lips stretched tight and that pig-eyed grin,

Bass mallet socking it to the drum. Lay it down like you know

You know how, shoulders hiked nice and high, chin tipped back,

So the song has to climb its way out like a man from a mine.

”

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