- Here’s a question: How many people can Manhattan hold?
Some perspective: As crowded as the city feels at times, the present-day Manhattan population, 1.6 million, is nowhere near what it once was. In 1910, a staggering 2.3 million people crowded the borough, mostly in tenement buildings. It was a time before zoning, when roughly 90,000 windowless rooms were available for rent, and a recent immigrant might share a few hundred square feet with as many as 10 people. At that time, the Lower East Side was one of the most crowded places on the planet, according to demographers. Even as recently as 1950, the Manhattan of “West Side Story†was denser than today, with a population of two million.
- Trying To Tame The (Real) Deadliest Fishing Jobs:
From 2000 to 2009, workers in the Northeast’s multi-species groundfish fishery (which includes fish such as cod and haddock) were 37 times more likely to die on the job as a police officer.
- Enjoy this Shakespeare Insult Kit, thou impertinent folly-fallen flap-dragon!
- Klingon remains surprisingly unpopular in the United Arab Emerates. [via]
- And finally, an LA garage door painted to look like bookshelves:
various
Monday various
- Here’s a question: Who inherits your iTunes library? Maybe a follow-up to that: would you want someone to inherit it?
There’s a significant difference between shelves of books or stacks of records and folders of e-books or mp3s. There’s no re-sell value to the latter, for instance, either because of the difficulties of transferring the files or because of restrictions inherent in the licensing agreements we sign. So the only reason to bequeath your digital media is if you feel the person receiving it in your will actually will want it.
- Ass-whooping on NPR.
- In other news, they were still printing Nintendo Power Magazine?
- Writing credits in documentaries: apparently a bigger issue than you might think.
- And finally, Space Stallions!
More information here.
Monday various
- There are huge spoilers in this Breaking Bad article (In Hell, “We Shall Be Free”), but it’s some of the best writing about the show, and particularly the character of Walter White, that I’ve read going into this current, final season. And, really, if you’re not watching Breaking Bad…? [via]
- Living grass portraits created by photosynthesis.
- The Sound and the Fury — now in color! [via]
- All Work and No Play Make the Baining the “Dullest Culture on Earth”. I can just imagine Rush Limbaugh claiming there’s some kind of conspiracy because they’re called the Baining. [via]
- And finally, a really cool rendition of the Doctor Who theme song:
Tuesday various
- I’m not sure I love this idea enough to actually follow them, but Matthew Baldwin did a neat thing: he created two Twitter bots, one playing Zork, and the other responding as the game. I’m actually more interested in replaying the game itself, but still, it’s pretty neat.
- Why Nigerian e-mail scams are so crude and obvious? Turns out, it may be on purpose. [via]
- So the hitchhiker who said he was writing a book about human kindness only to be shot by a driver…actually shot himself. So, um, I guess that’s one for humanity then…? [via]
- I’m not convinced any of these sounds are necessarily worth preserving, but the Museum of Endangered Sounds is an intriguing idea. [via]
- And finally, Three Simple Tips to Writing Your Own Aaron Sorkin Character Name. He must have hated writing a character named Mark Zuckerberg.
See also:
What can you say? The man has a formula.
Tuesday various
- With Coffee, the Price of Individualism Can Be High. We have these K-cups at work, with a Keurig machine. And beyond most of the coffee blends not being especially good, I think the convenience for a largeish workplace is definitely worth it. I drink so little coffee I’d feel a little annoyed if I had to help remake a fresh pot regularly. (The Keurig also makes tea and cocoa, so there’s that.) [via]
- One word: Megafishes. [via]
- Breakthrough: The first sound recordings based on reading people’s minds [via]
- ‘Huffington Post’ Employee Sucked Into Aggregation Turbine. I think I would like HuffPo more if it wasn’t a huge content farm fronted by unexceptional celebrity essays and stories from other websites, where millions of dollars go to line the pockets of Arianna Huffington but not a cent goes to the writers. Or at least if people on Twitter would stop linking to it as much.
- And finally, the real question: does anyone have sixty-thousand dollars I could borrow? [via]