- Wow, Marvel sounds like a lousy place to work:
It gets downright messy. Marvel’s new offices have only one restroom for each gender. In a company of hundreds of people. The post-lunch hour piddle line is said to be especially long and people actually stagger their lunches so as not to wait in it. There’s a human resources staff of one for the whole company. Review copies? You’ve got to be kidding. Editors have to purchase copies of the books they worked on. The precious archives of assets have dwindled over the years due to not spending any money to save them.
- Mark Bittman on why the demise (well, okay, just bankruptcy for now) of Friendly’s might not be such a bad thing. I have some fond memories of the chain, more for the ice cream than the food — and certainly not the ambiance or service — but I’m also not going to pretend like this is necessarily bad news.
- Emma to Charles Darwin. He nickname for him is…um…
- Noel Murray defends the Matrix sequels. I’m not sure I’m completely convinced, but he makes a very persuasive argument.
- And finally, how many books on Amazon.com are written by robots? More than you might think. [via]
business
Monday various
- It will probably come as no surprise that McDonald’s new oatmeal is actually sort of bad for you. [via]
- Or that the TSA’s full-body, backscatter radiation scanners are quite likely worse for you than the TSA’s faulty research earlier suggested. [via]
- And speaking of radiation — as it seems we must, daily, given the unfolding disaster in Japan — how close is your home to a nuclear power plant? Me, I’m just under fifty miles from Indian Point. [via]
- Was Doctor Who villain Davros actually created by a 13-year-old boy in 1972?
- And finally, the Monty Python Guide to Being a Better Boss. I’m not entirely convinced I’d want to work for this person.
Wednesday various
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Tuesday various
- Last Thursday, I posted this image to Capper Blog, and I planned to follow up with the original source article here. Better late than never. The pictures there actually give you a better sense of these so-called infinity pools, and moreover just how high up and close to the edge they are. I think I’d be terrified to swim in one these. [via]
- Going back even further on things I forgot to follow up on: back in June I posted about a link that was going around, suggesting that every actor reads the same newspaper. Well, Slate followed up on that link and found out the story behind the ubiquitous prop. [via]
- The world really is a poorer place without Jim Henson, isn’t it? [via]
- I can’t say I’ll miss Blockbuster all that much, but Matt Zoller Seitz makes a compelling argument that we’ve lost something with the company’s (now almost certain) passing [via]:
I’m talking about the pre-Internet experience of daily life, which was more immediate, more truly interactive: in a word, real. Bland and aloof as it was, Blockbuster was a part of that — and for certain types of people, it was a big part. There was nothing special about Blockbuster as a business, but special moments did happen there, simply by virtue of the fact that the stores were everywhere, and they stocked a lot of movies, and people who wanted to see movies went there regularly, sometimes alone but more often in the company of relatives or friends. You’d go through the front door and pass the front counter — where an employee was checking in a pile of returned videos (when opened, the boxes went whuck!) and check out the new releases wall (Seventy-five copies of “Hard Target?” Seriously?). Then you’d fan out among the aisles and try your luck.
- And finally, some video game-related links:
- If Lucasarts Had Made A Lost Game…In 1987… [via]
- I Dream in Retro [via]
- Super Mario Crossover: Play the original Super Mario Bros with characters from classic Nintendo games. [via]
- Is Our Future Going to Be Like a Video Game Designed by Big Brother?
Monday various
- The Amityville Horror house is up for sale. Anybody wanna go halfsies? [via]
- Well, there goes my dream of paying for the house by wearing a costume on Hollywood Boulevard. Are sights like this now really a thing of the past?
- And I guess I also won’t be able to afford a spot aboard this $1.1 billion “sea castle”. (In all seriousness, though, divorced from the politics and ridiculous price of the thing, a part of me does think the whole thing looks very cool.) [via]
- Maybe I can get a job pretending to be a foreign investor in Japan. [via]
- And finally, if I do, maybe I’ll be able to count myself among the luckiest people on Earth:
Well, maybe not. [via]