Matt Lehrer

Photo

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:47:50 -0400

6 Hurt When Car Jumps Curb, Plows into East Village...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:23:10 -0400

6 Hurt When Car Jumps Curb, Plows into East Village Bodega

Police say the 32-year-old driver lost control of the car near Second Avenue and East Fifth Street, hopped the curb and plowed through a block and a half of street signs, fire hydrants and bike racks before toppling outdoor displays at a bodega and coming to rest after hitting a cyclist on a CitiBike near East Fourth Street.

This is two blocks from my apartment. Scary!

usatodaysports: dailydot: Chris Bosh block to seal win for...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:25:13 -0400

usatodaysports:

dailydot:

Chris Bosh block to seal win for Miami Heat versus the San Antonio Spurs. Game 7 Thursday.

Are we talking enough about Chris Bosh? Probably not.

Photo

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:18:48 -0400

"As always with LeBron, it’s a little unfair. He has played an unfathomable amount of minutes..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:19:06 -0400

“

As always with LeBron, it’s a little unfair. He has played an unfathomable amount of minutes since Christmas of 2011 — 138 of 148 regular-season games, 44 playoff games (and counting), plus everything in the 2012 Olympics to boot — and it’s hard to remember another NBA team asking more from its best player. He’s the Heat’s leading scorer, rebounder and assist guy, their main creator, their best playmaker and their best defender. He plays four positions for them. He’s averaged a whopping 42 minutes per game these last two postseasons — just an unconscionable workload considering everything they ask from him, and if you don’t think we’re seeing the side effects lately, you’re crazy. The 2013 Heat have an on-off switch because they’re defending a title (you’re never as hungry a second time), because Wade and Bosh coast too much, and because of LeBron’s historic workload. Those are the three reasons.

At the same time …

When you have a chance to be the best player ever, or one of them, we start grading you on a humongous curve. We just do. Disappear for the first two and a half quarters of Game 2 of the Finals, we’re gonna notice. No-show Game 3 of the Finals, we’re gonna notice. We’re like overbearing Little League parents when it comes to LeBron, and only because we care about what we’re watching right now. We want to say someday that we saw LEBRON JAMES play basketball in the same way we talk about MICHAEL JORDAN, in the most reverential terms. Whenever he screws that up, we resent him for it.

”

- Bill Simmons on the gravity of Game 6 in the NBA Finals

bradofarrell: This year at E3 during the Xbox panel during a...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:06:14 -0400

bradofarrell:

This year at E3 during the Xbox panel during a scripted “trash talk” bit someone made a scripted rape joke (male gamer to girl gamer who sucks at a game: “just wait, it’ll all be over soon.”) and then they acted like it wasn’t a big deal and then they released an expensive, anti-consumer (DRM on physical games) piece of hardware. And then Sony just released the PS4 which is just the PS3 but better graphics and $100 cheaper than the Xbox. So THAT happened.

But then Nintendo just quietly released a bunch of great looking sequels for all of it’s major franchises (Mario, Pikmin, Donkey Kong, and Smash Bros.) and every single one of those games interestingly features playable female characters who haven’t been seen in decades like Dixie Kong and Princess Peach - and Pikmin now has a new female hero.

One of my favorite things about Peach in the new Mario game is that one of the power ups is a literal “cat suit” and Peach’s “cat suit” doesn’t sexualize her at ALL. You can’t even see her boobs. She just looks like she’s wearing over-sized footie pajamas it’s so cute. Also they added a pink letter to the Mario logo just to accommodate Peach’s re-inclusion into the franchise as a character with actual agency!

So at the end of the presentation they tell you to go to the Smash Bros website to find out about new characters. And then they announced this character, Wii Fit Trainer, on the site. And in an interview the director said he gets thousands of requests for almost every video game character under the sun and he’s gotten absolutely zero requests for this character and he put her in the game to be funny and defy fan expectation. This character is literally “hey fuck you we’re the ones making the games around here, and we’ll be goofy and funny if we want to and also check it out another female character in Smash.”

Also the inclusion of the Animal Crossing villager is interesting because Animal Crossing is VERY popular with girls and even though the villager is male I’m 100% certain his alternate costumes will include the girl default villager character. So that’s neat. The three Smash characters they announced were two girl(ish) characters from two girl(ish) games and then Mega Man.

Also in the new Animal Crossing game boys are allowed to cross dress and all of the animals are explicitly genderqueer in the dialog. Characters say stuff like “Boys can ware make up if they want to, I mean, it’s 2013, who cares?” and just today a jock rhino was looking deeply into my eyes and asking me to hike a football and I asked him if he loved me (which was one of the option out of other options about sports) and he was like “Oh I guess a lot can happen when you look into someone else’s eyes like that, huh?” He didn’t even care that we’re both guys. Also in the new Pokemon game you can be black.

Basically what I’m saying is Nintendo is quietly and systematically making their games more socially progressive and Microsoft made a rape joke and then said “what? it was a joke.”

Photo

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:26:48 -0400

watershedplus: Map of all the rivers and streams of the USA. ...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:38:00 -0400

watershedplus:

Map of all the rivers and streams of the USA.
By Nelson Minar

Beautiful.

"When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor..."

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 18:26:57 -0400

“When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That’s dangerous for human development.”

- Ai Weiwei - NSA surveillance: The US is behaving like China

americasgreatoutdoors: A view rarely seen by anyone. Secretary...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:58:57 -0400

americasgreatoutdoors:

A view rarely seen by anyone. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell stands ABOVE the top of the Washington Monument. The Secretary received an update on the repairs needed following the August 2011 earthquake and took a tour up to the top earlier this month.

During the same trip, photographer Tami A. Heilemann was able to snap unique photos of the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial and view of the National Mall and U.S. Capitol Building.

Photos: Tami A. Heilemann

Jefferson is the best memorial.

daniel sinker: Tapped out: Phone monitoring, young love, and me.

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:07:46 -0400

daniel sinker: Tapped out: Phone monitoring, young love, and me.

buzzfeedsports: nbagif: BIG4 Original gif...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:25:53 -0400

buzzfeedsports:

nbagif:

BIG4

Original gif via blog.mysanantonio.com

This is incredible

So much has changed, so much is still the same…

wnycradiolab: ucresearch: This photo — taken by Bug...

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 16:09:56 -0400

wnycradiolab:

ucresearch:

This photo — taken by Bug Squad’s Kathy Keatley Garvey — captures the moment after a bee sting when the honeybee attempts to fly away (with the barbed stinger still lodged in the victim). See that trail of goo? It’s actually the bee’s abdominal tissue.

WHAT.

"Tight security restrictions at Thursday’s Google shareholder meeting led even the company’s..."

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 10:30:27 -0400

“Tight security restrictions at Thursday’s Google shareholder meeting led even the company’s much-hyped Google Glass technology to be banned, infuriating a consumer watchdog group who accused the tech giant of hypocrisy.”

-
I love this.

Okay, beyond the obvious and mildly hilarious irony of it, and beyond another Transparency For The Masses hashtag for me, there’s an interesting point here: Google is acknowledging, right out of the box - in fact, before the box even ships - that there are contexts in which Glass is inappropriate. That is actually really good news. Let’s work with that. OF COURSE there are situations where you shouldn’t be taking video/audio recordings of what’s around you, and it’s not just a matter of corporate confidentiality. It is your friends’ kids, the people who live on your street doing their own thing, the business of strangers. In a civilised society, you don’t just privilege corporate space, you privilege personal space, too.

Moving beyond that, though, how about this: it’s not just that some things are private, it is that there is a space between private and public which should not lightly be entered or subsumed. There is a space which does not belong to me, or to you, or to any third party, but which is for all of us to act in, and that space is communal but not owned by any one of us. In that space, you should not record or report without the specific consent of everyone involved.

Privacy is not binary, it is fuzzy, and it inheres not in individuals only, but in groups, locations, contexts and communities.

Just a thought.

(- theblindgiant)

NYC's Sushi Yasuda Eliminates Tipping. Gratuities No Long Accepted (Updated).

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:10:26 -0400

pricehike:

American eaters, unlike their Europe counterparts, are long accustomed to voluntarily adding 18-20% to any dinner bill to compensate the wait staff for their services. But one New York City restaurant has put an end to that. The critically-acclaimed Sushi Yasuda, a 14-year old Japanese restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, eliminated tipping last month and raised its menu prices to reflect that development, owner Scott Rosenberg tells The Price Hike.

Here’s what guests now see on menus and receipts:

“Following the custom in Japan, Sushi Yasuda’s service staff are fully compensated by their salary. Therefore gratuities are not accepted. Thank you.”

Rosenberg suggests Yasuda might be the only U.S. restaurant with such a policy. He might be right. (Update: Turns out there’s at least one more.)*. A variety of ambitious American eateries like Alinea, Next, Atera and Brooklyn Fare already add automatic service charges as part of their pre-paid dining systems. But Yasuda’s move is closer to the European-style system adopted by Thomas Keller’s Per Se in 2005, where all prices are reflective of service, a policy Keller implemented to help correct the income disparity between cooks and wait staff, per this New York Times piece.

Read More

As if Yasuda wasn’t already impressive enough.

My second CitiBike experience and first commute was perfect.

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:14:31 -0400

My second CitiBike experience and first commute was perfect.

My first CitiBike experience

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 22:32:00 -0400

Last Monday, nine days ago, I bought the annual CitiBike membership. I checked their website today and saw that the average delivery time for the key is “~10 days” so on my way to meet some friends after work, I swung by my mailbox and found that the key was delivered today.

I went to their website from my phone to activate the key and got an error. I tried again and got the same error and a second error (I wish I had taken screenshots) that there was already a key associated with my account. I hoped that was a good sign but thought I’d probably have to call to activate. I went to the next docking station I found to get a bike for the rest of the trip. This failed either because I didn’t hold the key in the lock long enough or because that docking station wasn’t working. I walked the rest of the way, still unsure if my key was activated or if I’d have to call.

After leaving Marshall Stack, I started walking towards the docking station half a block north when a friend pointed across the street the other way to a docking station directly across the street. They’re everywhere. I got a bike out without trouble. The activation was a success.

The bike is solid. It’s heavy so it doesn’t damage easily and but not annoyingly so. It’s a good ride. I was feeling great and excited about the program and headed towards the docking station half a block from my apartment (St Marks and 2nd).

That station was full. On to the next one. I pulled up the CitiBike app to find the next closest station, which happened to be on the same block (St Marks and 1st). I got there and tried for a few minutes to return the bike until someone told me that the whole station wasn’t working.

I opened the app again to find the next one, which was a few blocks away (7th and A) and the app said it was two thirds full. It wasn’t, it was completely full. On to the next one.

The fourth station (behind/south of the main Cooper Union building) I tried was also broken.

Finally, at the fifth station (9th and 4th) I tried, I successfully returned the bike.

How many times will people put up with an experience like this before giving up for good? I know I’m not alone with this experience, and knew that it was a possibility since I had read Felix Salmon’s post earlier today. I hope the system gets better quickly before turning too many people off.

The 4 Levels of Designers

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 14:40:51 -0400

The 4 Levels of Designers:

heyitsnoah:

I wrote a post over at 99U about the levels of designers and how I think you build a great design team. You can read the whole thing there, but here’s a snippet about states:

If level two comes naturally to most designers who have grown up in a digital world, level three most definitely does not. States are about understanding all the different possible outcomes of a given task within a product and being able to design for all of them. Things like errors are obvious, albeit often forgotten, while actions like escapes and backs are much less frequently planned for.
To draw a parallel, a great engineer thinks in states. Before they write a line of code they have come to understand all the different outcomes and use that understanding to design a fault-resistant system. One of my favorite lines from one of our engineers recently was, “when I start typing the work’s done.”

watershedplus: The temporary footbridge used by the the...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:18:26 -0400

watershedplus:

The temporary footbridge used by the the Brooklyn Bridge workers became a dangerous but popular attraction for New Yorkers.
The sign at the entrance read “Safe for only 25 men at one time. Do not walk close together nor run, jump, or trot. Break step!”

milkmadeicecream: The making of flavor #87, Please, sir, I want...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 11:05:41 -0400

milkmadeicecream:

The making of flavor #87, Please, sir, I want s’more.

Here’s the latest edition of our S’More reconstructed. Last time we did a S’More flavor was exactly two years ago - June 2011 (image below). It was a graham ice cream with marshmallows and chocolate chips. This year it’s a chocolate ice cream with marshmallows and a graham crumble. And it’s awesome.

It is awesome.