Category: Strange World

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An experiment: I’ve modified* Twitter Tools to create digest posts as drafts instead of publishing immediately. That gives me a chance to edit a week’s worth of random thoughts and links down to the interesting stuff, clean things up a bit, expand things that could use more detail, and remind myself of items that I wanted to write more about later.

If it works out, and if the plugin still offers digests after it’s rewritten to use OAuth, I’ll probably use this same setup to make sure I keep on top of linkblogging at Speed Force.

*It was pretty simple. I just looked for the function that creates digests, then changed the post_status from publish to draft.

The Links

  • Why information storage is hard: The Universe Hates Your Data.
  • Interesting analogy: Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone aren’t quite ecosystems. Maybe it’s better to think of web services as governments. (via ma.tt)
  • WTF of the week: A book I was looking at on Amazon didn’t have any active discussions related to it, so Amazon showed me some random forum threads. They included this question on used textbooks: “Is it Ok if I used it to bludgeon several people to death with it?” Be sure to read the responses. [Edit: Amazon’s forums have been shut down.]
  • I love how Twitter’s status blog describes Wednesday morning’s outage as “high whales.”
  • Dear CNN: A 4.0 earthquake in California, especially one that didn’t cause any damage, is not breaking news. It’s more like business as usual. (It’s worth noting that a full day later, they haven’t updated the story with anything substantive…probably because there isn’t anything to add!)
  • Very cool: the Sci-Fi Airshow is a gallery of photorealistic images of spaceships from various science-fiction TV shows and movies set at, well, an air show. (via Bad Astronomy and SciFi Wire)

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If you went out to the movies in the US during 2009, there’s a good chance you saw a turn-off-your-phone PSA in which a movie about “robots from space” tries to negotiate blowing up Mount Rushmore.

In a case of life imitating art, the National Park Service is currently battling Transformers 3 — a movie about robots from space — over just what they can and can’t do with a national monument!

Okay, you can’t blow up a national monument, but…

Bill Line, Park Service spokesman, said the producers “have asked to do some things that simply are not done on the National Mall,” among them staging a “car race” along the Mall’s gravel paths and flooding it with artificial light in order to shoot at night.

Apparently it’s not unique to Transformers 3, but a fairly frequent battle between the park service and film producers, which means Sprint’s video isn’t just a funny story, but a bit of an in-joke to those familiar with the industry.

Hmm, any chance the new movie will have a chorus singing “Robots from space!” in the background?

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This Is True is a weekly newsletter rounding up weird news from around the world, summarized with witty comments by Randy Cassingham. It’s usually funny, sometimes sad, sometimes infuriating — but it always makes you think.

I’ve been a subscriber for years, and highly recommend it. One of the things I like about it is that he makes more effort to verify the stories than the typical “odd news” wire service that simply repeats something printed in a distant newspaper without realizing that it’s the local equivalent of the National Enquirer or Weekly World News. (Did anyone ever actually verify that Wii Fit nymphomaniac story last month? As near as I could tell every single article used the same tabloid as a source.)

Check out today’s sample story for an idea of what to expect.

Cassingham also links to interesting news items on Twitter and on Facebook, though not the same articles

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On a midday bus ride in San Francisco, a man in the back was holding forth on drugs, smoking, rehab, and the like, eventually comparing notes with a woman about all the drugs they used to do.

A woman in the middle of the bus remarked, “I feel like I’m in my own reality show.”

Another man responded, “Yeah, it’s called San Francisco.”

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A few weeks ago, I received six half-dollar coins in change. Since then, I’ve spent five* of them at counter-service fast food restaurants, and every single one has managed to confuse the clerks handling them. I suppose it’s understandable: fifty-cent pieces aren’t exactly in wide circulation, though I remember seeing them somewhat regularly when I was growing up in the 1980s.

Wendy’s – Clerk turned it over, examining it for several seconds, before she finally entered it as fifty cents.
Wasabi – Clerk peered at it for a few seconds, then asked, “This is a dollar, right?” I corrected him.
Wahoo’s – Clerk turned it over for a few seconds, then finally asked me how much it was worth.

(Weird: I can only remember three of them, but all three start with W!)

All of them took the coins without argument, though, unlike the classic story of the Taco Bell that refused to accept a two-dollar bill. What really surprised me were the two clerks who weren’t able to figure out how much it was worth on their own. It says “Half Dollar” right there on the coin. I guess all those collectible dollar coins and quarters are, in fact, confusing people.

*I left the sixth as part of a tip, along with two quarters and the appropriate number of dollar bills.

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A few weeks ago, I stopped at the post office on the way to work. As I walked to the door, my eye was immediately drawn to the big hole in the wall where, apparently, a car had crashed into the building while trying to park.

Whatever vehicle had done the damage was long gone, and the area around was cordoned off with yellow caution tape. Since I like to take pictures of weird stuff, I snapped a photo with my cell phone. (No, I didn’t cross the tape; it’s just not visible in the frame.)

This morning, I stopped at the same post office again. This time, my eye was drawn to a new addition to the facility:

One of these bright yellow posts stood in front of each parking space along the building. You can still see where the concrete has been spread around the base, and absolutely no paint has worn off. Clearly someone decided not to take any more chances with wayward cars!

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