Don’t Think About Elephants.

Monday, 30 July 2012

Ai on the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremony æ

Ai Weiwei:

Brilliant. It was very, very well done. This was about Great Britain; it didn’t pretend it was trying to have global appeal. Because Great Britain has self-confidence, it doesn’t need a monumental Olympics. But for China that was the only imaginable kind of international event. Beijing’s Olympics were very grand – they were trying to throw a party for the world, but the hosts didn’t enjoy it. The government didn’t care about people’s feelings because it was trying to create an image.

A truly impressive showing of Britain’s cultural might. I guess monumental is the only thing left to go for when you’ve destroyed most of your country’s culture a few decades prior and have only been preoccupied with developing economic power since.

Ai on the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony æ

Ai Weiwei:

My memory of the Beijing Olympics has not changed. It is a fake smile, an elaborate costume party with the sole intention of glorifying the country. From the opening to the closing ceremony, from the torch relay to the cheers for gold medals – these all displayed the might, and the desperation, of a totalitarian regime.

Thursday, 26 July 2012

Why Batman Believes in Gun Control æ

Scott Thill, for Wired:

Anyone who knows anything about Batman knows his parents were gunned down outside a theater. This is why the Dark Knight has rarely used guns in more than 70 years of comics history. And why he almost never kills anyone, even when the urge to do so reaches critical, maddening mass.

The “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” rhetoric rings hollow in the face of the Aurora shooting. An ax-wielding maniac could hardly murder as many people as quickly. To flip a recent Batman quote around: No guns, no killing.

We’ve Seen This Movie Before æ

Roger Ebert, on the Aurora shooting:

Whenever a tragedy like this takes place, it is assigned catchphrases and theme music, and the same fragmentary TV footage of the shooter is cycled again and again. Somewhere in the night, among those watching, will be another angry, aggrieved loner who is uncoiling toward action. The cinematic prototype is Travis Bickle of “Taxi Driver.” I don’t know if James Holmes cared deeply about Batman. I suspect he cared deeply about seeing himself on the news.

Minimal Email æ

Patrick Rhone, reimagining email (emphasis mine):

I want to write my email like I write my letters. I want to compose it first, then address it, and then come up with an appropriate subject. I’ve never understood why the question of subject comes before that of composition. In my opinion, it should come last. One should make the subject the last and most important decision based contextually on the content and the recipient. In fact, one should not be able to send the email until the subject box is filled out.

Receiving an email with the subject “(no subject)” is one of my bigger pet peeves. It also comes “close to meriting an automatic delete”. While I understand that sometimes you don’t have the time or need to devise a subject, our email clients really ought to be smart enough to simply preview the message directly.

The Sparrow Problem æ

Marco Arment:

There’s also some evidence that suggests that Sparrow was making $70,000–90,000 per month. Those are great numbers, but with a staff of five people in the cut-throat market for engineering talent, it goes quickly — a good developer may cost $15,000 per month to employ after all of the benefits and overhead.

We paid good money, but that money wasn’t good enough.

Saturday, 21 July 2012

Talent Acquisitions æ

Marco Arment, on resisting being acq-hire-d:

I was only able to reject those offers because Instapaper is a healthy business, and the life that Instapaper provides for me and my family is better than what the big companies offered.

If you want to keep the software and services around that you enjoy, do what you can to make their businesses successful enough that it’s more attractive to keep running them than to be hired by a big tech company.

Then again, we did pay good money for Sparrow.

Facebook Acquires Acrylic æ

More abandoned apps: Pulp and Wallet.

Why WhatsApp Doesn’t Sell Ads

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Gunman shoots 71 and kills 12 at ‘Dark Knight Rises’ screening æ

M. Alex Johnson & Pete Williams, for NBC News:

A gunman shot 71 people at a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” near Denver on Friday, killing 12 of them, in what the governor of Colorado called “the act of an apparently very deranged mind.” Many of the 59 people who were injured were critically wounded, police said.

Appalling.

Google Acquires Sparrow æ

Dom Leca, for Sparrow, the popular email app for Mac and iOS:

Now we’re joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google… While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users.

Good for Dom and his team on the exit, but sounds like Sparrow will be phased out, which is disappointing. I supported Sparrow from the get-go and use it for email on both platforms. Splendid design, reliable performance, and a charming icon that fits right onto my home screen dock.

They’d better be working on the next big thing for this “betrayal” to be worth it.

Tuesday, 10 July 2012

A Solution to Hong Kong’s Overcrowded Cemeteries? æ

Floating graves. This is not a joke. It’s quite brilliant.

Hong Kong is now the “best city” in the world æ

The Economist:

Filippo Lovato, an architect concerned with urban planning… added seven new indicators on “spatial adjustments” to the EIU’s ranking. Mr Lovato assessed cities’ green space, sprawl, natural assets, cultural assets, connectivity, isolation and pollution on a scale of 1 to 5, and then gave the resultant combined score 25% of the weight of his new index. The remaining 75% derives from the five categories that make up the EIU’s ranking: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure.

Looks like Mr. Lovato forgot to adjust for housing affordability. It might be more accurate to describe Hong Kong as the “world’s best city for the rich.”

Frank Gehry Designs Residential Tower in Hong Kong æ

Joyce Lau, for The New York Times:

Swire is aiming at high-end tenants by dividing the building into a small number of large apartments. Typically, a developer in Hong Kong would use that same space to create as many as 50 to 100 apartments, starting at 600 square feet, which is closer to the size of an average Hong Kong home.

The apartments are closer to 6,000–7,000 square feet each. By doing so, Swire probably more than doubled the price per square foot, which is rumored to be upwards of HKD 100,000.

Our Underground Future æ

Leon Neyfakh, for The Boston Globe:

Hong Kong, one of the world’s densest cities, recently started exploring the possibility of putting some 400 “unsightly” government facilities underground, according to the South China Morning Post—including sewage treatment plants, water reservoirs, fuel storage depots, and columbariums for cinerary urns.

That’s one way to tackle land scarcity, and by extension, the housing problem. And we’re not the only ones either:

What will it take for other cities to follow suit? For a hint, Sterling suggested taking a look at Singapore: a massively overcrowded city-state with a population of more than 5 million people that has taken up the cause of underground development with gusto out of sheer necessity.

Thursday, 5 July 2012

Self-censorship in SCMP æ

Paul Mooney, for iSunAffairs:

Nor was I the only foreign reporter to be pushed out of the newspaper–I follow a long line of foreigners–each with long experience–who saw their contracts allowed to run out by Wang–this way he could plead innocence: You’ve not been fired, your contract ran out. There are now no foreign reporters working for the South China Morning Post in China–a first in a long while.

The formerly-reputable South China Morning Post has fallen. Imperius-ed, if you will. This does not bode well for Hong Kong’s freedom of press.

What Hong Kongers Mean By ‘Rational’ And ‘Objective’ æ

李祖喬：

我應該想想，人家認為衝突「很激進」，要「理性客觀討論」，當然代表他們有一套「理性」和「客觀」的標準。與其每次為「激進」辯護，不如更直接和具體地認識那套「客觀理性」。

Highly recommended for anyone who considers themselves rational and objective. Spoiler: It’s like rain on your wedding day.

Backlash from Using Pinyin in Hong Kong æ

蘋果日報：

蘋果的香港 iTunes Music Store上周三推出，歌迷可用 iPhone及 iPad輕鬆選購歌曲，怎知歌名及歌手的名字使用普通話的漢語拼音，不少港人完全看不懂，有人質疑蘋果協助內地文化入侵，扼殺繁體中文，《蘋果》記者昨到蘋果旗艦店了解，傍晚 iTunes隨即「大洗板」，消去一部份拼音，變回繁體字。

《富士山下》becomes「 Fu Shi Shan Xia」— but it seems more like a mistake than a conspiracy.

Top 10 Art Galleries in Hong Kong æ

Guardian recommended. Free admission.

Protesters March as New Hong Kong Leader Is Sworn In æ

Keith Bradsher & Kevin Drew, for The New York Times:

As he took office, Mr. Leung did not speak in Cantonese, the Chinese dialect prevalent in Hong Kong, and instead used Mandarin, the dominant dialect on the mainland, to say his government would immediately begin to confront the array of social issues.

And some people still believe that Hong Kong will remain autonomous.