Chicago: Then and Now

Summerdale Savings Bank. Top photo taken in 1916.

See more "Then and Now" shots.

Random Links

• No more limbo - Good. I'm unbaptized.
  

• Dripping with Wittgenstein - Last week's "This I Believe" was an interview with the founder of Craig's List.
  

• Cellphone tricks - If you hate wasting minutes...

Random Links

• Air Sex - I still don't really get it (they say it's like the difference between guitar and air-guitar), but here's a video:
  

• Here are some interesting photos of various 60s-era Manhattan street scenes. [via metafilter]

• Gross.

• Predictions from 1900 - My favorite:
  

  Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

Add this to the list

This sounds like some sort of bizarre combination of Ohio and Las Vegas.

As China's modernization continues to pull hundreds of millions of people from farms to cities and suburbs, a construction boom has given rise to a vast landscape of foreign-looking settlements. These real-estate developments are the latest manifestation of the technique that has fueled China's economic boom: making copies.

In Nanjing, there are Balinese retreats and Italian villas. In the southeastern city of Hangzhou, there are Venice and Zurich. In downtown Beijing, everything is about Manhattan, with Soho, Central Park and Park Avenue.

"Many people in China today associate the exotic with wealth. They buy into these developments to differentiate themselves from ordinary people," said Tino Wan, a manager of ERA Real Estate in Shanghai.

Shanghai's plan is among the most ambitious, calling for a ring of satellite developments modeled after different parts of Europe, including German, Czech, Spanish and Scandinavian districts, in addition to the one that looks like London, known as Thames Town.

Read more here.
[via boingboing]

From Wired:

We'll be brief: Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") and is said to have called it his best work. So we asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves.

Here are some of my favorites:

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
- Margaret Atwood

Vacuum collision. Orbits diverge. Farewell, love.
- David Brin

Thought I was right. I wasn't.
- Graeme Gibson

Here's my crack at it:

• Let go of everything. Now what?

• Sat next to her--got up.
  

• Candy fell from the sky...again.
  

• He's come to take us under.

• And then it happened. That's it?

Leave your ideas in the comments.

[via 3quarksdaily]

More reasons to like Russia

From the site: "People of this small Russian town Borovsk are fond of painting their houses with different kinds of stories". What a great way to cultivate community.

Be sure to check out the rest.

Love

The first lovers? - They died embracing eachother. My first thought: awwwwwwwwwww...I want that to be me! My second thought: Wait, what horrible thing happened to them that allowed them to die embracing?

Divide and conquer - Rulers should be printed onto everything.

Ingredient in male sweat raises women's hormone levels - Goodbye deodorant.

Links

White Castle V-Day! - If you were considering this, stop.

"I bang my wife" - Buzzfeed says it best: "This trend needs to die immediately."

"I am a fucking steamroller and I'll roll over you or anybody else" - Good week for NY politics.

The HPV vaccine isn't just for chicks anymore - So penis cancer is real? Does this mean Republicans will start endorsing HPV vaccination and stop calling women who do, sluts? It always comes back to the rich white man's penis--always!

Men and women often misunderstand each other's flirtation signals - Ya think? From the article: ""One of the surprising facts in this study was that women do not send clear rejection signals. A woman sends sexually explicit signals without having much interest in the man." That is surprising.

Boredom comes from not knowing ourselves - I think that's right.

After a break of 16 centuries, Greek pagans are worshiping the ancient gods again - "To the astonishment of onlookers, Peppa also began babbling Orphic hymns, before thrusting her arms upwards into the Attic skies and proceeding, somewhat deliriously, to warble her love for the gods of Mount Olympus."

How Iraq Trillion Could Have Been Spent - Sad, sad, sad.

How can I make this clear: people are terrible predictors - "The best strategy for career planning is this: make your best guess, try it out and don't be surprised if you don't like it." Most people don't even try.

What could have been.

All those "Super Bowl Champions" hats and shirts you see after the game are made well in advance of the Super Bowl. So what happens to the shirts and hats for the team that lost didn't win the Super Bowl?

Apparently they're shipped to Africa. At least the Bears are champions somewhere...

People like sex apparently.

Flapper dresses are back! - And so is the Charleston! I need a flapper--I really do.

On-line dating works - Hmmm...

It's better to wait - Women who keep their men waiting longer end up having better, more fulfilling sex. Not all that surprising.

Posing as a family, sex offenders stun town -

In nearby Surprise, where Casey was enrolled as a 12-year-old in a public school for four months, he was regarded as a shy, average student with chronic attendance problems. A man identified as his uncle had registered him, attended curriculum night and e-mailed his teachers about homework assignments.

Now Casey is in jail, and his former neighbors and classmates have learned the unthinkable: Not only is Casey not Casey — his real name is Neil H. Rodreick II — but he is also a 29-year-old convicted sex offender who kept a youthful appearance with the aid of razors and makeup. [via Minidick]

Love in Warcraft - Losers.

My goal was to see how many "boyfriends", for lack of a more demeaning term, I could maintain at one time. The rules I set for myself were not to spend any gold at all on the loves of my life, and never implicitly ask them for gold or items. No real cybersex either - I save that for the Something Awful forums. I would, however, depend on the kindness of these strangers. [via Minidick]

Dating is competitive manipulation - What a great article. I love this girl.

Yeah, the logical part of my mind can hardly believe garbage like that works, either. But dating isn’t about logic. It’s all maneuverings and subtle manipulations.

But had he not had a girlfriend, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to get to know him enough to like him in the first place.