the20newyork:

wnyc:

Inside the City’s Ghost Highway System. WNYC’s Jim O’Grady explores all of NYC’s planned and abandoned subway lines. And check out the interactive map, which overlays the once-planned lines (a Brooklyn-Staten Island connector?!) with the current map. Super cool.

-Jody, BL Show-

this is awesome. 

poisonville:

The evolution of riot gear. (NYT)

europe1850-1930:

“German fleet surrendering to the English [….] London, England, 1918.” (Nationaal Archief)

criminalwisdom:

Via Linkmachinego

deadpresidents:

•This is an Historically Accurate Transcription•

CHURCHILL: We’ve got to end this thing…it’s gone on too long.
FDR: I agree.  I’m exhausted.  Look at me, I look like I’m 125 years old.
STALIN: Twenty million of my people have been killed!
CHURCHILL: Yes, this war is terrible.
STALIN: War?  Oh, you guys were talking about the war?  I actually meant that I had twenty million of my people killed.  I was bragging, not complaining.
FDR: Twenty million?  What did they do?  Espionage?  Treason?
STALIN: They didn’t name all of their pets and crops after me, so they went bye-bye in a box.  Well, twenty million boxes.  Well, actually, just a bunch of mass graves.
CHURCHILL: That’s horrible.  How does one kill twenty million people?
STALIN: Well, you start off by finding forty million people who are REALLY supportive of your plans and then you give them guns and…
FDR: I believe that was a rhetorical question.
STALIN: I believe that I could win a foot race between you and I.
FDR: Oh yes…here we go again…let’s make fun of the crippled guy.  Easy target, right?
CHURCHILL: Don’t piss him off, Frank.  He’ll kill you as quickly as polio killed your legs.
FDR: I’m getting it from both sides now?  I saved your ass, Churchill.  Remember that whole Lend-Lease Act?  You better recognize.  Without me, you’d be speaking German already.
STALIN: (Mumbling) Or Russian.
CHURCHILL: You’re right, Franklin.  I should thank you now before you crumble into dust.  I know the Presidency ages its occupants, but you look terrible!  Do you drink nicotine milkshakes for breakfast?  Have they just gone ahead and started embalming you already?
FDR: I’ve been elected to four terms as President.  You wouldn’t know what it is like to have to save the world, Winston.  Last time I checked, you and your wussy empire were the save-ees not the save-ers.  And don’t even start criticizing how people look:  everytime I see you I think, “Wow, that is the tallest, oldest baby I have ever seen.”
STALIN: What about me?  What do you guys think when you see me?
CHURCHILL: Marshal Stalin, I think it’s safe to say that when we see you our first thought is, “This Russian guy is either going to kill us with a hammer or molest us with his mustache”.  You look like every family’s creepy uncle who drinks too much and then tickles the kids for an inappropriately long amount of time.
FDR: Although, I will say that I enjoyed your appearance on “To Catch A Predator”, Stalin.  Is Chris Hansen tall in real life?
STALIN: What do you carry in those bags under your eyes besides dashed dreams about competing in a triathlon?
CHURCHILL: Oooh…BURN.
FDR: Shut up, Churchill.  I may not be able to walk, but at least I don’t waddle.  You look like a penguin in chemotherapy.
CHURCHILL: Listen…let’s stop for a second.  We have to stay united.  We’ve got Hitler on the ropes and once we’re finished with that, we can turn our attention to Japan.
STALIN: No.  I’ll be occupying countries within my sphere of influence and setting up decades of potential problems.  Thanks for the invite, though.
FDR: Don’t worry about Japan, Winston.  Remember what I told you?
CHURCHILL: I’m constantly drunk.  I hardly remember to walk to the toilet before urinating.
FDR: I don’t want to say it right now.
CHURCHILL: Come on…
FDR: No…remember…the atomicay ombbay that I don’t want alinStay to know about?
CHURCHILL: Oh yeah…we definitely don’t want that crazy fucker getting his hands on  the bomb you developed which harnesses the energy which powers the universe to completely obliterate cities with one blast…
FDR: Dude…
STALIN: What?  Tell me everything!
CHURCHILL: (Leaving) Gotta go!
FDR: …
STALIN: …
FDR: He’s just fucking with you.  We don’t have one of those.

Siri is not going to take my call anytime soon.

There’s been a lot of press given lately to Siri and other voice-operated apps. But they don’t work for me, probably because I have a pretty pronounced Southern accent. 

I still can’t use Siri’s predecessors on my Android phone, including Vlingo, Voice Dialer and Voice Search. Out of 10 various phrases I threw at those programs this morning, they got only one right: Voice Search threw up a Google Map of a major American city for me.

But they would not call my grandmother, or my boss, or open the Android Market, among other requests.  

todaysdocument:

On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had led the fight in Congress to root out suspected Communists from the Federal Government. The censure described his behavior as “contrary to senatorial traditions.” This copy of the resolution catches the debate on November 9 as the Senate refined the wording of its resolution. The substance of the first count, charging McCarthy with failure to cooperate with a Senate subcommittee, remained unchanged in the final resolution. The second count was dropped for a condemnation of McCarthy’s attacks on the very members of the committee that considered his censure.

Read More in Our Documents

Someone in the pantheon of Android gods — whether it was Google (developer of the Android platform), HTC (maker of my cellphone) or Verizon (my wireless carrier), or some combination — decided to send HTC Droid Incredible phone owners like myself a new system software update today, bringing us up to the new “Gingerbread” version of the Android software. 

I thought, Yay! So I hit the “install now” button. 

And then I spent the next 90 minutes trying to get my phone to work again. 

It got to the red Droid “eye” screen repeatedly and froze there. 

I wound up having to hard-reset it no less than 7 times to get it work again.

This is the same upgrade that some HTC Droid Incredible users were sent several months ago, but then the Android gods pulled those upgrades back, so to speak, after numerous complaints about bugs in the software. 

From my own experience, the bugs aren’t gone. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find that more people are having trouble with it as I did.

If you’re a Droid user, you should know how to hard-reset your phone (also called “factory reset”), if the need ever arises. You lose all stored info, but it beats going to the Verizon store, waiting in line for an hour and then being told that all they can do is ship you a replacement refurbished model that will take 3 days to get there. You can find instructions on how to hard-reset and force-reboot your phone (and how to boot into recovery mode) at this post in the Android Forums. 

You know those movies where multiple superheroes are thrown together (X-Men, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the old Saturday morning cartoons about the League of Justice)? Someone should do that with mega-editors: Tina Brown, Anna Wintour and Arianna Huffington. My planned outcome: Tina and Arianna join forces against Anna and break her sunglasses. 

Is there something off with Saturday Night Live’s audio for its live musical performances this season?

When I could barely hear Paul McCartney’s vocal on Jet earlier this season, I thought it was just one-time problem. But Elton John’s vocal seemed lost in the mix on the first song he did with Leon Russell on this past Saturday night’s show. (Though it was not as bad as Paul’s issue on Jet.)

What gives?