Photo taken last night by Yours Truly. I finally got to see Mad Max: Fury Road.
Giving away free butter — or even free imitation butter — anywhere in the Sun Belt seems like a bad, bad idea. Down here, that’s just an invitation to “weez the juice”, Pauly Shore-style.
It the 4th of July — Independence Day — and here in these United States of ‘Murica, that means fireworks. And the annual intentionally disturbing, unintentionally funny safety video from the CPSC, short for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The folks at Gizmodo have taken the most visually arresting bits from the CPSC video and turned it into 1-minute, 29-second “highlight reel”, complete with an added Muzak soundtrack:
I can imagine the planning meeting for the video:
CPSC official 1: We need to demonstrate how a bottle rocket can take someone’s eye out in a way that’s presentable to the public, yet gruesome at the same time, and doable with homemade special effects.
CPSC official 2: How about we use some twine or fishing line to guide the bottle rocket to a mannequin’s eye?
CPSC official 1: That’s a good start, but I need more gore. Tasteful gore.
CPSC official 3: I’ve got it! We scoop out one of the mannequin’s eyes…
CPSC official 1 (sitting forward in chair): I’m listening…
CPSC official 3: …and we put a raw egg in the resulting eye-socket!
CPSC official 1: GENIUS! Make it happen! Now remember that we’ve only got an afternoon to do it, and our budget is twenty bucks.
If you’d much rather watch the official video, complete with English and Spanish soundbites from official-looking people and “B-roll” for news organizations who need some additional video shots, here it is:
Things are dead slow today.
Click the photo to see it at full size.
The national holiday — Independence Day, the 4th of July — takes place on a Saturday this year, so a good number of businesses are treating today — Friday, July 3rd, the closest weekday — as a day off. If you’re trying to contact a business from outside the US and wondering why nobody’s replying to your calls or messages today, you now know the reason why.
Mike Beltzner, who’s formerly from Toronto, a resident of the other, lesser bay area, and now a product manager at Pinterest, posted a photo of the Canada Day-themed menu at the office:
My first thought: poutine contains fish?
It turns out that the source of the fish is the gravy. Worcestershire sauce is often an ingredient, and that stuff is basically anchovies in brine.
Today is July 1st, which is Canada Day, Canada’s national holiday!
On July 1, 1867, the British North America Act was signed, uniting three colonies into one country under the British Empire and called it Canada. Canada’s been my home for nearly 40 years, and I’m now an importer of Canadian-ness in Florida (a.k.a. “Canada South”). From a Canadian expat to my Canadian friends and family all over the world, Happy Canada Day!
Bonus reading: How Canada is perceived around the world, an article featuring interviews with 15 people from 15 countries, in which they’re asked how they see Canada.
Graphic created by The Cooper Review. Click the graphic to see the source.
I’m making a last-minute flight to Boston to visit the GSG mothership for a “planning for the second half of the year” / “Hey, we’re doing stunningly well, let’s celebrate” meeting / party. My flight arrangement were last-minute, which means that the airline’s picking my seat. Wish me luck, and good luck if you’re in the same situation!
In all the goings-on of the past few days, I’ve neglected to point to this statement by Benedict Evans, a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz (often shortened to a16z), who’ve invested in the seed and Series A rounds for Soylent, the liquid “staple meal” meant for people too busy doing important things and making the world a better place to eat solid food. He posted it in a tweet, which I’m illustrating below:
“Soylent does not replace the meal you spend an hour cooking,” he writes:
“…it replaces this:”
I dunno; I’m still leaning towards the Vienna sausages. And I’m not the only one.