Multi-colored sweat makes a comeback. Is it in you?
Hyped to see Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the Gatorade ad. It will be really exciting to see her perform at the 2024 Paris Olympics after an awesome Tokyo 2020.
Here she is in one of those classic “This is SportsCenter” ads:
One of the OG Gatorade ads:
Gotham is probably the one typeface that defines our millennial aesthetic. I’m sure you’ve seen it, Gotham had taken over the world by 2019.
What you may not know is that in 2014 there was a dispute worth $20 million within the firm that created Gotham: Hoefler & Frere-Jones. The drama was bad enough that Hoefler is accused of “most profound treachery” in Frere-Jones’s lawsuit. Ultimately the pair settled out of court.
Drama between type foundry partners is not new. In this article from Colossal we learn about Doves Press and their founders T.J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker. They founded the firm in 1900, but by 1909 they had dissolved their partnership. And in 1917, to ensure that no one would have access to Doves Press’ type—including Walker—Cobden-Sanderson dumped it all in the River Thames!
Robert Green, a type enthusiast, began searching for the missing lead type and in 2014 he miraculously found a lone ‘v’. And with the help of scuba divers, the team found 151 sorts (i.e., individual pieces of lead type) out of possible 500,000(!). Here’s a short film about the search:
It’s always fun to be reminded of the physical nature of typefaces…one reason why leading (LED-ing) is called leading, because of the lead in lead type.
I learned today that in the US, according to federal regulation, the only traffic sign that is allowed to be round is the “Railroad Crossing Ahead” sign.
The “Do Not Enter” or “X is prohibited” signs are not round! They are white rectangular signs with round images.
Edit (5/29) - Why is this the only round sign? According to Richard C. Moeur’s Manual of Traffic Signs:
The greater number of sides on a sign, the more critical a message it conveys. This is why a circular shape was adopted for the Railroad Advance warning sign (i.e. infinite number of sides), as a collision between a train and a typical vehicle will nearly always end badly.
I never realized how big professional darts is in Europe, specially in the UK. I started following it last year during the 2023 PDC World Championship where 16-year-old (!!) Luke Littler shocked the world by making it all the way to the final and finishing as runner-up.
Littler has continued to perform at an incredible elite level this year; and today, he won the prestigious Premier League!
The video below is of today’s final, where he hits a nine-darter: a perfect leg where the minimum amounts of darts are thrown to reach 501. According to Wikipedia:
“It is regarded as an extremely difficult feat to achieve even for the sport's top players, and is considered the highest single-game achievement in the sport, similar to a maximum 147 break in snooker or a 300-point game in bowling”.
Darts can be so fun and exciting! Watch the video and see it for yourself!
Breaking records left and right as the “youngest to do X” gives me “Lebron-the-Chosen-One”, Tiger Woods prodigy, type of vibes.
My wife and I have been playing tons of Dr. Mario (1990) on the NES Classic for the past couple days. Part of why I’ve enjoyed playing it so much is the funky droning background music, especially “Chill”:
(My wife swears that the more upbeat “Fever” is the better song…the winner of our matches gets to decide the music.)
Dr. Mario’s soundtrack has passed the test of time…with it being constantly re-adapted for multiple games.
I still think the original 1990 beep-boop version is the best. Perfect work music.
Tumbleweeds are not lonely plants rolling down a deserted western landscape. I learned that tumbleweed “stampedes” are taking over towns across the United States. Take a look at this photo!
As always, CGP Gray does a fun job explaining the ongoing trouble with tumbleweeds:
It’s always cool to see emergence happening from inanimate objects.
On March of 2014, the world was gripped with the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370. How could an airliner simply vanish in a world of ubiquitous tracking with radar and GPS?
The Green Dot Aviation channel released this nerve-racking, hour-long video using flight simulation software with conjectures on what might have happened within the cockpit. Of course, a lot of the video is unproven and it simply shows what a plausible scenario could have been.
The deductive reasoning based on incomplete information used to build a scenario on how aviation instruments were used/manipulated is pretty interesting.
Not sure if it’s just me, but I have found it extremely difficult to remember what the laundry care symbols mean. Being paranoid about not wanting to ruin a piece of clothing, I find myself Googling what each of the icons represent: “what does the dot inside a circle inside a square mean again? Is it dry clean or no dry clean? Is the dot a good thing or a bad thing?”
The American Cleaning Institute (!!) has created a guide that actually helps! Instead of remembering every single permutation, you simply need to remember the following 5 symbols:
And the following modifiers:
Nonetheless, still incredibly confusing, since not all the icons adhere to this syntax. What does this mean?
The vertical three lines: drip drying; the diagonal lines: in the shade
How is it possible that Kansai Airport (KIX) hasn’t lost a single piece of luggage out of the estimated 10 million baggage items it processed in fiscal 2023!?
Image generated on Microsoft’s Copilot—powered by DALL-E 3
I’ve been taking an (Lean) Operations Management class and would be really interested to see what processes, rituals, and culture they have put in place to achieve this (even if they are padding the numbers a little…).
At the very least, it looks like they are practicing a very “Lean” approach to continuous improvements by listening to front-line workers: “CKTS updates the manual regularly to incorporate staff suggestions.”
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On a related note, I have had the unfortunate experience of having our bags lost, and I truly think that I wouldn’t have been able to retrieve it if I didn’t place AirTags on them. The customer service agent had assured me that our bags had made it to Portland (according to what she could see in the system) but I was able to let her know that they had been left behind in Toronto! Thankfully she was able to get in touch with Toronto Airport staff to get our bags onto the next plane to PDX.
