Link Banana

Perhaps that’s a little over-dramatic, but this is a story that just makes you want to yell, “WHAT THE FUCK!?” An unidentified Walmart employee was killed in Long Island when trampled by a crowd of consumers who had broken the door off its hinges to get inside.

I’m not quite sure what to say. Though I don’t agree with Marco Arment on everything he has to say about the event, I think he captures some of what I’m thinking.

I don’t actually think that all of these are good rules, but it’s the most intereseting Tumblr I’ve seen in a while.

(via the via on the aforementioned Metafilter post)

Via MetaFilter, Thomas Weller’s collection of fun and straightforward expressions that are definately not maxims.

Not sure why, but I was rather fascinated by Brendan Koerner’s chronicle of the history of Zima, which finally ceased production a few months ago. It’s an interesting story in the way corporations try to work brands and the invention of beers marketed as non-beers.

There’s no doubt in my mind that this doesn’t capture everyone, but this seems like a reasonable explanation of most of the opposition to the auto industry bailout:

Most Americans simply no longer identify with the domestic auto industry (or with the states of Michigan and Ohio). To the Southerners who now make up the core constituency of the Republican Party, it’s a bunch of coddled, unionized workers trying to get handouts that the South’s auto industry (Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Mercedes, BMW …) doesn’t need. To the coastal urbanites and suburbanites who now make up the core constituency of the Democratic Party, it’s an industry that makes crappy big cars and fights against higher fuel efficiency standards. And to the business press it’s the worst thing of all: a trio of companies that are neither exciting nor financially successful.

(via Passport)

A beautiful, well-designed (and apparently smut-free) alternative to Urban Dictionary, the coolest feature about Addictionary is probably that you can request a word for your definition of a new thing.

(via Neatorama)

This thing made me go “Wow!” It’s a map of America’s Interstate highways smoothed into a series of straight lines, like a subway map.

(via Snarkmarket)

The Economist provides a handy charts with the odd on where President Obama will visit first. Britain’s way ahead, if you’re too lazy to click.

You’ve probably seen this by now, but if you haven’t, now you have.

William Saletan has two recent piece about motherhood that caught my eye. They are, as usual, full of interesting but vaguely tangential ideas.

The first is about grandmother surrogacy:

Take the Japanese case from a couple of years ago. Japanese law treated the child’s gestational mother—the genetic grandmother—as its legal mother. Therefore, the genetic mother had to adopt the child from her own mother. In the Virginia case, the genetic dad ended up telling reporters, “Mommy’s doing fine. Not this mommy. Grandma mommy.” Imagine looking at your mom and realizing that in a way, she’s your sister. Imagine getting into an argument with your mother-in-law over the way you’re raising your kids—religion, discipline, whatever—and realizing that in a way, she’s their mother.

The second is about, well, this: “What’s the next best thing to having your own baby? Having your identical twin’s baby.”

I’m increasingly leery of news stories proclaiming that academics have proven or demonstrated something or other. That said, some Dutch researchers have experimental evidence showing that signals of low-level crime make people more likely to litter or steal.

(via Ideas)

Forvo’s a relatively-new site collecting pronunciations by native speakers. It’s current library’s disappointingly small — it has nothing to contribute to my constant waffling on “machination” and “gnocci” — but it’s still a neat idea.

(via matt.cc)

Inspired by Merlin Mann, I’m posting one of the best tweets I’ve seen in a while:

The dissemination of what’s important to the world is too significant a task to be left to algorithms and popularity contests.

My fake restaurants never got trashed (yet loved) by a reviewer on the internet. I feel unloved.

(via BuzzFeed)

FYI, they are:

1. That can’t happen.
2. That doesn’t happen on my machine.
3. That shouldn’t happen.
4. Why is that happening?
5. Oh, I see.
6. How did that ever work?

(via G&H, who has his own version)

I don’t usually do this, but there’s too much good in this Kottke post to not point straight to it.

As I sit here dreading another Monday, I would like to point people in the direction of a nice graphical representation of an idea I like.

(via Tomorrow Museum)

Hypothetical question: You’re heartsick about global warming, so you’ve just paid $25,000 to put a solar system on the roof of your home. How do you respond to news that it was manufactured with a chemical that is 17,000 times stronger than carbon dioxide as a cause of global warming?

I’d probably say, “Really!? Wow. That sucks. Is there any replacement.” To which the article says nothing.

(via Ideas)

Another reason to like Louis CK.

(via Jack Shedd)

These bits always interesting me. For example, I had no idea that the iPod name came from 2001. (Assuming I’m willing to trust CIO magazine.)