*-)* welcome aboard *-)-
just me. my current interests and stories for the interwebs.
Come check out the goodness that sits atop JetBlue's Terminal 5 at JFK! Come and show up a little earlier than normal and relax outside during the cool nights with some Blue Marble Ice Cream or Hebrew National Hotdogs whilst peering out onto the Freedom Tower.
Data from 16,000 American adults on incomes, sexual activity and happiness led economists to conclude in a much-discussed 2004 study that increasing the frequency of intercourse from once a month to once a week increased happiness to the same extent as having an additional $50,000 in the bank.
I'm going to go with this excerpt. I mean, who minds an extra $50K?
Reckless flying in paths of passenger aircraft. Thanks Mr. Drone Pilot for messing up the rules for the rest of us.
*update: obviously this has been outted as a hoax showing off digital graphics and video editing. Read the winglet which shows branit.com instead of Southwest. Sorry for the confusion. *
A detailed teardown (via PopMech) of a pair of Beats’ immensely popular Solo headphones conducted by hardware-focused venture capital firm Bolt has some answers buried beneath. The headphones are incredibly cheaply made. The company cuts corners everywhere it can; gluing pieces together instead of using screws, and reducing the amount of tooling wherever possible. Amazingly, for all the company’s claims about precision sound design, the headphones use freaking off-the-shelf drivers!
As if this wasn't reason enough?! I still can't believe that Apple was tricked into buying such a shitty product! And yes, I Have tested and spent spent $399 on their Stuido Pro but promptly returned them one hour later. Trash!
Do yourself a favor and go with some Grados. The best $100 on headphones you can spend are on the Prestige Series SR80e.
Also of not, their "award winning" Beats Solo are essentially filled with extra metal for added weight to trick you into thinking they are substantial.
First year pay at most airlines. Couldn't sum it up better than this clip from Half Baked especially that it pertains to life in New York. Happy Friday!
At its core, though, the debate is about the philosophical purpose of fine wine. Should oenologists try to make beverages that are merely delicious? Or should the ideal be something more profound and intellectually stimulating? Are the best wines the equivalent of Hollywood blockbusters or art-house films? And who gets to decide?
In the early 2000s, he recalls, he drank a syrah from the Rhone Valley in France with another sommelier. Like other Rhone wines, it impressed him less with its fruit flavor than with its hints at things that couldn’t possibly be in the wine: roasted meat, freshly turned soil. He liked how the wine felt in his mouth, crisp rather than weighty, and how the wine evolved as he drank it, one sip after the next. These, he knew, were hallmarks of bottlings from the finest regions of Europe. When he wondered aloud why similar wines weren’t made in California, the other sommelier said it simply wasn’t possible.
One of the best articles that I have read on the NYTimes pertaining to the Parker influenced American palate of wines. What's your flavor? I'm all for the unique flavors of each grape harvest from a specific field but once again, at what cost?
I went to a friend's dinner party and as always, personal taste and manners have always prevented me from showing up empty handed. So, off to the local wine store I went. Upon entering, lost in a sea of labels, I asked for a pair of great $25 bottles of wine thinking that sum would quanitfy my being but also provide an adequate pairing. Yea I know what you're thinking. As if I could have told you the difference between them and a $5 bottle I was just going to get taken by the owner. But, just because I couldn't taste the difference, there could have been that one wino that would have been judging / eye glaring at the labels I showed up with.
Essentitally, I didn't want to feel cheap, nor look cheap. I entered the party holding my head mid-level knowing that I went half the distance towards a good bottle and contributed to the drinks' table. Then I stumble onto this Slate article back from 2011.
There are plenty of reasons to go back to our 1990s habits, and to start using 15 bucks to buy four or five bottles instead of just one. Ernest Gallo, who, along with his brother Julio, popularized wine among the American masses, understood the psychology of wine better than anyone. He used to pour two glasses of wine for potential buyers, telling them that one sold for 5 cents, and the other for 10. According to Gallo, his guinea pigs invariably chose the more expensive option. What they didn’t know was that the two wines were exactly the same. Researchers have recently reproduced Gallo’s results, proving that our appreciation of a wine depends on how much we think it costs. If you can break yourself of this psychological quirk—or have your spouse lie to you about the cost of your wine—you’ll save a small fortune.
If hints of cassis, subtle earthiness, and jammy notes don’t interest you, you are not a lesser person. Wine is not art. There’s no reason to believe that aligning your tastes with those of a self-appointed elite will enrich your life, or make you more insightful or sensitive. If wine critics want to spend lavishly on the wine they like, that’s great. Leave them to their fun. Be grateful that you can gain just as much pleasure, if not more, without bankrupting yourself.
Hello $3 bottles!!! Now I know why my crashpad consistently stocks Charles Shaw! ^_^
Apple has long maintained that conversations over iMessage and FaceTime use end-to-end encryption, meaning “no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them,” as the company said after the PRISM revelations. That claim has turned out to be partly true: normally, Apple can’t read your iMessages, but they can if they really want to.
Google, on the other hand, has been mostly silent—there have been no boastful public statements—about the security of its popular Hangouts service, which can be used for both text-based as well as audio-video conversations. In its support documentation, Google simply says that “when you message or talk with someone on Hangouts, your information will be encrypted so that it’s secure,” but there’s no mention of end-to-end encryption.
via Motherboard
So...just to summarize, Google confirms that cops can and are wiretapping your hangouts. *delete* But I guess Facebook isn't necessarily safe either.
If you want to expand you knowledge on all the various illicit activities that the US Government has been doing, check out the blocked Snowden interview that the US Media failed to air and it still trying to block. Click here for the Axis of Logic.
“Every time you pick up a phone, dial a number, write an email, make a purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cell phone, swipe a card somewhere, you leave a trace, and the government has decided that it’s a good idea to collect it all, everything, even if you’ve never been suspected of a crime.”
From The New Yorkers' "Shopping at Anthropologies with Marie Kondo.
Discard any clothing that no longer sparks joy.
Passing a display of denim jeans and dark-blue chambray shirts, Kondo touched almost nothing. She said that she rarely wears pants because several years ago they stopped bringing her joy.
Maybe we’ll start seeing a decline in the shopping habits of women? Ya… right… A husband can wish ^_^
I'm currently finishing up her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing on my Kindle and I'll admit, I'm SUPER inspiried. Only 50% in, I'm giving this book a 10 our of 10! Go grab yourself a copy and tell me what you think.
Sheriff Chris Nocco said Thursday that Green logged onto the school's network on March 31 using an administrative-level password without permission. He then changed the background image on a teacher's computer to one showing two men kissing.
I probably would have put something else more light hearted. But being arrested? A little overboard. What do you think? And shockingly enough, the administrative password that were used at the school were teacher's last names?! That's just being smart in my book on the kid and very unsecure on their part.
via Tampa Bay Times
True, these days pilots spend only a short amount of time with their hands on the control column or stick. But that does not mean we aren’t controlling the airplane throughout the entire flight. Our hands might not be steering the airplane directly, as would have been the case in decades past, but almost everything the airplane does is commanded, one way or the other, by the crew. The automation only does what we tell it to do. On the 767 that I fly, there are multiple ways to set up and command any routine climb, descent or change of course. Meanwhile, more than 99 percent of landings, and a full 100 percent of takeoffs, are performed manually.
Exactly what I'd tell you when you ask me, "Isn't it always on autopilot anyways?" Great Op-Ed by Patrick Smith.
Is more sex before bed the answer to getting a good night's sleep? "Not only do I generally agree with that, but there is some good data to support it," says Nicole Prause, Ph.D., a top sex researcher at UCLA. "But, in all of the literature and research, we don’t know if it helps improve the quality of sleep. It's never been looked at. We just know that sex can get you to sleep and to get your brain off what it's ruminating about and that can lead to better sleep."
"There is one good study done in Germany that says when you have an orgasm, oxytocin and vasopressin both go high and they stay high for at least an hour. They did an experiment where they injected male rats with vasopressin and the rats immediately started yawning like crazy. It was actually really cute. This does show that orgasms—whether it's via sex with a partner or masturbation—can help you fall asleep faster."
Filing it under future reference. ^_^
Fernet what?
The easiest way to explain the taste is to imagine Jägermeister without the sugar. You shoot it, immediately getting a strong hit of mouthwash - drying the mouth out, stinging the tongue. Its kind of like getting hit in the nose. Your brain hurts, your eyes sting and water, you cough a bit. Then, as soon as it begins a warm wave of relief washes over and you are left baptized in Italian herbals and golf ball eyed awake.
Of course, The Atlantic called it a few years ago as the Liquour you're still not drinking. I'll admit it's been a while but it's because I'm not searching. Have you tried it lately?
I wrote this article a few months ago after first trying it in no other city than San Francisco but The Bold Italic just released an awesome infographic so I thought I'd finally publish.
And always, don't forget my recent post on Esquire's drinking recommendation. ^_^
