581: Who civil servants are, 1800s Easter fashion, and why no audiotours?
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The weather has officially shifted to spring in NYC and everyone including the sun is out in the parks rejoicing! Hallelujah. Next week I’ll post this visit’s tips.
I gathered some friends to listen to artist Janet Cardiff’s 2004 guided audio walk through Central Park, and it was amazing to see how many activities and people she references then, still happening now in the same place (like skaters or traffic noises). Try it sometime if you’re in the city - it’s a wonderful way to experience the park on a nice day.
I wonder why this medium never took off (audio guides with music and geosync’ed info). Tourists the world over still pay college grads to walk them around giving the same spiel about the same spots in big cities - but there’s no winner in the online marketplace for this. Must be some invisible forces holding it back - maybe because with tour groups you can meet others?
Technology
Matter aims to dethrone Pocket as the read later app of choice. I’ll give it a try, although I don’t see much need to reinvent the wheel here as I’ve used Pocket to pocket things for this newsletter and myself for years without issue.
Candor is a webapp that has participants answer ‘I have, have you?’ style question cards and then matches people who answer similarly, for party games.
NYC people got tired of playing GeoGuessr worldwide and made a version with only their city, because of course it’s the only place that matters. :P
I may have posted this excellent webapp showcasing all the noises CDMX street vendors use to hawk their wares in Wheres Waldo style HTML before, but since I was just there recently it’s worth sharing again. Beautiful execution of the concept here.
Ideologies
Via the very first subscriber to this blog, Mom, this conversation between John Stewart and Michael Lewis about his new book exploring who are the nameless civil servants than run the US government was a fun one. Turns out many of them are quite efficient and effective, but our culture stigmatizes them because they chose to serve others rather than get rich. The guy they highlight for having figured out how to predict where shipwrecked or overboard people float to in order to rescue them faster is a fascinating one!
Memes
The Easter Bonnet parade happened last Sunday in NYC, as it has been happening since the 1800s. I didn’t make it out, but look at all the creativity on display in the ridiculous hats, for decades on end! How wonderful.
There’s some effect you can apply to audio to make it sound like its in the next room, so of course there’s entire YT playlists of vibey pop played from far away, in since closed retail stores like Toys R Us, to evoke nostalgia. It do be vibey though.