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Archive for August, 2017

Made it past Boardwalk

Posted in Uncategorized on August 21, 2017| Leave a Comment »

IMG_20170821_181448771.jpg

I have wanted to make this sidewalk art for a long time. Ideally, it would be on the corner of our block and go up on International Tabletop Day. Even better would be if I decorate the whole square block with all the properties from Monopoly just like the board. But this first draft was fun to make in a few minutes. Here’s what I learned:

  1. Don’t leave sidewalk chalk in the sun. It fades. Hence red turns to pink.
  2. Old sidewalk is much worse and bumpier than new sidewalk that is smooth.
  3. Big blocky things are much easier to chalk draw than words.
  4. Outlining things in a dark color makes them stand out even more.
  5. Photography is a whole skill on its own (of course)! Proper lighting is really tricky and the camera doesn’t always see things the way our eye does.

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It must be a real treat to live with me

Posted in Ann Arbor, I am a jerk on August 9, 2017| Leave a Comment »

I saw this article on my local NPR station’s website the other day and realized this is the future of awful reporting. The headline was “Amazon will drain jobs from local economies” above this picture:

closing

The caption reinforces the headline: “…with layoffs in retail continuing, Amazon’s expansion to Michigan could drain jobs from local economies.” So the headline is about store closings and there is a picture of a closed store, so it’s already happening!

But I don’t even know what that is a picture of. Could it be the old Dumpling Astronaut by the highway that the Health Department closed? Is it the prong resale shop that couldn’t make it next to the national Prongery? Likewise, I don’t know when the picture was taken or whether it’s even in Michigan. The article has nothing to say about the picture so no one knows. It would be great if at least the caption said something like “Another mom-and-pop Freezee shop closed by the giant retailer Amazon last year.” The editor might as well have picked out a kitty or random clickbait celebrity image of Farrah as an illustration of how Amazon is squeezing out other retailers. A kitty would have just as much relation to the text as the picture that did run.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the information and I agree with the tone and the few facts that the it offers. But the sloppy way we read the news today goes hand in hand with the sloppy way we present it.

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