If you open one link today, make it this one from Five Thirty Eight. The minisite chronicles the more than 33,000 gun deaths in America in the past year and breaks down the number into digestible portions by race, gender, and type. Heavy stuff.
Portrait of an elderly woman living alone in Chinatown
The Atlantic recently posted this incredibly heartbreaking video story about an elderly woman living alone in NYC Chinatown. I often see people similar to this lady in Chinatown, all on their own and sometimes I wonder what their story is. I wonder if they have family. If they have work to go to. If they need company late at night. I feel for these people because I know how lonely it can get in NYC sometimes being an American and here is a portrait of somebody who immigrated here for a better life in what I perceive to be less than stellar circumstances.
But of course, I can make up all the stories I want but I'll never really know these people unless I take the time to know who they are. That's what Mantai Chow did here with this sweet old lady.
The video ends rather tragically, but I have good news to report: SHE IS CONFIRMED TO BE ALIVE AND STILL IN CHINATOWN.
The Squarespace bug that didn't allow me to make any posts
Uh, so you're probably wondering why the last few days were a bit silent around here. Somehow, through some exact special combination of buttons, I managed to unearth a bug in Squarespace that has never been seen before. No support ticket or forum posts on the topic and even Squarespace engineers seemed baffled at how this bug was messing with my site.
So if you're interested in how I troubleshooted this, read along.
So there were two problems with my site. The first, was that for some reason, the Previous and Next navigation buttons at the bottom of my blog disappeared. I hadn't changed any code or anything. They just vanished. But at the same time that I noticed this, I also noticed a rogue post in my admin section that had no title and was also published, and yet it didn't appear on my site at all as the most recent post (as the timestamp indicated it should). Odd. I couldn't edit the post or delete it. And every time I tried to open it to edit it, I got a message that said Squarespace couldn't find the missing link or something.
I wasn't sure if the two were related so I opened support tickets with Squarespace on the issues and nobody seemed to have a fix except to start a new blog, move all the posts over to it, and delete the blog you are reading now. Not a very hard thing to do, but I didn't really want to go through the trouble.
I knew that the post in question that seemed to linger in purgatory on my Squarespace account was originally drafted on my mobile device. So I tried to delete it there as well. No luck. Then I noticed that anytime I made a draft on my mobile device to my account, the same issue happened on my web browser where the post would be missing stuff and not be able to be deleted. Very weird.
So against the requests of Squarespace engineers, I created a new blog but instead of moving all the good posts over, I just moved the bad posts over. Then I deleted that new blog, including the bad posts that were wreaking havoc on my site, and the issue was resolved. And my navigation buttons came back.
So without being a programmer or engineer, I'm assuming that the issue stems from their latest mobile app update. Hopefully this helps somebody in the same situation. Really messed me up for a few days.
Losing The Signal: The rise and fall of BlackBerry
I'm going through this book quite quickly. I started Losing The Signal a little late for this month (it's my July book) but already I'm speeding right along, thanks mostly in part to the phenomenal storytelling and writing. The book revisits all of the spectacular coincidences that founded RIM (BlackBerry's parent company) and how the mobile device maker ushered in the era of data on mobile devices for consumers.
A really great book so far and hopefully one that I'll finish on time if it keeps up!
Urban Outfitters on W. 100th Street
Broadway and W. 100th Street. Best looking exterior for an Urban Outfitters.
Meet Rocky the Alaskan Malamute
Meet Rocky. Or maybe Rocket. We aren't 100% sure yet. But he's a dog. A huge 6-month old pure-bred Alaskan Malamute. Did I mention he's huge? Yes, I think I did. Let me mention that again. He's BIG. Like, think of the largest car you can imagine. Then think of that car as a limo. That's how big this dog is. And he's only 6 months old! Oh, what fun he will be when he becomes a full dog. TRANSFORM YOU MIGHTY BEAST!