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16 April 2002
Annoyance of the day: a chandelier recessed into a tray ceiling, with air conditioning vents “hidden” inside the tray. Predictable result: tinkling crystal throughout the speech.

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15 April 2002Apologetic spam: received one today which started with “Alright, alright you hate me already because I am in your inbox and you don’t know me. I’m sorry.” However could you have guessed?

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10 April 2002
Oops: failure to use Bcc results in yet another major media leak, this time about potential bidders for Global Crossing assets.

Received this completely random email at 13:48 today:
“Amy got the last seat, that bitch. I’m on the third floor, back corner, windows, but I’m sitting with someone. I could move to the tables on the second floor since I forgot my internet cord anway. Hope the tour was fun.”

Gripe and praise

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Quick gripe: spent too much of today hearing platitudes about gentrification, my own poster child of how the complexity of urban social, political, legal, and economic systems is manifested in sometimes random ways. Argh.

and I think I’ve written this earlier, but it bears repeating: fellow CTA commuters, you make for an attractive crowd! Surely far better than the car-bound, and probably better than those on the sidewalks.

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4 April 2002
What the hell? 4:55pm, Dearborn and Madison. I was racing by in the right lane, northbound on Dearborn, going through the green light. Pedestrians are waiting on the northwest corner. As I go by the corner — looking over my shoulder to merge left, since a bus is stopped in front of me, and a van is pulling up behind and on the left — a few pedestrians lean towards me and start shouting something. I can’t quite understand what’s going on; besides, I’m already in a highly precarious position, within seconds of running into something and frightened of getting killed in rush hour traffic. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, either. Why would someone endanger someone’s life like that? What do they gain from it?

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31 March 2002
1. Last week’s This American Life was the “hoaxes” one, the first which (in its description of someone who had a fake British accent as a teen) really caught my ear.

2. A pair of “follow the consumer good through the industrial capitalist system” articles in this week’s Times Magazine: beef and used clothes. “And yet the further you follow [the rational logic of industrializing agriculture], the more likely you are to wonder if that rational logic might not also be completely insane… how cheap, really, is cheap feedlot beef? Not cheap at all, when you add in the invisible costs.”

3. Other hidden costs: raising the cost of driving in NYC, to reflect the real costs of public space.

4. The advent of abusive spam: received an email today with the subject line “Stop Fu$%#ing around and fill it out.” Well then.