Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

  file photo of Joe Hahn, Linkin Park being carted to a stage What do bands do for disasters? They play Live Aid or Farm Aid or even make an album called Hearin’ Aid. Yet, the two bands, Linkin Park and B’z did something different, they crowd sourced money for donations. They asked people to round up money $500 per person (and they could get it from others as well) and they’d play a show to a small crowd which numbered 1000 people and raised reportedly $350,000. Some of you might think that’s nothing for a band that can make millions… yet imagine a show, their shows requires an army to work it, which includes transport, flights, and tons of back room coordination from the suits. There’s PR and more. Imagine, 350k is just the crowd sourcing, but their expenses might be another 100k or more and then there’s the band B’z from Japan. That said, 350k is great for an intimate show and the recovery goes on. (Mainichi – Linkin Park)
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  The typewriter factories no longer exist, but repairs and usage continues in India. Power doesn’t exist for a huge population, and that doesn’t mean they’re illiterate. Typing manually is still a feeling that’s hard to explain. One the one hand, mistakes are not easily corrected. Huge shifts of paragraphs can’t be done on the fly. A page needs to be reworked, first manually with pencil or pen, then a retyping after retyping until you finally get the final product. In India, repairs are being done on the machines, and there’s plenty of them of all vintages in circulation. (LA Times – typewriters in India)      
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I test drove a the new Scion iQ as a part of an intimate blogger gathering of 24 writers. A disclaimer in the second sentence: Are each of us writing something and it’s being tracked by big the disciples of Big Japanese Brother, Toyota? Perhaps. It’s no secret that Giant Robot has done projects with many branches of Toyota. From the Matrix, Yaris and yes the Scion, we’ve been patronized by the world’s largest car company many times. Naturally, reaching out to us makes sense.

The Scion iQ is part of a global movement to be efficient, fun and smarter. That’s what I got out of the half day symposium.

It’s nearly a shame that the Smart Car brought the word “smart” and car together in a strange marriage that eventually was revealed to be an unhealthy relationship. The two co-exist conceptually as a brilliant plan – the DNA of a small footprint and the magic of low price should have birthed something desirable. Maybe it was too early and maybe the needs of the adopters from the Smart orphanages weren’t met. You hardly see these on the road and I’ve heard nothing but complaints.

 

 

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  It’s always an honor when an article I write is good enough to get to the Discover Nikkei site. The 99 Years No Ai piece (no pirate pun here) made it. It’s been merely a three year drought. Discover Nikkei is via the Japanese American National Museum. Yes, I’ve worked on Two Biennale exhibitions, the Zen Garage, and other projects, so nepotism doesn’t work there, so I’m hoping I did a decent job with it.
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Lillie and Sasha! That’s Lillie with a baby dog. Sasha who’s semi camera shy is blurred in yellow, but visible below. The last day was a small event at gr/eats and aside food, and cake, there was arm wrestling. You never know what happens at a GR event. We bid them farewell.

 

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