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Building in public 👉 github repo / changelog

IGA fail commercial

I saw this commercial for IGA air during the 2nd Stanley Cup playoff game. I’m pretty sure the kid says “fail” at the end. It has to be one of the most mainstream applications of the fail meme that I’ve seen. There’s also a French version of the commercial.

Update: I realized after the post, that it was a certain kind of mainstream. Honestly, there’s a relatively small Anglo population watching CBC in Montreal, but the commercial aired… so a reasonable number of people must have seen it.

Rejection hurts

Researchers at the University of Michigan have found that rejection hurts, and not just in a metaphorical sense. The study found that “social rejection shares somatosensory representations with physical pain” (via nyt). Maybe artists, musicians and poets have been on to something all of these years.

Algorithmic pricing

Michael Eisen found a good example of algorithmic pricing on Amazon which resulted in two booksellers pricing a book on fly genetics at almost $24 million (via yewknee).

On the day we discovered the million dollar prices, the copy offered by bordeebook was 1.270589 times the price of the copy offered by profnath. And now the bordeebook copy was 1.270589 times profnath again. So clearly at least one of the sellers was setting their price algorithmically in response to changes in the other’s price. I continued to watch carefully and the full pattern emerged.

Once a day profnath set their price to be 0.9983 times bordeebook’s price. The prices would remain close for several hours, until bordeebook “noticed” profnath’s change and elevated their price to 1.270589 times profnath’s higher price. The pattern continued perfectly for the next week.

I’m waiting for the algorithmic pricing that messes up in the other direction and nets me a Gutenberg bible for pocket change.

Bauhaus Dessau identity

Bauhaus Dessau identity sample by HORT

I’m a fan of the new identity for Bauhaus Dessau, created by HORT.

We thought a generic design would work best in order to make this distinction. The new identity was created by using strict typography, a minimalist layout, standardised formats and no colour. Being the most generic and incidental typeface, Courier was selected as the new corporate font. To guarantee a unique identity we changed the capital “A” of Courier according to Herbert Bayer’s well-known logo on the front of the Bauhaus Dessau building.

The identity also makes use of Arial, presumably due to its prevalence on most machines.