{"id":1116,"date":"2006-09-15T06:58:51","date_gmt":"2006-09-15T11:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-2\/"},"modified":"2006-09-15T06:58:51","modified_gmt":"2006-09-15T11:58:51","slug":"unrequired-reading-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-2","title":{"rendered":"Unrequired Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve decided to make Unrequired Reading a regular post on Friday mornings. It’ll consist of the same stuff I was posting at random in the past few weeks. Which is to say, thanks to the miracle of RSS feeds, VM goofs around online so you don’t have to.<\/p>\n

As my friend Mitch put it, “You know you’ve bottomed out when Bobby Brown says you’re an unfit mother to his children.”<\/a><\/p>\n

(It’s Mother’s Day, not All Everybody Day!<\/a>)<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Here’s a slideshow about Jonathan Ive,<\/a> the design guru at Apple.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

10 Highly Pretentious Musical Instruments<\/a><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

You stay classy, Cleveland.<\/a><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

You are your Netflix Queue.<\/a><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Visiting Kandor?<\/a><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Firing tons of people — even Japanese people — does not automatically make you a success.<\/a> I can’t stress this enough. Restructuring by “cutting fat” is fine, but it doesn’t necessarily put a company in the position to succeed in the future. Carlos Ghosn is trying to stay ahead of the game by allying with an American automaker and firing a ton of people.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

A wide-ranging (by my lights) interview with U of Penn Architecture Department Chair Detlef Mertins<\/a>, author of a book on Mies van der Rohe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Paul Wolfowitz is running into trouble as president of the World Bank<\/a>, due to his policy of not lending money to corrupt regimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve decided to make Unrequired Reading a regular post on Friday mornings. It’ll consist of the same stuff I was posting at random in the past few weeks. Which is to say, thanks to the miracle of RSS feeds, VM goofs around online so you don’t have to. As my friend Mitch put it, “You … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Unrequired Reading”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25,22,27,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-art","category-big-business","category-travel","category-urban-issues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-i0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2528,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-sept-26-2008","url_meta":{"origin":1116,"position":0},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Sept. 26, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"September 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Unrequired Reading is off this week! All you get is this: Come back next week!","rel":"","context":"In \"zoidberg\"","block_context":{"text":"zoidberg","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/tag\/zoidberg"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3176,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/meta-unrequired-reading","url_meta":{"origin":1116,"position":1},"title":"Meta-Unrequired Reading","author":"Gil","date":"January 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Jason Kottke offers up his favorite posts of 2008. I only discovered his site recently, and realized it's like my Unrequired Reading section, but every day of the week. So I suck.","rel":"","context":"In \"kottke\"","block_context":{"text":"kottke","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/tag\/kottke"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4876,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-jan-22-2010","url_meta":{"origin":1116,"position":2},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Jan. 22, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"January 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"No Unrequired Reading for you this week! That's due less to my malaise, and more to my laptop being in the shop. It suffered the hinge-break that first-generation MacBook Air models are prone to (\"so take \/ this broken hinge . . .\"). Apple is replacing the monitor and hinge\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5814,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-dec-24-2010","url_meta":{"origin":1116,"position":3},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Dec. 24, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"December 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"No Unrequired Reading for you this week, dear readers! I'm on vacation! I'll have an extra-special edition for you next week, to close out 2010! Okay, okay. Just to give you something, here's the 3-D Yule Log.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1286,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-jan-12-2007","url_meta":{"origin":1116,"position":4},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Jan. 12, 2007","author":"Gil","date":"January 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's time for some post-birthday Unrequired Reading, dear unrequired readers! Christopher Hitchens \"reviews\" Ann Coulter. * * * Idiocracy is out on DVD. * * * An even-handed take on the mystery of how much oil is really remaining in the earth. * * * The zen of Jimmy Buffett.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2237,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-aug-15-2008","url_meta":{"origin":1116,"position":5},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Aug. 15, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"August 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"It's time for an all-architecture edition of Unrequired Reading! So if you don't care about this stuff, go visit the Unrequired Reading archives instead! Frank Gehry tries to justify his work. * * * Rem Koolhaas tries to justify his work. * * * Is Zaha Hadid's work past the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}