Mike Arauz's Blog – The Archives

I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday weekend. Thanks for reading my blog!

These are a few of my favorite links, pictures, and videos from the past week on my Tumblr blog.

This article from the New York Times got me thinking about why we choose to like or dislike certain cultural artifacts.

The “Napoleon Dynamite” problem is driving Len Bertoni crazy. Bertoni is a 51-year-old “semiretired” computer scientist who lives an hour outside Pittsburgh. In the spring of 2007, his sister-in-law e-mailed him an intriguing bit of news: Netflix, the Web-based DVD-rental company, was holding a contest to try to improve Cinematch, its “recommendation engine.” The prize: $1 million. It is, Bertoni and others have discovered, maddeningly hard to determine how much people will like [Napoleon Dynamite]. When Bertoni runs his algorithms on regular hits like “Lethal Weapon” or “Miss Congeniality” and tries to predict how any given Netflix user will rate them, he’s usually within eight-tenths of a star. But with films like “Napoleon Dynamite,” he’s off by an average of 1.2 stars.

Dezeen posted some amazing photos of the Tokujin Yoshioka installation at the Moore Building in the Miami Design District.


Faris posted a healthy reminder about how "viral" really works.

What we mean when something goes 'viral' is that LOTS OF PEOPLE CHOOSE TO PROPAGATE IT. It requires people to do something. Voluntarily. For their own reasons. It is not simply a new way to broadcast our messages through populations. It suggests we push, when in fact they pull.

George Eastman House has added 50 incredible shots of street photography from 1960s New York City by James Jowers to Flickr's Creative Commons Collection.

St. Marks Place


Ave A and Eeast 7 St.


Waverly Place