If you went to Carnival in Trinidad last weekend, please send pics immediately. The rest of us will have to sun ourselves with Soca playlists. This year’s crop is excellent, but to focus on one of a zillion, Bunji Garlin’s “Looking for China” is SUCH a bop. Buoyed by steel drum, it chips forward as Garlin bellows the title of the song between verses. If you tune in to the lyrics but also turn down your ear precision just a little, you’ll learn that Garlin isn’t “looking for China” so much as engaging in an activity that rhymes with it. Sit with that for a minute (or dance, which is more appropriate).
As a chilled-out counterpoint, also check out Wayne T’s Gyal What You Want, produced for this year’s celebrations by my old neighbor, Marcelino.
Did everyone see this feel-gooder on Medium about how Google hacks employees’ lunchtime habits? If you can believe it, they give people small plates and place vegetables FIRST in the lineup so there’s less space for things like meat and dessert. Oh, and they recently put the snacks further away from the break-room coffee machines so people won’t be tempted to chew while they brew. While none of this is revolutionary, it is rare to see at scale, and Google has the luxury (data) of having proven that it works. If only the government could build a market-leading search engine that makes enough money to fund café engineers.
Stepping out of the lunch line for a moment, some actually surprising news is that Google Maps seems to be moving lines of disputed territories based on where you’re viewing them. In Morocco, for example, you can’t see the line designating the Western Sahara, an indigenous-occupied region that sees itself as independent. From Russia, Crimea is displayed as a part of the country, but it’s marked as contested when viewed from Ukraine. From Iran, you see the “Persian Gulf,” which is labeled the “Arabian Gulf” in Saudi Arabia. So, um, why? The Washington Post reports that there isn’t a clear system in place on the team for drawing these borders, so their final selections tend to be best guesses based on history, current laws, and the opinions of both lawmakers and— why not— Google executives. Put that on your plate!
Looking to not use Google some of the time? If you work with images, check out this sweet new Drive alternative called Air, an asset collaboration platform that lets you work on projects in real time with your colleagues. Once you upload visual files, you can organize, comment, and share while others view or comment alongside you. And the platform is way easier to navigate than Drive or Dropbox: an open layout leads with visuals rather than file names, and hover preview means you avoid clicking through folders to find stuff. The best thing is that everyone has access all the time, which means you always know the status of projects and never have to bug anybody for files. If this sounds like a good thing for your team, learn more and get started here. (You’ll be in good company; Thrillist, The Infatuation, and Industrious all use it already.)
