Super Punch

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Link roundup

1. The US Coast Guard remembers Dodger phenom Yasiel Puig's early failed attempts to flee Cuba for America:

One night, the gravity of the situation depressed Puig. Torres could tell the toll his impending return to Cuba was taking, so he went to his locker and retrieved a pair of tennis balls. He brought them to Puig, along with a Sharpie, and asked him to sign.

Carlos Torres was the first American to get Yasiel Puig's autograph, looped in perfect cursive with his number for Cienfuegos: "Y Puig 14."

Almost two weeks after the Vigilant interdicted Puig's boat, it parked just outside of Cuban water space. Cuba was sending a boat to bring the migrants home. The Coasties thanked them for their conversation, their companionship, their attitude, their appreciation – for understanding this wasn't personal but a policy implemented more than half a century earlier, when the world was a different place. Puig and his friends gathered their belongings and walked toward the ladder. For some migrants, it is the last glimpse they’ll ever get of something American.

"I remember as they were leaving, I said [to Puig], 'Are we going to see you again?' " Hoschak said. “He just smiled."

2. The Mall of America to double in size. A $2.5 billion expansion is planned.

3. "Algae creates a giant green obstacle for Chinese beachgoers."

4. "This comically large shotgun was once used for hunting ducks."

Link roundup

1. Advertising:

Sony is shipping its Bravia X9 line of 4K TVs in the UK this week, and it wants to convey the advantages of all those extra pixels. The solution? Advertising that's as finely detailed as the screens themselves. It's putting micro ads on the fingernails and uniform of tennis player Anne Keothavong as she makes her way through Wimbledon, showing how the extra detail pays off.

2. "For reasons of being incredibly poisonous, expensive, or just involving way too many snails, here are five pigments that have disappeared from art."

3. "Police in Lower Merion Township (the 5th highest-earning community in America) have just accused husband and wife luxury real estate duo Jonathan and Andrea Straub of planting dead mice and snakes in the driveway of their next door neighbor’s $1 million home in an effort to sabotage its sale."