Pillaging

2012-04-23

1928: “This youngster has been under the raying of the ultra-violet mercury arc for nearly half an hour,” reads the back of this photo, “but seems none the less happy.” The image was used in the Mid-Week Pictorial on Aug. 18 to illustrate a treatment in Paris for children “suffering from rickets or other maladies common to city children unable to have the healing rays of the sun.” Photo: The New York Times

2012-04-10

So if you’re an Instagram user, you’ve been picking up on all of the cues about how important you are, how valuable you are to Instagram. Then along comes Facebook, the great alien presence that just hovers over our cities, year after year, as we wait and fear. You turn on the television and there it is, right above the Empire State Building, humming. And now a hole has opened up on its base and it has dumped a billion dollars into a public square — which turned out to not be public, but actually belongs to a few suddenly-very-rich dudes. You can’t blame users for becoming hooting primates when a giant spaceship dumps a billion dollars out of its money hole. It’s like the monolith in the movie 2001 appeared filled with candy and a sign on the front that said “NO CANDY FOR YOU.

— Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out — Daily Intel