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Walk into any Japanese convenience store and you will always find a shelf dedicated to one item: onigiri. The onigiri, often translated as “rice ball”, literally means “grasping a fistful” and is in many ways Japan's original fast food, before fast food. Quick to
Every year, around March, a curious social custom occurs in Japanese families. Parents of kids entering elementary school visit the grandparents and gingerly tread the topic of buying the kids a very expensive item: a randoseru. And gingerly they must tread. The randoseru, a Japanese school bag, costs a whopping
Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-part article. Read Part 1 here. Part 1 Summary: Brother Industries built Takeru, the world's first software vending machine that let users download software from a server. While revolutionary, it wasn't as huge a success as
Editor’s Note: This article ends on a cliffhanger. The next part goes out in a week. I will start with an honest admission. I didn’t set out to write about the world’s first app store. I set out to write about Brother printers. But
Open your phone’s keyboard and go to the emojis. Scroll past the same five emojis you’ve used for years and see what others exist. You will soon see 🍡 🈸 🍙 and other weird-looking pictures. What the hell are these things, and why are they in
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Money makes it easy for people to lie to themselves, and to other people. None of the entrepreneurs who started Theranos, Nikola, Fast, Juicero, and WeWork would have gotten very far with what they were doing if they didn’t raise cash from investors. Cash can cover up all sorts of problems, or at the very […] The post Cash covers things up appeared first on Herbert Lui.
London's escalatoriest stations an FoI request last week which revealed all. We learnt that 89 stations maintained by London Underground have escalators, and we learned how many there are at each. Here's the Top 10. 1) BANK/MONUMENT (35 escalators) Also a lot of them are recent, like these escalators which were added during the expansion works related to the new Cannon Street entrance. They're numbered 29, 30 and 31, which just goes to show how many escalators there are. The FoI request only gives a total but if you go round with a pen and paper, or if you know where to look online, you can work out where they all go. 1-3: Bank junction to Central line 4-5: District line to Northern line 6-7: Lombard Street entrance 8-9: Northern line, north end 10-11: DLR west end (1991) 12-13: DLR east end (1991) 14-15: District line to DLR (1991) 16-19: Walbrook entrance to W&C (2018) 20-22: Northern line to DLR (2022) 23-25: Central line to Northern line (2022) 26-31: Cannon Street entrance to Northern line (2023) There were only 9 escalators in the good old days of the Bank/Monument 'escalator connection', as depicted on tube maps. Then the DLR came along upping the total to 15 and the most recent expansion more than doubled that to 31. 2) WATERLOO (26 escalators) There were 14 before the Jubilee line arrived in 1999 and that added another 10. Except that's not 26, we're two short. Again the discrepancy can be bridged by adding in the two travelators, convincing me that the TfL FoI operative has indeed included them too. It just goes to show that no matter how carefully you phrase an FoI request it can always be misinterpreted, or data can simply be churned out of a spreadsheet without it being what you wanted. Alas in this case it does matter because the third-placed station has 24 escalators too. 3) LIVERPOOL STREET (24 escalators) I think the top 3 really ought to go like this... 1) BANK/MONUMENT (31 escalators) 2=) WATERLOO (24 escalators) 2=) LIVERPOOL STREET/MOORGATE (24 escalators) And on we go. 4=) Canary Wharf [Jubilee] (20 escalators) 4=) Tottenham Court Road (20 escalators) 6=) Bond Street (19 escalators) 6=) King's Cross St Pancras (19 escalators) 8=) Canary Wharf [Elizabeth] (17 escalators) 8=) Westminster (17 escalators) 8=) London Bridge (17 escalators) Canary Wharf has a double labyrinth of escalators, 20 at the Jubilee line station and 17 more for Crossrail. It would take top place with 37 escalators if these stations were linked but they're not so it doesn't. Of the seven stations in this list three stations are served by the Elizabeth line and four by the Jubilee line, because newer lines tend to have a lot more escalators than older lines. For Top 10 purposes it's a shame that so many of these are joint placings. No station has 9 escalators, but every other number from 1 to 10 is present. (OK, actually the most common number of escalators is 0 - there are almost 200 of those) wooden escalator on the Underground, but in 2014 they removed that, replaced it with an incline lift and added a new non-wooden escalator. It remains London's least escalatory station. But this escalator is no longer there. Further escalator FoI facts The least used station with escalators: Wanstead The most used station without escalators: Finsbury Park The only zone 6 station with escalators: Heathrow Terminal 2,3 The number of escalators beyond zone 3: 12
People need time to learn. You and I are constantly in the role of a teacher, and in the role of a student. A teacher might go over a set of facts, an example, or a standard operating process once. That isn’t enough. Knowledge transfer happens over time, with application and practice. If you’re in […] The post Memory, reliability, trust, and confidence appeared first on Herbert Lui.
Some people who have a lot to offer the internet feel too much doubt to write and publish it. Ashley Willis wrote a great post about this. Even though I publish here every day, I identify with this group of people. I’ve written for over 1,000 days now. Sometimes, for me, it feels like the […] The post Talking myself away from the fear of being seen appeared first on Herbert Lui.
