Madplanet

Heartland's waning fortunes

I worked in Roppongi Hills for a few years, which inevitably meant getting dragged into Heartland occasionally. Terrible place full of geeky Goldman VPs droning on to girls in party dresses about how many direct reports they had. It’s hardly surprising that the girls are steering clear now the investment banks’ glory years (and indeed their very existence, in the sense that they’ve become deposit-taking institutions and the 30% ROE days are gone) are over.

  JapanSoc

Not to be curmudgeonly, but I'd call this a case mod.

  JapanSoc

Unison Idea Studio

I really wanted to like Unison Idea Studio. In fact, I did, during the period where I’d ordered a couple of their Space Intruderz lamps and still believed they would show up.

It’s been five months since I sent them a PayPal payment. At first, I wasn’t especially worried about the delay since they’re clearly a small outfit, and getting behind schedule and not telling anyone about it is, sadly, SOP these days for harried startups. When I sent a couple of mails asking for an update Ibar Yensen Paez, UIS’s creative director, who’d responded when I first emailed them, replied fairly quickly and explained that the package would be shipping soon. Needless to say it never showed up.

(As an aside, I tried looking up both the company’s addresses, one in Chile and the other in Miami, on Google Maps today. Inconclusive. Chile unfortunately doesn’t have Street View, but the address (Cueto 500, Of. 502, Santiago Centro, Santiago) appears legitimate. The Miami address (7223 N.W. 43rd Street) seems from Google Street View to be a fairly industrial area, with rental lockups and storage; could be kosher, could not.)

In any case, after several more mails—none of which have been answered—to the company’s “info@” email address, plus one through their website form and one to Carlos Roberto Neira Andrade, Paez’s “partner” and the person to whom I sent the PayPal payment, I’m giving up. If you don’t want to be labelled a crook, then don’t act like one. These people are crooks, as far as I’m concerned, until proven otherwise. Having held onto my money for five months and then gone incommunicado, they deserve my suspicion far more than my trust.

Feel free to email me at aragoto [at] gmail [dot] com if you have any information about Unison Idea Studio or have had a similar experience.

  JapanSoc

The End

Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker, on the subprime meltdown. I think this is the most extensive and easily comprehensible account I’ve yet read.

  JapanSoc

Iran makes huge ostrich sandwich

How could this not be headline of the day?

  JapanSoc

The terrors of nail art

Nail art will rot your arms up to the elbow! Nail art will make seven-foot-long blue flames shoot out of your fingertips! is what you expect this article to reveal given its slightly hysterical lead-in; however, it actually turns out to be total fark on what must have been a painfully slow news day. Its key statistic is also its downfall; the fact that 38 people have reported some kind of trouble caused by nail art in the last ten years is hardly cause for alarm. More people have probably eviscerated themselves in tragic running-with-chopsticks accidents during the same period.

  JapanSoc