Links for March 27, 2022

🚚 $87.50 for 3 Minutes: Inside the Hot Market for Videos of Idling Trucks — NY Times

When trying to nudge behavior in a more environmentally-friendly direction, is a carrot or a stick better? As it turns out, you can use both: NYC is rewarding citizens for reporting idling trucks, to cut down on air pollution. One man has made $64,000 from the program:

This is a scene from the city’s benign-sounding but often raucous Citizens Air Complaint Program, a public health campaign that invites — and pays — people to report trucks that are parked and idling for more than three minutes, or one minute if outside a school. Those who report collect 25 percent of any fine against a truck by submitting a video just over 3 minutes in length that shows the engine is running and the name of the company on the door.

💎 Ceramic Mosaics Mend Cracked Sidewalks, Potholes, and Buildings in Vibrant Interventions by Ememem — Colossal

Throughout his home city of Lyon, Ememem is known as “the pavement surgeon.” The artist repairs gouged sidewalks and splintered facades with colorful mosaics that he describes as “a poem that everybody can read.” Intricate geometric motifs laid with pristine tiles hug the cracks and create “a memory notebook of the city. It reveals what happened, the life in these public places,” he tells Colossal. “Here cobblestones have been picked up and thrown. There a truck from the vegetable market tore off a piece of asphalt…”

The rest of Ememem's work is worth viewing, and a great reminder of the Japanese concept of Kintsugi.

🐦 An Interesting Tweet

These are the buttons from my wife's granddad's WW2 RAF uniform. When you put them together, they make a mini-compass, for use if you get shot down behind enemy lines (which he did). It's the most Q-Branch thing I've ever seen. pic.twitter.com/Cy30xtMTqR

— Paul Kirkley (@prkirkley) March 18, 2022