+ I only just stumbled upon Effed in Park Slope’s expose of the Atlantic Center Target, the worst Target on the planet. part 1 | part 2 | part 3

I can verify that this is indeed as bad as it looks in the video. It’s so badly mismanaged and understaffed. The lines at the checkout are usually so long that people just abandon their carts. It seems to me that Target would make enough money from one of those abandoned carts to pay the salary of another cashier, you know?

+ Passive Aggressive Notes find notes that are passive aggressive about typography.

+ Here’s a whiny “Those kids today!” article about how college kids are reading Twilight instead of the classics. I have a BA in English lit, so believe me, I’m on board with this rant to a point, although, I don’t remember doing a whole lot of recreational reading when I was in college. I had to read, on average, 3 books a week for my classes, so that didn’t leave a lot of time for other things, and when I did read extracurricular books, they were mostly fluffy things to contrast against the Serious Literature I had to read for class.

+ WTF, clothing retailers? Although my beef with this post is the comment about “average women” having larger waists. You know what? Can we just agree that clothes are not made for real women’s bodies and move along? Because, actually, finding pants that are big enough for my hips inevitably leaves me with pants that are too big in the waist, so speak for yourselves. But, still, it seems stupid that clothes stores are so adamant about not stocking bigger sizes.

+ Check out these Whirl Girls, chorines from 1921.

+ I mentioned that I recently got a Kindle. I think the advent of this Kindle and its competitors is starting to make ebooks more popular and accessible to the masses in easily-readable formats. So, is one advantage to ebooks the embarrassment factor? I mean, I read a lot of romance, and so much of it just has ridiculous cover art, and if I’m reading on the subway, I don’t want everyone judging my books by their covers, you know?

+ Blast from the Past: Battle of the Cartoon Girl Bands.

+ Corollary: I spent part of this weekend looking for a particular Smashing Pumpkins song, and then I just saw this commercial using a song that is so evocative of high school for me (I was a huge SP fan). So strange to hear the song in a different context.

Today is International Women’s Day.

Also, check out this great site put together by the New-York Historical Society: Brooklyn Revealed. Lots of old photos of Brooklyn and histories of the 6 original towns that made up what we now call the borough of Brooklyn. This photo of Eastern Parkway amazes me; the museum looks so lonely out there by itself! I wish I could find a contemporary photo from the same angle, but alas. I did find this postcard that shows all of the apartment buildings that have since been built across the street and here’s my photo of the museum.

I am apparently only good at posts full of links lately.

+ Gawker prepares for Watchman by looking at photos of New York in 1985.

+ I’ll have you know that I am a geek, thankyouverymuch.

+ Speaking of geekery, Jezebel ponders when it became uncool to be smart, citing a woman who won a quiz show in the UK.

+ The Girl Scouts are trying to modernize. Which is awesome. Although my life is sadly lacking in Girl Scout Cookies.

+ If you thought Monday was snowy, check out these photos from the blizzard of 1888. I’d guess we got almost a foot in my corner of Brooklyn on Monday, enough to inspire people to go cross-country skiing in prospect park.