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How to dump 3000 pounds of confetti on Times Square
- lostgame 8y agoAny chance of a non-paywalled version? Not sure why paywalled links keep popping up on HN.
- Scoundreller 8y ago? It's NY Times. Unless you're viewing > several articles per month (per browser install...), there's no paywall.
- hahamrfunnyguy 8y agoOpen in an incognito window and you're golden.
- Scoundreller 8y ago> January 1: Applications go out for next year’s Confetti Crew. (Mr. Heining calls the volunteers “dispersal engineers.”) Though he says that 50 people would be enough, he enlists twice that number in order to give more people the opportunity. With free and unvalued labour.
- culot 8y agoWow, that guy is really something. Turn dumping trash in public into profit, get others to volunteer to do the work, charging the people the entire time, for both the dispersal and the cleanup, all the while claiming his trash dumping is a powerful deterrent to crime. Master scammer.
- nimbius 8y agoquite simple really. 1. dump a large pile of confetti in Times Square. 2. Argue the second law of thermodynamics until the ball drops. 3. Watch as the American Journal of Physics grudgingly publishes your paper with a long-winded preface on just how aggravating your approach made parking that year. 4. Win a sanitation award. 5. Spend the rest of your days running from the reanimated corpse of Max Planck.
- Johnny555 8y ago"The confetti drop started in 1992, when it was intended to lighten up the tone of the event. “Up until that point, it had just been a drunken brawl,” said Treb Heining, who managed the confetti that first year and has been doing it ever since. “It was so seedy.”" I think they are attributing too much to confetti -- how does one minute of dropping paper at the end of the event transform an hours long event to something less seedy? I think the big push to clean up the Times Square area that started around then is the real reason the event became less seedy.
- gentaro 8y agoIt's fitting that the man who's job it is to throw a ton of confetti is immensely self congratulatory.
- xfitm3 8y agohttps://outline.com/HgZwLt https://outline.com/HgZwLt
- spullara 8y agoIf you have ever thought about waiting in Times Square for midnight I highly recommend against it. It is hard to see from the TV PoV but you are all in small, square roped off areas in the middle of the street. You can't leave for the entire night and you need to get there by around 5pm to even be close to the festivities. We left at around 7pm and got our hotel concierge to find us a nice place to eat. Far preferable. You can kind of see how controlled it is in this photo: https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2018/01/timessquarenewyearseve2018austinpazflynyon-5.jpg https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2018/01/timessquarenewy...
- mikepurvis 8y agoI had this experience as well about ten years ago, arriving in NYC on my own a few days before new year for an internship— the idea of being sealed in there for such a long period was kind of terrifying so I ended up going elsewhere.
- complector 8y agoThis may come as a surprise to you, but some people actually like the kind of experience you’ve described. Probably difficult to imagine why, especially for people who don’t expect this from crowded city events. Some people like it like that.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- spullara 8y agoI kind of wished it was more crowded. Instead people were in what were basically cages and the police / organizers were walking around in the empty space between them. Makes sense from a safety perspective but isn't like typical crowded places. The pens weren't even completely filled...
- op00to 8y agoI've gone (as a college student in the 00s) and had a blast. I wouldn't do it now because I'm lazy, but back when I had a lot of energy it was fun. I went with a good group of people, made friends with the revelers, shop keepers (and police!) around us.
- edwinjm 8y agoFor the rest of the world using the metric system: that's 1361 kilo.
- markdown 8y ago1.3 tonnes.
- static_noise 8y agoOr about 3 horses.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoOff topic: Can't we all, just get along and adopt the metric system? It's so weird, a bushel, used for grains etc., doesn't weigh the same https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel#Weight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel#Weight . Use the metric system and be done with it. Or even the pound /lbs but get rid of cups, pints, teaspoons etc
- shivaas 8y agoopened the article expecting to read a wide array of tech and coordinated pyrotechnic systems used to disperse the confetti, but at the end of the day, good old human power and simple coordination does the trick. always amazed at how simple systems & processes can be magical.
- yaleman 8y agoGeeez, spoiler alert :)
- person_of_color 8y agoIs it biodegradable?
- Artemis2 8y ago> The confetti thrown at midnight is made from recycled material that would otherwise be discarded, and all of it is biodegradable.
- culot 8y agoBiodegradable on what time frame? Isn't everything biodegradable given enough time? Is there an official definition on what time frame of biodegradability allows something to be legally declared 'biodegradable'? (Looking into this now, fascinating!) If there's no reasonable legal definition of biodegradable, then isn't that label useless?
- cauldron 8y agoAnd 30,000 pounds of other nondegradable plastic garbage.
- nagVenkat 8y agoThe articles says that the confetti is biodegradable
- manicdee 8y agoThe article also says 3000 pounds of confetti. The article makes no mention of the other garbage the accumulates as a bypoduct of this event, much of which is not biodegradable. What is the point of dumping this garbage in the street?
- qha 8y agoTo keep the cleaners busy, so they have a job and can feed their families. Isn't that a good enough point?
- KozmoNau7 8y agoNo. It's a net waste of resources, and ultimately a pointless exercise in doing work for nothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
- AnaniasAnanas 8y agoBetter idea: pay the cleaners anyway and let them stay home without littering in public. Alternative: do not pay the cleaners if they can't do enough useful work (without artificially increasing it for no gain) - their wage comes from the taxpayers after all (I presume) who pay them in order to get a specific work done, not for charity.
- vkou 8y agoMost of the garabge they are cleaning up isn't confetti. It's people throwing their wrappers/bottles on the ground because they can't/won't get to a garbage can.
- factsaresacred 8y ago> the hard-core among them wearing diapers so as not to lose their spots Humans are strange.
- obmelvin 8y agoWhat I've heard from friends is that diapers are close to necessary because of how packed it is and due to being effectively locked in for safety
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Timucin 8y ago/gif but why? I understand how this entertains people momentarily but I still don't understand why people are choosing to waste this much in general...
- KozmoNau7 8y ago"Because they can" is the short answer. As long as there are no direct personal consequences from type of needless waste, a large segment of the population will just keep on doing it. They'll be dead long before the consequences hit, after all. Edit: However, it should be noted that the confetti is made from waste paper and is biodegradable. I still think it could be put to a better use, but it's not like they're dumping a load of plastic on the streets. That still leaves 57 tons of trash that isn't recycled, though. What a waste.
- zappo2938 8y agoThe explained the reason in the article. In order to transform the Time Square NYE celebration from a violent dangerous drunken brawl complete with hookers and cocaine from the dealers on 'eighth and forty - deuce' they started dropping the confetti to make the experience a lot more fun.
- culot 8y agoMaybe the police should consider dropping confetti on rioters? Maybe implement in clubs and bars? The solution to world peace: confetti. Who knew. :P > More than 100 sanitation workers begin their eight-hour shifts. Using street sweepers, backpack blowers, and push brooms, they will remove the 57 tons of material that’s left behind This is actually disgusting. I think the idea that dropping confetti prevents violence, or that it was responsible for the drop in violence the article attributes to it, seems silly. It sounds like they are just trying to justify the massive expense and waste associated with this reckless behavior. Of course the owner of the company who gets paid mad money to dump trash on the public is going to tout his works as transformative and important. Does his company also pay for the 100 sanitation workers to clean up his mess? Or do the people foot the bill for both the dumping of the trash and the cleanup?
- unixhero 8y agoWelp. Pretty much as dumb as the Cleveland Balloon event[0]. I think it is funny as hell, but incredibly dumb, yes. "Cleveland, WE DID IT! YEEEAH". [0] https://youtu.be/n0CT8zrw6lw https://youtu.be/n0CT8zrw6lw
- Scoundreller 8y agoOh, I didn't get the connection, but the same guy made/planned the balloons for that event: https://gizmodo.com/ask-the-project-manager-for-cleveland-s-crazy-balloonf-1566255102 https://gizmodo.com/ask-the-project-manager-for-cleveland-s-...