"New Yorkers say some terrible things about the subway - that they hate it, or are scared stiff of it, or that it deserves to go broke. ''I haven't been down there in years,'' is a common enough remark from a city dweller. Even people who ride it seem to agree that there is more original sin among subway passengers. And more desperation, too, making you think of choruses of ''O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark. ..."
→ Tunneling Below Second Avenue (NYTimes) [eng.]
"In Manhattan, where street traffic tends to stall, only one subway runs the length of the East Side. Every weekday, 1.3 million passengers — more than are carried in 24 hours by the transit systems of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco combined — cram onto the Lexington Avenue line. Yet the chaos above and below has inspired afeat: about 475 laborers are now removing 15 million cubic feet of rock and 6 million cubic feet of soil — more than half an Empire State Building by volume — out from under two miles of metropolis."
→ Way Down in the Hole - Slide Show (NYTimes) [eng.]
"In December 2016, a new tunnel will make its debut as a portion of the Second Avenue subway — the great failed track New York City has been postponing, restarting, debating, financing, definancing and otherwise meaning to get in the ground since 1929. Kim Tingley and Richard Barnes went underground to document the progress."
→ Argentina Offers Its Aging Writers a Little Security (NYTimes) [eng.]
"The city of Buenos Aires now gives pensions to published writers in a program that attempts to strengthen the “vertebral column of society,” as drafters of the law described their goal. Since its enactment recently, more than 80 writers have been awarded pensions, which can reach almost $900 a month, supplementing often meager retirement income."
→ Atlantic Plastic Gyre Science - Plastic Pollution in Oceans (Popular Mechanics) [eng.]
"A recently released 22-year-long study provides a clear look into the huge problem of plastic pollution in the Atlantic Ocean, but raises an important question: After it enters the water, where is it all going?"