
How to dump 3000 pounds of confetti on Times Square - celias
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/nyregion/how-to-dump-3000-pounds-of-confetti-on-times-square.html
======
Johnny555
"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
It's fitting that the man who's job it is to throw a ton of confetti is
immensely self congratulatory.

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spullara
If 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/timessquarenewy...](https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2018/01/timessquarenewyearseve2018austinpazflynyon-5.jpg)

~~~
complector
This 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.

~~~
spullara
I 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...

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shivaas
opened 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
Geeez, spoiler alert :)

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unixhero
Welp. 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
Oh, 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-...](https://gizmodo.com/ask-the-project-manager-for-cleveland-s-
crazy-balloonf-1566255102)

------
Timucin
/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...

~~~
Roedou
What are they wasting? Per the article, this is material that was already
destined for the trash.

And now a million people get to enjoy it as an enhancement to their evening.

~~~
drb91
Right, but at the cost of throwing waste on the ground. I’m not arguing that
it is harmful (i’d imagine it biodegrades pretty easily) but it seems flippant
to me to assume zero impact.

~~~
dymk
Why do we enjoy fireworks? Party poppers? Potato canons? Streamers? Tinsel on
Christmas trees?

It's fun and pretty, and sanitation apparently has no problems cleaning it all
up afterwards.

~~~
drb91
This would come off as meaningful if you didn’t dismiss the environmental
impact without even acknowledging its existence. I am not against celebrations
like these _so long as you can acknowledge their impact_.... sanitation
workers are not responsible for our actions, regardless of how content they
are to clean the visible impacts from the streets.

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factsaresacred
> the hard-core among them wearing diapers so as not to lose their spots

Humans are strange.

~~~
obmelvin
What 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

------
nimbius
quite 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.

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xfitm3
[https://outline.com/HgZwLt](https://outline.com/HgZwLt)

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lostgame
Any chance of a non-paywalled version? Not sure why paywalled links keep
popping up on HN.

~~~
hahamrfunnyguy
Open in an incognito window and you're golden.

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edwinjm
For the rest of the world using the metric system: that's 1361 kilo.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Off 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

~~~
AznHisoka
as a programmer, I would love it even more if everyone adopted the same date
format. Makes date parsing a lot easier.

~~~
mhh__
Specifically, the ISO one (YYYY/MM/DD)

------
person_of_color
Is it biodegradable?

~~~
Artemis2
> The confetti thrown at midnight is made from recycled material that would
> otherwise be discarded, and all of it is biodegradable.

~~~
culot
Biodegradable 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?

~~~
dymk
throw a piece of paper in a mulch bin with some worms and a carrot, it'll be
gone in less than a month

~~~
samstave
How many worms and carrots are trapsing around the streets of manhattan?

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cauldron
And 30,000 pounds of other nondegradable plastic garbage.

~~~
nagVenkat
The articles says that the confetti is biodegradable

~~~
manicdee
The 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
To keep the cleaners busy, so they have a job and can feed their families.
Isn't that a good enough point?

~~~
AnaniasAnanas
Better 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.

~~~
arthurfm
> Better idea: pay the cleaners anyway and let them stay home without
> littering in public.

There are about 200 unemployed New York subway construction workers who would
love a job where they get paid to do nothing.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-
construction-costs.html)

 __ _An accountant discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for
new train platforms under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.

The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the
platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the
Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs
that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials
could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there.

“Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,” said
Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York. The
workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how long
they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000
every day.”_ __

~~~
PakG1
Wow, a thousand a day? Is that full wages, or does it include benefits? Even
if it did include benefits, $1,000/day all-in is not exactly chump change.
Universal income would not pay them $1,000/day.

~~~
user5994461
That should be full costs, probably paid to a subcontracting company.

~~~
lostlogin
Are you implying that it wasn’t going to a worker, that it was just fraud?

~~~
user5994461
I'm implying that workers are often employed temporarily though a
subcontracting agency, rather than being in a permanent role. The daily costs
is fully inclusive.

Both companies should keep track of what resources are assigned where and paid
for.

~~~
PakG1
Which makes sense, but if true, quote in OP article would be vastly inaccurate
and changes everything.

------
Scoundreller
> 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
Wow, 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.

