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(Via Dirty Tackle:  Mexican club replace players’ names with Twitter handles on shirts .)

Mexican soccer club Jaguares has replaced player names on the backs of their shirts with Twitter handles that promote both the player and shirt sponsor, Sol beer. As Dirty Tackle explains:

In a bid to get its players (and beer sponsor) a few more followers, the club — which was founded in 2002 — replaced the players’ names on the back of its shirts with each players’ individul Twitter handle. The club also colored the lettering on the orange home shirts in a Twitter teal (or blue…whatever) along with the social networking site’s bird logo.

Now, I love soccer and I love Twitter, but this is a bit much for me. The fact is, a lot of Mexican club shirts are so chock full of sponsors that they basically could be mistaken for NASCAR cars. Adding Twitter handles to this trend — well, it’s just jumping the shark.

It is interesting how enamored people, especially those in the sports world, are with promoting their twitter accounts, but aren’t similarly obsessed with promoting their Facebook accounts. This, despite the fact that Facebook has over seven times the monthly active users that Twitter does. This probably has a lot to do with the default public nature of Twitter, versus the default private nature of Facebook.

Despite the fact that Facebook has developed some pretty great settings to allow users to easily maintain robust and separate public and private profiles on Facebook, this use doesn’t seem to have gotten widespread attention yet. For now, and for the foreseeable future, individuals seem to view Twitter as their public mechanism for sharing content and information, while Facebook is a private means of sharing content and information. Of course this only applies to individuals, it’s now SOP to use both channels to market an organization.

Arcade: The Last Night at Chinatown Fair Trailer from Kurt Vincent on Vimeo.

To paraphrase Heart of Darkness, “The printed page, he dead.” Yesterday, Amazon announced that kindle books are now the most popular book format on Amazon.com. “Today,” the obit reads, “less than four years after introducing Kindle books, Amazon.com customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all print books – hardcover and paperback – combined.”

Also dead: The arcade in New York City. Above is the trailer for Arcade, a documentary that explores Chinatown Fair during its last week in operation. The arcade closed after being in operation for over 50 years. The director is running a Kickstarter campaign to get funding and has already exceeded his goal. But I’m sure he’d appreciate the extra investment.

It seems we are all staring into screens a lone right now.

In the world of sport — and signs of the Apocalypse — Italian soccer giants AS Roma, are apparently sniffing around all sorts of American players with EU passports. No Short Corners has all the speculation a man could want on this subject. Current rumored targets include defenders Timothy Chandler or Eric Lichaj. Also, he quotes Yoda, so that’s pretty bad-ass.

In political news, John Huntsman, the only sane Republican candidate for President that I’ve run across, is getting raked over the coals by his increasingly bat-shit crazy party for saying that scientists might know what they’re talking about. Huntsman’s crime? Telling Time that we should listen to the overwhelming majority of scientists who tell us that climate change is real and happening now.

Need something to do on a rainy Saturday? Try Pitch, the board game of graphic design — or, Pictionary for people with dark-rimmed glasses and Apple fetishes.

Speaking of Apple fetishes, liking Apple products apparently triggers the same parts of the brain in Macheads as Dieties do for the devout. No surprise there.

Finally today, Puma has taken a big step forward in thinking on corporate sustainability, announcing it will put a value on the environmental services it uses to produce its shoes. This sounds super wonky, and in many ways it is, but basically means that Puma will now account for environmental degradation when it tallies up the bottom line. From The Guardian: “Puma has published an economic valuation of the environmental impacts caused by greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and water consumption along its entire supply chain and has committed to the more difficult task of integrating both its social and economic impacts.”

Engadget points to the latest plan to to air condition stadiums at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which essentially consists of creating giant remote-controlled, solar-powered drone clouds that will fly over stadiums to cool players and fans alike. (And, no doubt, carry massive advertisements.)

I will admit that I am still bitter that the US lost the 2022 bid to Qatar, but this kind of excess and whiz-bangery is simply not good for the sport and not good for the World Cup. My fear for 2022 is that design excess — exemplified by these types of gimmicks — will turn the World Cup into a futuristic World’s Fair where design, technology and the lavish spending that can accompany both will take precedent over the play on the field.

Plus, what if these machine clouds come crashing down and take out the Italian side? Now that would be a real shame…