March 2011
47 posts
James Murphy in 2005 on Culture Proliferation
Thing is, mass culture is just so tremendously bad, and underground culture is so tremendously underground, that it’s very hard for bands to be really good. There’s just so much more to know. Like when I was a kid, there wasn’t that much to know. 1985. You had 60s rock, whatever. Easy to get your head around, unless you really wanted to get into, like, Gong. But there were fewer...
““Win the Future” is about re-imagining human life as the worst...”
– Lose the Future « Easily Distracted (via ayjay)
Any hopes I might have had of ever writing the definitive screed against the “Win the Future” mentality have been dashed. This is great.
The Wire as Victorian Serial
The Wire began syndication in 1846, and was published in 60 installments over the course of six years. Each installment was 30 pages, featuring covers and illustrations by Baxter “Bubz” Black, and selling for one shilling each. After the final installment, The Wire became available in a five volume set, departing from the traditional three.
I’m going to like this.
“Lack of corporate sponsorship has to be among the lamer reasons to cancel a hobo...”
– The Cigarette Smoking Blog: Fat-Cat Businessmen Don’t Care If Hobo Convention Is Canceled
“This war—let us call it by its right name, for once—will be remembered to a...”
– What Iraq Should Teach Us About Libya | The New Republic
“I just hope that when Google finally decides it needs to make some money off...”
– buy now, pay later « Manifest Density
Via @reihansalam
“I noticed that everything that was done correctly on the first attempt was more...”
– Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
“[Becoming a father] fixed every mental problem that I had within an hour. So I...”
– Chris Ware
1 tag
“The current public face of gamification is Jane McGonigal, author of the new...”
– SXSW 2011: The internet is over | Technology | The Guardian
Via @ayjay, of course.
“What fascinates you most about the rate of productivity today?
Hal Varian:...”
– Hal Varian Interview - Innovation with Google Economist Hal Varian | The Ideas Economy
Meanwhile, Nicholas Carr reads the actual study, and discovers that the questions are “a random sample of 2515 queries from a major search engine.” Deck-stacking at its finest.
“You can’t understand Google,” vice president Marissa Mayer says, “unless you...”
– Larry Page Wants to Return Google to Its Startup Roots | Magazine (via pegobry)
“Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a...”
– Federal Bureau of Investigation - The Charlotte Division: Department of Justice Press Release
Ah, the language of the federal prosecuting attorney. (via @pegobry )
“But [His Eminence Metropolitan] Jonah sees American Orthodoxy at a crossroads...”
– Metropolitan Jonah goes to Washington - The Washington Post
“Second, large-scale Western intervention will destroy the fragile Middle East...”
– The American Conservative » The Raj Strikes Back
“There’s a reason why Sun Tzu burned his ships when he reached enemy territory,...”
– Adam Neary - CEO at Profitably - We Are NY Tech
…It was Cortez. Eyeroll, sigh.
(via pegobry)
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
2 tags
“One afternoon, when Blia Yao Moua and I were chatting, as we had on many...”
– from The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
Over a decade after reading the book, this quote still haunts me. Those of us who live in wealthy, stable places should appreciate how untested and ephemeral our own notions of our better selves really are. The abundance we take for...
“At GitHub we don’t have meetings. We don’t have set work hours or...”
– Obviously this condition is far from equilibrium, but still. It sounds pretty choice.
Optimize for Happiness
“Yeah, I went to stay with my grandparents for a while. They live out in the...”
– This sounds like the greatest songwriting strategy of all time.
Pitchfork: Okkervil River’s Will Sheff Talks New Album I Am Very Far, Shares New Non-LP Track “Mermaid”
“It has become accepted practice in web app development to design in layers of...”
– Anatomy of a Crushing (Pinboard Blog)
“If an opponent has managed to get inside your home and all other gambits have...”
– Nobrowmanship | HiLobrow
I love HiLobrow.
“iTunes for Windows is why I’ve never considered buying a Mac. iTunes for...”
– An interview with Warren Ellis : The Setup
A Comment I Just Sent to Zappos.com
My only problem with the entire Zappos experience is the infantile tone you use in correspondence. I don’t know why the tech sector has adopted this voice in its copy, but I find it condescending and repellent. For example, this is the text of my order confirmation email:
Your order with Zappos.com has shipped. YAY! We’ve enclosed some tracking information, so you can follow your...
Two Poles of Perception
Synoptic:
Little Jack Dorsey was obsessed with maps of cities. He papered his walls with maps from magazines, transit maps, maps from gas stations. His parents had resisted joining the emigration to the suburbs, and their shy, skinny son supported them by becoming a passionate proponent of city life. He was mesmerized by locomotives, police cars, and taxis. He would drag his younger brother...
“It is folly to try to build an education reform program around getting only...”
– Teachers and Incentives, Positive and Negative | Politics | The American Scene
With respect to teachers and incentives, the alarming diagnostic signal that I keep seeing is the tendency for teachers to leave the classroom and get credentialed for administrative jobs. It seems as if the sunk costs...
“Among the G.O.’s [Gentleman Observer’s] dates were a recruiter; a...”
– Wait, Wait, Don’t Date Me! Tuning In and Striking Out with the Listeners of WNYC | The New York Observer
The American elite and its gender issues, writ large.
“Facebook has been credited with facilitating revolutions in the Middle East,...”
– marginal utility annex: Structuring the self as inherently entrepreneurial, Facebook as neoliberal state
I don’t sign on to all of Rob Horning’s commentary here, but I think this is apt.