October 2011
46 posts
“Why can’t they say something like this? “These gangsters have too much money....”
– That’s Doug Henwood, quoted approvingly by Mike “Rortybomb” Konczal.
Speaking as someone who generally likes Mike’s gloss on hard left theory, I’m surprised by how many like-minded wonks are disappointed by the Wall Street-occupying anarchists’ failure to get...
September 2011
97 posts
“1.fearlessly contaminate brand
2.gum-up google
3.cripple criticism
...”
– mentholmountains: L.A. GUNS: INTANGIBLE SHOWDOWN
Dave Berman’s six-point argument to Stephen Malkmus for calling the latest Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks album L.A. Gunz. Don’t miss the emails between lawyers and record execs.
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Look Dad! I'm in a listicle! →
“Against so powerful a force as the Jacobins, and the revolutionary order they...”
– Guest Post: Corey Robin on the Deep Roots of Conservative Radicalism. | Rortybomb
This is a fun post. Corey Robin explores Burke’s less-quoted revolutionary rhetoric.
Robin’s right about the difference between the historical Burke and the cuddly version that has been sculpted from...
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“This point was made well last week by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, writing for The...”
– Justice, After Troy Davis - NYTimes.com
Almost as cool as the PEG shout-out is the fact that there was an actual hyperlink in a NY Times editorial.
“Yesterday, Facebook unveiled their new “Timeline” design. Largely imagined by...”
– I find it hilarious that in a techno-whiggish post about the “refactoring of digital tools back into the language of the process it was [sic] designed to improve,” the author mistakes the title of designer Nicholas Felton’s website for Felton’s last name, thereby undermining...
““Lethal autonomy is inevitable,” said Ronald C. Arkin, the author of “Governing...”
– A future for drones: automated killing - The Washington Post
Oh, OK then.
Via Of One Piece.
“Initially, Facebook was just a place to post photographs and see which of your...”
– News Desk: What Facebook Really Wants : The New Yorker (via ayjay)
This is all obvious. Facebook wants to do to the internet what shopping malls did to Main Street. But have you been to an indoor shopping mall lately?
I think there’s a cycle at work: canalization and diversification...
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“City of Brockton Police Chief, William K. Conlon said, “This is the wave...”
– Via James Poulos comes this treat.
I’m a little surprised this hasn’t been built for civilians yet. Snapping a photo of someone and pulling up their social media profile (or their sex offender registry entry, whatevs) seems like a use case with even more demand than identifying...
“Topix, a site lightly trafficked in cities, enjoys a dedicated and growing...”
– Small-Town Gossip Moves to the Web, Anonymous and Vicious - NYTimes.com
I’ve been waiting for the rest of the world to discover Topix. I stumbled across it when I was searching for information about our previous hometown in West Virginia (pop. < 10,000) and… wow.
New rule: no more than three consecutive text-only posts on this joint. There’s room for words on the rest of the internet.
“Household size began inching up in 2005, before the recession, a trend that...”
– Increase in household size could slow economic recovery - USATODAY.com
Note, as Scott Sumner points out, the reversed causation between headline and article copy.
Like I’ve said before, there’s nothing tacky about a McMansion once it’s holding three generations and some...
“But it’s a lovely rustic dish — the recipe linked above calls it...”
– The Cigarette Smoking Blog: My Not Entirely Successful Rabbit-Stew Adventure
According to the half-dozen kids’ biographies of her that lurk on our bookshelves, restaurants paid the young Annie Oakley a premium for the birds she hunted, since she shot them with a rifle and left no beads of...
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Anonymous asked: Why did you leave Twitter? Are you coming back?
“There are two main approaches to action: conditionally speaking, cataphatic and...”
– The priest interviewed in my previous post.
“Remembering the advice the mayor of Bruchsal had given me, the moment I had...”
– Patrick Leigh Fermir, describing his walk across Germany in the winter of 1934.
I read this last night, and then went to bed and dreamed that several people I know only from Twitter showed up at my house. We were having a wonderful impromptu party, when I suddenly realized that they were expecting...
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by...”
– This cranky old blogger makes some good points. You should read the whole thing.
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June Carter Cash “Diamonds in the...
When I see my next door neighbor, who owns a barbecue restaurant, furiously stabbing with a bamboo pole at a groundhog trapped under his shed, I wish I were still on Twitter.
“When I was just a baby, my mama told me, “Sue,
When you’re grown...”
– Crescent City Blues Lyrics | Roots of Cash’s hit tunes - Los Angeles Times
Dear “Everything’s a Remix” cultists: here’s an early Christmas present. Now please go away.