December 2009
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“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new...”
– benjamin franklin (via kurt)
ten years ago, i was partying with howard dean. at least i think he was there.
h?
anyway, i decided the best place to usher in the “end of the world” was with friends, far away from a metro area. hasket and his fam hosted me for a few days for my...
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Old School Hip Hop Tapes →
jhnbrssndn:
errorgorilla:
An online archive of one man’s personal collection of tapes dating back to the very early days, all available to download.
yes.
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Vice Magazine Interview with David Simon
VM: Why does reform seem so impossible?
DS: We live in an oligarchy. The mother’s milk of American politics is money, and the reason they can’t reform financing, the reason that we can’t have public funding of elections rather than private donations, the reason that K Street is K Street in Washington, is to make sure that no popular sentiment survives. You’re witnessing it now with health care, with the marginalization of any effort to rationally incorporate all Americans under a national banner that says, “We’re in this together.”
VM: But then the critics of a system like that immediately cry socialism.
DS: And of course it’s socialism. These ignorant motherfuckers. What do they think group insurance is, other than socialism? Just the idea of buying group insurance! If socialism is a taint that you cannot abide by, then, goddamn it, you shouldn’t be in any group insurance policy. You should just go out and pay the fucking doctors because when you get 100,000 people together as part of anything, from a union to the AARP, and you say, “Because we have this group actuarially, more of us are going to be healthier than not and therefore we’ll be able to carry forward the idea of group insurance and everybody will have an affordable plan...” That’s fuckin’ socialism. That’s nothing but socialism.
VM: It is, literally.
DS: So the whole idea of group insurance, which of course everyone believes in, like that fellow on YouTube, “Don’t let the government take away my Medicare…” You look at that and you think there’s only one thing that can make people this stupid, and that’s money. When you pay people to change their votes on the basis of money, the wrong shit gets voted for. That’s American democracy at this point. And you get to the Senate and you’re looking at 100 votes, which don’t represent anything in terms of popular representation. When 40 percent of the population controls 60 percent of the votes in the higher house of a bicameral legislature, it’s an oligarchy.
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“I have a terrible singing voice, but my children would be offended if I played a...”
– clay shirky, continued.
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“Most user-generated content is created as communication in small groups, but...”
– Clay Shirky (via azspot)
This is actually something we’ve always acknowledged at Vimeo. We even had an awkwardly-worded tag line for a while, “not everyone should see everything,” that was meant to convey the closed nature of some interactions on the site. I like how Clay has expressed the ideas...
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The End of the 00s: The Hunt for lonelygirl15, by... →
No one is actually listening anymore: One of the great frustrations of the lonelygirl hunt was the fact that, despite having her face plastered everywhere in media, for weeks and weeks no clue about her identity emerged. How was this possible that no one had seen her? Well, it was possible because, despite everyone on earth in one way or another seeing her face (certainly everyone who used the...
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“Now nanotechnology had made nearly anything possible, and so the cultural role...”
– Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age (see also: plastic surgery) (via syntheticpubes)
this is where we are, now.
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castles in the sky.
so, flickr is pimping social gaming w/ “noticings.” it’s a good way to up usage of their geo-tagging feature and harness the whole “omgimplayingagamebutimreallysosriouswiththischeckin” craze (10-1 this is biro’s favorite hashtag now)
He’s noticing things around him by photographing them, uploading the photos to Flickr, tagging them with the tag noticings and...
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“Idea-intensive industries have long tended to locate disproportionately in the...”
– NYT: Economic Lessons From ‘Mad Men’ (via caro)
this is why i work in new york city.
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America can't make things because managers all... →
But these executives were frequently numb to the sorts of innovations that enable high-quality production at low cost.
proof points and unique positioning:
amit gupta is a real smart guy. he runs a business and it’s built on real, tangible & focused deliverables. at the same time, he’s looking for solutions that will change our economy.
$700 billion generated to cover up...
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Gin, Television, and Social Surplus →
syntheticpubes:
I re-read this every few months and it always cheers me up. Perhaps social media isn’t to blame for a lack of productivity—it’s just doing an effective job of soaking up our increasing number of idle hours. Those idle hours are probably a symptom of broader economic missteps in the face of globalization and its inherent upsets.
(I still like that 4chan hyperbole though.)
this...
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“Isn’t better ever to just die?”
– Conan O’Brien, to Bear Grylls (via goldenfiddle)
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TechCrunch sues Fusion Garage over the Joojoo --... →
i’m really less into this debacle b/c of the actual tech & product but more about how arrington’s only chess piece is his blog and everyone who reads it that doesn’t take every single pixel with a grain of very big salt. begging people to tell their readers about drama surrounding a product? weak charlie, weak.
i’m not going to buy whatever pad this is b/c the price...
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blogs are in season.
people who don’t like blogs or haven’t read them before should just start reading after thanksgiving into about feb. everyone just lists out their best posts in an effort to mentally clean house and steal pageviews from anyone trying to hide from their family. think about it. look at all the blogs you read. they’re all compiling “best of the year.” everyone else...
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