May 2012
17 posts
“Nationalised Spanish lender Bankia is offering a Spiderman towel to young investors as part of a drive to hold onto deposits after being taken over by the state in the biggest bank rescue in Spain’s history.”
—
Reuters, and we’ve got a bit more on this here. (via ftalphaville)
And more! Ftalphaville is worth a follow.
Did you know that the Wisconsin recall election is coming soon?
Esquire wants to remind you. Other bits in the news I care about…
Katie Baker continues to write superb articles about the NHL
Mike Bloomberg is going after your soda
The art market isn’t booming unless there are plenty of absurdly rich people
The Nation reflects on Kurt Vonnegut
Ezra Klein discusses European stereotypes
Henry Copeland discusses predictions he made about the blog industry
Splitsider discusses the first gay sitcom character
Judge defends his sentence for Dharun Ravi
Michelle Dean discusses the protests in Quebec
The Economist calls out conservatives for all of a sudden becoming PC snobs when it suits them
Ezra Klein (again, sorry) discusses med school debt and primary practice
Alyssa Rosenberg tries to figure out how TV companies will collect revenue in the future
Information Architects wants you to sweep the sleaze
Columbia Journal on feral children
AV Club writes about the effectiveness of being a hater
Bloomberg on Iceland’s property bubble
Mary Meeker writes about the state of the web, fatmanatee directs you to her political contributions. These things are important!
Molly Lambert on the new Jay-Z/Kanye video
All Things Digital talks about how Kevin Rose worked for Google+ for all of two months - He now works for Google Ventures. Printing money over there.
Robin Sloan talks about Facebook and Google’s vision for the future
Let’s talk about the culture of distraction. But first, here’s a slideshow of 25 cute animals with baseball caps.
“
When it comes to the web, we not only understand the consumer side of the Internet we understand the producer/supplier side as well. And like any producer or supplier we want to be compensated. The reason the Digerati are so fixated on “what the consumer wants” is simply because most of them have only experienced the web as consumers.
“The consumer wants music to be free” they shout as they pound their tiny fists on their Skovby tables.
The consumer also wants cars to be free. And beer. Especially beer. But any market involves a buyer and a seller. A consumer and a producer. If GM can’t afford to give away their product for free it ain’t gonna happen. No matter what the consumer wants.
” —David LoweryFUN THINGS TO READ AND LISTEN TO
David Lowery on the new economics of music
The Atlantic defends Chris Hayes
The Atlantic on how Google can beat Facebook
Slate on the problems with British science journalism
College Media Matters on why students shouldn’t follow the Joe Weisenthal method of reporting (in short: it’s insane and he’s often wrong)
On the media on the future of TV (audio)
Rolling Stone spends time with Skrillex
Peggy Nelson on the tragic speed of modern life
The Billfold on being young and privileged and applying for food stamps
“That record, and Mr. Awlaki’s calls for more attacks, presented Mr. Obama with an urgent question: Could he order the targeted killing of an American citizen, in a country with which the United States was not at war, in secret and without the benefit of a trial? The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel prepared a lengthy memo justifying that extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch.”
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Secret ‘Kill List’ Tests Obama’s Principles - NYTimes.com
Good lord … this administration thinks that due process is the process by which it decides to kill you.
When you vote for Obama, this is what you’re voting for.
Let me be clear: Killing someone is worse than water-boarding someone. So if you cared about the first, you better care about the second.
(via jeffmiller)
“Now, for the veterans of the two wars of the past decade, we’re giving them all kinds of favors and goodies and public applause, and maybe even a parade or two, overcompensating our brains out, but, ultimately, what does all the applause mean at the end of the day? We are apparently fine with two more years of vets coming home from Afghanistan, from a war that 60 percent of us say we oppose. But we support The Troops. Will we become a more skeptical nation the next time a bunch of messianic fantasts concoct a war out of lies? Perhaps, but we support The Troops. Will we tax ourselves sufficiently to pay for what it costs to care for the people we send to one endless war and one war based on lies? Well, geez, we’ll have to think about that, but we support The Troops.”
—Charles Pierce
“Fewer and fewer people are falling for this. And they have begun to realize TED events raise similar corporate-speak red flags as well. Yes, people want new and entertaining ideas but feel alienated by the branding and packaging reminiscent of the corporate Silicon Valley establishment. “Consumers” are savvy, and they know when they are being sold to. So many of the TED talks take on the form of those famous patent medicine tonic cure-all pitches of previous centuries, as though they must convince you not through the content of what’s being said but through the hyper-engaging style of the delivery. Each new “big idea” to “inspire the world” and “change everything” pitched from the TED stage reminds me of the swamp root and snake oil liniment being sold from a wagon a hundred years past. As Mike Bulajewski pointed out in a Tweet, “TED’s ‘revolutionary ideas’ mask capitalism as usual, giving it a narrative of progress and change.”
—Nathan Jurgenson
READ GOOD STUFF AT THE BEACH
I’ve been meaning to throw this at tooseriousman, but whatever, here are some things you should probably know about. IMPORTANT THANGS. I’ll try to beam some new articles over to the other tumblr as I read them.
The Nation on the Higher Education Crisis (via catbutt)
FT dines with Paul Krugman and they give a shitty tip
Atlantic on the dumb kids class
Sports Illustrated on transgender athletes
Harvard Law on what happens after Facebook fails
New Yorker on Putin and democracy
NY Times primer on the euro zone crisis
Heidi Moore details the Facebook IPO debacle
Old NYer article on Italy’s Beppe Grillo
New Inquiry essay on data transgression
The Atlantic on what Occupy can learn from a New Orleans subculture
New Yorker on Trayvon Martin and America’s Gun Laws
GQ talks to D’Angelo (STAY WITH IT, IT’S WORTH IT)
The Atlantic on the perfected self
Huffington Post on an important Texas primary - I love this article. LOVE LOVE LOVE. It’s a guy who worked for Obama in 2008, hoping to bounce an incumbent in a Texas primary. Law school grad. We need to see more of this.
Bloomberg on the awful JPMorgan oversight board
Fortune on Tim Cook’s tenure so far
Reuters on the ongoing drug wars in Mexico
The Verge on cable networks fighting for the future
Rookie’s writers talk about street harrassment
The New Republic on VAWA and domestic abuse
The Awl on the Orthodox problem with the internet
Enjoy yourself, k?
“Liberty Treehouse is GBTV’s show “for the younger set.” Here you can step aboard the BioBus (it runs on vegetable oil), explore the history of the jelly bean, and learn what happens when you put dry ice inside a latex glove. It’s a pretty good show. You can also listen to the host, Raj Nair, gush about the Big Cheese, his visionary CEO. “Glenn is my boss,” he told viewers on March 6, “so I see him a lot, and if there’s one person he really reminds me of, it’s that of Walt Disney. This guy who has dreams … People are like, ‘Ah! Ain’t gonna happen! No way! Too crazy, too big!’ But just like Walt Disney, Glenn’s like, ‘All right!’ and that just fuels him even more.”
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Glenn Beck TV is one year old and still chuggin away.
Oh, and he’s making more money since he left Fox.
“The recent defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) produced many examples of this phenomenon: Lawrence Lessig summarized the success of anticopyright activists in stopping SOPA by claiming that “the Internet had taken on Hollywood extremists and won.” A political campaign to unseat Lamar Smith, one of SOPA’s sponsors, raised money to place an ad on a billboard in his district that read, “Don’t mess with the Internet.” And Nicholas Mendoza, an Internet activist and P2P Foundation member, wrote an essay for Al-Jazeera claiming that the Internet is a living organism with rights that are under threat by the movie industry’s lobbying.”
—The New Inquiry
I have absolutely no idea how a picture of me ended up on this blog.
SORRY GUYS, WHOOPS
Money Unlimited →
newyorker.com
When the Court announced its final ruling on Citizens United, on January 21, 2010, the vote was five to four and the majority opinion was written by Anthony Kennedy. Above all, though, the result represented a triumph for Chief Justice Roberts. Even without writing the opinion, Roberts, more than anyone, shaped what the Court did. As American politics assumes its new form in the post-Citizens United era, the credit or the blame goes mostly to him.
