May 2012
63 posts
#goodreads 30 May 2012
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel endorsed Scott Walker in his recall campaign. Readers responded in kind, filling up an entire page with letters criticizing the decision. You can read them here.
Three things we learned about Tony Blair’s relationship with the media | Oliver Wright | The Independent | 29 May 2012
According to the former British PM, he was only a business acquaintance with Rupert...
#goodreads 29 May 2012
How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing ‘Terrorists’ - and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook | Rick Perlstein | 15 May 2012
It’s a perfect example of how post-9/11 fear made law enforcement tactics seem acceptable that were previously beyond the pale. Previously, however, the targets have been Muslims; now they’re white kids from Ohio. And maybe you could argue that this is acceptable, if the...
#goodreads 28 May 2012
Cyberwar: China’s move discovered
Revolutionary hardware backdoor discovered in China-made military-grade FPGA chips. Claims were made by the intelligence agencies around the world, from MI5, NSA and IARPA, that silicon chips could be infected. We developed breakthrough silicon chip scanning technology to investigate these claims. We chose an American military chip that is highly secure...
#goodreads 27 May 2012
Criminals have electronically filed thousands of false tax returns with made-up incomes and withholding information and have received hundreds of millions of dollars in wrongful refunds.
From 2008 to 2011, the number of returns filed by identity thieves and stopped by the I.R.S. increased significantly, officials said. Last year, it was at least 1.3 million, said Steven T. Miller, deputy...
#goodreads 26 May 2012
David Lowery on the Internet illusion of internet democracy.
In the last few years it’s become apparent the music business, which was once dominated by six large and powerful music conglomerates, MTV, Clear Channel and a handful of other companies, is now dominated by a smaller set of larger even more powerful tech conglomerates. And their hold on the business seems to be getting stronger.
...
#goodreads 25 May 2012
#Grexit stage left: @mjbommar visualizes the online discussion around Greece’s possible Euro exit. /@rrichard09
Chris Matthews and Newt Gingrich.
MATTHEWS, impatiently: OK, favorite snake.
GINGRICH: Uh, probably a python.
MATTHEWS: Why? It’s a constrictor, right?
GINGRICH: It’s big and passive. It sits there.
Chris Matthews and Newt Gingrich: The Most Entertaining (and...
#goodreads 24 May 2012
Madeline Albright’s life as a diplomat is somehow less exciting than her family’s remarkable history.
Born in Prague in 1937, Albright was the eldest child of Joseph and Anna Korbel. Her father was press attaché to the Czech delegation assigned to Belgrade, where she spent most of her first year. As tensions mounted, Madeleine and her parents returned to Prague, and then, in 1939,...
#goodreads 23 May 2012
Twitter is really revolutionizing Bollywood.
Twitter represents for these celebrities a certain refuge from both the constraints that held them back. It maintains a comfortable distance from the media and its manipulations and, simultaneously, from the diktats of propriety—because, presumably, unless it is said to the press, it is not official. But the truth is that their audience, following...
#goodreads 22 May 2012
Your Brain on Facebook | David Rock | Harvard Business Review | May 18th, 2012
By way of The New Inquiry:
Congressional Data: conservative outside money 4X greater than liberal. [@WashingtonPost, /@FrankPasquale,
Search as speech; the irony of free speech; the tragedy of free speech. [/ @FrankPasquale]
OccupyData. [/@FrankPasquale]
When high tuition drives resident students...
#goodreads 21 May 2012
Being a journalist in Mexico can be deadly. [@TheAtlanticWire]
In China, Fear At The Top | Roderick MacFarquhar | NYT | 20 May 2012
Why has ownership of wealth become so important for the Chinese elite? It’s not just an economic cushion, or pure greed. “One answer surely is that they lack confidence about China’s future.” It’s a political hedge
All The World Is...
#goodreads 20 May 2012
“When people realize they’re being listened to, they tell you things.”—Richard Ford, whose dyslexia forces him to listen more closely when people are talking
More…
Six Degrees of Aggregation | Michael Shapiro | Columbia Journalism Review | May 2012
Jonah Peretti on Arianna Huffington: “She makes her weak ties feel like strong ties.” And that, he recognized, “creates a large network of all...
1932 promotional film for Sonoma County poultry... →
#goodreads 19 May 2012
Israel in Peril | David Shulman | The New York Review of Books
How the Jewish state is hastening its own demise.
How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet |Mat Honan | Gizmodo
What happens when a nimble startup gets gobbled up by a behemoth that doesn’t share its values.
Blogger Shines Light on U.S. Shadow War in East Africa | Wired
If you are very lucky you may see a fire rainbow once or...
#goodreads 18 May 2012
The Listener Who Made Talk Radio | Gideon Haigh | Global Mail | 17 May 2012
Remembering Studs Terkel, historian and broadcaster, born 100 years ago. “He never lost his excitement at the thought that there was a world out there just waiting to be heard, and ready to be opened by the simplest of questions”
Preying On The Poor | Barbara Ehrenreich | Huffington Post/TomDispatch | 17 May...
#goodreads 17 May 2012
#video Ken Burns on storytelling. Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg has an interview with the filmmakers.
“One thing I’ve noticed about many of the people whose creativity inspires me is that they seem to be obsessed with something.” On @draplin.
Waxy.org on Untangling Cover Song Licensing on YouTube.
What it is like to get bitten by a shark.
The Internet at the dawn of...
Pari passu →
Tomorrow’s goal is to add this my lexicon.
Pari passu is a Latin phrase that literally means “with an equal step” or “on equal footing.” It is sometimes translated as “ranking equally”, [1]“hand-in-hand,” “with equal force,” or “moving together,”[citation needed] and by extension, “fairly,” “without...
#goodreads May 16, 2012
Report on a government-subsidized non-profit that collects on student debt. /@BloombergNews
Healthcare costs for family of four with insurance exceed $20,000 per year. /@HuffingtonPost
Default now or later? Greece’s four options – /@FTalpha
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the State Department is poised to do something that could increase the chances of war with Iran.
For...
Thing of the day: 15 May 2012
This tweet, from @wsdot_traffic, the most entertaining government account out there.
We know it’s sunny out, but this isn’t a safe place to get a tan #pleasedontwalkonthefreeway yfrog.com/oes3ubuwj
— WSDOT Traffic (@wsdot_traffic) May 15, 2012
@cdixon on Facebook’s business model →
The key question when trying to value Facebook’s stock is: can they find another business model that generates significantly more revenue per user without hurting the user experience? (And can they do that in an increasingly mobile world where display ads have been even less effective.) Perhaps that business model is sponsored feed entries, as Facebook seems to be hoping (along with Twitter and...
#goodreads May 15, 2012
Breaking The Rules | Marc Peruzzi | Outside | 10 May 2012
An alternative approach to parenting: “Courage and a moral compass are fascism’s bane. Dare to live a moral life, I tell my kids, the beautiful hoodlums, and sometimes what’s right wins out over what is merely prescribed”
Anonymous: Most Powerful Organisation On Earth | Catherine Solyom | National Post | 12 May 2012
...
#collected May 14, 2012
Louisiana imprisons more people per capita than any other place in the world. Most of those prisoners are housed in for-profit facilities. And at least some of that profit goes to the sheriffs who decide who gets arrested. Key folks in law enforcement are financially incentivized to arrest people and make sure not much cash is spent on them once they’re behind bars. And the model seems to be...
Stepping Away From The Desk
For a brief but appreciable departure from the hum-drum of the week, try clicking on one of the links Brian Shimkovitz shared with The Wire (another Wire)
The man behind the Awesome Tapes From Africa blog and label, Shimkovitz has a keen eye for organic and unique culture. The resources he recommends range from streaming Somali music to documentaries from 1970s Iran. Have a nice trip.
Understand "curation" and "criticism" and "taste"... →
How do I broaden my horizons when I hate everything in sight? - books media tv | Ask MetaFilter
#goodreads May 13, 2012
Under Attack | Michael M. Phillips | WSJ
When a suicide bomber struck a convoy in Afghanistan, a routine Marine patrol turned into a harrowing firefight. Michael M. Phillips with an eyewitness account of bravery and tragedy in the confusion of war.
A Far-Fetched Plan To Solve The Syrian Mess | Stephen Walt | Foreign Policy | 09 May 2012 Involve Putin. He persuades Assad to accept asylum, asserts...
Goal-oriented self-blackmailing service →
Do good work, or do nothing
It’s easier to do nothing and live on nothing than it is to do something and live on something when you’re running around compromising.
So says Kevin Shields, of My Bloody Valentine in an interview with Quietus.
Being on the dole is better than being in a shit job, so long as you’ve got an interest in your life. Because if you’re in a shit job you don’t really have that much more...
@elanazak asks, "What's your preferred way of...
#collected May 12, 2012
Creepy: Popular Skulls.
The Mike Birbiglia short film from the This American Life live show.
Radical, Skate Ipsum. “Hip nose bump fakie out drop in Jerry Hsu boned out.”
Lovely: Facsimile Dust Jackets, 7700 scanned and archived jackets, cleaned up and available for browsing and for sale.
“I expect the majority of my readers will be unaffected by this change. At last count, in...
Collected Comments on Fungible
Fungible is a provocative treatise by Stijn Debrouwere positing that much of what we find competing with journalism in the digital world are things we wouldn’t consider journalism.
Are we trying to get better at something that doesn’t matter anymore? Perhaps we should take the best traditions of journalism and do something entirely new with it. Whatever we are doing now is not working.
...
#goodreads May 11, 2012
Reading a good piece can feel like finding a five dollar bill in your pocket.
The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg | nymag.com | Henry Blodget | May 6th, 2012 | view original
How Florida brothers’ ‘pill mill’ operation fueled painkiller abuse epidemic | openchannel.msnbc.msn.com | Thomas Francis | view original
Fungible | stdout.be | May 4th, 2012 | view original
Evening the...
“The best way to impregnate (pun intended) an idea into someone’s mind is...”
– The Insidiousness of Conservative Talk Radio | MetaFilter
How Chicago Became a Center of Journalism... →
The net result is that Chicago has become a focal point of innovation for programmer-journalists.
Our Concert Could Be Your Life: Indie's New Guard... →
On May 22nd, 2011 at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, a number of bands put on a concert hosted byEugene Mirman and Janeane Garofalo to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the publication of MichaelAzerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life. Link with more context, setlists, and a whole lot of pics. Alternate context. NPR audio timecodes on the left for easier perusal of first link, video footage...
Play Gaffe Dodger, the presidential election game... →
Gaffe Dodger is a game by the Christian Science Monitor which tests basic political knowledge and reaction time, and will add new stages as the election progresses.
The Great Political Press Vacuum
I tend to look at this period of the campaign as sort of a phony war between the two campaigns. So we as journalists are left in this great vacuum where we have to produce day-to-day stories, and the campaigns know that, so they produce a series of—as I say—“bait stories,” which we end up swallowing one way or another even if only in the sense of using it as an...
#goodreads May 8, 2012
The spy who came in from the code [CJR]
Massive May Day Turnout Highlights Media’s Disconnect From Reality
Love Bomb: How Deep Is Israel’s Love for Iran? [@Jadaliyya]
CBC looks at classic New Yorker magazine covers.
Fight For Your Right, Revisited #video [Mubi]
“Since its inception in 2006, Google has added 65 languages from every region in the world, with two notable exceptions: Central...
My Time with The New York Times | May 6, 2012
Selections from things I read today, in The New York Times main section. I love Sundays.
9 Swing States, Critical to Presidential Race, Are Mixed Lot
The political outlook in the tossup states is far from clear. While they all voted for Mr. Obama in 2008, seven have elected Republican governors since then and all have added significant numbers of Republicans to their legislatures or...
Best one-two I've seen on Twitter
@jonsnowc4 in response to @rupertmurdoch
"Too much is made of this Twitter."
In “Republicans Use Crowdsourcing to Attack Obama Campaign,” The New York Times examines the new speed and agility presidential campaigns exercise in their attack campaigns. Recent campaigns sucha as #Julia, Forward (and antipode Backward), and #WeCantWait, were launched swiftly through channels such as Twitter. Worth noting is how close the counter-attack followed. [SOURCE:...
