July 2012
June 2012
“Of course, many Americans who cite Christianity to justify their economic...”
– David Sirota, America’s Christian hypocrisy (via absurdlakefront)
“The military slang for a man killed by a drone strike is ‘bug splat,’ since...”
– Michael Hastings, The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the...”
– Roald Dahl (via neptunariasreadingroom)
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: The Ultimate Guide... →
Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Think of your laptop as a machine like the one at the gym where you open and close your inner thighs in front of everyone, exposing both your insecurities and your genitals. Because that...
“Some people are old at 18 and some are young at 90. Time is a concept that...”
– Yoko Ono, 1977 (via alahni-break)
“My daddy was from the Deep South, and he always told me as kid not to let them...”
– LAPD beating victim Rodney King, six weeks before he drowned in a pool at the age of 47. (via newsweek)
Betteridge's Law of Headlines | Wikipedia →
If the headline asks a question, try answering ‘no’. Is This the True Face of Britain’s Young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No; or you wouldn’t have put the question mark in.) Does This Map Provide the Key for Peace? (Probably not.) A headline with a question mark at the end means, in the vast majority of cases, that the story is tendentious or over-sold. It is often...
Mobile Advertising: The $20B Opportunity Mirage →
When I hear that there’s a mother lode of advertising revenue in location-based ads that are pushed to my mobile phone as I stroll down Main Street (with my permission…I hope), ads that offer succulent deals in the stores and restaurants I’m about to pass, I wonder: Do we want barkers on our devices? Is this the game changer for mobile advertising, yet another kind of spam? LBA may be a hot...
Why our food is making us fat | The Guardian →
By the mid-70s, there was a surplus of corn. Butz flew to Japan to look into a scientific innovation that would change everything: the mass development of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), or glucose-fructose syrup as it’s often referred to in the UK, a highly sweet, gloppy syrup, produced from surplus corn, that was also incredibly cheap. HFCS had been discovered in the 50s, but it was only in...
Hang Around With People Who Get Shit Done |... →
If I can only teach my kids one lesson, it would be to hang around with people who get shit done. Now, my kids are still young, so I am more likely to phrase it as “make friends with people who do cool stuff”. That would also give us the opportunity to talk about what cool stuff is.
Getting straight As on every report card? Yeah, that is pretty cool. Building a model of the Eifel Tower out of...
John's Tumblr | Computers = Trucks →
I picked up a phrase some time ago that I think applies: “The next big thing is always beneath contempt.” Implication being that it is, of course, until it isn’t. Until it’s too big to ignore. This has happened over and over again in our society. In the middle ages, people assumed that no serious discussion could happen in anything but Latin — the so-called “vulgar” languages had no merit. And...
