February 2011
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How do you solve a problem like...
Mubarek
Sofia
Finding Mike Brown’s replacement
Korea
the Gators
Health reform
denialism
Roberta
Scotland
Joseph Kony
Luann
Sayeeda
friction
SPURA
Hildegard von Bingen
vuzevela
Latifa
the Fuhrer
boxed mac and cheese
jet fuel
Sarah Palin wearin’ your products
the Jejemons
Scalia
Sharia
Ikea
Algesia
abortion
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Let's Regulate Facebook! →
My new piece for the Awl is about how it’s questionable to say the Egyptian protests happened because of social media, and about how Egypt shows the real dangers posed by an unregulated Facebook.
But the same apparatus that causes commentators to overstate Facebook’s importance to the Egyptian protests makes the service a growing threat to our ability to control our own identities. ...
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How Your Nielsen Ratings Sausage Is Made →
sectionfive:
According to this article, 25,000 people are being polled for the ratings. That’s 1/4 of 1% of the 100,000,000 TV Households.
That’s not an accurate sampling. It sounds like a joke.
(via NewTeeVee)
It’s called the Law of Large Numbers, and it’s the foundation of every nationally representative survey you’ve ever read. There are certainly reasons to dislike...
January 2011
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“In each case (including Egypt, which does not censor the Internet) there are...”
– Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor Boas, Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003)
Lots of interesting stuff going on here. The book is from 2003, which is well before the advent of the social media era, so it’s...
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Dearborn, Mich., Police Arrest Man in Apparent... →
A 63-year-old Southern California man who reportedly has “a long history of antigovernment activities” was arrested in a car laden with explosives outside one of the nation’s largest mosques, the authorities said Sunday. More than 500 members of the Dearborn, Mich., mosque were attending a funeral service at the time.
The apparent anti-Islam terror plot comes after a year of apparently ...
MOTHERFUCKERS, get it right. It is "splooge." That... →
deepomega:
Related: When I was in a band in high school we had a song very popular with our friends called When I Spooge.
Let’s all post the gimmicky song our high school band did! Mine was called “Happy Hamster Blues” and involved a harmonica.
unsustainable:
Dismemberment Plan — “What Do You...
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les nouvelles
filigree:
Gabon is on fire; Sarkozy’s visit brings un goût of the françafrique; Cairo is burning, Suez is burning; Sana’a is burning; Lebanon, Tunisia, they are disintegrating; Cote d’Ivoire is in pieces; Mandela is fading; South Sudan has voted; Bangui is voting, or possibly “voting”; explosions in Kabul (no alarms and no surprises, please); I am arguing with a Nigerian hotel and shipping boxes...
WatchPresumably we’re all paying attention to Egypt today, but take a moment to watch the new Nicki Minaj video, for “Moment 4 Life.” She plays her own fairy godmother! There are fireworks! A giant table of chocolate! Awesome outfits! Nicki really helps clarify why Gaga continues to annoy me - she does the work of finding a style that’s outrageous but still works with her,...
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“The adventure that ensued over the next six months combined the cloak-and-dagger...”
– I’ve been trying to formulate a more cohesive response to Bill Keller’s Assange piece and haven’t been successful; I think things are still too up-in-the-air. But the last sentence here just seems utterly damning. The media’s been treating the movement of the narrative from...
“I saw the one of me washing a Trans-Am automobile in the driveway shirtless with...”
– A “Trans-Am automobile.” That’s So Biden!
Biden thinks The Onion’s spoofs of him are ‘hilarious’ - Yahoo! News (via marklisanti)
#gleefulclapping
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It's Not Just The Birds Who Might Get Angry →
tomewing:
“What level are you on?” a woman asked me on the train to New York.
“I’m on level 12. I just can’t get past it. I’m thinking of giving up.”
“Try pressing the bird again in flight, it pops into three.”
I tried that and it worked. After being stuck and at the edge of despair I was now able to move on. Not that it was it was an important milestone in my life, but the challenge had...
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themattsmith:
R. Kelly : I Believe I Can...
Watchperpetua:
Sleigh Bells “Rill Rill” At long last, a “Rill Rill” video! They pretty much nailed it. Nice bandolier, Alexis!
I love this video in part because it’s a sort of mashup of two of my most favorite blog posts ever: the one about how the video for Kanye’s “Flashing Lights” dramatically and patiently explores a single image rather than just cutting between a bunch...
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“In part, what I see as the continuing attack on good, sound eating and...”
– God fucking damnit, you better not fucking make me hate you, Mark Bittman.
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pterodactyls replied to your post: If the Puppy Bowl was a social realist drama
but what of the kitty halftime show?
They would come out dressed in nuns’ habits and the bourgeoisie puppies would bribe them with catnip to get the proletariat puppies to accept their social positioning.
If the Puppy Bowl was a social realist drama
In the first quarter, all the puppies would roam about the field freely. Then, in the second quarter, the refs would gradually drive all the dogs except for one out of the good side of the field. The one dog would be large (maybe like a Doberman or something?) and represent Capitalism. The refs would let a bunch of small dogs sit in the middle of the field, and these would be the bourgeoisie. ...
Things I daydreamed about during the SOTU
Instead of giving a big long speech, Obama just gets up to the podium, takes a deep breath, and yells “everybody gets a POOONYYYYY!!!” Then he runs around the room high-fiving everyone and climbing the balcony and crowd-surfing like in the “Even Flow” video.
In the middle of a really serious section Boehner suddenly starts hallucinating that there are bugs all over him...
abbyjean asked: love your grumpy lashing out. more please!
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Person on Internet gets it, but no one else does →
lukesimcoe:
jenniferanne:
This is SO FUCKED UP. I remember once my mom wanted to send me to a school out of district because she didn’t like the one I was at. While it was a gigantic hassle of paperwork and explanations, it was possible for someone to make that choice. I can’t even believe they would consider this a felony or that it was “theft” for someone to send their kid to a fucking PUBLIC...
Snooki vs. Children’s Books: Did NBC snub 2011’s... →
If you want some more evidence that talk shows have become the symbolic battlegrounds for our cultural values, here is an article from The New Republic working up some righteous anger about the fact that the Today show booked Snooki instead of the Newbery and Caldecott winners. Now, one would think this would be a “duh” kind of thing - of course a major show on network television is...
Ohio Mom Kelley Williams-Bolar Jailed for Sending... →
Williams-Bolar decided four years ago to send her daughters to a highly ranked school in neighboring Copley-Fairlawn School District.
But it wasn’t her Akron district of residence, so her children were ineligible to attend school there, even though her father lived within the district’s boundaries.
The school district accused Williams-Bolar of lying about her address, ...
My 3,000th post was a dumb joke about National... →
I suppose that certainly says something about something.
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“It was one of those gut feelings you get. Something wasn’t right.”
– The researcher at the National Archives who discovered that famed historian Thomas Lowry had allegedly falsified a celebrated Lincoln document, meaning history books have been getting details of his assassination wrong for years. (via washingtonpoststyle)
Thus restoring the honor of the Gates...
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alexwhines:
R. Kelly - Number One Hit
The...
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