August 2011
Longshot!: Your Longshot Contributors, Issue Two →
longshotmag:
Forty-eight hours ago we gave you guys an assignment, twenty-four hours ago you turned in your stories, and today we made a magazine. Despite the fact that we’ve only spent a collective 6 days streamlining this process, it seems to get easier every time. That’s thanks in large part to the amazing…
I have a piece in the new Longshot. It is about my time working at the record...
July 2011
The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement →
A confluence of factors has fueled the anti-Shariah movement, most notably the controversy over the proposed Islamic center near ground zero in New York, concerns about homegrown terrorism and the rise of the Tea Party. But the campaign’s air of grass-roots spontaneity, which has been carefully promoted by advocates, shrouds its more deliberate origins.
In fact, it is the product of an...
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$75.876 Billion Vs. $73.768 Billion →
parislemon:
One of these numbers represents the cash reserves of an entity that is perhaps the most well-oiled, fine-tuned money-making machine the world has ever seen.
The other represents the operating balance of a long-time power that is now a broken machine constantly tied down in bureaucracy.
(No, not Google.)
So a) this is wrong, because the original article was saying that the...
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"The market"
Dear journalists: please stop talking about “the market” as if it were an actual thing with concrete desires, motivations, and reasoning. As in, “the market reacted badly to the continued standoff over the debt ceiling.” This is bullshit. “The market” did nothing. “The market” is an aggregation of individual buying and selling decisions, the majority...
ilyagerner asked: I think you're missing the most salient aspect of the Boehner plan, which is the provision to redo this entire scenario in 6 months.
Debt ceiling update
I haven’t been able to dig too much into the details, but from what I can tell, the only real policy differences between the Reid and Boehner plans are these:
The Boehner plan would require a balanced budget amendment.
The Reid plan would require a 50% cut in war funding over the next two years.
Other than that you’ve got nothing. Neither actually specifies how discretionary...
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The Sylvester Stallone Character Name Generator
anfscu:
I spent a quiet evening at home a while back watching the 1987 Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling movie, “Over the Top.” Don’t be jealous—it’s not a good look for you. Anyway, it is utterly ridiculous that this film is the only living document of the Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling craze that swept America in 1987, possibly as a reaction to Reaganomics. The story, performances,...
"Like The Catcher in the Rye, [The Bell Jar] is a...
So says Emily. My guess three years ago would’ve been goth-emo, but nowadays I don’t know either. What say you?
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The debt ceiling and you
If you want to be horrified about something with this whole debt ceiling mess, feel free to be horrified at the GOP for trying to hold the economy hostage. But, if you’re a Democrat, you don’t really need to worry too much. Because man oh man, is John Boehner screwed right now. He has essentially two options available to him. On the one hand, he can follow the Tea Party line and not...
Blogger expresses regret for initial report...
BROOKLYN, NY - Music blogger Aaron Paul apologized publicly Monday for a post he authored this weekend reporting on the death of British singer Amy Winehouse.
“She died on a Saturday morning in July,” said Paul. “Bloggers were all at the beach or hungover, and we just wanted to get on with our day.”
Paul’s post first reported on the facts of the incident which were known at the time. But then,...
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Academic Work Should Be Distributed For Free →
Right now in academic publishing, what you have is basically a lot of donor- and government-financed nonprofit organizations taking outputs with near-zero distribution costs (electronic journal archives) and selling them to each other. For any one institution, this kind of makes sense. A publisher doesn’t want to give up his fees, which are valuable in meeting the costs of producing scholarship....
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Postal Service targets 3,600 offices for closure →
youngmanhattanite:
markcoatney:
msnbc:
The U.S. Postal Service is expected to announce a plan Tuesday to close more than 3,600 post offices, mostly in small communities, to close a widening budget gap, according to published reports.
One of those is my hometown post office in Linwood, KS (which, apparently, is too small for Google to have bothered sending a Street View truck through). It...
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teabyrd:
Solid Owen Pallett cover of “Hard to...
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Winehouse
I was one of the few people that never really liked Amy Winehouse’s music - I had Back to Black on my iPod for literally years trying to get myself to like it, but no luck. As an itinerant music blogger, though, I occasionally had to write about her, and it was always kinda hard. As Maura talks about in her obit, to write a “normal” article about Amy Winehouse was to write an...
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Anonymous asked: Your reaction?
"McDonald's boss punches mom with service dog."
"McDonald's boss punches mom with service dog."
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EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR: MY FIRST REAL EXPERIENCE... →
ohheymary:
what, manager? you want me to work in backstock, the mythical cavern of all the extra clothes and things that i usually only get to go into if someone unlocks it for me so i can get some difficult customer a billion more sizes? DOWN.
you want me to spend my ENTIRE SHIFT away from the customers?…
Oh, you will want to read more.
HOT ENOUGH FOR YA?
The weird thing about growing up in a house with a lot of books and magazines laying around is that, as a child, you almost always encounter references to a thing before you encounter the thing itself. I remember reading comic strips and watching old shows in which someone would make a joke about “Hot enough for ya?” and having no idea why it was funny. Because of course: the joke is that adults...
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strictlyalright asked: OK, nevermind, I see.
abbyjean asked: how was your vacation? are you refreshed and rejuvenated or dismayed to be back? any hilarious travel mishaps? (i ask as i am sitting on the floor of the denver airport with an inexplicable flight delay)
youngmanhattanite asked: How did you survive in a post-ninja rap world?
vickyj asked: You presumably encounter a lot of data, charts, statistical graphs, etc. What do you wish they kept statistics on? How would you chart the results? Basically, describe your ideal infographic.
vickyj asked: Next year there's a chance of Hurricane Michael. What do you think Hurricane Michael will be like? Don't feel like you have to limit yourself to what's atmospherically/hydrologically possible.
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The world according to GURPS
The great myth of nerddom is that it is about being artistically creative. It is not. The foundations of nerd culture are very much in highly technical interests, in knowing the world in its most minute details rather than in imagining a new world. Early nerd culture in the US began with people who were interested in technology. These people could debate the merits of different types of military...
kfan asked: What's your earliest memory of having a very strongly-held opinion.
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Ask me something →
It’s Friday, and I feel like we haven’t talked in forever. So talk! Loudness wars, politics, food, turtles, whatever.
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The Loudness Wars: Is Music's Noisy Arms Race... →
This is the piece I’ve been working on the last couple weeks. It’s assessing the state of the loudness war in 2011 and concludes that artists are starting to push back. I got to interview two of my favorite mastering engineers (I know!) as well as Derek from Sleigh Bells, who talks a little about the direction of the new album, if that’s the kind of thing you’re interested...
