Here is a tweet that Gawker writer Max Read retweeted a few days ago.

RT @DavidWinkies: @max_read actually if you call a lawyer and say you're white a dude and str8, they say you have no case #truestory

— max read (@max_read) May 23, 2012

So, sort of a backstory, to begin. Last week brought us two Internet rumpuses regarding and/or demonstrating an especially privileged kind of blindness/obliviousness/ridiculousness. One was TED curator Chris Anderson's flabbergasting decision to withdraw a TED speech about wealth inequality on the grounds that it was "too political." The other, John Scalzi's head-patting essays on Kotaku, comparing [...]

Perhaps you were wondering what Wired editor Chris Anderson is up to, after putting forward ideas called "The Long Tail" and "Free"? Well, now we know! His new idea is called "Atoms & Bits." He will be giving it away… for free. (Oh and a book deal. And some speaking gigs. Whatever.) But what is "Atoms & Bits," besides a good name for a futuristic dog food brand? You can find out at a breakfast coming soon!

I was going to spend the weekend reading Wired editor Chris Anderson's hot new airport tome Free, so as to go deeper into his explications of the future of business. I might learn something! (Sincerely.) But I did not! Instead I spent the weekend exchanging sums of money for products and services. But Janet Maslin at the Times has read it for me (us) and has come away unhappy.

Choire Sicha: Do not miss how amusing it is to have Malcolm Gladwell review Chris Anderson in the New Yorker. Tom Scocca: Wha- Tom Scocca: Zhu- Tom Scocca: Huff? Choire Sicha: So, yes, for starters? Gladwell finally makes the point that "approaching zero" is nowhere the same as zero. Tom Scocca: That's how Richard Pryor's embezzlement scheme worked in Superman III.

In 2008, Wired editor Chris Anderson brought in circa $2 million in speech fees. His forthcoming book, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," says the promotional materials, "makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them."

This sure is a neat graph in Wired, to accompany the new theory that "the web is dead" and that the future is apps. The graph explains that, since 1990, usage of the "web" has peaked (at about 50% of Internet use, in 2000) and has since declined, to about 23% of Internet use. There's another graph that might be of interest when looking at this!

A helpful recession tip from the Twitter of Wired editor (and author of Free) Chris Anderson! Oh, let's click through! First sentence: "DANIEL SUELO LIVES IN A CAVE."

Actually, yes! To use his phrase, Wired editor and ideas-author Chris Anderson is actually a proponent of "digital sharecropping." Especially since he can't find a way to put the "genie" back "in" the "bottle." (Also which fallacy is it where you describe something as a "charge" that somehow makes it not an argument?) Whatever, I'm going to go look at some ad-supported, user-generated cat pictures now!

Wired editor Chris Anderson is giving away 200 free copies of his book, Free! (Pause for light laughter.) There are two ways to get a free copy of the book, he blogs. One is: "Impress us with your cool friends (you get FOUR books!)" Can't pull that off? "Impress us with your social media skillz (you get one book)." Wow. It gets… I guess the word is "grosser"?

Oh, more must-read today! In which Joel Johnson discusses Wired editor Chris Anderson's thoughts on "atoms are the new bits." (I know, wot?) "To marvel that you can convince a Chinese company to make a small batch of electronics for you? In many cases, that's when conditions are worst. Try to get something that is more than a greenboard made and you're back to standard manufacturing issues like making dies for stamping parts. Why? Because real 3D printers don't exist yet."

Airport book writers have always loved their anecdotes. But sometimes the anecdotes do not enjoy being such! Particularly when the events of their anecdotage are totally misconstrued. The anecdote in this case is the career of UC Berkeley professor Richard A. Muller. In Wired editor Chris Anderson's Free, Anderson says that, because Muller put his physic lectures on YouTube and got lots of attention, he got a book deal and sold more books. In the actual world, however, Muller sold his ninth book to an editor he'd worked with before. And when the book came out, he emailed everyone who'd written in about his YouTube videos, and found "no discernible [...]

Wired editor Chris Anderson raised issue with and made some explanations regarding yesterday's Malcolm Gladwell review of his book, Free, which has chunks of other people's work in it. Unfortunately, he ends his concluding paragraph with a question. To which he hedges the answer. And then he ends in disaster-proposing a system of labor divorced almost entirely from profit, a bizarre model so hyper-capitalist that it resembles nothing so much as a digital-age medieval society. He would even create a new class of corporate vassalage! Is this what he possibly really thinks? He says yes!

Once upon a time there was a Bongwater song called "David Bowie Wants Ideas," about a dream in which David Bowie invites a bunch of people to a party because he is desperately in need of ideas for his new album. (An album which was clearly going to be assembled in the Maureen Dowd group composition fashion.) Then David Byrne shows up and we learn never to trust Davids ever! Anyway, now in the real world, it is Wired editor Chris Anderson who wants your ideas, oh crowd full of wisdom and ideas and words and endless tails, this time for his new book, which is about, uh… not [...]