Posts tagged as Gah
"Content Screeners" Review 10,000 Baby-Stabbing Porno Images Each Hour
It's the new nightmare job: 'content screener' at one of the outfits hired by MySpace and Yahoo! and Microsoft and the like. Someone's gotta screen out all that homemade porno and true crime and wife-beating. You get paid between $8 and $12 an hour; somehow, you supposedly click by 80,000 images a day, if you work at Telecommunications On Demand. (Um, that's 166 images a minute per employee, by the math, which is impossible, but they do claim that their staff of 50 review 20 million images a week. Maybe it's in big thumbnail batches! But with thumbails big enough so that you can see if any of the pictures are of children being stabbed!) The Internet: destroying lives, one person at a time.
The 'Twilight' Movies End in Horror
If you haven't read the Twilight books (or, like me, read the plot summaries on Wikipedia), then you may not know how the shiny vampire series ends. So I won't "spoil" it in the interests of bringing you this insane and terrifying quote from the screenwriter. But now that I've given you the chance to look away... READ MORE
That Story That We Don't Talk About Gets a Pulitzer
The story that we do not mention under any circumstances has won a Pulitzer Prize-Gene Weingarten's second in three years. (So he had a so-so '09, so sue him!)
How Can I Wait Four More Hours Until 'New Amerykah Part 2'?
Four. And. A. Half. Hours. Until. Erykah Badu. Leaks. Her. Own. Album. (I'm interested in a business discussion of her process??? Can you even call this a leak? But also OMG, I can barely think.) UPDATE: just a track. Sigh.
Haiti "Over All Fairly Calm" (Also Horrible)
"So far, violence has been scattered, with the security situation over all fairly calm," reports the Times team from Haiti last night, noting also that people are fleeing to the countryside left and right. But never by boat! Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Christopher O'Neil tells the paper that "anyone caught leaving the island and heading toward Florida would be returned to Haiti." But what if they are, you know, heading towards Jamaica, or Cuba? Or East Caicos! Or, even, you know, the other way-towards Puerto Rico? And: "Haiti's ambassador in Washington, Raymond Joseph, recorded a message in Creole to his countrymen, urging them not to leave. 'If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that's not at all the case.'" Sorry, everyone. It's pretty much just you guys and Anderson Cooper now.
Have Your Say! Should We Murder Homosexuals?
Response and social desirability biases have actually made this BBC discussion poll interesting! It seems that if you start with the proposition that maybe homosexuals should be slaughtered, you'll get a lot of people saying, "Um, NO?" and also some people saying, "Well, not slaughtered, but...." In this way, we can find out what people actually do think of the gays. READ MORE
2Balls1Cup
There is a new iPhone app called "2Balls1Cup." I don't know what it's about, because THERE IS NO WAY you will get me to look at that. Look for yourselves, if you want, I don't care, it's your life.
Hey Planes Don't Miss Your Airports Please?
How did we miss the story about the airplane pilots that blew right on by Minneapolis? (Or were getting blown.) Ignoring radio contact from the ground for an hour? Like, the pilots could have ended up anywhere, if a flight attendant didn't call up and be like "HEY YOU GUYS we are in Wisconsin now." But you know, the pilots are being paid less than me right now so I guess I don't expect much good service about arrivals and stuff.
So Long, Paris Fashion Week!
Paris fashion week slides to a greasy halt. Largely it was a tepid affair, punctuated by the saddening Chanel outing and the unbelievable Alexander McQueen show, and, let us be honest, I spent like 45 minutes talking about his shoes last night, again. And there were some other secret fashion week bits that we heard less about. For instance, the new Walter Steiger shop, where you don't know how much anything costs. "After all, why bother asking asking the price of a made-to-measure boot in astrakhan, shaved mink, and blond fox?" writes fashion week correspondent Matthew Hicks. Except don't you want to know that they cost something like $12,000 Euros? That is because, you know, it's a hard day's work to pull the skin off a baby and/or fetal karakul lamb!
