The Tumblr of Newsweek, which still exists, unlike Newsweek, and which is run by the DailyBeast "senior editor for social media," announced a new policy yesterday. "You pin, we unfollow" was the communiqué—by "pinning" they mean the Tumblr commerce initiative wherein, for a small fee, one can make a Tumblr post "adhere" to the top of each follower's dashboard until each follower "clicks" upon the post to make it disappear. (By "unfollow," they meant that they would no longer choose to receive said pinners' posts in their dashboard.) "The pins are like dashboard cockroaches. Turn on the lights every morning and unpin, unpin, unpin, unpin, unpin, unpin, unpin," the [...]
This is a fine how-do-you-do for longtime wingnut champion Bill O'Reilly: the anti-Obama right is convinced he's a sell-out because he's "too busy" to report on how Barack HUSSEIN Obama is not a citizen. But some are still on O'Reilly's side: they're convinced that he was just threatened by the government and coerced into silence by the far left lunatic fringe currently inhabiting the White House/NPR/etc. ("Obama's goons have gotten to Fox News channel," as one commenter put it.) Poor Bill! Live by the something, die by the something.
You really, really, really want to go see the Carsten Höller exhibition that is opening at the New Museum this Wednesday. We got a sneak peak of the installation and it's bonkers-cakes! Obviously you will want to start on the fourth floor so you can take the chute down through the concrete floor. Also there are like some lights and a bunch of birds (looks like a mobile of bird cages with birds in them) and stuff. (Stuff = "a sensory deprivation pool." Just what the senseless Lower East Side needed.) It's max ridic, as the kids say. HOW MANY HIPSTERS DOES IT TAKE TO JAM UP A [...]
Well! People are saying that last night's tiny Kanye West show was amazing, but when you listen to the clips of his ten-minute monologue, those are not really the sounds an audience makes when the preacher is on fire, or when something amazing is happening. (Although everyone does crack up when he thanks "the energy from the models." Because that is hilarious. And there's applause and enjoyment of it—just less and less as it goes on.) But mostly I think this is the sound an audience makes when someone has gone off the rails. (There's whole parts that don't make sense, after all! And anyone who spends ten [...]
It's a lawsuit for the ages: this "100% gay" guy is suing his former employers after he was terminated for touching a female student "in a way that made her uncomfortable." LET'S GET HIM! Oh, also he was her tandem skydiving instructor at the time of the touching and they were jumping out of a plane.
A few anti-cheating protections in place at the University of Central Florida, which is going way-high-tech in order to preserve (or re-institute?) its students' academic integrity, which has taken something of a hit in recent years: "No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student's speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside."
"I'm a 23-year old undergraduate at a small liberal arts college. In my view, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a very close relationship with your parents. Calling your parents five or six times a day–why not, especially if you consider them your friends? Just because the Boomers (and the Gen X-ers, to a certain extent) had bad relationships with their parents doesn't mean we need to repeat that experience." —This comment, in response to Terry Castle's essay on what it's like to teach the current crop of parent-attached young people, is pretty amazing! It's gonna be a long couple decades.
"Russian businessman Mikhail D. Prokhorov… this winter became the first of the post-Soviet set of ultrawealthy financiers to run for president…. Being a billionaire in itself — Mr. Prokhorov owns 20 Jet Skis, a 200-foot yacht and a mansion outside Moscow — might seem a fatal handicap in an era of anger at the rich that is as prevalent in Russia as anywhere." —"Might." Each something gets the something it deserves.
As the election cycle really gets started, politicians are really taking Iowa seriously: "His arm was in my back door, trying to get in and I screamed and went upstairs to my parents room and I continued screaming." (via everyone, everywhere)
"I was in Fargo and this woman left after the reading and came later to get a book signed and she had a little plastic container, and she had gone home, and it was a plastic container of breast milk, and she wanted me to sign the container. And I said, 'Can I smell it?' And she said sure and lifted up the lid and she looked at me and said, 'We both know where this is going.' And I said, 'We do.' I didn't drink all of it. I just had to taste it, you know?" -David Sedaris is still pretty punk in his own way.
The between-the-lines reading of today's Tom Friedman column: "Starving the people of Gaza is bad… because it's bad for Israel. Not because the Gazans are starving (65% of the population is food insecure)."
“We’re not just running creative teams,” said Hearst’s men’s group editorial director and Popular Mechanics editor Jim Meigs. “We’re running new business incubators. We’re constantly thinking about where can we take our content and roll it into new platforms and in ways that are going to make money.”
Ladies, do we have a problem? We kind of… do. Rebecca Traister weighs in on SlutWalk. I wanted to love SlutWalks, the viral protest movement that began this spring after a Toronto police officer told a group of college women that if they hoped to escape sexual assault, they should avoid dressing like “sluts.” In angry response, young women (and men) have marched in more than 70 cities around the world, often dressed in bras, halter tops and garter belts.
But at a moment when questions of sex and power, blame and credibility, and gender and justice are so ubiquitous and so urgent, I have mostly felt irritation [...]
"Robots to get their own internet." —Enough said, right? Yes, I know, you're saying out loud: "How could this go wrong? The best part is that the RoboEarth website has a section called "collaborators," which, they certainly are. RoboVichy!
Last night, NBC premiered "Outsourced," the show that I am not going to watch about call centers and labor inequity and how weird Indians are, the latter two things definitely being stuff I'm not up to being amused about. Sorry, humorless! Also, what, they couldn't find a role for my high school buddy Ajay Naidu? Hell no then. But others watched!
• "I defer to African-Americans on issues of minstrel in this country and whether it's worth it or not. Oh, nah? It's not. Okay. What the fuck!!!"
