A bunch of us have been using Flattr recently. It's a goofy but sweet European company that allows you to set a budget for micropayments that get delivered through social media services: Flickr, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Github, App.net. You favorite a thing? Part of your monthly budget goes to that favorite.

This was going semi-well. One problem was that Flattr isn't that widespread yet, though it had to start somewhere. So payments tended to be a bit circular. I made about 7 Euros in the last month, and I spent about 15 Euros. A lot of this, it looks like, was just money sort of equally changing hands.

I'm batting a full "zero out of twelve" on the Booker Prize longlist! I'm basically illiterate.

Aww. Sounds like MGM, which is now the property of its creditors (so long, James Bond movies?), might not even be able to release Red Dawn. But we were having so much fun!

"£15,370 pledged of £375,000 goal. Funding for this project was canceled by the project creator about 1 hour ago." (via)

"'We mostly saw it as an African problem, and a little bit as an inner-city American problem,' he said. 'Nobody ever talked about it as a disease among Yale students and staff.'" —Bless you and all, but I'll probably never recover from that quote, Christopher Glazek, Yale '07. Still! Glad to hear there are future plans to help colleges make note of what is apparently still, somehow, unspeakable and unthinkable.

• "The first major snowstorm of the season began its slow eastward march across the Midwest early Thursday, leaving at least three people dead, creating treacherous driving conditions and threatening to disrupt some of the nation's busiest airports ahead of the holiday weekend."
• "Tornado warnings remained in effect in parts of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama early Thursday."
• "Schools across the country, already on edge following last week's massacre of 20 students and six adults at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school have been further unnerved following a series of copycat threats, sometimes yielding arrests and caches of deadly weapons."
• "The number of Americans filing first-time claims for [...]

Ain't nobody gonna ask Hipster Cop if he's gay, I guess. Hot GQ pics though. (What a WORLD.)