July 2010
“But while we’re on the topic, social technology often does one thing well –...”
– From just a fantastic piece from What Consumes Me that responds to Umar Haque’s “Social Media Bubble”
Shouts & Murmurs: Postmadern Men
newyorker:
A Modern “Mad Men”:
A meeting at the offices of SterlingCooperMizuho.
DON DRAPER: As you all know, we’ve been commissioned by D1SKOUNT Rx Meds!!! to come up with their new spam mail. This is major; if you’re low on Adderall, now’s the time to refill.
Read the rest
An interview with Abe Sauer
My two favorite pieces from the last week — favorite because of their unexpectedness as much as their quality — happened to be written by the same guy, Abe Sauer.
First, regular readers of The Awl who live in Minneapolis might have been a bit surprised to see the lengthy write-up of Minnesota GOP candidate Tom Emmer. Sauer rustled together some tidbits from Emmer’s personal and...
“Political elites don’t even feel compelled to pretend to be able or...”
– In light of the wikileaks documents that came out today, here’s Greenwald on the WaPo’s totally fantastic “Secret America” piece that got little to no play
“If, on the other hand, you consider the games as a fever-dream allegory of the...”
– this New Yorker piece on the current uptick in dystopian teen fiction, Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games”, is an interesting compendium to The Commish’s piece in MNMo
“The greatest challenge with gifted kids, however, may be that they’re not...”
– Tim “Chairman of the Party” Gihring, my favorite Minnesota in-print personality, writes about MN’s left behind smart children in MNMo
“Most eye-opening is Emmer’s support of an amendment to the Minnesota...”
– I finally got around to reading all of the Awl write-up on our friend Tom Emmer, and I strongly, strongly recommend reading it.
Switchblade Comb reports from this year's ComiCon →
Playboy's new work safe website
Today Playboy launched a new bloggy site that was billed as ‘safe for work’ because there aren’t any nipples.
Spoiler: it’s still pretty not safe for work. It’s also wicked boring and a huge missed opportunity.
Awhile back I posted a design concept for Playboy from a student that went for the simple road. The re-branding proposal (and I’ll try and find...
“The Times has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February...”
– from the Guardian, “Times loses almost 90% of online readership”, which I read for free online
“At the movies, incomprehensible gibberish has become a way of life, but it...”
– WOW.
Rex Reed’s review of Inception is unbelievably amazing in its total oppositeness of reality.
“If you are of a certain age, you probably switched from a MySpace account to...”
– super interesting read: “Why is Facebook so damn white?”
MinnPost - Pawlenty says there's 'credible'... →
east-lake:
He said he suspects that any illegally voting felons might have favored Franken, but hastened to add: “I don’t know that.”
Just in case I haven’t said it in a few days, Tim Pawlenty is a huge jackass.
An interview with Steve Henningsgard of Iron...
In March Minneapolis metal band Iron Thrones beat a long list of band from across the country to win the national Scion No Label Needed contest. As a result of their victory, the group received a power up for their newest EP: new artwork, a new website, new merch, and studio production from The Machine Shop’s Will Putney and Machine.
Iron Thrones are now heading back to Minneapolis, and...
“Dr. Verlinde’s argument turns on something you could call the “bad hair day”...”
– the Times looks at “one of the most important papers of the last 20 years” that swipes at the long-standing assumptions about gravity
Exit
newsweek:
markcoatney:
Always lead with the news: I’ve decided to leave my position at Newsweek and accept a job at Tumblr. Though this is cliche, it is indeed true that this has been a difficult decision for me. I have been and continue to be a loud and persistent defender of Newsweek, and this is not (mostly, anyway!) simply because they sign my checks; I very much believe in the people...
“Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4...”
– From one of the best pieces I’ve read in awhile “Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal” that Grant had in Bloomberg Magazine
gifparty
this "Too many journalists?" piece is the best... →
Efficiency is a tough topic to tackle when it comes to discussion media organizations because you can’t quantify the work that goes into a big story or the results of regular beat reporting until after the fact, the metrics would never match up from journalist to journalist.
That being said, I’ve long had the position that one of the key things the “flattening” of the...
Doodledee on Bike Commuting Drafting off Strangers →
edkohler:
You can be my wheel whore if I can be yours.
I bike from around Lake Street up the LRT bike trail to downtown, and I get old spandex’d guys drafting all the time. It’s not that big a deal, but when it’s super windy, it can be really annoying.
“Here’s the point: Jezebel exists as a community of people in which, BY...”
– the Awl points out a totally awesome comment from their post yesterday on the Daily Show v. Jezebel discussion