Occasional gesticulations, by Mark Ury.
“The single most important thing about Danah is that she’s the first anthropologist we’ve got who comes from the tribe she’s studying.”
-Clay Shirky in the Times on Danah Boyd.
Marco Arment thinks we can beat the MPAA by not watching their member’s films:
Even if we don’t watch their movies in a theater or buy their plastic discs of hostility, we’re still supporting them. If we watch their movies on Netflix or other flat-rate streaming or rental services, the service effectively pays them on our behalf next time they negotiate the rights or buy another disc. And if we pirate their movies, we’re contributing to the statistics that help them convince Congress that these destructive laws are necessary.
So maybe, instead of waiting for the MPAA’s next law and changing our Twitter avatars for a few days in protest, it would be more productive to significantly reduce or eliminate our support of the MPAA member companies.
In principle—great idea. In practice? Well, here’s a test. Lean over to your girlfriend or husband tonight and tell them to turn off 30 Rock. Or Harry Potter. Or the million other filmed stories they watch. When they ask why, tell them it will help avoid shutting down the internet.
How’d that work for you?
That’s the effectiveness of using consumer purchasing to stop the MPAA.
The alternatives? Campaign finance reform. Play the game. Collaboration.
Or, just kill them.
Hollywood appears to have peaked. If it were an ordinary industry (film cameras, say, or typewriters), it could look forward to a couple decades of peaceful decline. But this is not an ordinary industry. The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise.
That’s Paul Graham’s call-to-arms on the day that SOPA was rubbed out.
When I was 14 I learned about being a life guard. I vividly recall the warning that drowners often drown the people who try to save them. They’re a mess of panic and adrenaline and will do anything to survive—even if that means killing those around them.
I’d also like to call him my husband. I’m not the biggest fan of the word “partner”: It either means that we run a business together or we’re cowboys. “Boyfriend” seems fleeting, like maybe we met two weeks ago. I’ve been saying “better half” for as long as I’ve been able to. I think it’s a little self-deprecating and clearly defines that we’re in a relationship, but it would be nice to say “my husband.”
(via suicideblonde)
Vanessa Paradis with her hubby. Have you seen her in Heartbreaker? She’s pitch-perect, as is the rest of the cast.
We cannot expand our self, and our collective self, without making holes in our heart. We are stretching our boundaries, and stretching the small container that holds our identity. Of course there will be rips and tears. Late-nite informercials, and cavernous CES halls of unsellable gizmos, are hardly uplifting techniques, but the path to our enlargement is very prosaic, humdrum, and everyday. The only real progress that sticks is boring.
Paul Graham of YCombinator writing about founders who don’t shrink from the tedious or unpleasant aspects of the business:
A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake. And schleps should be dealt with the same way you’d deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in. Which is not to say you should seek out unpleasant work per se, but that you should never shrink from it if it’s on the path to something great.
This reminds me of one of the best comments Kaye said while we were thinking about a big/fat/scary part of the business. I fretted about not knowing how to do something, to which she replied:
Of course you do. You just jump in. You know how to do that.
Youth, stupidity, naiveté—these are important tools in a startup (and a marriage, for that matter.) You don’t shrink from things you don’t know about. You just deal with them as they occur.
This is why I love Steward Brand’s “stay hungry, stay foolish.” You fail when you think you know everything or won’t do anything.
Charlie has taken ownership of the chocolate factory!
The word “power” splinters into several definitions when I see this shot. Photographed by Mark Seliger for Vanity Fair.
Under the guise of launching a Facebook clone, Google has actually embarked on a major plan to improve search relevance AND shift its revenue mix to the much more profitable first-party ads. It’s an amazing coup.
Perhaps more people will relate to this: I hate Android for the same reason that Severus Snape hates Harry Potter — the very sight reminds me of something so beautiful, that was taken. Except it’s worse. It’s as if Harry Potter has grown up to become Voldemort.
Paris Lemon’s post on why he hates Android is a bit whiny, but he’s right about Google. Their strategy to enter the phone market failed miserably and, in turn, they screwed everyone over with their Verizon deal.
Closing quote from Lemon:
It’s so wonderful that the platform which helped cripple Net Neutrality and is keeping the evil carriers in control is taking off. Make no mistake: Android is now the carriers’ best friend.
The Oscars would be 100x better if there was more Audrey.
We teach students to write too methodically. We allow adherence to form to trump creativity. We assess according to state-issued rubrics that call for a certain structure to be followed. We score students on their abilities to be focused, include enough content, stay traditionally organized, use proper grammar and spelling, and use “style.”
[But] We neglect audience. We’re churning out writer-robots who spit back the format they think we want to see.
Lyn’s a K-6 principal, but her critique of teaching applies all the way up to master’s programs. Scoring has taken creative enterprise and focused solely on enterprise.
Economically, the print media are in the business of marking up paper. We can all imagine an old-style editor getting a scoop and saying “this will sell a lot of papers!” Cross out that final S and you’re describing their business model. The reason they make less money now is that people don’t need as much paper.
Jessica Brown Findlay on the set of Downton Abbey. Interestingly, I have that same expression when I watch the show. LOVE it.
