March 2012
65 posts
“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for...”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson (via nedhepburn)
Let it wash over you.
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February 2012
43 posts
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Where is Premium Email?
dbreunig:
Developers: please think twice before building small, niche services atop existing, entrenched, ad-supported platforms and consider creating premium versions of the functions said platforms provide. When users are spooked by successive privacy news stories, ask them how much their privacy and data is worth. Answer with your product.
For example: I’d like to see a start up set out to...
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On advertising: Banksy vs. Gossage
austinkleon:
This Banksy quote from Cut It Out has been making the rounds:
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are...
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“First, Thibodeau and Boroditsky asked 1,482 students to read one of two reports...”
– Not Exactly Rocket Science describes a Stanford experiment illustrating the power of metaphors and language.
The words you use matter.
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“Not only do living things lessen the disorder in their environments; they are in...”
– James Gleick, The Information (Chapter 9)
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What is California SB 375? (HealthyCal.org) →
latimes:
healthycal:
Groundbreaking legislation could change how neighborhoods are designed in California, curbing sprawl and creating safer, more walkable communities. But to make sure the law promotes public health on all of these fronts, Californians need to keep their leaders accountable.
“California’s Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act is the first law in the nation to...
Kickstarter Expects to Provide More Funding Than... →
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“Increasingly, we inhabit a world of transmedia storytelling, one that depends...”
– Henry Jenkins, “Game Design as Narrative Architecture”
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“The central attribute of human conscious experience, so fundamental, in fact,...”
– Legendary neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran, author of the excellent The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human, shares his adventures in behavioral neurology.
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“We have a government that says it’s okay to eat Twinkies and Cocoa Puffs and...”
– From sustainable farmer Joel Salatin. Quote captured by Amy Eddings on WNYC Culture blog.
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“Consider, too, that in 1960 we spoke of the First World and the Third World;...”
– A Conversation with Peter Thiel - The American Interest Magazine
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“Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has apparently found rare Joy Division and New Order...”
– NME
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WatchMy valentines. ♥ ♥
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education →
austinkleon:
One of the great errors of an elite education, then, is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense. But they’re not. Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more. Their souls do not weigh...
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“This is the axe my grandfather made.
My father replaced the handle,
and I...”
– Proverb (via bestmadeco)
“You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.”
– Warren Buffett: Why stocks beat gold and bonds
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“Baja is the new Tuscany.”
– Anthony Bourdain
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James Fallows and me on the U.S. Constitution, NBD
James Fallows, responding to my question on his Reddit AMA yesterday:
[…]our political system is uniquely resistant to change. Our Constitution is harder to change than most other countries’ – and is getting quite old now. If “the Founders” were around today, they would never come up with something like today’s Senate. They were practical-minded people, and they would have...
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Me, to James Fallows on Reddit:
You’ve said in this discussion: “the foundations of American democracy and self-government are a cause for serious worry.”
I tend to agree with this statement, but I have a hard time pinpointing the biggest fissures in the foundation. I often blame first past the post voting for creating a homogenous legislature. I also worry that national...
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“Fine, it may not be legal to flip the bird on television, but that’s simply a...”
– Sasha Frere-Jones to Tim Winter of the Parents Television Council, from M.I.A. Shouldn’t Have Apologized.
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“Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know’.”
– Wislawa Szymborska, from her Nobel Prize acceptance speech
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“As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. “There’s...”
– What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success - The Atlantic
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“We hope to change how people relate to their governments and social...”
– Facebook’s S-1 Filing Facebook officially asserts itself as a non-state actor.