mmmm… bacon.
via Reddit
Wow Wow Wow.
An exploration of how color impacts our ability to relate to historically important people and events. (Click to see photos larger).
Artist: Sanna Dullaway
Either way Abraham Lincoln looks like he would give kids nightmares. And not just wealthy, white plantation kids.
Gopnik on Mass Incarceration
I think this article is a must-read, both for the content and for style. I’ve read it twice, and I can’t point to a single paragraph that I’d excise.
That said, I love this bit comparing the Bill of Rights to the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
The trouble with the Bill of Rights, he argues, is that it emphasizes process and procedure rather than principles. The Declaration of the Rights of Man says, Be just! The Bill of Rights says, Be fair! Instead of announcing general principles—no one should be accused of something that wasn’t a crime when he did it; cruel punishments are always wrong; the goal of justice is, above all, that justice be done—it talks procedurally. You can’t search someone without a reason; you can’t accuse him without allowing him to see the evidence; and so on. This emphasis, Stuntz thinks, has led to the current mess, where accused criminals get laboriously articulated protection against procedural errors and no protection at all against outrageous and obvious violations of simple justice. You can get off if the cops looked in the wrong car with the wrong warrant when they found your joint, but you have no recourse if owning the joint gets you locked up for life. You may be spared the death penalty if you can show a problem with your appointed defender, but it is much harder if there is merely enormous accumulated evidence that you weren’t guilty in the first place and the jury got it wrong.
The whole article is free at The New Yorker.
Also, Adam Gopnik is rapidly approaching must-read status for me.
Forbes on Zynga
If Zynga made Avatar, it would still be about actual Native Americans and set in the 1860s. They’d hire Ryan Gosling to replace Kevin Costner, call it “Cavorting with Bears” and refuse to acknowledge the original’s existence.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/01/25/everything-wrong-with-zynga-in-one-image/
(via conangifs)
The album w h o k i l l by tUnE-yArDs was just named record of the year by voters in the 2011 Pazz & Jop poll. …
For the next 15 years, she must validate other people’s belief in her own brilliance. There is no other option. Because if she doesn’t, those same people will view her inability to become transcendent as hilarious.2
2. This happens all the time. It now seems super-funny that so many people once believed Arrested Development was among the most important bands of the early 1990s. The idea of anyone advocating the merits of Fischerspooner now seems totally ridiculous. It somehow seems crazy that Cornershop was previously viewed as luminous, even though their songs still sound good to me. It’s just an impossible problem: We always want to reward art for being innovative, but most artistic innovations are not designed to hold up over time. They exist as temporary reactions to other things happening within the culture. And that means they will seem goofy and dated when the culture changes again.
—
Chuck Klosterman on tUnE-yArDs - Grantland
Best footnote I’ve read in a while.
(via younglionyounglover)
(via younglionyounglover)
Ummm… sure. Ok.
Why Romney’s Tax Return Matters - The Atlantic
It’s not that Romney tax return proves he’s done something wrong. It’s that his tax returns prove that the tax code is wrong. Households worth $200 million earning $20 million in investment income a year shouldn’t be paying a lower tax rate than some middle class families, especially at a time when we’re thinking about cutting spending that disproportionately benefits the lower and lower-middle class.
Colorado weekends are the best.
The Classical Music Rollercoaster. (via The Atlantic)
This is exactly the type of thing that keeps me coming back to Reddit.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/oq7o6/what_are_some_glorious_expressions_that_only_make/
PIPA Response from Senator Michael Bennet
Emailed to me today in response to the email I sent urging him to oppose SOPA/PIPA.
As a free place for expression and commerce, the Internet is a representation of what is best about American ingenuity. Unfortunately there is a disturbingly large number of criminals who take advantage of this forum by stealing and illegally selling intellectual property. Many of these individuals do not even live in this country. And current law is inadequate to address the problem of offshore rogue pirates exploiting the creativity of Americans.
The chain of logic at work here.
- Foreigners are stealing our IP.
- U.S. laws don’t apply to foreigners.
- Therefore, we need new laws here in the US to solve this problem.
