March 2009 – Screw Type

1. Every time you click the “thumbs up” icon on someone’s Facebook post, Roger Ebert is paid 3.5 cents.

2. The creators of Twitter are obsessive James Ellroy fans, and started the service out of a desire to see more people write with the same brevity and idiosyncratic approach to grammar as their idol.

3. 43 percent of all blog posts about marketing are made of pieces from surplus Seth Godin posts.

4. 16 percent of all photos on flickr are self-portraits. 67 percent of those are ill-advised.

5. Even in face-to-face conversation, Guy Kawasaki never utters more than 140 characters before waiting for a reply. If the person he’s talking to does not quickly respond, Mr. Kawasaki switches topics, leading to some awkward cocktail party moments.

6. The term “Web 2.0” was started as a code O’Reilly Media employees could use when, during meetings with clients, they really needed to use the bathroom.

7. You do not want to know the origin of the term “The Long Tail.” (Shudder.)

(or “While I’d Probably Have a Different Opinion if I Made More Money…”)

(or “Men in Black References Are Too Still Relevant!”)

1. Does the anger over the AIG bailouts represent the cresting of a more significant popular anger over what’s been a 30 year trend of American capitalism valuing moving money around far more than actually making things? It’s not just that the AIG mess can serve as a shorthand for rewarding people who failed so badly at their jobs that they hurt the rest of us along with them, but that a closer look reveals a system in which even if they had succeeded at their jobs, they still wouldn’t have “deserved” that money.

2. Watching Norm Coleman in Minnesota pivot pretty directly from arguing right after the Senate election that a recount would cost the state too much money (up to $120,000) to arguing that a new state-wide election is the only way to serve the public interest (at a cost of millions) has me wondering, as so many things do, if, as part the process of joining the Republican Party, one is hit with a Men in Black-style gadget that erases the bit of the brain in charge of cognitive dissonance. It would explain so much.

3. Eric Cantor (R-VA) is every student council president ever.

Screw Type

Month: March 2009

3 thoughts about politics