“

Life is a race, Sandberg is telling us, and the way to win is through the perpetual acceleration of one’s own labor: moving forward, faster. The real antagonist identified by Lean In then is not institutionalized discrimination against women, but women’s reluctance to accept accelerating career demands.

If resistance to working harder is the problem, then it follows that work, in Sandberg’s book, is a solution. Work will save us; but, the reader may be asking, from what? By taking note of the forms of human activity that do not appear in Lean In, we see that what work will save us from is not-work: pleasure and other nonproductive pastimes.

Kate Losse, “Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in?”
“
It’s weird for me to hear about technologists in the wake of Sandy Hook saying that we should ban guns — gun control is simply technology control.
Gene Hoffman, chairman, Calguns Foundation
theatlantic: theparisreview: Gay Talese’s outline for “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” 1966, written on a shirt board. If you haven’t read it, read it. View high resolution

theatlantic:

theparisreview:

Gay Talese’s outline for “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” 1966, written on a shirt board.

If you haven’t read it, read it.

(Reblogged from theatlantic)

Data is a resource, just like money — and just like money can flow between different people, but is much harder to trace because we don’t have the disclosure laws that we do for money. So thinking about it not just in terms of privacy, but in terms of power, I think is important.

— Lois Beckett, ProPublica, in our conversation in this podcast.

Also in this podcast: Micah Sifry wonders if the State of the Union response on social media signals that we’ve reached peak stupid and communications consultant Shayna Englin discusses how data-driven campaign practices might — or might not — translate from the presidential campaigns into civic life.

Composite photo: The High Line in New York, before and after it was converted into a park. Made in GIMP for this story. View high resolution

Composite photo: The High Line in New York, before and after it was converted into a park.

Made in GIMP for this story.

This is my toast to 2013. Here’s to plainer speaking and sharper thinking; to the courage of conviction; to more dollars in my pocket and fewer dollars on the bar. Here’s to you; to your ambitions; to the arguments we will have; and to the terror and the thrill of things unforeseen. “Brevity is the soul of wit.” — Polonius, Hamlet “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” — Albert Einstein “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.” — Oscar Wilde (Photo: AleGranholm / Flickr) View high resolution

This is my toast to 2013.

Here’s to plainer speaking and sharper thinking; to the courage of conviction; to more dollars in my pocket and fewer dollars on the bar. Here’s to you; to your ambitions; to the arguments we will have; and to the terror and the thrill of things unforeseen.

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”

— Polonius, Hamlet

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

— Albert Einstein

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

— Oscar Wilde

(Photo: AleGranholm / Flickr)

“
It’s not perverse for Wikipedia to insist that authors must publish essays in reputable forums if they want to correct the record on their own work. It’s the only way a system like Wikipedia can work. It’s not indifference to Philip Roth’s authority that drives Wikipedia to snub his own edits to his literary record; it’s deference to the New Yorker’s authority. Wikipedia can only answer internet-shaped questions, like: “Was assertion X made on website Y?” For questions of real-world identity and personal authoritativeness, Wikipedia relies on the rest of the world to supply the credentials.
Cory Doctorow in The Guardian

(Source: Guardian)

“
And [Obama] took one look at the bookshelves, filled with china, and thought, This won’t do. “They had a bunch of plates in there,” he says, a little incredulously. “I’m not a dish guy.” The dishes he replaced with the original applications for several famous patents and patent models—Samuel Morse’s 1849 model for the first telegraph, for instance, which he pointed to and said, “This is the start of the Internet right here.
Michael Lewis,”Obama’s Way,”Vanity Fair

(Source: vanityfair.com)

theatlantic: The Case for Letting Gary Johnson Into the Debates When Gary Johnson was a GOP primary candidate, he watched in frustration as CNN invited an obviously unqualified Herman Cain onto the debate stage, even as it refused appeals from the former two-term New Mexico governor to take part or even to be included in the polls used to determine eligibility.Now that Governor Johnson is the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, he has a similar problem but a different foe. The Commission on Presidential Debates doesn’t want to extend him an invitation. In an open letter to the organization, he’s trying to persuade them to change their minds. The third of voters who are loyal to neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party deserve to have at least some representation during the televised presidential debates, he argues. Read more. [Image: Reuters] View high resolution

theatlantic:

The Case for Letting Gary Johnson Into the Debates

When Gary Johnson was a GOP primary candidate, he watched in frustration as CNN invited an obviously unqualified Herman Cain onto the debate stage, even as it refused appeals from the former two-term New Mexico governor to take part or even to be included in the polls used to determine eligibility.

Now that Governor Johnson is the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, he has a similar problem but a different foe. The Commission on Presidential Debates doesn’t want to extend him an invitation. In an open letter to the organization, he’s trying to persuade them to change their minds. The third of voters who are loyal to neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party deserve to have at least some representation during the televised presidential debates, he argues.

Read more. [Image: Reuters]

(Reblogged from theatlantic)

n+1: The Politics of Cynicism

How did such a movement emerge in the first place? A number of more or less compelling explanations can be adduced. One revolves around the internet. As the Russian print and broadcast media was evacuated of any challenging content, political discussion gradually moved online. Ten years ago, only a tiny percentage of Russians could go online, and they were unlikely to cause any trouble. As internet access radically expanded, however, and the Russian LiveJournal–based blogosphere came into contact with the Russian diaspora, online dissent became more unified and much more difficult to control. (The government is currently implementing an online censorship bill that at long last seems to be a serious attempt to clamp down on internet activism, though its stated justification is protecting children from immorality.) Another explanation is purely Maslovian: a new middle class has emerged, and a large segment of the population can finally pay attention to more abstract needs than security and shelter. Corruption is of particular interest to this new social force, since it is a direct threat to its economic prospects. At least as significant, however, is the fact that the government’s behavior diverged from its antipolitical line. While the four-year rigmarole with President Medvedev may have been intended as a play to a knowing crowd—and certainly Medvedev was not taken seriously at the beginning of his term—by 2009 significant numbers of Russians had been persuaded to buy into the new president’s program of reform and modernization. Many Russians began to become aware of the possibilities of idealistic collective action. They organized local groups to fight developers, corrupt officials, and deficiencies in public services. At first, the aspirations of these activists were limited, but it could not have been long before they awoke to the fact that corruption was not simply an incidental part of the Putinist system.