TBD | Nick Judd

What’s on 2/10/2012? It’s still January.

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:49:14 -0500

What’s on 2/10/2012? It’s still January.

Ron Paul’s Giant on the Unique Talents He Brings to the Campaign -- Daily Intel

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:56:50 -0500

Ron Paul’s Giant on the Unique Talents He Brings to the Campaign -- Daily Intel:

For some reason you looked more gigantic in those photos. Were you standing next to a midget? That guy was pretty short who was standing in front of me. He’s not a midget but he’s pretty short. That’s why this whole thing is very funny to me. I was going to make up some crazy story that I was found in an orphanage and all that, I’m nine feet tall, but no. I’m just six-foot-five, the guy in front of me was short, and it just happened to be. Last question: Has Dr. Paul asked ever asked you to personally destroy the Fed with your bare hands? No, but he should, because I’d happily volunteer for that.

The New York Times public editor's very public utterance | Clay Shirky | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:06:54 -0500

The New York Times public editor's very public utterance | Clay Shirky | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:

This is the part where I feel like Shirky is talking to me:

This is partly because centrist publications enjoy more uniform access to politicians than partisan ones (even if the partisanship is simply an intolerance for hogwash). It’s also because treating readers as political participants rather than spectators would be frowned on by advertisers, for whom the relative neutrality of the mainstream press is a prized part of that platform’s value.

Which is a problem, then, with a relationship between some media outlets and their readers. The client of the newsperson should be the reader, not the advertiser.

New York Times Public Editor on Truth - The End of Truth - Esquire

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:01:02 -0500

New York Times Public Editor on Truth - The End of Truth - Esquire:

Charles P. Pierce:

The pack is bigger and more unruly. Everybody’s on deadline all the time. (Twitter! File for the blog! Generate Content Across Many Platforms!) There are more — and, occasionally, better — watchdogs, especially on the Intertoobz, but even a lot of that is now hyper-amplified heckling. The marketing people are better at their jobs than the journalism people are at theirs. But, among all the problems that have gotten worse and not better since Crouse wrote his book, it’s is the latter consideration, the chickenshit bosses back home, that has done the real damage. Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/new-york-times-public-editor-on-truth-6638107#ixzz1jJc4nIrH

The Game: How Campaigns' New Obsession With Social Media is Hurting America | TechPresident

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:23:09 -0500

The Game: How Campaigns' New Obsession With Social Media is Hurting America | TechPresident:

Me:

The thing about attaching numbers to people’s names is that it usually makes them want to make the number go up. Call it gamification if you want. The truth is that it’s human nature, and as more people pay attention to social media, it is creating a sort of downward behavioral spiral. Candidates wanting more points on the social media scoreboard are urging supporters to tweet and post to Facebook on their behalf — spreading borderline spam on social networks and doing nothing to make the campaign season less of a horse race when that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Rather than just making things worse, there are better things that papers like the Post could be doing.

Hi I'm Louis C.K. and this is a thing : IAmA

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:20:35 -0500

Hi I'm Louis C.K. and this is a thing : IAmA:

Louis CK:

to steal from someone and not feel bad, you either have to be a sociopath or view the act differently. One way is to remove “Someone” from the equation. You’re not stealing from a person. Big companies do a lot to help people view them as less than human. I heard a speach by Noam Chomsky who said that corporations are like super humans. They cannot be hurt like a human can and they never die. They are not succeptible to scrutiny or accountability. this makes them more profitable. If companies want to enjoy these benifits to some degree they have to live with what else comes with being not human. you miss out on compassion, forgiveness, comraderie, empathy, trust all kinds of shit.

The Cluetrain Manifesto:

These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked. roadkill Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.

Rational Irrationality: In Defense of Political Journalists : The New Yorker

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:56:00 -0500

Rational Irrationality: In Defense of Political Journalists : The New Yorker:

Maybe those tweet-happy, trivia-obsessed McMuffins really are letting down the profession and the country, turning Presidential politics into a game show. And since I’m sitting here waiting to find out how the horse race in New Hampshire turns out, rather than doing some research into the historical demonization of African-American political leaders, or whether Mitt Romney’s get-tough approach to China is credible from a game-theoretical perspective, maybe I’m guilty of the same thing. But wait a minute. Over breakfast this morning, I read the front section of the Times, which contains almost four full pages of political coverage, much of it tied to today’s New Hampshire primary. There were reports on how Romney has spent years cultivating local political leaders, on how the campaigns are already blanketing the airwaves in South Carolina, and a particularly interesting story on the relationship between Newt Gingrich and Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino billionaire and fervent Zionist, who has just donated five million dollars to a Super PAC tied to the Georgian. Sitting down at my desk, I picked up an investigative report from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal that I had printed out. It examined the history of seventy-seven businesses that Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s old firm, invested in between 1984 and 1999, and revealed that more than one in five of them (twenty-two per cent) had filed for bankruptcy. To my eyes, anyway, these were all examples of serious political journalism: well reported, clearly edited, and soberly presented. And today is nothing special.

Track: New Hampshire Primary Returns - WNYC

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:36:39 -0500

Track: New Hampshire Primary Returns - WNYC:

This.

Is Tumblr Protecting Its Users From the Big, Bad Internet? | TechPresident

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:56:54 -0500

Is Tumblr Protecting Its Users From the Big, Bad Internet? | TechPresident:

cutlerish:

The browser extension, Missing e… modifies the look and feel of Tumblr to add several new features — something that Tumblr has taken issue with for months…. This puts Tumblr, known for its stance on SOPA as a champion of user rights, in a bit of an awkward position: In this case, it’s the entity seeking to block access to a popular and by all accounts useful piece of software.

The result, it seems, is a return to the age-old tension between users’ desire to get more out of a platform than it was designed to offer and a platform’s need to control its product. We’ve seen it with Twitter, Dave Winer notes, we’ve seen it with Facebook, and now we’re seeing it with Tumblr.

I wrote this.

At Wall Street Protests, Clash of Reporting and Policing - NYTimes.com

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:31:16 -0500

At Wall Street Protests, Clash of Reporting and Policing - NYTimes.com:

Reporting and policing can be high-adrenaline jobs. . But the decade-long trajectory in New York is toward expanded police power. Officers routinely infiltrate groups engaged in lawful dissent, spy on churches and mosques, and often toss demonstrators and reporters around with impunity. When this is challenged, the police commissioner and the mayor often shrug it off and fight court orders. The mayor even argued that to let the press watch the police retake Zuccotti Park would be to violate the privacy of protesters. “It wouldn’t be fair,” he said. As arguments go, this is perversely counterintuitive. But the mayor’s words reflect, as State Senator Eric Adams, the civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel and two others wrote in a recent letter to the commissioner, a misunderstanding of long-established patrol guide procedures.

First Demonstration of Time Cloaking - Technology Review

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:16:53 -0500

First Demonstration of Time Cloaking - Technology Review:

In effect, the space between the two lenses is a kind of spatio-temporal cloak that deletes changes that occur in short periods of time. The device has some limitations. The Cornell time cloak lasts only for 110 nanoseconds—that’s not long. And Fridman and co say the best it can achieve will be 120 microseconds.

Quoth Keanu: Woah.

El Oso » Archive » Protest Infatuation and the 4th Wave of Democratization

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:36:23 -0500

El Oso » Archive » Protest Infatuation and the 4th Wave of Democratization:

Go read this. David Sasaki asks: Okay, networked activists, what’s next?

kimjongunlookingatthings: looking at YOU

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 22:38:32 -0500

kimjongunlookingatthings:

looking at YOU

kimjongunlookingatthings: looking at a gift from vice premiere...

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 22:29:30 -0500

kimjongunlookingatthings:

looking at a gift from vice premiere zhang dejiang

Also, in The Atlantic: Gulag of the Mind: Why North Koreans Cry for Kim Jong Il

Could Revolution Come to Putin's Russia? - Brian Till - International - The Atlantic

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 22:25:23 -0500

Could Revolution Come to Putin's Russia? - Brian Till - International - The Atlantic:

Brian Till, on Moscow:

The street needs leaders, or cohesive coalitions of leaders, who can tell the movement when to lie low, like Mandela, and when to rise up, and who can demand more in the face of the regime’s tepid offerings. Starting with the Green revolution, in Iran, moving to Wall Street and what we’ve seen in Moscow today, these uprisings have sometimes seen individuals decline to lead (like Mir Hossein Moussavi in Iran), or suffer fractured leadership (like in Libya), or structure themselves in a way that they will never elevate a leader (Occupy), or simply too infant to have decided who, in the end, will lead (Moscow). But, it should be clear that revolutions need leaders, and those that succeed without will continue to be the exception rather than the rule — perhaps even more so today, because of both the advantages and dangers conferred by the digital era.

Cee Lo Green Strikes Pop Star Gold, Without a Gold Album - NYTimes.com

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:42:08 -0500

Cee Lo Green Strikes Pop Star Gold, Without a Gold Album - NYTimes.com:

The old business model for entertainment, it’s a-changin’. The Times on Cee Lo Green:

Cee Lo — a cannonball-shaped man devoted to the Liberace and Elton John school of showmanship — will earn about $20 million this year. Record sales represent the smallest slice of the revenue pie, according to Larry Mestel, the chief executive of Cee Lo’s management company, Primary Wave Music. The collapse in record sales over the last decade has decimated the bottom line, and a hit song alone is no longer enough to bring in superstar wealth. So even musicians with multiplatinum success have started looking elsewhere for income, especially to increased touring and the kind of commercial deals that result in Miracle Whip product placement in Lady Gaga videos and Taylor Swift’s performing at a JetBlue airport terminal.

Lawsuit May Determine Who Owns a Twitter Account - NYTimes.com

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:39:49 -0500

Lawsuit May Determine Who Owns a Twitter Account - NYTimes.com:

A writer who parted ways with a former employer took — with the employer’s permission, he says — the company Twitter account with him. The New York Times tells the story of Noah Kravitz:

And so he began writing as NoahKravitz, keeping all his followers under that new handle. But eight months after Mr. Kravitz left the company, PhoneDog sued, saying the Twitter list was a customer list, and seeking damages of $2.50 a month per follower for eight months, for a total of $340,000.

"Newsrooms are eerie during the holidays. Sources disappear. They don’t call. They don’t write. It’s..."

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 14:37:39 -0500

“Newsrooms are eerie during the holidays. Sources disappear. They don’t call. They don’t write. It’s an apocalypse. #partylikeajournalist”

- Ginger Christ (via partylikeajournalist)

n+1: At the NYSE

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:43:56 -0500

n+1: At the NYSE:

For the next hour, the crowd moved up and down among Beaver, Broad, and William. Around 10 AM, still on Broad and Beaver, I heard a sound to my left like the alarm when someone opens an emergency subway exit. Turning, I saw a line of maybe twenty protesters, not two feet over, drop to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. This was the LRAD—a Long Range Acoustic Device, or sound cannon, that emits a high frequency pulse that rattles the skull—earplugs don’t help. First developed for use in faraway countries, it has finally found its way home.

“All art is propaganda.” — George Orwell, in,...

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 01:47:46 -0500

“All art is propaganda.” — George Orwell, in, of all things, his essay on Charles Dickens.