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“Not only is Twitter a tightly networked circle of Chinese dissent, it is also a direct line to the foreign media. It thus can be an effective way for Chinese to send an SOS signal to the outside world. Several years ago, blogger Peter Guo famously declared that Twitter helped get him out of jail. He got in trouble for spreading word about a crime that allegedly involved local officials. After he was arrested, he tweeted for help via his mobile phone. His case quickly attracted domestic and international attention, and he was released a couple of weeks later.” — Emily Parker: How The Obama Administration’s Narrative About Chen Guangcheng Unraveled, One Tweet At A Time | The New Republic (via s-m-i)
(via s-m-i)
It’s a fair point that you add insult to injury when you embed someone’s photo without linking to their post or crediting them in any way, but it’s a dangerous case to make for an aggregation site. After almost four years at the Huffington Post, I know! But it’s ok because Simon Dumenco’s gonna save us all.
via aledlewis
(via s-m-i)
Cat Cake. At Bruce High Quality Foundation (Taken with instagram)
This section of @brianstelter’s timeline is important right now for so many reasons. This is going to hang in the Newseum, and it’s so ice-cold that motherfuckers best bring some mittens if they want to touch it.
Stop Celebrating St. Patrick Because He Was Probably an Asshole -
caro:
I’m not out there celebrating my last name’s country of origin because it really kind of horrifies me that a holiday laden with undertones of defiance of rules designed to oppress an ethnic minority has turned into an excuse for people with no connection whatsoever to said ethnic group to dress up as the worst possible cartoon stereotypes of it and get wasted in the streets. That was a very long sentence in defiance of rules designed to enforce proper grammar.
When I was a kid, St. Patrick’s Day in my family meant remembrance of various past struggles and some kind of buttoned-up dinner in support of one Irish aid society or another. Maybe I don’t like the annual reinforcement of Ireland’s association with heavy drinking because of how many alcoholics my family produced in generations past. I also take issue with Cinco de Mayo (would frat boys co-opt Chinese New Year, Diwali, or Purim like that?) but am unoffended by Mardi Gras, perhaps because New Orleans itself takes so much pride in it. The Irish, or at least some of them, seem to be a little embarrassed by how Americans celebrate St. Patrick’s.
I may well be wrong, but I think being permissive with cultural ignorance in one context (drunken debauchery on St. Patrick’s Day or Cinco de Mayo) is the kind of mindset that leads to more dangerous misconceptions like, say, believing that the Founding Fathers were right-wing Christians who intended the United States to be as such.
My views on St. Patrick’s Day celebrations have, however, not managed to influence my dad, who went to the parade in midtown today wearing a jacket and tie. His response to me was, “Oh, don’t worry, it’s much classier in New York than it is in South Boston.”
Yes
“As New Yorkers, we all live in a peculiar state of location upgrade, a kind of reverse Manderlay, where places we had once known have outpaced our own internal soft-focus (as an exercise, I recommend replacing the word nature with real estate developers in the opening page of Rebecca). Memory must do the decay work of time and it is here at 314 that I remember the black, rusted iron gates of the front door, the hallway swabbed in yellow plaster, the chipped linoleum floor tiles attempting a marble mosaic, the five flights up to my apartment where, even drunk at 2 A.M., I had to be careful not to step on syringes, used condoms, sleeping prostitutes, and take-out ketchup packets.” —
Richie Incognito is one of the more peculiar names in sports, but it has nothing on Just-in’Love Smith, Yourhighness Morgan or the Mapp Twins (Majestic and Superior). Those are just some of the best names in sports, which SI has collected below.
GALLERY: Great Names In Sports
“I’m going to be 35 this year. ... I want to be able to buy groceries and fix the brakes on my car." -
(Source: joepompeo)
