SECONDED: Ryan McCarthy's Tumblr

"Complexity, as it turns out, is not particularly viral."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:18:09 -0400

““Complexity, as it turns out, is not particularly viral.””

- A great Evgeny Morozov essay on meme-hustling and Tim O’Reilly.

"The idea of the Creative Person dropping his wisdom down like manna upon the heads of a grateful..."

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:01:01 -0400

““The idea of the Creative Person dropping his wisdom down like manna upon the heads of a grateful public is, I venture to say, really dumb.””

-

Maria Bustillos, on point, as usual.

"Running may kill you; it may hurt you; it may bore you; it may make you boring. But it can help you..."

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:37:38 -0500

“Running may kill you; it may hurt you; it may bore you; it may make you boring. But it can help you from feeling older.”

- Nicholas Thompson on the ageless Bernard Legat.

"But Mason fails to see why the market behaves the way it does. It is callous, to be sure, but it..."

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:47:56 -0500

“

But Mason fails to see why the market behaves the way it does. It is callous, to be sure, but it isn’t stupid. The Street is not unaware of the fact that it has a regimented system that does not reward eccentric behavior. Mason’s lack of prior experience and personality quirks were at odds with Wall Street’s platonic ideal of a public company CEO: a numbers-driven operator who is experienced, polished, reliably predictable and predictably reliable. In other words, not the kind of guy who makes jokey yoga videos in his underwear or who nearly presents he mayor of New York with a pony (a GrouPony, to be exact) as a party favor for an office visit. Certainly not the kind of guy who creates an entire room in his corporate headquarters for an imaginary tenant named Michael whose belongings include an exercise bike that plays Sade when pedaled, Cheerio boxes as décor, and a toilet full of Almond Joy bars. All of which Mason had done.

The presentations that public company CEOs have to make to institutional investors are called “dog and pony shows” for a reason. Wall Street knows some of it is superficial and irrelevant. It recognizes that it’s inconvenient and annoying for the CEO have to trot the company out, brush its hair, decorate it with pretty ribbons and walk it around the stage. The CEO has better things to do, after all. Isn’t the CEO supposed to be building the company?

”

- Elizabeth Spiers sat down with Groupon CEO Andrew Mason about a month before he was fired. And this is just a great passage in an awesome article.

"There’s a freedom in being ignored. Away from the spotlight, Brooklyn developed something that..."

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 10:37:38 -0500

“There’s a freedom in being ignored. Away from the spotlight, Brooklyn developed something that people want, and now they’re coming to take it away. Fortunately, Brooklyn is a large place, larger than “Brooklyn.” As long as there are still Trinidadian doubles shacks in Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, outside the pickle belt, and Bensonhurst is still Sicilian enough to support Villabate, the greatest pasticceria outside of Sicily itself, I’ll keep hope alive that city life doesn’t have to be a theme park or a plastic desert.”

- Terrific essay by Esquire’s David Wondrich on living in Brooklyn — the place, the brand — for the last 26 years.

"Much is made of genius and talent, but the foundation of any life where you get to realize your..."

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:54:27 -0500

“Much is made of genius and talent, but the foundation of any life where you get to realize your ambitions is simply being able to out-last everyone through the tough, crappy times — whether through sheer determination, a strong support network, or simply a lack of options.”

- I usually avoid the self-helpy entrepreneurial advice blog posts. But this, on Ang Lee’s six-year drought and the uncertainty of success, is really good. I like the idea of success as endurance.

Michael Chabon treats dreams like a Hollywood exec treats scripts

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:02:52 -0500

“Dreams are effluvia, bodily information, to be shared only with intimates and doctors. At the breakfast table, in my house, an inflexible law compels all recountings of dreams to be compressed into a sentence or, better still, half a sentence, like the paraphrasings of epic films listed in TV Guide: ‘Rogue Samurai saves peasant village.’”

He’s going to pass on anything involving dwarfs, just so you know.

charliewarzel: excellente.

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 17:34:42 -0500

charliewarzel:

excellente.

bobbycaputo: To see more of the “NewsStand Project,” visit...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 23:31:09 -0500

bobbycaputo:

To see more of the “NewsStand Project,” visit Traynor’s Instagram feed @ishootpeople or #NewstandprojectbyTrevorTraynor.

Pokemon as Dante's Inferno

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:14:00 -0500

The life of a Pokemon is not a good one: they wander aimlessly in the grass, the desert, and the sea, attacking literally anything that comes by. Inevitably, they will be brutally beaten and captured by a trainer, who will keep them in a tiny ball or trapped in some PC (“Bill’s PC”, or “Whatever PC” in later vesions). Then, if they’re lucky enough to escape their Tron-esque digital nightmare world, they will occasionally be trotted out to battle other Pokemon – where they will be burnt, frozen, paralyzed, poisoned, and a million other horrible things – all so some loser trainer can win some badges

“The 10 Most Miserable Creatures in the Pokemon World” is really a reflection suffering, punishment and religion in a Godless, post-modern world.

HOT JOB!

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:22:57 -0500

HOT JOB!:

soupsoup:

This is a fairly awesome job we’re hiring for.

You’ll work with Felix Salmon, Ryan McCarthy, Ben Walsh, and on occasion, me and the rest of the Reuters Digital team.

"Writing is an obsessive-compulsive disorder."

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:22:17 -0500

““Writing is an obsessive-compulsive disorder.””

- T. Coraghessan Boyle (via theparisreview)

evamiriam: These optical illusion chairs by French design...

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 10:03:49 -0500

evamiriam:

These optical illusion chairs by French design studio Ibride are brilliant…

FT Alphaville: The Book of Bove

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:17:36 -0500

FT Alphaville: The Book of Bove:

“There’s something wrong with bank analysis. … This industry did come back,” he told a room full of journalists Wednesday. “We’re going to see fourteen years of higher earnings.”

The three-course lunch was hosted by his new employers, Rafferty Capital Markets, as a sort of comeback party for…

How Davos talks about unemployment

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 04:04:50 -0500

I wrote about the world’s elite pondering the couple hundred million people across the globe who can’t find work:

“People want a job because they have real lives,” Publics’s Levy said. “We, as a society, are guilty of not giving them that job.”

Who says the Davos crowd doesn’t care?

There is a magazine in #Davos called “Snowtimes”....

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:21:00 -0500

There is a magazine in #Davos called “Snowtimes”. It’s the Wintermagazin of 2013!

gq: Deadspin: Our early candidate for Tweet of the Year.

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 20:03:47 -0500

gq:

Deadspin: Our early candidate for Tweet of the Year.

pbump: Student debt as the new feudalism.Via @wonkblog

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 09:34:49 -0500

pbump:

Student debt as the new feudalism.
Via @wonkblog

"Come up with something that gives every borrower — maybe — a pittance and leaves the truly hurt —..."

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 09:26:42 -0500

““Come up with something that gives every borrower — maybe — a pittance and leaves the truly hurt — and there were many — as much in the lurch as before.””

- Karen Petrou, quoted in Joe Nocera’s column on the logic behind the foreclosure review settlement. Here’s more from Nocera:

The money is being distributed with no regard to whether a borrower suffered harm.In some ways, this is the sorriest part of the whole episode. The foreclosure review never answered the key question: which borrowers had legitimate claims against their bank and which didn’t. Thus, the settlement doesn’t make that distinction. If you lost your house in 2009 and 2010, you are going to get money — whether the bank was culpable or not. “The notion of error is not involved in this settlement,” conceded Hubbard.

explore-blog: Kurt Vonnegut’s classic lecture on the shapes of...

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 10:24:11 -0500

explore-blog:

Kurt Vonnegut’s classic lecture on the shapes of stories, now in an infographic.