February 2012
6 posts
Cohan: Wall Street Confesses to Bonus Culture Ills... →
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Why Drones May Bring a Renaissance, Not Erosion,... →
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Kim Dotcom, Pirate King [longform.org] →
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RE: Ghetto
Please stop throwing it around. It’s a loaded word that means different things to different people. I ranted his whole spiel on someone on the good side before realizing that it was totally not fair to make it seem it was his deal, his fault, or anywhere near his personal beliefs, so I moved it here. And hopefully fixed some typos: Please don’t say ghetto. A lot of people have...
The Montauk Grifter: How One Con Man Used OkCupid... →
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Catholics need to preach what we practice -... →
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January 2012
2 posts
Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will... →
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25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing →
December 2011
3 posts
'A Perfect Terrorist:' The American Behind The... →
The Sicario: A Juárez Hit Man Speaks ... →
Truly frightening.
What Really Happened to Strauss-Kahn? by Edward... →
This is just scary how easily you can be set up if you can’t keep your dick in your pants.
November 2011
4 posts
'A Perfect Terrorist:' The American Behind The... →
The Sicario: A Juárez Hit Man Speaks ... →
What Really Happened to Strauss-Kahn? ... →
The Movie Set That Ate Itself [via Longreads] →
(via Instapaper)
October 2011
3 posts
Robert Reich (The American Jobs Depression, and... →
I don’t expect anyone to really read this, but they really should.
Rick Rubin, Russell Simmons: Def Jam's First 25... →
Just Kids [via Longreads] →
When Jeffrey Eugenides moved to New York, he was 28 years old and things were not looking good. After graduating from Brown in 1983, he and Rick Moody, a college friend, had driven out to San Francisco with no real plan other than making a go of it as writers, and lived together awhile on Haight Street, listening to the sound of the electric typewriter coming from the other room. … That same...
September 2011
1 post
The Old, Scared State
The Old, Scared State by Kevin C. O’Donovan Some might wonder why I, a straight, married, white dude with a child, would feel so passionate about this artificially chaotic, idiotic, and wholly unneeded amendment to the State’s constitution, saying “Kevin, you don’t have a dog in this fight.” But I do. A big one. First of all, it’s embarrassing to the State...
August 2011
10 posts
http://baselinescenario.com/financial-crisis-for-be... →
We should all probably start here.
A-Fucking-Men
sweetlovehotcoffee:
I’ve always wanted a pragmatic, intellectual, somewhat-left-of-center president. Honestly, I knew the populist crusader of the campaign would turn into, well, the editor of the Harvard Law Review, once in office. But I kept my mouth shut. And, unlike most of my friends, I got exactly the president I wanted. So I’ll do my best to enjoy the dude while he’s still around.
Watch
Well done, Best Coast and Drew Barrymore. Very cool!
The Saddest Movie in the World | Arts & Culture |... →
This is scarily true. When I was a kid, this was the first, and for a long time, the only movie that ever made me cry. It’s not because I was some sort of manly child, it’s because the movie was so damn sad.
July 2011
20 posts
Cyber Weapons: The New Arms Race →
Fiction becomes fact:
Cyber espionage and nation-state-backed hacking incidents appear to be increasing in frequency and severity. What once seemed the province of Hollywood—high-tech robbers with guns; Internet worms that take out power plants—has become real. They fear that online skirmishes and spying incidents are escalating into a confusing, vicious struggle that involves governments,...
You Are Not Running Out of Time [via Longreads] →
A tad heavy, but does make you think about the uncomfortable.
Early in his political career, Julius Caesar is said to have wept upon reading a biography of Alexander the Great. When asked why, he apparently said, “Do you think, I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable!”
No Gorgeous Finales [via Longreads] →
Just a tad morbid, but a really interesting read. Gotta go sometime.
The death you see on the screen will not be the kind of death you have. Judy Bachrach made a penetrating point last month in this space, arguing that Hollywood presents death in a…
Last 3 Months
I’m into indie, alternative, electronic, folk and rock, including: LCD Soundsystem, Justin Townes Earle, Elbow, Phoenix, Two Door Cinema Club, Moby, The Avett Brothers, Beastie Boys, Death Cab For Cutie, Panda Bear, Guillemots, Florence + The Machine, M. Ward, Nouvelle Vague, The Walkmen, Angus & Julia Stone, TV On The Radio, Living Colour, Passion Pit, Fela Kuti, The Cat Empire, Broken...
“The tall proud tomes that cast a golden penumbra in an angle of the drawing room...”
– Jorge Luis Borges, “A Yellow Rose” (via sweetlovehotcoffee)
Fall of the House of Busch [via Longreads] →
This would make a really fine film.
The death of Adrienne Martin is the latest twist in a saga that has transfixed St. Louis. The Busches and their beer company had survived Prohibition, labor strikes, and price wars, growing to operate 12 breweries around the country, producing 128 million barrels of beer in 2007 and taking in nearly $17 billion in revenue. The red, white, and blue Budweiser...
My Lost Boy John Walker Lindh [via Longreads] →
Slightly self-serving, there, Mr. Lindh.
John Phillip Walker Lindh, my son, was raised a Roman Catholic, but converted to Islam when he was 16 years old. He has an older brother and a younger sister. John is scholarly and devout, devoted to his family, and blessed with a powerful intellect, a curious mind, and a wry sense of humour. Labelled by the American government as “Detainee...
On the Jury [longform.org] →
Great 1979 article on just what happens in jury rooms, leading to the farce we’ve been witness to this week.
Escape from North Korea [via Longreads] →
First you get out, then you run, then you find your way south, then the hard part starts again when your workers paradise ain’t much.
“Defection is daunting. So is starting a new, free life.”
Larry Garrison, Pain Merchant [via Longreads] →
I’d really like to pummel this guy with his vanity plate.
“I dont think you should go with CNN, Larry Garrison says into his cell phone as he paces across a hotel lobby near his home in Westlake Village, California. Id like to team up with you.”
Hood [via Longreads] →
An interesting look at the rise, fall, rise, fall of Killeen and Fort Hood.
…
IAVA - Hall of Heroes: Honoring Robert J. Miller |... →
Brave isn’t the word here. Hero.
Twisted ethics of an expert witness →
This made me want to kill a number of people. Figuratively, of course.
Earlier this year, a four-page document with a bland title, “Stipulation for Dismissal with Prejudice,” was filed in a civil matter percolating on the King County Courthouse’s ninth floor. Hardly anyone took notice. Most everyone had moved on.
But that document — filed by lawyers tangled up in the estate of Stuart...
Can Sheryl Sandberg Upend Silicon Valley's... →
An article that reads like a work conversation with my wife. Except conversations with my wife usually end up with “shut up, Kevin.”
Several female computer-science majors at Stanford pointed to the depiction of women in films like “The Social Network,” where the boys code and the girls dance around in their underwear. Sandberg says that the impact of popular culture struck her when...
A Good Joke Spoiled [via Longreads] →
It is hard to think of another writer as great as Mark Twain who did so many things that even merely good writers are not supposed to do. Great writers are not meant to write bad books, much less publish them. Twain not only published a lot of bad books, he doesn’t appear to have noticed the difference between his good ones and his bad ones. Great writers are not meant to care more about money...
Interview with Trey Anastasio [via Longreads] →
This article is almost as ponderous and boring as Phish itself. You’ll probably want to read it anyway.
Final NASA shuttle mission clouded by rancor [via... →
NASA is a big, huge, space-like mess.
CAPE CANAVERAL The last shuttle, Atlantis, sits on Pad 39A, ready for its valedictory flight.
It is the nature of a shuttle to look kind of lonely out there…
Family restaurants keeping the home fires burning... →
This is what it takes to achieve barbecue fame in North Carolina:
Six days a week at 5 a.m., Jeff Jones, 63, crosses the two-lane highway in front of…
The Ballad of Wily Mo Pena [via Longreads] →
Wilfredo Modesto Pea, better known as Wily Mo, hits baseballs for a living, which is sort of thing a 29-year-old man named Wily Mo would do. He hits them hard, probably harder than anyone alive.…
Watchodocatfish’s July 2011 mix
June 2011
2 posts
Immutable/Inscrutable.: The New Yorker to... →
sweetlovehotcoffee:
Lady Gaga…Beyoncé…and Adele…split the market into neat thirds…Adele’s impeccably sung collection of unperturbing soul…will almost certainly be the year’s biggest-selling album…she is selling to…middle-aged moms who don’t know how to pirate music and will drive to Starbucks when they need to buy…
There’s a reason I very nearly worship Mike Doughty. And this is...