May 2013
2 posts
3 tags
“How can the most architecturally innovative part of the United States also be...”
– Martin Filler, writing for the New York Review of Books, has some pretty harsh words for L.A.’s architecture. He continues:
“…LA is also a highway-strangled, traffic-choked expanse of artificially lush desert with no discernible organizing principle save for the allées of palm trees that...
April 2013
6 posts
2 tags
sextsfrommarxists:
hey boy,
those who do not move, do not notice their chains. remember, the safe word is “banana.”
2 tags
Watchthis movie’s dramatic climax is an abstract sequence of flickering lights soundtracked by drones. A+
1 tag
“Q: So how much land have you sold so far?
A: Well, this is the only job I’ve...”
– Dennis M. Hope Has Owned the Moon Since 1980 Because He Says So | VICE United States
2 tags
2 tags
3 tags
1 tag
“Language acts as an acid over its message. If you no longer care about an idea...”
– The Flame Alphabet, by Ben Marcus
March 2013
8 posts
2 tags
Listen
“The early rounds of American Idol feature inappropriate contestants with little...”
– KILLER KARAOKE: Reality Television and the Death of the American Middle Class | Press Play
Please go and read this extremely intelligent take on how reality tv contest shows reflect the conditions of our awful economy.
(via perpetua)
2 tags
“On P2P sites, most things that seemed too good to be true actually were:...”
–
a) As usual, this is very good.
b) The one I remember most is the fake clip of Sarah Brightman performig the Diva Dance from The Fifth Element. As far as I could tell this was pure wish-fulfillment — but it seemed plausible at the time! (Actually, it probably seems even more plausible now...
1 tag
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“To stabilize the market, De Beers had to endow these stones with a sentiment...”
– Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? - Edward Jay Epstein - The Atlantic (via)
an unexpected example of how advertising shapes culture: it turns out the tradition of giving expensive diamond engagement rings was invented by (surprise surprise!) madison avenue. in 1938, the firm n.w. ayer began a...
2 tags
January 2013
1 post
November 2012
2 posts
October 2012
1 post
2 tags
“Lee and his colleagues produced a manual of cultural technology—it’s known...”
– Cultural Technology and the Making of K-Pop : The New Yorker
September 2012
2 posts
"what if we just lay down in that patch of shady...
on sunday, the open streets project closed a long swath of milwaukee avenue to automobile traffic, letting bikers and pedestrians take over both its lanes. the sponsors had laid out a scattering of hula hoops, slack lines, and foursquare courts to provide entertainment, but the area was mostly just empty street. with its lack of defined expectations, the event felt utopian. you were handed a...
August 2012
3 posts
But female ducks have developed countermeasures.... →
“see!” said rep. todd akin. “you human ladies just aren’t trying hard enough.”
“Generally speaking, it’s hard to picture the people who commit such acts being...”
– In Violence Against Sikhs, Racists Don’t Discriminate - Daily Intel - New York Magazine
July 2012
4 posts
3 tags
Blur - Under The Westway & The Puritan Live Stream →
WOOHOO
June 2012
7 posts
“When I presented my bathrobe-wearing habit as an actual story, as I’m doing...”
– Bathrobe Boy – The New Inquiry
when i read about food—which i’ve been doing a lot lately, for work-related reasons that aren’t worth going into here—i often find myself fixating on the stuff that’s gross and/or macabre. there’s beer made with yeast from beard follicles (via), bloody ducks incompetently slaughtered in someone’s backyard, and the rotten, month-and-a-half-old deer brain that a...
“I think it uses the our-search-for-the-Creator mumbo-jumbo to make you believe...”
– From Ridley Scott’s original to ‘Prometheus,’ a not so brief conversation about the ‘Alien’ franchise - Grantland
alex pappademas puts his finger on why prometheus’ loose ends don’t bother me. the big questions help create a chilling atmosphere - one that could have been ruined (IMHO) by lots of...
3 tags
“My case illustrates how success is always rationalized. People really don’t like...”
– Princeton University - 2012 Baccalaureate Remarks
michael lewis ended this speech by saying that “the world would be better off” if privileged grads keep themselves from believing they deserve “an extra cookie” for what’s really good luck. but by pulling all his...
May 2012
1 post
“This is not an audition for the Bohemia life before I return to my family’s...”
– Young, Privileged, and Applying for Food Stamps | The Billfold
important words
April 2012
9 posts
What was the first book you ever threw across a...
maura:
Mine was Fargo Rock City, which I flung across a hotel room in Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom Resort in 2001.
I’m in the middle of Fargo Rock City and I have several times come close to doing this. I can’t remember the last time I started reading a book with such high expectations… and ended up being annoyed SO MUCH.
“I am always so shocked when anyone thinks of an insult about me that I haven’t...”
– Lena Dunham on YouTube, Twitter, and film : The New Yorker
Simpler times
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“Catherine Nay, his biographer, calls Mr. Sarkozy a terrible communicator. “He...”
– Sarkozy Re-election Bid in Trouble - NYTimes.com
Sometimes even in translation French people just sound so French.
Blue Lines Revisited: Grim Realisation →
tomewing:
gleaned from following Longreads for a while: there’s a generic style/technique to longform writing which annoys me, a patina of “good writing” tricks which is hard to pin down but becomes more obvious the more “great pieces” you read. Eg this ending on a NYT piece about games:
Lantz told me…
It’s clear we’re in a longreads bubble! Bloated NYT features are this...
2 tags
Watchericapolis:
“Blood For Poppies” - Garbage
This is pretty exciting
It is! But honestly, I’ve never known what to do with Garbage (another band I loved as a tween!). Some of their more heavily produced tracks seem to really want to make you feel, way down deep in your soul, that this is a band founded by record producers. But then that combination of poppy-but-aggressive vocals and noisy...
March 2012
3 posts
2 tags
“Until recently, many Internet critics have feared that such personalization of...”
– What if content-farm-style “news” articles were tailored with the same mechanisms companies now use to tailor ads? (via Slate)
3 tags
February 2012
3 posts
1 tag
