Friday, February 18, 2011

Project: Consolidation

It's pretty clear to everyone that I have a bad habit of spamming up the Facebook news feed with all the articles I link; it's just gotten so easy, now that every page in existence has about 50 different Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn sharing tools.


I decided that rather than using those, it would be better to consolidate all the stuff I read or pick up on during the day and share it in one convenient place, so that if you want to read one or two, you can, but I don't occupy your whole bandwidth all the damn time. 


So here it is - Project: Consolidation. I mean, if borrowing, reblogging and copying content works for the Huffington Post, why not me?


- GQ has a pretty prescient article on the decline of innovation in the broader Hollywood industry; we still get Inception, Black Swan and the Social Network, but the vast middle has become a kind of creative wasteland. Yeah, it's a bit harsh on comics and other genres, but overall I think it's really well-written - and hideously depressing.


- Speaking of the Social Network, the Boston Globe has a nauseating account of some horrible new media tool called Klout, which is basically like a popularity score based on your social media presence (The Bieb has a perfect 100 score, shocking...). Sample quote: 

After Valentina Monte accepts a date, the Boston University junior quickly goes online to see how many Twitter followers her suitor has. She checks her own follower count three times a day. When she meets someone who admits to following more people than follow him, she judges. “That means you’re a loser.’’
So when her Klout score hit an impressive 59 out of 100 recently, making it almost as high as Jay Leno’s score of 65, she was ecstatic. “I felt worthy.’’
Wow, I really want to bludgeon someone to death with an iPad now.

- If you hacked your PS3, get offline - the SonyCops are coming for you. (via Ars Technica)

- Bahrain is next up on the Arab Revolution Chain Reaction; Tunisia must be regretting this somewhat, as absolutely no one is paying attention to their struggle now. It seems like the Bahraini police or army is using live ammo on protesters there. I hope Bernie Ecclestone does the right thing and cancels the Bahrain Grand Prix - I'll hate waiting for the start of the F1 season but Sakhir is a boring track anyways and more importantly, it's a way to hit the government where it hurts, right in the pocketbook.

- One gets the feeling that The Onion and The New York Times are starting to switch places as self-parody and paper of record, with the former running this gem and the latter's third most-emailed article being about how some people sleep with their pets.
Let's compare and contrast. The Onion: 
"From now on, people looking for helpful hints on renovating a $4 million Manhattan townhouse won't have to waste time sifting through articles on the crisis of public education," Times executive editor Bill Keller said of the new section, which will be printed in smudge-proof ink so it doesn't soil the soft, pink hands of its readers.
The ACTUAL New York Bloody Times:
Ms. Ruttenberg’s habit of sleeping with pets mirrors that of Paris Hilton, who has slept with a pig — of the four-legged variety — and was once bitten at her home at 3 a.m. by a kinkajou, a tiny raccoon-related creature. Keeping that sort of menagerie may be unusual, but the habit of allowing animals in bed is not. Figures vary, but according to a recent study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 14 to 62 percent of the 165 million dogs and cats in this country sleep in bed with humans, with other surveys skewing higher.
Wow. 14 to 62 percent, really? You sure you don't want to be a little less specific there? 


All the news that's fit to print, indeed.