October 2011
31 posts
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An epic, awesome, in-depth look at the Battle for... →
As something of a Facebook-as-a-business skeptic, I was happy to read this selection:
In some ways, it’s unfair to compare Facebook to Amazon, Apple, and Google. While Facebook’s growth is impressive, its actual numbers barely register next to the other three: Facebook is reported to have made $1.6 billion during the first half of 2011 (about double what it made in the first half...
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Poor, dumb Netflix. →
And I love that the stock is absolutely falling into the toilet. Overreactions all around, right?
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Hilarious, perfectly worded, incisive rant about a... →
And as someone that eagerly watched Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip in 2006, I feel qualified to say that this is entirely spot-on.
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An interesting, totally pointless rumination on... →
Read it, thought it was actually fairly interesting, and decided it was the epitome of pointlessness. Just not in a bad way, necessarily. NPR thoughtfully followed up in a fairly interesting, albeit equally pointless way.
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Pig Farmer & Fantasy Baseball Champion/Genius →
Emailed around my fantasy baseball league. I love this guy, who also casually proves you don’t need a smartphone to succeed as a fantasy sports owner.
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This Shakespearean scholar HATES "Anonymous," the... →
…as he writes in the piece, this all seems like bringing an F-22 to a knife fight.
but, also, hilarious.
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Small Stories by Wells Tower Accompanied by Weird... →
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How did some British dude named Jools Holland... →
Also, Bon Iver is, not surprisingly, a better studio act than live act.
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Whatever happened to that Groupon IPO that was... →
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Thoughtful, interesting piece on liking Ryan Adams →
I agree with a lot of this.
And yet I like THIS a lot…
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Yes, Redskins fans, Rex Grossman has a terrible,... →
If we didn’t laugh, we’d almost certainly have to cry.
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I admit to being weirded out that I'd never heard... →
Laura Miller makes a bunch of extremely interesting points about the award and the gulf between “popular” writers and “writer’s” writers. Which - let’s be honest - is like the difference between the popularity of the Huntsville Stars and the Birmingham Barons (AA affiliates of the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago White Sox, respectively).
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Nothing gives me more pleasure than reading about... →
Now please for a similar collapse/critical dissection of the New York Yankees…
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Cool Infographic: Disruptive Innovations →
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The AV Club tackles the wild world of the... →
…and as usual, they’re only about a year-and-a-half behind me. And here I thought I was the only one under the age of 60 who was into all this!
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Seems like this has been posted everywhere, but I... →
Though it feels weirdly like half of a great bit of journalism — it really rockets through time and skips around a lot, truncating instead of ending. A great, odd piece that I wish were twice as long.
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Great interview with Mike ("Pat") O'Brien →
Topics include: his great webseries “7 Minutes in Heaven,” writing for SNL, and improvising in Chicago.
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Another good read loosely about The Art of... →
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What's next for Occupy Wall Street? →
I actually have started crossing my fingers that something meaningful might take shape from this particular mini-movement.
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I've loved Ryan Adams for a long time, but haven't... →
He is exactly what you’d expect: motormouth, energetic, self-pitying, self-involved, dramatic, petulant, nutty, emotional, confessional, and engaging. Regardless of what a nutty dude he is, I can’t wait for Ashes & Fire. Love his music.
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A super-slight, yet charming Mindy Kaling profile. →
I LOVE Mindy Kaling. I mean Mindy Chokalingam.
Following her graduation from a prestigious prep school in Cambridge, Mass., where Kaling was a Latin whiz, she went to Dartmouth College to pursue, as she puts it in her book, “my love of white people and North Face parkas.”
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“The people at the Swedish Academy, who bestow the Nobel Prize, recently...”
– Jonathan Frazen, in his interview with The Paris Review I posted two days ago, giving the opposite perspective to the Salon story I posted yesterday. Happy accidents!
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Great piece on why Americans don't win the Nobel... →
The perfect literary conversation-starter. I’m not at all sure I agree, but it’s a great and interesting perspective.
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Great, looooong interview with Jonathan Franzen →
What an interesting guy, with such an understanding of interior-life: he puts his finger on (and puts words to) feelings better than anybody else working. (For my money.) This conversation also isn’t afraid to delve DEEP into pretentious waters. I especially like this exchange:
INTERVIEWER
DeLillo’s sentences seem to involve intimate connections between individual words, even letters—a...
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An excellent interview with Chad Harbach, author... →
I really liked The Art of Fielding, and also enjoyed this interview a lot.
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Occupy Wall Street. An interesting perspective. →
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The "real" Sean Parker...sounds almost as crazy as... →
