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Uma Thurman’s father is a smart dude. Looking forward to...

Sun, 27 May 2012 01:07:00 -0400

Uma Thurman’s father is a smart dude. Looking forward to seeing him speak at the Tibet house on Wednesday.

Beastmaster (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:36:02 -0400

Beastmaster (Taken with instagram)

The Wythe Hotel rooftop view at sundown is nice.

Sun, 20 May 2012 11:57:12 -0400

The Wythe Hotel rooftop view at sundown is nice.

"The insertion of a tool like a cell phone into our experience reconfigures the “intentional arc.”..."

Fri, 18 May 2012 17:01:30 -0400

“The insertion of a tool like a cell phone into our experience reconfigures the “intentional arc.” The phenomenon is neatly captured by the expression, “To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail.” How we perceive our environment is shaped by the mere presence of a tool in hand. And this effect is registered even before the tool is used.”

- Circle of Presence – The New Inquiry

This really nails it. (Sorry.)

Lots of overlap here but the overall idea puts things in...

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:19:07 -0400

Lots of overlap here but the overall idea puts things in perspective.

tumbledore:

The Hierarchy of Innovation

Sexpigeon: parislemon: Will Apple make a wrist device? I don’t know. But they...

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:02:47 -0400

Sexpigeon: parislemon: Will Apple make a wrist device? I don’t know. But they...:

parislemon:

Will Apple make a wrist device? I don’t know. But they should at the very least be thinking about it.

All I know is that at least 50 times a day I reach in my pocket to see why my phone just buzzed. A new email? A DM? An iMessage? Some sports score alert? Instagram? Path?…

My finest line of code today:

Tue, 01 May 2012 16:33:45 -0400

viewsfm:

.display {
display: none;
}

Radio Dept = reblog sexmusic: i wanted you to feel the same //...

Tue, 01 May 2012 11:13:09 -0400

Radio Dept = reblog

sexmusic:

i wanted you to feel the same // the radio dept.

download: itunes

"The picture certainly looks like future events influence the past, a view any right-minded physicist..."

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:16:06 -0400

“The picture certainly looks like future events influence the past, a view any right-minded physicist would reject.”

- Quantum decision affects results of measurements taken earlier in time

In unrelated news, I just bought this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Experiment_with_Time

How can you not love this nature of reality stuff?

This is some serious house cleaning. (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:51:48 -0400

This is some serious house cleaning. (Taken with instagram)

Instagram Team Mix In case you were wondering what a billion...

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:24:52 -0400

Instagram Team Mix

In case you were wondering what a billion dollars sounds like.

"When conformity was regarded as a grave threat, seeking proofs of uniqueness was imperative. Now..."

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:23:03 -0400

“

When conformity was regarded as a grave threat, seeking proofs of uniqueness was imperative. Now it’s a given, guaranteed by how much data is collected on us. By letting Facebook capture and process everything, we can generate better and weirder selves than what our memory could have given us, enhanced by commentary from our connections …

… What threatens the data self is not inauthenticity but lack of access, a disruption of the information flow. If the sharing process is disrupted, we are left with the underlying terror that there might be something crucial about our lives that can’t be expressed in data. The true existential threat is not that our identity will be exposed as fake, but that endless sharing of it will make it feel increasingly inexpressible.

”

- Facebook in the Age of Facebook – The New Inquiry

Great analysis of a great episode. madmenfootnotes: A...

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:09:16 -0400

Great analysis of a great episode.

madmenfootnotes:

A Meditation on Mailer, Pete Campbell and The Language of Men

“His anger often derived from nothing: the set of a pair of far lips, the casual heavy thump of the serving spoon into his plate, or the resentful conviction that the cook was not serving him enough.” —Norman Mailer, “The Language of Men”

Pete Campbell presents a whole different kind of masculinity issue than does our mainstay Don. From S1E1 Pete’s been a mess of insecurities, all stemming from the essential Pete nugget that he simply doesn’t know very much about people. Wavering between the petulance of a child and the brimming over-confidence of a teenager, Pete is his own worst enemy.

He’s quick to lash out — recall this is not the first time he’s been in a fight at the office. He punched poor Kenny for his indelicate comments about fair Pegs back in season 1! Of course, that might have had something to do with his extreme jealousy of Ken — this comes only a few episodes after Ken gets his first story published in The Atlantic. And he’s become so used to shooting off his passive-aggressive sniping comments and being ignored that when Lane actually challenges him to a fight, he’s floored. He’s not used to being directly confronted or spoken to about much of anything, really.

Here’s Mailer again:

“He became aware again of his painful desire to please people, to discharge responsibility, to be a man. When he had been a child, tears had come into his eyes at a cross word, and he had lived in an atmosphere where his smallest accomplishment was warmly praised.”

Pete has some…issues with recognition and pride, no? He craves it desperately, and yet he’s either so unctuous or so biting that even when he does good work, people are reluctant to reward him. This man, who was so spoiled in his youth, finds that his peers don’t like him at all. When he pitifully says at the end of “Signal 30” that “This is an office. We’re supposed to be friends”, we get the sense that he actually means it. That SCDP holds the only friendships he’s ever known! This coming on the heels of Don telling Megan that the people at work are not her friends only underscores Pete’s essential misunderstanding about other people and his innate loneliness that comes from being excluded.

As decent as Pete has become at his job, he’s never gotten over his puppy love with Don Draper, the man he has been trying to get a reaction as long as he’s graced our screens. When flattery didn’t work, Pete turned to subterfuge. None of it seemed to work very well, but Pete is still giving Don the biggest steak.

“…with his heart aching he lunged toward Hobbs. He had no hope of beating him. He merely intended to fight until he was pounded unconscious, advancing the pain and bruises he would collect as collateral for his self-respect.”

“[He] began to wonder about the things which made him different. He was no longer so worried about becoming a man; he felt that to an extent he had become one. But in his heart he wondered if he would ever learn the language of men.”

So then of course, Pete does get called on his pervasive misanthropy and reflex anger toward the rest of the world. And in every glance and gesture, Pete has always tried to ape the standard masculinity: he tries to dress like Don, he blusters through work drinks living up to Roger, he commits adultery after the both of them. And yet even when he’s embraced the trappings of masculinity, he still can’t connect. He hates himself for it because it’s not what he wants, and Don hates him for it because it seems like such a poor imitation of the thing he himself does. Everything Pete does has an air of forcedness to it, because it just doesn’t come naturally to him — the language of men.

*Footnote by Natasha Simons

STREET CARNAGE » BARF’S GIRLS

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:01:33 -0400

STREET CARNAGE » BARF’S GIRLS:

I watched this show wanting to hate it too, but I’ve never seen something that nails the issues of many of my generation so well.

I am such a sucker for high concept minimalist apps like this...

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:46:02 -0400

I am such a sucker for high concept minimalist apps like this even if they are ridiculously impractical and difficult to use.

danielnguyen:

The hipster’s new calculator.

Medical Daily: Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:41:43 -0400

Medical Daily: Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills:

Hey, if science says so.

Media Empires

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:38:00 -0400

The_Jo_Particle 141 points 58 minutes ago
“551-day-old Instagram is worth $1 billion. 116-year-old New York Times Co.: $967 million.”

Capp—City 83 points 36 minutes ago
“It’s amazing what sepia tone can do”

Facebook Purchases Instagram

#zenstagram (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:14:30 -0400

#zenstagram (Taken with instagram)

sexpigeon: nostrich: This Times article on dumbass games has...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:39:18 -0400

sexpigeon:

nostrich:

This Times article on dumbass games has an actual game in its header. Amazing and unexpected.

(☃ pbump)

Good lord. You can scroll the length of the article using this game.

Funny, just had a conversation yesterday on ‘stupid games.’ My thesis, however, was that some are relaxing and good for your mind (Tiny Wings, Chess) by encouraging a mastery of technique, while others (Farmville, etc.) encourage no mastery or relaxation, but instead of a mindset of obsessive task-completion, which is addictive and unhealthy.

The article spaceship game is pretty great though.

How Can I Stop Using My Phone All the Time and Actually Connect with People in the Real World?

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:03:15 -0400

How Can I Stop Using My Phone All the Time and Actually Connect with People in the Real World?:

Forget global warming, cancer, overpopulation – this is where my generation needs to start.