The Big Find

So long

Thu, 29 Mar 2018 15:23:52 -0400

I’m going to stop posting here for the forseeable future. I started this tumblr in hopes that it would replace Google Reader as a place to share and discuss articles, but it hasn’t generated the conversation I had hoped.

If there’s anyone out there, thanks for reading!

Chapter 2, Part 1 – Microsoft At The Dawn Of The Internet Era

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 15:23:54 -0400

Chapter 2, Part 1 – Microsoft At The Dawn Of The Internet Era:

In the mid-90s, Microsoft and telecom companies envisioned “the internet superhighway,” which would be a controlled network of smart TVs that provided curated content by large media companies. The open, democratic, worldwide web, hosted on computers, ended up beating out this idea. Now, with anti net neutrality practices, the telecom and media companies are trying to turn the internet into what they envisioned the internet superhighway would be.

'It's the Grandparents Stealing From the Grandchildren'

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 10:47:38 -0400

'It's the Grandparents Stealing From the Grandchildren':

Our entitlement system was designed to fund current generations out of the taxes of younger and future generations (while pretending not to). This intergenerational compact not only made sense, but also worked, when working Americans were largely in far better financial shape than senior citizens, and population growth and economic progress went more or less hand-in-hand in steady progression. But not only is the elderly poverty rate no longer 50 percent but, rather, now 10 percent: The wealthiest, highest-income age cohort also is now those Boomers nearing retirement. The second wealthiest? Those already in retirement. Who’s not doing well in the current economy? Younger Americans.

The Problem with Muzak | Liz Pelly

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 10:44:23 -0400

The Problem with Muzak | Liz Pelly:

Spotify also presents a new and complicated extension of hyper-commercial webspace, and it’s a development that could prove to be particularly harmful for musicians: the corporate-branded playlists. This “feature” could be explained as the platform’s interpretation of corporate personhood, where paid-for brand accounts can create their own profiles and make playlists in the manner of the platform’s regular users. This has led to a proliferation of playlists made by brands. For example: the “Coffeehouse Pop” made by the official Starbucks page, or the “Running Tempo Mix” created by Nike Women. So long as corporations have at least twenty songs on their playlists and don’t include an artist more than once, they’re good. In the past, such an arrangement would require a given artist to sign a licensing or advertising deal, and it often appeared transactional, hence the traditional notion of “selling out.” Today on Spotify, artists often have no idea they’ve been added to these playlists.

The Last Temptation

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 10:40:15 -0400

The Last Temptation:

So where do evangelicals get their theory of social engagement? It is cheating to say (as most evangelicals probably would) “the Bible.” The Christian Bible, after all, can be a vexing document: At various points, it offers approving accounts of genocide and recommends the stoning of insubordinate children. Some interpretive theory must elevate the Golden Rule above Iron Age ethics and apply that higher ideal to the tragic compromises of public life. Lacking an equivalent to Catholic social thought, many evangelicals seem to find their theory merely by following the contours of the political movement that is currently defending, and exploiting, them. The voter guides of religious conservatives have often been suspiciously similar to the political priorities of movement conservatism. Fox News and talk radio are vastly greater influences on evangelicals’ political identity than formal statements by religious denominations or from the National Association of Evangelicals. In this Christian political movement, Christian theology is emphatically not the primary motivating factor.

Confessions of a reluctant gentrifier

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 10:36:19 -0400

Confessions of a reluctant gentrifier:

Even now, at a much more wary and guarded age, what I feel when I am told that my neighbourhood is dangerous is not fear but anger at the extent to which so many of us have agreed to live within a delusion – namely, that we will be spared the dangers that others suffer only if we move within certain, very restricted spheres, and that insularity is a fair price to pay for safety. Fear is isolating for those that fear. And I have come to believe that fear is a cruelty to those who are feared.

"Why is the religious right obsessed with subjects like abortion while unmoved by the plight of..."

Tue, 13 Mar 2018 10:59:11 -0400

“Why is the religious right obsessed with subjects like abortion while unmoved by the plight of immigrants, minorities, the poor, the uninsured, and those slaughtered in pointless gun violence? No white man has ever been denied an abortion. Few if any white men are affected by the deportation of migrants. White men are not kept from attending college by laws persecuting Dreamers. White evangelical Christianity has a bottomless well of compassion for the interests of straight white men, and not a drop to be spared for anyone else at their expense. The cruelty of white evangelical churches in politics, and in their treatment of their own gay or minority parishioners, is no accident. It is an institution born in slavery, tuned to serve the needs of Jim Crow, and entirely unwilling to confront either of those realities.”

- The article removed from Forbes, “Why White Evangelicalism Is So Cruel” – Political Orphans

Susan Sontag (1933 - 2004)

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 10:24:39 -0500

Susan Sontag (1933 - 2004):

2 of 16

Only one standard of female beauty is sanctioned: the girl. The great advantage men have is that our culture allows to standards of male beauty: the boy and the man. The beauty of a boy resembles the beauty of a girl. In both sexes it is a fragile kind of beauty and flourishes naturally only in the early part of the life-cycle. Happily, men are able to accept themselves under another standard of good looks – heavier, rougher, more thickly built. A man does not grieve when he loses the smooth, unlined, hairless skin of a boy. For he has only exchanged one form of attractiveness for another: the darker skin of a man’s face, roughened by daily shaving, showing the marks of emotion and the normal lines of age. There is no equivalent of this second standard for women. The single standard of beauty for women dictates that they must go on having clear skin. Every wrinkle, every line, every grey hair, is a defeat. No wonder that no boy minds becoming a man, while even the passage from girlhood to early womanhood is experienced by many women as their downfall, for all women are trained to want to continue looking like girls.

People Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Fast-Food Explosion

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 10:38:12 -0400

People Of Color Bear The Brunt Of Fast-Food Explosion

Forget Self-Esteem—Try Self-Compassion Instead

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 10:40:38 -0400

Forget Self-Esteem—Try Self-Compassion Instead:

It means treating yourself with the same kind of kindness, care, compassion, as you would treat those you care about—your good friends, your loved ones.

Now Is the Time to Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About

Fri, 28 Jul 2017 17:01:47 -0400

Now Is the Time to Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About:

“Now is the time to resist the slightest extension in the boundaries of what is right and just. Now is the time to speak up and to wear as a badge of honor the opprobrium of bigots. Now is the time to confront the weak core at the heart of America’s addiction to optimism; it allows too little room for resilience, and too much for fragility. Hazy visions of “healing” and “not becoming the hate we hate” sound dangerously like appeasement. The responsibility to forge unity belongs not to the denigrated but to the denigrators. The premise for empathy has to be equal humanity; it is an injustice to demand that the maligned identify with those who question their humanity.”

Betrayed at the Polls, Evangelicals of Color at a Crossroads

Fri, 28 Jul 2017 16:57:20 -0400

Betrayed at the Polls, Evangelicals of Color at a Crossroads:

For those staying, they must contend with a dominant white theology, shaped in the cauldron of privilege, which suggests that a successful life springs from an individual’s good, moral choices alone. It fails to recognize how unfair policies and societal structures harm the economic and social wellbeing of those subject to those systems.

"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing..."

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 18:01:56 -0400

“In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

- Dan Hodges

"What I cannot create, I do not understand."

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 19:22:17 -0400

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”

- Richard Feynman

The Secret to Love Is Just Kindness

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 09:40:42 -0400

The Secret to Love Is Just Kindness:

Contempt, they have found, is the number one factor that tears couples apart. People who are focused on criticizing their partners miss a whopping 50 percent of positive things their partners are doing and they see negativity when it’s not there. People who give their partner the cold shoulder—deliberately ignoring the partner or responding minimally—damage the relationship by making their partner feel worthless and invisible, as if they’re not there, not valued. And people who treat their partners with contempt and criticize them not only kill the love in the relationship, but they also kill their partner’s ability to fight off viruses and cancers. Being mean is the death knell of relationships.

Photo

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 09:34:11 -0500

How to Prevent Gun Deaths? Where Experts and the Public Agree

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 16:40:43 -0500

How to Prevent Gun Deaths? Where Experts and the Public Agree

Where will all the traffic go?

Fri, 06 Jan 2017 13:35:51 -0500

Where will all the traffic go?:

Interstate highways running through dense city centers strangle the potential for those cities to flourish. The highways are falling apart anyway; let’s tear them down. The timing is perfect.

No One Leaves Home Unless Home Is the Mouth of A Shark

Sun, 04 Dec 2016 16:08:55 -0500

No One Leaves Home Unless Home Is the Mouth of A Shark

Social Justice Is a Christian Tradition — Not a Liberal Agenda

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 09:28:55 -0500

Social Justice Is a Christian Tradition — Not a Liberal Agenda:

Instead of saying all lives matter, Jesus said, “Samaritan lives matter.”