Here.
(via BoingBoing)
Monthly Archives: August 2010
Finally
- Image by talkradionews via Flickr
From Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic:
Ken Mehlman, President Bush‘s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.***Mehlman acknowledges that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda.“It’s a legitimate question and one I understand,” Mehlman said. “I can’t change the fact that I wasn’t in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally.” He asks of those who doubt his sincerity: “If they can’t offer support, at least offer understanding.”
Better late than never.
Related articles
- 2004 Bush Campaign Manager Comes Out as Gay (cbsnews.com)
- Former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman Comes Out: I’m Gay (huffingtonpost.com)
- Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman: ‘I’m Gay’ (littlegreenfootballs.com)
- Mehlman Comes Out to Support Gay Marriage (politicalwire.com)
Entertainment quote of the day
- Image via Wikipedia
The Internet has destroyed rock. Children no longer develop social graces. They don’t hang out anymore. I’m financially stable. I’m okay. But what about the kids trying to make it in this business? If you’re not an established band, if you don’t have a hit single, they’re gonna drop you. There are a lot of people out there as talented as we were, but they can’t sustain being in a rock ‘n’ roll band for long without success. We were able to, but we’re going to die out.
– Stevie Nicks, of Fleetwood Mac, decrying the supposed impact of the Internet on the high culture of corporate rock.
Related articles
- Stevie Nicks Claims The Internet Destroyed Rock; Seems To Think You Need A Record Label (techdirt.com)
- Potent Quotables: Nicks Wastes the Web (spinner.com)
The secrets of Trader Joe’s
I love Trader Joe‘s and was thrilled when they came to Michigan a few years ago. But as a private company, they don’t file any SEC reports. Fortune Magazine does some digging and offers an inside look at their secrets.
The privately held company’s sales last year were roughly $8 billion, the same size as Whole Foods’ (WFMI, Fortune 500) and bigger than those of Bed Bath & Beyond, No. 314 on the Fortune 500 list. Unlike those massive shopping emporiums, Trader Joe’s has a deliberately scaled-down strategy: It is opening just five more locations this year. The company selects relatively small stores with a carefully curated selection of items. (Typical grocery stores can carry 50,000 stock-keeping units, or SKUs; Trader Joe’s sells about 4,000 SKUs, and about 80% of the stock bears the Trader Joe’s brand.) The result: Its stores sell an estimated $1,750 in merchandise per square foot, more than double Whole Foods’. The company has no debt and funds all growth from its own coffers.
If nothing else, they made “Two Buck Chuck” a famous wine.
MGMT is back
That’s right. MGMT is back with a new video for the title track of the album called “Congratulations
Related articles
- MGMT comes out of retirement, makes video abt how they died as a buzzband (altreport.hipsterrunoff.com)
- MGMT – Congratulations (hypebeast.com)
- WATCH: MGMT Drop Video for “Congratulations” (spin.com)
Political quote of the day
We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture.
– Ray Mummert, a pastor in Dover, Pennsylvania, quoted by Charles P. Pierce in the article Greetings from Idiot America. Pierce is the author of the book Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. (Via Quotation of the Day Mailing List)
Massive Attack, Tracey Thorn and Michel Gondry
Take one part Massive Attack trip-hop, add Tracey Thorn’s beautiful voice and fold it carefully into the creative video technique of Michel Gondry.
What do you get? This perfect version of the classic song “Protection” from the Massive Attack album of the same name, Protection
Related articles
- Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt: Everything but the grief (guardian.co.uk)
- Massive Attack Thinking About Next Album (spinner.com)
- Modern Maestros: Michel Gondry (filmexperience.blogspot.com)
Tech happenings
Marco Armet offers a brief history lesson in pictures. It graphically reminds one that Apple has totally changed cellphones in just three years with its ground-breaking iPhone, and what that might portend for the future of computers.
Disclosure: I am long in Apple.
F**K YOU
Here is a very catchy song from Cee Lo Green (part of Gnarls Barkley). I love it. (via Scott Beale)
Related articles
- Cee Lo – Fuck You! (shabooty.com)
- Cee-Lo Green’s New Single Is A Smash (manolith.com)
- LISTEN: Cee-Lo Song Drops Many, Many F-Bombs (spin.com)
Elizabeth Warren for sheriff
More on Elizabeth Warrn from Joe Nocera in the New York Times.
What struck me . . .was the bluntness of her language. She used words like “tricks,” “fleece,” and “bribe” to describe the actions of mortgage and credit card lenders. And I think a lot of her appeal stems from that simple fact: she describes abuses — predatory lending, hidden fees, bewildering “disclosures” that hide more than they disclose — in precisely the way most Americans have experienced them. She conveys a powerful sense that she understands what we’ve been through this last decade.
Her critics have complained that in her quest to avenge the downtrodden consumer, she could endanger the safety and soundness of banks, by writing rules that would strip them of billions in profits. Her essential position is that if taking advantage of borrowers is necessary to save the banks, then there is something deeply wrong with the banking system in America. The American Bankers Association may not agree with that, but that is unquestionably what most Americans believe. And they are right.
Related articles
- Elizabeth Warren leading choice for top U.S. consumer post (theglobeandmail.com)
- 4 Bogus Attacks Bankers and Their Political Puppets Are Using to Attack Elizabeth Warren (alternet.org)
- Elizabeth Warren gets her own rap video (salon.com)
- Mostly Economics: Profile of Elizabeth Warren (mostlyeconomics.wordpress.com)
Tech quote of the day (updated)
Our tablet will be better than the iPad.
– Chang Ma, vice president of marketing for LG‘s mobile-devices unit. Added to calendar for review one year from now.
Disclosure: I own Apple stock.
Update: Another quote for the calendar, this one from Acer. Its Chairman says that the iPad market share will soon drop from near 100% to between 20 and 30%.
Related articles
- Acer’s JT Wang: iPad’s market share will drop to about 20 percent, maybe less (engadget.com)
- Acer chairman: iPad market share will drop to 20-30% (slashgear.com)
- Acer exec thinks iPad market share will fall to 20% (electronista.com)
A creepy CEO
Image via Wikipedia
John Gruber on Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.
More and more, I get the feeling that if there’s a rift between the old “Don’t be evil” Google and the new “Let’s do whatever we want” Google, that it’s a rift between Schmidt and Larry/Sergey — if not personally, then at least culturally within the company. On the one side, the Larry/Sergey Google that makes amazing cool things — the search engine, Gmail, Android. On the other, the Schmidt Google that, in its efforts to serve ads as efficiently as possible, no longer seems concerned with the traditional Western concept of personal privacy.
Couldn’t agree more.
Related articles
- Schmidt: Erase your identity to get away from Google (go.theregister.com)
- Google to Teens: Just Change Your Name (socialtimes.com)
- Strange! Google CEO fears the amount of Information shared Online (globalthoughtz.com)
Turn-about is fairplay
And there a few stills from the bull-fighting incident here at LIFE.
Experimental film tribute to Blade Runner
- Cover of Blade Runner (The Director’s Cut)
Ridley Scott‘s movie Blade Runner is one of my all time favorites.
A new experimental film tribute to the movie is on Vimeo. This film was made as a unique picture with a resolution of 60.000 x 60.000 pixels (3.6 gigapixels). It was made with 167,819 frames from ‘Blade Runner’.
Link to video: BLADE RUNNER revisited >3.6 gigapixels from françois vautier on Vimeo.
Watch it in high def and full screen. (via BoingBoing)
Related articles
- BLADE RUNNER revisited >3.6 gigapixels (milkandcookies.com)
Cat in the box
By Simon Tofield. Be sure to check out his website.