ALEX CAMPBELL'S TUMBLELOG

A friend of his had opened a Gmail account when he had had a child (I think, actually, even before they were born), in the child’s name. His friend had been writing emails to his son as a kind of record of his life as he grew up. They were now four or five years old. I thought this was awesome. Imagine if our parents had done that, how different our relationships with them might be? 10 Questions for Ben Malbon | Tangerine Blog (via brianoberkirch, msg)

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We find out nothing about Alaska that we didn’t learn in elementary school. I know that some Americans think Palin is stupid, but I never realized that she thinks we’re stupid. Nancy Franklin reviews Sarah Palin’s new reality TV show in The New Yorker.

I couldn’t help wondering, where do those people in Indonesia and India go away to when they lose their passion, spark and faith? I don’t think they come to Manhattan. I wonder if there could be an exchange program for the passion-deprived, a sort of global spark-swap. Sandip Roy describing “the new colonialism” that underlies the Eat, Pray, Love phenomenon (via TIME Magazine)

thedailywhat:

Tweet of the Day: brb, doing this for the next three hours or so.

[@john_harper.]

(Source: thedailywhat)

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…A chief thrust of right-wing ideology is invested in making green and “eco” the heirs to their earlier success with “politically correct,” turning them into bywords for phoniness and self-righteousness that “ordinary” people everywhere will strive to define themselves against. Eco ego, PopMatters (via somethingchanged)

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A Facebook group entitled 'Subversively move Tony Blair's memoirs to the crime section in book shops' gained more than 1,000 members inside a day.

(Source: somethingchanged)

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50 Cent is angry. (via tulletulle)

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This feeling was always in the air. People were trying to build popular culture not piggy-back on it, trying to create new culture, not just repeat old ones. About the worst thing you could say about an idea was that it had ‘borrowed interest’. And it was palpably clear that this instinct led to more effective, more profitable brands. So I remember writing ‘brands that influence culture sell more’ in a creds deck and getting the highly prized [Dan] Wieden nod of approval. Russell Davies on his time at Wieden + Kennedy

So let us talk then about wisdom. It is an old saying, but true nonetheless, that the wise person is certain of little but his or her ignorance. A wise man is wise enough to know what he does not know. He believes the world is too mulitfarious, changeable, and miraculous a place to put much trust in feeble humanity’s ability to comprehend and control it as we would wish. Therefore, a wise man counsels caution, and encourages us to pay attention to our ignorance—what we do not and cannot know—as we make our way through life. My favourite investment banker, The Epicurean Dealmaker, dissects Peggy Noonan’s latest crazed WSJ rant in his post “It’s All How You Look At It”

Back in 2004, Steven Levitt asked ‘Why do crack dealers still live with their moms?’. One of the most fascinating (and entertaining) TED talks of all time.

The American dream itself — a house, a job, a car, a family, a little lawn for the kids to frolic on — has expanded into something far broader and less attainable than ever. Crafty insta-celebrities and self-branding geniuses and social media gurus assert that submitting to the daily grind to pay the mortgage constitutes a meager existence. Books like “The 4-Hour Work Week” tell us that working the same job for years is for suckers. We should be paid handsomely for our creative talents, we should have the freedom to travel and live wherever we like, our children should be exposed to the wonders of the globe at an early age.

Somehow “Mad Men” captures this ultra-mediated, postmodern moment, underscoring the disconnect between the American dream and reality by distilling our deep-seated frustrations as a nation into painfully palpable vignettes. Even as the former denizens of Sterling Cooper unearth a groundswell of discontent beneath the skin-deep promises of adulthood, they keep struggling to concoct chirpy advertising messages that provide a creepily fantastical backdrop to this modern tragedy.

“Mad Men”: Stillbirth of the American dream - Mad Men - Salon.com (via fluffynotes)

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The final thing I’d say about optimism is this. If we took the loopiest, most moonbeam-addled Californian utopian internet bullshit, and held it up against the most cynical, realpolitik-inflected scepticism, the Californian bullshit would still be a better predictor of the future. Which is to say that, if in 1994 you’d wanted to understand what our lives would be like right now, you’d still be better off reading a single copy of Wired magazine published in that year than all of the sceptical literature published ever since. Clay Shirky’s interview in The Guardian, ‘Paywall will underperform – the numbers don’t add up’

unhappyhipsters:

The angular house had disrupted the space-time continuum; he could feel his features starting to blur.

(Photo: Nicolas Saieh; ArchDaily)

reblogged from unhappyhipsters

Two things make tall buildings possible: the steel frame and the safety elevator. The elevator, underrated and overlooked, is to the city what paper is to reading and gunpowder is to war. Without the elevator, there would be no verticality, no density, and, without these, none of the urban advantages of energy efficiency, economic productivity, and cultural ferment. The population of the earth would ooze out over its surface, like an oil slick, and we would spend even more time stuck in traffic or on trains, traversing a vast carapace of concrete. From this wonderful New Yorker article by Nick Paumgarten (via the brilliant @STWnext)