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EVERYONE has a lot of stuff to do because there IS a lot of stuff to do. Some of it is work. Some of it is hanging out with your family. Some of it is just laying on the couch reading a book.

In his new book, Mp3: The Meaning of a Format, McGill University professor Jonathan Sterne exhaustively and eloquently traces the history of the mp3 from the initial hearing model developed in Bell Labs to the current debates about piracy. As the author argues, each time we rip a CD to our hard drives, we're not only saving space in our living rooms or ensuring we have the appropriate gym soundtrack, but also reaffirming a fundamental idea about the limits of human perception.

I interviewed Jonathan Sterne for Pitchfork about his new book. While conducting the interview, I thought Pitchfork readers would like to know about how AT&T’s capitalistic policies in the 1910s and 1920s laid the groundwork for those compressed bits of data currently clogging their hard drives, and other gentle, science-laden facts about the mp3’s history. I was wrong. But not to worry! Here are the cut bits.

Awesome flash game.

Why he runs red lights. I choose my riding style mindful of my own safety and that of my neighbors, but also in pursuit of happiness. Uninterrupted motion, gliding silently and swiftly, is a joy.

From Honolulu’s Department of Information Technology, city/government data made publicly available for citizens to use and build apps around. Collaboration with Code for America in some cases. ‘Citizens Analyzing Numbers Discover Opportunity’

This is a thing I read at (and wrote specifically for) the Pitchfork Music Festival’s amazing Book Fort on Sunday. It is about being both a writer and a musician, and the overlapping attendant neuroses of both.

Ocean’s search was not for songs in a familiar language, but for a Rosetta stone, a key to making sense of the universal message.

My excursions make me better because it’s the only time I stop to really examine my process. I’m an adult with responsibilities, but fiddling will always be a priority.

They don’t show the product. They don’t explain the product. They make the target audience feel stupid. They make the Geniuses look like unsupportive know-it-alls. There’s no clear call to action.

The verb of my life is learning.

If you’re using Google Web Fonts on your websites, then there’s a very good chance that 1 in 5 visitors are seeing faux bold and italic versions of your fonts — even if you correctly selected and used all of the weights and styles. That’s because the implementation method recommended by Google Web Fonts doesn’t work with Internet Explorer 7 or 8.

You are entitled to be wrong, to feel embarrassed, to feel like a jerk, and to keep writing anyway.

Eighties-style druggy hedonism and the songwriting vision of Frank Ocean.

Thats it you now have the native AMP stack running ontop of the Mountain Lion.

Interview I did with my friend's skateboarding magazine.

Ultimately this is a question of what means more right now: The shoulder-shrug of indifference or the clarion announcement. Both have their value, but in the famous person/regular person conversation, we'd argue that the script has been incorrectly flipped. For many (lucky) young people (and older) the case may be that they can just be gay and, whatever, nobody really cares. And good for them. In high schools all across America that is probably the case, that's all that it takes. But for many people that is not the case. And those are the kids (and older) who most need to see examples of gay champions beaming down at them from the hallowed halls of celebrity Valhalla. The brighter the flash from above, the more light might get down to them. There is no right way to come out — you do you, Anderson — but there are ways that are more beneficial, more productive than others. We're happy to hear the news from Mr. Cooper. We just wish he'd said it a little louder. And a lot sooner.

When someone like Anderson Cooper comes out, it changes things, just a little bit. There’s one less glass closet in this world, one more tiny shift in the public sphere. So as a queer woman, I find cynicism and snark from heterosexual people who’ve never experienced the pressure of either the closet or outness just a little much. It’s not the sign of your comfort with queer culture that you might think it is, and it’s not particularly supportive. We still face immense pressure, and that requires your empathy and compassion, not your judgment.

We need not give in to sorrow, or feel disgust, or take action, because our brave clown princes have the tonic for what ails the national spirit. Their clever brand of pseudo-subversion guarantees a jolt of righteous mirth to the viewer, a feeling that evaporates the moment their shows end. At which point we return to our given role as citizens: consuming whatever the quacks serve up next.

According to an AT&T Customer Service representative, a widespread outage was reported Wednesday morning. Customers tell Hawaii News Now they are unable to make or receive phone calls. Some customers may also be experiencing problems with data service and text messages. The company is working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. AT&T does not know when service will be restored.

Before he entered the theater, he purchased guns, whether legally or illegally, under a framework of laws and regulations governed and negotiated by politics; in the parking lot outside, he was arrested by a police force whose salaries, equipment, tactics and rights were shaped and determined by politics. Holmes' ability to seek, or to not seek, mental health care; the government's ability, or inability, to lock up persons deemed unstable — these are things decided and directed by politics. You cannot "politicize" a tragedy because the tragedy is already political. When you talk about the tragedy you're already talking about politics.

A Code for America effort. You agree to listen for the siren test and report any problems.

The world *is* full of terrible things, including rape, and it *is* okay to joke about them. But the best comics use their art to call bullshit on those terrible parts of life and make them better, not worse. The key—unless you want to be called a garbage-flavored dick on the internet by me and other humans with souls and brains—is to be a responsible person when you construct your jokes. Since the nuances of personal responsibility seem to escape so many people, let's go through it. Let's figure out rape jokes.

Good walkthrough of the essential sections of a web design contract.

In response to my long reply. This is incredibly useful!

Using the pcal program to generate calendars.

2,546 votes and 863 comments so far on Reddit

This is smart, and prescient. Through this lens, a huge part of the entire mobile app phenomenon that iPhone really catalyzed is merely an impact of moving so much computing power to the edge of the mobile phone network, instead of trying to provide so many services through archaic centralized infrastructure. Put simply: Move the brains to the edge of the network, and you get great new kinds of apps. We don't know what the Angry Birds or Draw Something of the server-side web app world looks like right now, because right now there's no way for consumers to buy it.

Your success is delicious. Others look at your success and think, “Well, duh, it’s so obvious what they did there - anyone can do that” and, frustratingly so, they’re right. Your success has given others a blueprint for what success looks like, and while, yes, the devil’s in the details, you have performed a lot of initial legwork for your competition in the process of becoming successful. I do know that Apple believes the future is invented by the people who don’t give a shit about the past.