Saved (Public Feed)

The infamous 'hot coffee' lawsuit.

AKA 'Stairway to Heaven'. It's officially closed but you can supposedly get around the guard/fence.

This is silly. Taking this pop star's very carefully constructed image and hype seriously isn't very useful, no matter how many times you use the word 'deconstruction' and 'phallus'.

The always-great Matt Thompson on why episodic news content isn't as helpful as laying a contextual groundwork for a story and then letting readers know about events that happen in that framework.

What's really happening here? BP bit off more than they could chew, and there was a catastrophe that they weren't fully prepared for. That's stupid and irresponsible. But it doesn't seem equally foolhardy or naive, as this article seems to suggest, to assume that technology will solve our problems like cancer and hunger — of course it absolutely *will* solve them eventually. (Or it won't because we won't invent that technology, and we'll destroy ourselves.) There's a difference between hoping your existing technology will be adequate and hoping that people will continue to develop ingenious applications of science to solve problems. Because that's what technology is. The screwdriver is technology, "top-kill" mud seals are technology. Whether the first incarnation of something works isn't a sure thing, but blaming the non-entity "technology" as something we shouldn't trust because it isn't ready sometimes doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Think more on this.

They're are distraught and stuck in a pre-maturity funk.

So if people are naturally creative or not, to what degree does 'encouraging' creativity even work? And do we understand this enough to know what aspects of creativity we are encouraging, or rather I should say: do we know how to encourage the 'good' parts of being creative and not make people into schizophrenics/sociopaths?

"Everyone knows that Google is killing the news business. Few people know how hard Google is trying to bring it back to life, or why the company now considers journalism’s survival crucial to its own prospects."

Humanizing and well-written. Spoiler: she doesn't have a penis.

Touring by playing performances in people's homes. Free room and board, and it's actually profitable. Everybody wins. Problems with this are: can be noisy, and you'll need a PA if you're not an acoustic band.

A very good, very important list.

The story of Chat Roulette's teenage creator. Where will it lead?

On whether Best Coast's guys-treat-me-like-shit-but-I-just-keep-crawling-back lyrical content is hindering the female experience. Read all of the follow-up Tumbls and comments to get the full perspective. It would be interesting to hear Bethany herself comment on this.

Because there's no alternative, and it is valuable. But its privacy practices are awful.

A simple theory on how we interpret music.

An insight on the limited morality of babies and the implications of that for the rest of us societal adults.

Why the reaction to the iPhone leak reflects a much-weakened press and an Apple in bed with the authorities.

Total linkbait I know but there's some useful stuff here.

Using CSS to detect device size (for things like iPads and iPhones).

This is exactly why Instapaper is so incredible: "Instapaper makes me more productive, everywhere. On my desktop it dismisses distractions. On the go it transmutes idle time to knowledge. It remembers things I forget, but it has never become a new todo entry on my list. If all my apps had this power, I would be utterly unstoppable."

There's two big lessons here: 1. Fame makes people do and say crazy things, and other famous people tend to give an equally outrageous reaction to it. 2. Christianity is a joke.

Nitsuh Abebe on why being wrong doesn't make you a bad person, and why 'support' is weak sauce.

Attempting to answer the question, "what is white culture?" and reporting on those who have tackled it before.

There are two problems with this piece that I have noticed right off the bat and later would like to comment on. One, he states that no research has actually shown that going for better teachers makes a difference, but that's not true (see the Economist article I linked to earlier regarding TFA's study etc.). I think the phrasing is ambiguous anyway, but there's a straw man here. Two, he seems to imply that bettering teachers is a quixotic goal, but isn't "bettering America" just as ambitious? He is essentially suggesting that we wage a war on poverty to get our children better educational environments. I don't disagree, but I think that finding top-notch teachers to bridge the gap while we fix that problem for the next fifty years is a good idea.

Joe Clark on why those complaining about the closedness of the iPad are complaining about a non-problem. "Open source has nothing to teach literature or indeed any artistic creation, since talent doesn’t scale as you give more and more developers check-in access to the version-control system set up for your novel."

The extent to which large 'environmentalism' groups are actually destroying the environment with their corporate connections.

Me fucking around on Paul's guitar during a lull at practice.

Plain and simple: software patents don't work because there's too much software and not enough people who know about it.

Great free releases. Post-pop, lo-fi, experimental, etc. etc.