Gainful Unemployment
Twatters data crunching from #Oscars, including the top 10 most retweeted posts, many of which are not that funny. My own data crunching shows that I was quite obsessed about Mila Kunis’s lace-shrouded boobs, courtesy of Elie Saab.
XL Recordings, the record label that’s tearing up the rule book | Music | The Guardian
Sadly, I only worked at record labels that almost always took the worse fork in the road. Having spent my 40 hour week in a freezing warehouse up to eyeballs in CDs/LPs no one wanted anymore, I know the gut feeling of staff is crucial in A&R.
The mistakes with so many labels is the failure to say no to middling bands. One of the biggest frustrations working at a record label is when the company basically becomes a loan center for shitty bands who play shitty music. The money spent on those warehouse space-fillers could have been spent on the good bands. This never happened. It makes my stomach boil now just thinking about it.
What’s Inside: Street Heroin | Magazine
Just a no-nonsense breakdown of what could be in your average, cut street heroin. It’s your wife, your life and so much more.
Three weeks into the scheme, he decided to use it to track down his daughter.
“Hi thi is to let yo people know that in lookin eoq my daughter her name is sarah m rivera,” he tweeted on Thursday.
He followed the message up with others posting his mobile number and a photo of his daughter, Sarah, 27.
She called him the next day, and the overjoyed pair were reunited in New York on Friday.
” —BBC News - Homeless Daniel Morales finds daughter by Twitter
Tearjerker follow-up story to the Unheard in New York project I mentioned before that provided a few homeless people with prepaid mobile phones and a Twitter account. Using the tools, Daniel Morales found his daughter, whom he hadn’t seen in 11 years.
eHarmony.com Deal of the Day | Groupon San Francisco
Here’s a Groupon for sad. Your soulmate for half off. Horrible first dates for half off. For people who don’t match their profile photos for half off.
Unfortunately, without a prenup, your alimony will not be half off.
Your letter scared me, upon first glance, I hadn’t any idea what it was about, but when you told me, it struck in a strange way, I hadn’t any idea that I talked about my guitar so often, I’m going to have to change that, no matter who I talk to.
It’s a drag that it screwed up our relationship, you should have told me sooner, but I don’t think that’s the only reason, you just don’t like me that much, and I can see why, because I’m a hard person to get along with at times.
” —Letters of Note: I hadn’t any idea that I talked about my guitar so often
Surprisingly thoughtful, mature response to a break-up from Slash of teenage years, back when he was “Saul.”
It would be interesting to compare this with startups acquired by Google. Anyone wanna take that on?
Secrets of a Mind-Gamer - NYTimes.com
Memory palaces are a tested method to better memory storage and retrieval in the human brain. It’s kind of like Inception, in which architecture and city planning lay the foundation for the dream.
Bruce Davis, the Academy’s executive director, said it had been forced to turn down the request due to fears impostors would attempt to gatecrash the ceremony.
“The fun but disquieting scenario is that if the film wins and five guys in monkey masks come to the stage all saying, ‘I’m Banksy,’ who the hell do we give it to?” he said.
When his nomination was announced, Banksy called it a “big surprise.”
“I don’t agree with the concept of award ceremonies, but I’m prepared to make an exception for the ones I’m nominated for,” he said, adding: “The last time there was a naked man covered in gold paint in my house, it was me.”
” —Banksy refused Oscars disguise request | Film | guardian.co.uk
If the Oscars had any smarts, they’ll just let Banksy flow with his bad self. Isn’t it the Academy for Arts and Sciences? Banksy is just about the most exciting non-artist artist right now. I pray upon the ghost of Marcel Duchamp that something awe-striking will happen on Sunday.
In Which We Teach You How To Be A Woman In Any Boys’ Club - Home - This Recording
In a different way, I so so so feel this. I’ve been labeled “funny” or “cool” or “smart” because of my interest in certain cultural manifestations. It doesn’t make me feel “not hot.” However, I think some guys who tell girls they are “funny” or “cool” or “smart” feel like that utterance earn them the right to treat a girl like a guy.
I don’t need doors opened for me and I don’t need a guy to think I’m only capable of less because I’m a girl. But guys need to know that even “cool” girls are and have been surrounded by fucked up notions of womanhood; we try really hard to jettison the messy values instilled in us since little girlhood, but no matter how “cool” we are, we’re still women struggling internally and externally. So treat us like that. Don’t treat us like one of the guys. Haven’t you seen Some Kind of Wonderful?
But many of the runway styles are actually purchased by a small group of customers, not all of them from the isle of Manhattan. And unlike celebrities and socialites, who often get designer clothes at no charge in exchange for publicity, these customers pay full price.
Yolanda Berkowitz uses the personal shopping services provided by Neiman Marcus in Coral Gables, Florida, to buy high fashion pieces by designers like Marc Jacobs, Prada and Valentino. Such women are among the most valuable clients of designers and luxury department stores such as Neiman Marcus Inc. and Saks Inc. Sometimes these women attend the shows during fashion week and order directly from designers, receiving the items three to five months later. More often, a retailer will send the clothes to their homes, either on consignment or on good faith. The women develop close relationships with personal shoppers, who memorize their wardrobes and suggest complementary pieces.
” —Inside the Closets of Shoppers Who Pay Full Price for Designers’ Latest Runway Looks - WSJ.com
The life I dream about: a closet full of runway pieces and clothes being sent to my house so I can play fashion show and buy what complements what’s already in the closet. The dollar amount these women spend on clothing is heart attack-inducing and aggravating, but show me the actual clothes and I only see sequins and draped jersey. I’m a jerk.
Whose Line Is It, Anyway? | The New York Observer
Much respect and bafflement to the New Yorker whose fact checking department fact-checks poetry, and on occasion, asks the writers to make changes based on the research. If poetry isn’t sacred art, then fact checking is?
Career Advice: Why We Said No - Inside Higher Ed
This is behind the scenes stuff from academic institutions screening tenure track candidates, but I think some of the ideas apply to other categories of employers filtering through reams of resumes and cover letters.
Football’s ramifications so concerned the former Chicago Bear Dave Duerson that, after deciding to kill himself last Thursday, he shot himself in the chest, apparently so that his brain could remain intact for similar examination.
This intent, strongly implied by text messages Duerson sent to family members soon before his death, has injected a new degree of fear in the minds of many football players and their families, according to interviews with them Sunday.
” —N.F.L. Players Shaken by Duerson’s Suicide Calculation - NYTimes.com
Super morbid story about brain damage in football players, suicide, and donating brains for science to study the damage.
Now, Jordan has admitted the couple did not use contraception, leading her to question whether Charlie was the father when she discovered she was pregnant.
“I had the abortion last Thursday, I went home to Oregon to have it because that is where I grew up. I was sick and on the couch all day,” revealed Jordan, who has already terminated three previous pregnancies.
“I think it might have been too soon to be Charlie’s baby, but you never know. I get pregnant very easily.
” —“I get pregnant really easily.” Well, maybe you shouldn’t be having no-condom sex for your day job and extra curricular activities, and maybe look into more effective birth control???
I’m pro porn and porn actors. I’m sure there are more porn actors who are careful about safe sex on or off set than those who aren’t. But come on, please don’t use abortion as birth control. It makes things more difficult for the rest of us who may need to make that choice at some point. The places where you get abortion services can counsel you on birth control options. Go there before you need to get an abortion. Please.
Cheating, Incorporated - BusinessWeek
The most interesting tidbit from a piece on Ashley Madison. MSN’s keyword ad sales doesn’t sell “infidelity.” Wonder what other words are on the blacklist?
From Cairo to Madison, some pizza - Meredith Shiner - POLITICO.com
Hells fucking yeah! The world feels like the shittiest place sometimes, but then you read something like this and know strangers are at the ready to help if you need it. Maybe 2011 will be the best year in a long time for regular people trying to get their peace.
“Those AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) people make me sick. I hate hearing about other people’s problems. I have my own problems. If you want to quit, you quit on your own.”
They rebel against the chirpy optimism of abstinence-based programs: Try harder. Pray. Ask for help. Don’t give up. We feel your pain.
In contrast, St. Anthony feels like Death Row. The message is refreshingly grim: Everyone is going to keep drinking, it’s probably going to kill them, and no one’s going to talk them out of it.
” —At St. Paul ‘wet house,’ liquor can be their life — and death - TwinCities.com
Today I learned about “wet houses” that shelter homeless alcoholics and basically let them drink to death under a roof instead of out in the street. It’s not a glamorous, crash-and-burn demise a la Leaving Las Vegas. I can see how some may object to this kind of charity, but then again, really, what is charity?
