I began this current journal, XSML, with the intent of reducing my own notes to extra small, XML-friendly updates. Increasingly, I have been drawn by the allure of the 140 character limit of Twitter. I may get a round Tuit and synchronize my use of Twitter with this blog. For now, here’s a dump of about a year’s worth of tweets in a single post:
Xavier: Glowing at the OK Corral http://bit.ly/f8NCX8
“Books don’t become best sellers because they are ahead of their time.” Stephanie Coontz on Friedan via Louis Menand, http://t.co/ZEeKRgK
Belgian students riot on Ryanair flight: http://bbc.in/epBVc3 Was civility a victim of more bad price signaling? http://abcn.ws/gu1HOK
A juicy, meaty, tasty read on football, concussions, televised sports, journalism, money, race… etc! http://t.co/JtjR6yO in The New Yorker
on dictatorships harnessing “self-pitying, bullying shitheads.” http://bit.ly/idxANe cf. Cuba’s “actos de repudio,” via Matthew Yglesias
“Three takes on JP Morgan and Madoff” http://reut.rs/f3oZEN is also a fresh take on how online competition is sharpening analysis in news.
yellow is the next purple. i’m pretty sure it’s not but i’m going to pretend it is and hope things break my way.
UCSB prof. on Egypt: “a return of very powerful and vastly organized labor movements, principally among youth.” http://bit.ly/hZB47J via TPM
“As pro-Mubarak demonstrators roam Cairo, Egypt’s Internet roars back to life” http://bit.ly/f2NEHW – Foreign Policy’s Passport
A history of ideas: In the 19th century, scientists pointed an elaborate telescope at distant societies. In the 20th, they turned it around.
The Internet is not enough: Matthew Yglesias chimes in on stunted technological progress and economic bubbles. http://bit.ly/hLHZBe
The U.S. is often criticized for its military aid to illiberal regimes but with Egypt it’s been a progressive tactic http://nyti.ms/ece00P
Why do we say “my God” and not “our God”? #foxholes
want to bite your nails to the raw? watch the astoundingly tense The Verdict with Paul Newman: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084855/
Magical. Chris Matthews grilling Tea Party Express co-founder Russo on Rep. Bachmann’s slavery denialism: http://on.msnbc.com/fRJnCg
Did the Obama White House, as headed by Michelle and Barack, just launch what will be their legacy? WalMart goes healthy and localvore?
If heterosexuality is the key to raising healthy children, time to close every school and home run by asexual priests and nuns.
10,000 species. Most of us can’t even keep eight things in mind.Climate Threatens Birds From Tropics to Mountaintops – http://nyti.ms/i6Pcr1
Pro tip to high schoolers: consider a career in http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotechnical_engineering & profit from global warming floods.
Lazy food service analogy: linear TV is omakase. Video on demand is buffet.
When all cars have smartphone jacks, how will broadcast radio (antenna and/or satellite) compare to personalized radio via mobile web?
Morbid coincidence: ill person shoots embattled healthcare access advocate, others. Are victims externalities of a patchy health safety net?
i love the days when everyone jokes “see you next year” or “see you in [currentYear+1]”. it’s like a big carnaval for the fiction of time.
In Hollywood and then Highland Park, passed two billboards en español for American Idol. The great brown hope.
El Bulli or Marinetti? Pieces of olive, fennel, and kumquat are eaten with right hand while the left caresses sandpaper, velvet, and silk.
Google Ngram for “father, mother” http://t.co/N4gnvoV
Hunter climbs into bear’s den, kills bear, boasts about it. Controversy ensues: http://bit.ly/eZJA8U
Rainy weeks are first disorienting in Los Angeles. Then familiar. We are returning. The water drenched clouds envelop the earth like a womb.
Thoughtful, fun read on computer languages – really, on computer programmers and their dogmatism: The Semicolon Wars http://bit.ly/hBzLAU
Can the curiosity of different cities be compared by the length of delays caused by rubbernecking on its highways?
The ending of American Psycho the movie is even better than I remembered. The commercials that followed it were creepier.
Russia as the Baltimore depicted in The Wire, only with nukes and vast energy reserves: NYT on leaked cables http://bit.ly/fTEeQK
Some heavy, fun ish: Why Farmers Are Flocking to Manure | Atlantic http://t.co/7D5vO4o
“Are you ready for an uneventful flight?” the passenger asked the captain. Wouldn’t it be better if he were ready for an eventful one?
One of the major political movements of our time is an effort to redefine selfishness as patriotic. Maybe that’s nothing new.
check the angle of repose: feeling awfully like this “fat monkey made of flip flops” http://bit.ly/bwCC9O
so very sad, Google StreetView images curated by Jon Rafman via @waxpancake http://9eyes.tumblr.com/
The majority of the audience at the Foals show was born after Nirvana’s Nevermind. #recalibrating
The more Spanish language TV shows Whitman’s former maid bawling, the more Whitman’s campaign has to pump money into Spanish language TV.
The singer for Junior Boys sounds a little like Don Henley after a swallow of helium.