Tag: monopolies

Things I’m Verbing: Bad conspiracies, bad monopolies and good sleep

Well, this week sure is continuing (and this story continues to develop even as I type up this post). At least we’ve got Andy Serkis on our side.

Well, this week sure is continuing (and this story continues to develop even as I type up this post). At least we’ve got Andy Serkis on our side:

  • Instead of more of all that, dig into this New York Times piece on musicologist Alan Lomax, who dedicated his career to preserving and elevating American folk traditions. It’s not just about the newly opened free archive of his recordings — we also need to ask ourselves about the difference between honoring culture and mummifying it.
  • I already have many beefs with Amazon, Jeff Bezos’ rescue of the Washington Post aside. At the New Republic, Matthew Stoller implores Democrats to remember their trust-busting roots as Amazon ascends to true monopoly. For the Nation, David Dayen considers how Amazon is not just bad for the economy, but for the entrepreneurial spirit itself.
  • Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse is one of those Republicans liberal Twitter can get behind. But like Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins and Arizona’s Sen. John McCain, his voting record is at odds with his reputation. Writing for Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley digs into the dangers of performative decency with “The Wasted Mind of Ben Sasse.”
  • Kids and teens rejoice: Per Maggie Koerthe-Baker at FiveThirtyEight, sleep “problems” are societal.
  • If you’ve muted “thread” on Twitter, developer Darius Kazemi might have an amazing new app for you. Spooler turns long Twitter threads into blog posts, so they can be read as they were freaking meant to be read. Have at.

Stay brave, friends.

Things I’m Verbing: Freaky fathers, HQ donuts and things only ’90s kids will understand

Now my formative years are turning 20, which I’m both glad to see celebrated and also totally not ready to admit. It’s all worth it, though, to see the Atlantic extol the glories of one of my unironic favorite movies of all time.

I turned 13 in 1997, which, among other things, marked my passage into adulthood as a member of the Jewish people. My bat mitzvah was also the first time I met most of my older cousins for the first time I could remember, and holy moly, suddenly I had a bunch of cool music and culture recommendations to break me out of my Celine Dion/movie soundtracks/exclusively the Beatles bubbles. I joined both the Columbia House and BMG mail-away music clubs, ripping out thick folded sheets of CD-cover stamps from my issues of Seventeen and YM. Suddenly my world was Beck’s Odelay, Fiona Apple’s Tidal, Radiohead’s OK Computer and of course, as much Björk as I could get my hands on.

Now my formative years are turning 20, which I’m both glad to see celebrated and also totally not ready to admit. It’s all worth it, though, to see the Atlantic extol the glories of one of my unironic favorite movies of all time: Face/Off.

  • Speaking of youth culture, my favorite Beatle, Paul McCartney, turned 75 this past weekend. Esquire has a nice little read from 2014 about how the Fab Four wrested pop culture away from the hands of ad-men and grown-ups.
  • This weekend was also Father’s Day, and I’ll be real, I am a sucker for simple features like the AP’s side-by-side comparisons of famous fathers and their uncanny sons through the years.
  • In less fun features, this week Amazon bought Whole Foods, and everyone is freaking out. I’ve written before about why Amazon is bad news for all of us, but let FastCompany make the case for breaking up the megacorp as an antitrust violation.
  • Speaking of large tech companies who don’t get it, Wired has an excellent bit of architectural criticism — yes, I know — on Apple’s new doughnut-shape headquarters and why it’s not forward-thinking at all.
  • The face of America’s veterans is changing drastically, but the systems and attitudes toward all the groups and genders that serve have not. Angry Staff Officer has proposed an eminently sensible way to make these veterans visible: a new universal veteran symbol, like one we employed after World War II.

Stay brave, friends.