May 23, 2012

Kenowa Hills High School Students ride to school and get suspended… 

May 22, 2012
What makes a good engineering culture?

May 21, 2012
Dan Harmon Poops: HEY, DID I MISS ANYTHING?

danharmon:

When I was a kid, sometimes I’d run home to Mommy with a bloody nose and say, “Mom, my friends beat me up,” and my Mom would say “well then they’re not worth having as friends, are they?” At the time, I figured she was just trying to put a postive spin on having birthed an unpopular pussy. But this is, after all, the same lady that bought me my first typewriter. Then later, a Commodore 64. And later, a 300 baud modem for it. Through which I met new friends that did like me much, much more.

I’m 39, now. The friends my Mom warned me about are bigger now, and older, bloodying my nose with old world numbers, and old world tactics, like, oh, I don’t know, sending out press releases to TV Guide at 7pm on a Friday.

But my Commodore 64 is mobile now, like yours, and the modems are invisible, and the internet is the air all around us. And the good friends, the real friends, are finding each other, and connecting with each other, and my Mom is turning out to be more right than ever.

Ah, shit, I still haven’t called my fucking Mom.

Mom, Happy Mother’s Day. I got fired.

May 18, 2012
"I do stuff like this all the time,” Zuckerberg says in his relaxed tone. “The facebook literally took me a week to make."

Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06: The whiz behind thefacebook.com | News | The Harvard Crimson

May 17, 2012
"Coding is a part of cultural competence, even if you never do it professionally. [Judge] Alsup is a modern hero."

A federal judge learned to code - O’Reilly Radar

May 17, 2012
"It’s disappointing that so much resources have to spent on what everybody understands is a policy that not only is ineffective that is racial and prejudicial by its nature. And the two people that don’t understand that is the Mayor and the [NYPD] commissioner,” said Brooklyn Councilman Jumaane Williams."

Federal Judge Approves NYPD Stop-And-Frisk Class Action Suit - NY1.com

May 16, 2012

Via BrainPickings, “a Little Bird”

(Source: vimeo.com)

May 15, 2012
Jawbone’s Jambox w/ jamchain. The perfect #bikenyc accessory?  (Taken with Instagram at Velvet Unicorn)

Jawbone’s Jambox w/ jamchain. The perfect #bikenyc accessory? (Taken with Instagram at Velvet Unicorn)

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May 15, 2012
"after watching Espada’s arrogant parade of corruption over the years, we can certainly relate to her schadenfreude. That said, we’ll miss Pedro’s clownish antics if and when he goes up river! Of course, Albany seems to have an inexhaustible supply of colorful buffoons to take his place."

Juror Who Couldn’t Convict Espada Works For JPMorgan Chase: Gothamist

May 14, 2012
"If a few people control political institutions, they will rig the economic game in their favour. This, in turn, gives the holders an incentive to fight to preserve power and others an incentive to displace them. The political game will be far less fraught and so more stable under inclusive political institutions, since people can obtain a high standard of living from voluntary exchange."

The wealth of nations - FT.com

May 8, 2012

Who wants to form a corporation to buy Kenyatta!?! I’m serious! Let’s kickstart this man in the most ethical way possible!

kenyatta:

The Project for the Study of Corporate Personhood

This is my project proposal for a 2012-13 Rhizome artist commission. I’m going to sell my name to a corporation for three months. They will take over all of my public interactions both online and irl. Kenyatta will become a product. I will not exist.

corporatepersonhood:

The Project for Corporate Personhood (aka Kenyatta Co) is a three month performance that explores the topics of “corporate personhood” and personal identity.

The American Supreme Court and some politicians have declared that corporations should be treated as persons. So what happens when a person voluntary assigns their personhood to a corporation? Can it be used to raise awareness of the issue of corporate personhood and create spectacle in the process?

Kenyatta Cheese (creator of Know Your Meme, an artist, an activist, and a person) will sell the exclusive use of his name to a corporation for a period of three months. That corporation will assume both the real world and online identity of ‘Kenyatta Cheese’, reimagining his personhood as a brand with the help of ethnographers, lawyers, focus groups, public relations departments, a creative agency, and friends and acquaintances. During this period, Kenyatta (the person) will not be able to use his name except in the case of emergencies and air travel.

In order to develop Kenyatta Cheese (the product), the corporation will conduct research and development, mining his personal life, online profiles, and browser data for uniquely identifying information. The corporation will hire his friends and family to “be” Kenyatta Cheese at public events, speaking engagements (technology and media conferences), and social gatherings, interacting with people based on their own ideas of how they think Kenyatta Cheese would behave.

These public interactions will be documented through hidden video and interviews will be conducted to capture the thoughts and feelings of the Kenyatta Cheese “betas”.  People who interact with these betas will be given a business card directing them to complete a customer service survey online.

This documentation will serve as the basis of standard operating procedures for being Kenyatta Cheese, brand guidelines, and a marketing and media buying plan.  The corporation will then hire social media “gurus” to take over and run all instances of Kenyatta Cheese online including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and a personal website.  Strangers will be hired off of Craigslist to represent the brand at public events in cities around the world (complete with afro wig and business cards).  Like the research beforehand, the interactions of these Craigslist hires will be documented and they will be interviewed.

The three month project will culminate in the compilation of a dozen or so interview videos, the creation of the corporate and product documents, the capture of company interactions in social media, and hopefully two public panels: one at SXSW (or similar conference) exploring the topic of personal identity and marketing featuring 4-5 “Kenyattas” and a second panel at the New Museum exploring the topic of identity through the stories of several Kenyatta’s, artists working on similar issues, and representatives from each of the companies involved in creating Kenyatta Co.

Possible Kenyattas will include but not be limited to author Baratunde Thurston, technologist Anil Dash, artist Kevin Slavin, writers Nick Bilton and Clive Thompson, entrepreneurs Nora Abousteit, Know Your Meme co-creators Jamie Wilkinson and Elspeth Rountree, performers Mike Rugnetta and Patrick Davison, actress Michelle Krusiec, sociologist Tricia Wang, and Kenyatta’s mom.


May 8, 2012
"The Kiernans bought their four-bedroom home for $2.025 million, the highest price ever paid for a single-family home in Williamsburg, according to Jonathan Miller, president of the Miller Samuel appraisal firm. That makes this moment for Pat Kiernan a moment for the neighborhood, too."

There goes the neighborhood… ;-)

Pat Kiernan Brings a Familiar Face to a Brooklyn Neighborhood - NYTimes.com

May 8, 2012
"The former [NYPD] captains spoke of an unrelenting, often unethical pressure to manipulate crime statistics. In addition, the professors studied [NYPD] police and health data and found weird divergences. [NY] City hospital data shows a 90 percent increase in emergency room visits for assaults from 1999 to 2006. But [NYPD] police data for the same period records a nearly 50 percent decrease in assaults."

No Room for Dissent in a Police Department Consumed by the Numbers - NYTimes.com

May 4, 2012
An all staff at #wef.  (Taken with Instagram at World Economic Forum)

An all staff at #wef. (Taken with Instagram at World Economic Forum)

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May 4, 2012
May the FOURTH be with you...

Happy Star Wars Day!!!