rickwebb's tumblrmajig: Archive

“Buffett always likes a sweetener, and Burlington gives him one in the form of information. He learns about wallboard demand from USG and consumer-credit trends from American Express, but Rose has called the railroad a kaleidoscope of the economy. Rail traffic patterns are a window on commodity, wholesale, consumer, and international trade flows. Buffett is adding this kaleidoscope to what his other CEOs tell him about the “reset of the consumer” to a lower level of spending. They feed him data from Berkshire’s portfolio of companies—sales of building materials, jewelry, furniture, real estate, credit, fractional jets, vacuum cleaners, fabricated steel, newspaper ad lineage, and other products and services. He may now command as much information about the state of the U.S. economy as anyone, including the Federal Reserve—and probably gets his faster.” —When CEOs Have Warren Buffett in Their Boardroom - BusinessWeek (via pegobry) (via jryu) (via mikehudack)

Feb 28, 201019 notes

“If you’ve spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you’ve probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It’s supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It’s the saddest kind of failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that’s not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can’t tell if what they’re creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It’s an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they’re being entertained. Of course, the reader really isn’t sure, either. They just want to know when they’re supposed to pretend that they’re amused. All those extraneous exclamation points are like little splatters of canned laughter: They represent the “form of funny,” which is more easily understood (and more easily constructed) than authentic funniness. I suppose the counter-argument is that Tom Wolfe used a lot of exclamation points, too… but I don’t think that had anything to do with humor or insecurity. The Wolfe-Man was honestly stoked about LSD and John Glenn. I bet he didn’t even own a TV. It was a different era!” —

Chuck Klosterman, Eating the Dinosaur (via fimoculous)

People use too many explanation points these days, it’s true. And Fitzgerald had a point. But lordy. I’d take too many exclamation points over this dourness.

Also, this is one of the reasons I love having a job that isn’t as a writer. So I can keep using exclamation points, and say “dude, get over it. I’m not a writer. I’m a business man.”

Feb 28, 2010131 notes

We're all Predators Now

mikehudack:

newsweek:

Turns out the U.S. monopoly on deadly unmanned aerial vehicles is nearing the end. From P.W. Singer:

The unmanned spy plane that Lebanon’s Hizbullah sent buzzing over Israeli towns in 2005 was loud and weaponless, and carried only a rudimentary camera. But the surprise flight by a regional terror group still worried U.S. analysts, who saw it as a sign that the unmanned vehicles were falling into the wrong hands.

Today that concern appears to have been well founded. At least 40 other countries—from Belarus and Georgia to India, Pakistan, and Russia—have begun to build, buy, and deploy unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, showcasing their efforts at international weapons expos ranging from the premier Paris Air Show to smaller events in Singapore and Bahrain. In the last six months alone, Iran has begun production on a pair of weapons-ready surveillance drones, while China has debuted the Pterodactyl and Sour Dragon, rivals to America’s Predator and Global Hawk. All told, two thirds of worldwide investment in unmanned planes in 2010 will be spent by countries other than the United States.

You wouldn’t know it to hear U.S. officials talk. Jim Tuttle, the Department of Homeland Security official responsible for safeguarding America against nonnuclear weapons, downplays the idea that drones could be used against us. “What terrorist is going to have a Predator?” he scoffed at a conference last winter. More recently, The Wall Street Journal reported, the U.S. ignored a dangerous flaw in its UAV technology that allowed Iraqi insurgents to tap into the planes’ video feeds using $30 software purchased over the Internet.

Such arrogance is setting us up for a fall. Just as we once failed to imagine terrorists using our own commercial aircraft against us, we are now underestimating the threat posed by this new wave of technology. We must prepare for a world in which foreign robotics rivals our own, and terrorists can deliver deadly explosives not just by suicide bomber but also by unmanned machine.

Another thing to file in the “never ceases to amaze me” category: how people keep equating what an official says in public with what they actually think, do and believe, and then use it as evidence that they are dumb.

Feb 27, 201017 notes

nickdouglas:

tedr:

nickdouglas:

Huge illustrated list of the iconic images Shepard Fairey ripped off from other art.

“I’ve never seen any evidence indicating Fairey can draw at all.”

Art, like fashion, is theme and variation, not copyright and ownership, so I don’t think plagiarism or theft is a fitting critique here.

I’m with you up til the point where a dude makes millions, becomes more famous than his influences, and publicly denies directly copying from sources and only recants after being exposed. Art is theme and variation, not an entire career based on slicking up other people’s work without credit or acknowledgment. The vast majority of Fairey fans have no clue where his work is from, and he makes no effort to show them the great stuff that “inspired” him, and that’s artistically dishonest.

Famous DJs tell you who they’re remixing. History’s greatest authors expected readers to understand their literary references.

Also, personal opinion, Shepard Fairey’s work just isn’t that much better than any very competent Photoshop user’s. I’ve seen more inspiring stuff in a video game fan art contest.

I’ve followed Fairey for almost twenty years, since his RISD days, and I can tell you a) he doesn’t “make millions,” and b) doesn’t rip off “great stuff” (was a weird crop of Obama from an AP photo “great stuff”? Does a collage artist rip off “great stuff?”).

Also, as for “not much better than any very competent photoshop user”… Lordy. This is like saying you could have made Duchamp’s “Fountain” or a Mondrian.

Here. Let me explain it for you. Fairey’s “art” is not in the sources, or even, especially, what he does visually with it (though the re-contexualizing the familiar, yet unplaceable, definitely is part of it). It’s where it goes. It’s where you find it. It’s where he places it. And where you find it is NOT the internet.

When the original Andre stickers appeared, pre internet, throughout the world, by the thousand, in different countries and cities and everywhere, somehow, unannounced, unexplained, it was a phenomenon the world had never seen. It was pedo bear, or domo, almost twenty years earlier, without an internet to do it. I love you both, but the world existed before the Internet. And context in art is vital.

Feb 27, 201047 notes

“It boils down to control. I’ve written several times that I believe Apple controls the entire source code to iPhone OS. (No one has disputed that.) There’s no bug Apple can’t try to fix on their own. No performance problem they can’t try to tackle. No one they need to wait for. That’s just not true for Mac OS X, where a component like Flash Player is controlled by Adobe.” —

Daring Fireball: Yet More on the Unfolding Future-of-Flash-and-the-Web Saga

No surprise, but Gruber gets it. Performance is a distraction, and it all comes down to control. Going back to my point about Apple producing its own processors from the other day, you can look at the introduction of the iPod, iPhone & iPad as evolutionary steps towards greater and greater control of the device ecosystem - all the way down to the silicon.

(via secondverse)

Agreed. Where it gets interesting, though, to me, isn’t the morality of it. I have no problem working in a controlled, closed environment, provided it does what I need. This is where I think Apple’s taking the real gamble - they are so very confident they can keep providing everything the bulk of their users needs. That may be so. But I can definitely envision a day where the whole shebang starts to deviate from *my* needs, and then I’ll have to move on. And that’s the other thing - I hope there’s something to move on TO. I suspect there will be, though. And I’m not convinced that Apple, by being closed now, is lessening the chances that there are alternatives to switch to down the road.

Feb 27, 20104 notes

Feb 24, 20102 notes

“Q: How would you describe your corporate acquisition strategy?
A: Technology and talent. Typically small companies. We’ve looked at big companies, but nothing has totally fit. If we find a large one, we won’t be shy about it, but we won’t do it to do it. We’re not about having the highest market share or revenue…we want to make the best products. Acquiring a company simply to boost our revenue wouldn’t be something we’d consider.” —Apple COO Tim Cook Speaks at Goldman Sachs Conference - Mac Rumors

I wish Tim and Steve would find one, just because it would make my life more entertaining if Apple acquired a large company.

Feb 24, 20102 notes

01 - chromatics “healer”
02 - bat for lashes “a forest”
03 - joy formidable “whirring”
04 - flaming lips “watching the planets”
05 - ian brown “gettin’ high”
06 - clan of xymox “imagination”
07 - INXS “to look at you”
08 - ultra vivid scene “special one”
09 - breeders “saints”
10 - yo la…

MAN. This is like a dream set for me. Do you do this at a club? I want to go. Also, you should go to the Chapterhouse reunion show! SO EXCITING!

Feb 22, 20107 notes

This is awesome. This needed to exist. Thank god. It’s exactly what I needed to hear right now.

Feb 22, 20102 notes

“We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don’t think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you’re hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.” —Art Buchwald (via fatalistichues) (via kimberleecline) (via secondverse)

Feb 22, 2010124 notes

…
I hear you, I really do, and for the most part I’ve been on board before this manifesto was published.

But what about the fact that most engagement on my stuff takes place on Facebook nowadays? People are lazy, and I don’t blame them. They’re not going to bother visiting my Tumblr, and my…

Yeah, this is a tough one. I get WAY more comments on my Tumblr activity on Facebook than I do from Tumblr. And way more activity from real world friends occurs there too.

I get what this guy is saying - and I can’t STAND twitter feeds imported into Tumblr - but I think judicious use of it isn’t terrible.

Also, much of this manifesto is, to me, a call to have the feeds properly imported and exported by the publishers and receivers. Tumblr’s doing this to some extant, translating @twitters to @tumblrs usernames. I do wish they’d format the Tumblr feed into facebook so it didn’t truncate so brutally, though.

Feb 21, 20101,041 notes

“Our new album’s gonna be fucking 100 times better than the iPad, with this record you’re going to be interfacing with your soul in ways that have never happened before.” —The Rapture’s new album to be ‘100 times better than the iPad’ | News | NME.COM

Feb 21, 20106 notes

“Depeche Mode were joined by former band member Alan Wilder at a one-off show at London’s Royal Albert Hall last night (February 17) for the Teenage Cancer Trust.” —Depeche Mode joined by former band member at Teenage Cancer Trust show | News | NME.COM

Zoiks!!!

Feb 21, 2010

Feb 21, 20102 notes

“Residents of the historic Little Italy neighborhood of Nolita have reacted with a mixture of shock, dread and horror as news spread of the hamburger chain Shake Shack’s proposed location in the heart of the picturesque area,” read a press release from concerned neighbors, including the Little Italy Neighborhood Association and the Little Italy Restoration Association.” —Nolita neighbors fear Shake Shack take-out insanity

Nooooo! We need Shake Shack in our hood! Come on! It’s not gonna be any worse than Habaña, with the dozens of people milling about, or Pinche. People take the food back to their offices or home!

Feb 21, 20101 note

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March 2010

February 2010