commentary

My wick hath a thief in it

My wick hath a thief in it:

Do you know what it is to succumb under an insurmountable day-mare,—”a whoreson lethargy,” Falstaff calls it,—an indisposition to do anything, or to be anything,—a total deadness and distaste,—a suspension of vitality,—an indifference to locality,—a numb, soporifical, good-for-nothingness,—an ossification all over,—an oyster-like insensibility to the passing events,—a mind-stupor,—a brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience. Did you ever have a very bad cold, with a total irresolution to submit to water-gruel processes?

[To good to ignore.]

Source: Letters of Note

Stuff

Stuff:

I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can’t afford a front yard full of old cars.

[Brilliant opening, and sadly too true for most of us. I may work on this forever unless some calamity helps me.]

What Eduardo Saverin Owes America (Hint: Nearly Everything)

What Eduardo Saverin Owes America (Hint: Nearly Everything) | PandoDaily:

As an immigrant myself, I’ve got no patience for the argument that he should keep all of it. Pretty much everything in my life that I enjoy wouldn’t have happened without my being in the United States. My education, my job, my wife and family, the fact that I’m not persecuted for my race or religion (I was born in South Africa), the fact that I can sometimes forget to lock my doors at night and not end up killed by marauding bands—I hate paying taxes as much as the next guy, but when I think about all the ways that the United States has been integral to everything in my life, taxes seem like a tiny price.

Now, remember that the tax rate on long-term capital gains is only 15 percent. In other words, Saverin gets to keep 85 percent of everything he’s making from Facebook’s IPO. Given how much of his wealth depends on the government, that’s more than fair.

[Right on. The low level cheesiness surrounding Facebook and its founders is remarkably high. It may be time to toss my account.]

The Loop on Blogging

The Loop on Blogging:

Blogging is not a thing, it’s an attitude:

Blogging is not about being stiff and rigid in your writing, but being flexible and flowing with ideas. It doesn’t matter if everyone agrees with your thoughts. In fact, that would be really boring — but you write it anyway.

If large media companies want their writers to be bloggers, they need to let them go. Bloggers need to feel free to express themselves and their opinions. There are plenty of great bloggers on the Internet — many of them came from these large organizations, but weren’t allowed to post their thoughts.

Blogging is also about trust. If you’re readers know that you are writing from your heart, they will listen. They will engage you, and in the process you will learn something new. That, in turn, will help shape your opinions.

Blogging doesn’t have an agenda, other than expressing your true thoughts on a subject.

[The last point is, at the very least, poorly written. Of course blogging is about an agenda. It’s just a personal one, not a corporate one.]

Source: inessential.com

Dear “Landlord”

Dear “Landlord” – raganwald’s:

I used to sell things for a living. One thing I remember is that there is a tremendous gulf between free and a dollar. In companies, you can’t spend a dollar without having to justify it to someone, to make a case for it. Everyone wants to know who the vendor is, how long they’ve been around, whether we can trust them, and whether what they’re selling is worth a dollar.
So, although your offices are crowded, that actually doesn’t provide me with any security that other people have thought things through and decided you are a good bet. For all I know, they could decamp tomorrow for some other hot, free thing. This feels like fashion, not business, and it’s going to keep feeling that way until you can show me some tenants who actually pay, not just squat.

[The irony here is that this was posted to posterous, which was just bought by Twitter, and which everyone suspects will disappear before too long. Twitter purchased them for their talent, not their product, and business dictates that they’ll shut it down at some point relatively soon. But @raganwald really makes an excellent point about all see services. If you’re getting something of value, and your not paying for it, you must ask who is and why. But never consider a service for which you don’t pay yourself reliable. It’s not.]

Stop justifying your lack of ethics

Stop justifying your lack of ethics:

Matt and his moronic clique will never actually consider that hey, if we all publicly boycott shit, the people we dislike aren’t making money, and hey, we aren’t a pack of thieves. Because that dear reader, would inconvenience Matt, and lemme tell you about douchey little millenials like Matt: They won’t do shit that inconveniences them

[The whole piece is on point if, as usual, you have to wade through the invective.]

Source: bynkii.com

Strobist: How to Avoid Dealing With the Police When Shooting in Public

Strobist: How to Avoid Dealing With the Police When Shooting in Public:

I know my rights. I carry The Card. But I also know that on the street, the police have the ability to wreck a shoot. This one was not time-sensitive, but many are. And even worse, they can write you up, take you in — and even put you on any of a number of secret lists in our new DHS Secret Police State.

I know this because a very good friend of mine asserted his rights to — get this — a rent-a-cop private security consultant while shooting a twilight shot of a hotel during a commercial job. He made the mistake of being near train tracks where, according to the private security guy, the Constitution was no longer in effect.

My friend won the argument, but lost the war. The security guard/terrorist detection specialist turned out to be a vindictive jerk. The photog is now on an “increased scrutiny list” that adds a long and special wait at TSA any time he flies.

That sucks. And it’s not right — or even legal. But that is the environment we are now in. Like it or not, we have to deal with ignorant bystanders and/or ultimately, uniformed police officers potentially screwing up our shoots. Or worse.

[What a mess. But not a bad plan.]

This Problem of Taste

This Problem of Taste:

Our essential human duty – without question – is to see into other people’s hearts and minds, no matter how heinous their thoughts and actions may be, and we must understand and empathize with why they think and act the way they do.

[A favorite writer on the topic of cycling, but just generally, I dig the dude’s work.]

The Chef and the Critic

The Chef and the Critic:

We’re hoping to succeed; we’re okay with failure. We just don’t want to land in between. The app idea, which came first, was a way we were hoping to make TV without going through all the TV hoops. The magazine came later. Of course you want your peers and the public to engage with something like this, but I don’t have any idea of who the people are or what they really think of it. I’m always prepared for people to be like, “This is just f—ing too ridiculous,” and then it will all be over.

[snip -Ed.]

The first audience I think about is us: Can we make something we don’t hate? Then it’s my friends: Can I create something they will think is cool even though they have to listen to me bitch all the time? Then it’s people out in the world. And my secret hope is that a certain aspect of the magazine leads them down an unexpected alley—reading more Junichiro Tanizaki, or chasing down a Bill Orcutt record, or seeking out Kay & Ray’s potato chips.

I think Dave is incapable of stopping himself from following ideas that interest him. He doesn’t have a brand he’s worried about; he’s not worried about a message; he’s not interested in trying to create something that’s going to be a blockbuster. Failure is an option, but only when you’ve done something that says, “This is the most honest thing we can put out there.” So that allows us to make it as weird as we want because we believe in what we’re doing.

I can’t speak to how he runs his businesses, but he has just scores and scores of talented people, and he is creating scenarios where they run this restaurant and this restaurant—Dave Chang is not the chef of it. I’m probably in a much more stoney-baloney sort of way into that idea, but, also just creatively, that’s exciting to me. You find people and let them really go out on their own with it and then shape it as much as it needs to land on its feet.

[The bold bits (added by myself) are a model I’ve followed for years.]