Every so often I rearrange my home office setup, to keep it from becoming too familiar. I find I get less work done if I let it become just another room in my apartment. Even though it’s only ten steps from where I sleep, I like heading into my office to feel like I’m going someplace else. Here’s a look at the latest redesign.
Dre was kind enough to have me on the inaugural episode of his relaunched NerdCast podcast to discuss “The New Mother.” It was a long conversation that Dre has extensively annotated. Here’s the video:
A few (how many?) articles and sites that I want to save.
In September, at a speech at NYU, Holder defended the lack of prosecutions of top executives on the grounds that, in the corporate context, sometimes bad things just happen without actual people being responsible. “Responsibility remains so diffuse, and top executives so insulated,” Holder said, “that any misconduct could again be considered more a symptom of the institution’s culture than a result of the willful actions of any single individual.”
In other words, people don’t commit crimes, corporate culture commits crimes! It’s probably fortunate that Holder is quitting before he has time to apply the same logic to Mafia or terrorism cases.
Pretend that it’s 4 a.m. and you’re channel surfing and you come across the opening to some old sitcom you must have seen before but don’t seem to quite remember. That’s how this was originally presented. Eleven minutes from now your life will be a stranger, more interesting thing than it was before.
I drove down to San Antonio to attend the first game of the season with my Dad and watch the Spurs get their rings and unveil their fifth banner. I recorded the ceremony, and while I spent some time wrestling with the brightness settings on my phone, I managed to get some great moments (including a rare Gregg Popovich fist pump). Here’s what it looked like in the arena.
And this one, created by a volcanic eruption in Papua, New Guinea, is incredible. Keep your eye on the clouds around the island before and after the eruption.
I’m sort of locked in to using the tabclosing tag for these entries now, but the name has become a pleasant fiction. These days when I want to save something for later reading, I just send it to my Pocket queue. I’ve neglected actually looking at that queue the last couple of months, though, and so my Pocket is stuffed to bursting. Let’s change that a bit. (And pretend we didn’t.)
The Daily Show nails it. Twice.
I’m moving into a new apartment and don’t have internet access right now save for via the cellular network, but I spent all night on my phone scrolling through Twitter and marveling at each fresh outrage. If you aren’t following the #Ferguson hashtag right now, you are blind to the current state of American civil liberties. In brief: a police officer in Ferguson, MO murdered an unarmed Black teenager in front of witnesses, the department hid the shooter’s identity, the citizens gathered for protests and vigils, and the police declared a no-fly zone, brought out armored vehicles and snipers and tear gas, began arresting reporters and destroying cameras, and basically instituting martial law with no meaningful oversight. I’ll update this post with links and more information once I’m at a computer.
Update: And actually, by the time I’ve gotten to a computer, it turns out the situation has evolved so much and so rapidly that providing a full roundup would now be too big an undertaking. Fortunately, media outlets have also finally started following the story, so you no longer have to be on Twitter to see it.
Update 2: Nope, Twitter is still, a few days later, by far the best place for information. Follow the #Ferguson hashtag. And for a reasonable roundup, here’s John Oliver.