It is not news that Americans have empowered the police and other agents of the state to murder, terrorize, and denigrate African-Americans at will. It has always been this way but it does not have to be this way forever.
If you are saddened by the refusal of the state to hold Jason Stockley accountable for the murder of Anthony Smith, here are some small things you can do to make an impact:
Hold the police accountable for their actions in your community. Maybe don’t vote “yes” every time they hit you up for tax dollars to fund their G.I…
Did you know that Cornelius has a new record coming out soon? I did! And I’m v. excited to hear more than just the two great tracks that were pre-released on Apple Music!
In the meantime, let’s just go through every listenable version of “Count Five or Six” that I can find on YouTube.
The Official Video
Very good video, fun effects.
The Yo Gabba Gabba Appearacnce
Almost certainly my favorite performance of the song. Yo Gabba Gabba rules.
The French Variety Show
Conclusive proof that the Flying V is the coolest guitar. Stay for the end to get some bonus nostalgia from the VHS fuzz on the video.
The Joiner
A brief complaint about a frequent frustration
I’m going to start this kvetch session with a few bullets for context:
- I am hugely dependent on iOS Share Sheets to pass information back and forth between the apps and services that I use to keep my life “organized.”
- The underlying concept that ties this mess together is a not-quite-by-the-book implementation of Getting Things Done.
- I have a terrible short term memory so I add a lot of extra context to items when I’m creating tasks or reminders.
- The three previous points are starting to make me feel like an edge case?
Point being: if I’m going to type…
Smart folks like Chris Messina have been talking a lot lately about “Conversational Commerce,” the ability to deliver information and brand experiences through natural language, meeting their customers where they live — their messaging apps. Industry observers like Casey Newton have been tracking these trends closely and went deep earlier this year on The Search for the Killer Bot. Even Adweek have is getting into it, so it was no surprise that Facebook’s F8 conference was all about the bot.
“We think that you should just be able to message a business in the same way that you message a…
Short and sweet this week: you owe it to yourself to check out Techies, a series of portraits and interviews from Helena Price that tell the stories of those underrepresented in the tech industry. In Price’s own words:
”I started this project with two main goals: I wanted to show the outside world a more comprehensive picture of people who work in tech. I also wanted to bring a bit of attention to folks in the industry whose stories have never been heard, considered or celebrated.”
The photography is stunning and the interviewees are generous to share their lived experiences…
Genius, the occasionally noxious, always useful, frequently brilliant platform for annotations might be wishing for a couple more highlights this week, after an article by Chelsea Hassler called out the company’s News Genius product as being a potential tool for abuse and bullying. Recently reinvigorated by the hiring of Leah Finnegan, News Genius builds on the power of the Genius Web Annotator to aggregate annotated articles from across the web. By simply prepending “genius.it/” to a valid URL (like this one), a Genius user can annotate the content without the publisher’s permission or even knowledge of the annotation. …
Hulk Hogan was awarded $140 million dollars in compensatory and punitive damages this week when a Florida jury sided with the professional wrestler and amateur racist in his lawsuit against the internet tabloid Gawker over the publishing of a video showing Hogan having sex with his friend’s wife. Gawker publisher Nick Denton was not amused, but supremely confident about their chances at appeal. Characteristically, Denton did not hold back in his response:
“Hogan did not sue us, as he has claimed, to recover damages from the emotional distress he purportedly experienced upon our revelation in 2012 of a sexual encounter…
Mid-last month, we learned that Bill Simmons’s next venture, The Ringer, would be unveiled first as a newsletter. A week later, we learned that the site would live on Medium. This week, the first newsletter reached inboxes and it was all very Bill Simmons-y. It might sound like I’m damning with faint praise, but I mean that in all the possible ways you can mean it.
I’m a fan of Bill Simmons, a frequent listener to his podcast, and an eager observer of his burgeoning media company. I consider the 4 days I spent devouring The Book of Basketball on…
It’s been a strange news cycle this week. I don’t really want to talk about Donald Trump and I don’t really feel like I have anything more to add to Hamza Shaban’s reporting on #AppleVsFBI so I thought I’d use this space to play a little “where are they now” with some of my favorite subjects from the last half-year or so.
I. Awl Y’all
Last week I fretted about some changes at The Awl but today they announced that they hired Silvia Killingsworth, managing editor of the New Yorker and a truly inspired choice to lead what I’m sure…
Big changes at The Awl today, as it was announced that the Last Independent Media Company was seeking new leadership following the appointments of current co-editor John Herrman, Slate’s Amanda Hess, and Greg Howard of Deadspin to the prestigious David Carr Fellowship at the New York Times. Admittedly, my initial reaction was less than enthusiastic — The Awl’s peculiar brand of sarcastic literary dystopia checks all my boxes — but with time I’ve come to find a couple silver linings.
The Times Just Got a Lot Better
Any publication would be thrilled to add Herrman, Hess, or Howard to their staff, much less all three. …
Bob Sherron
I make websites for fun and profit at @hlkagency. Also writing a newsletter for fun and no profit at @periodicallyco.
