And I’ll quote from a great essay on Twitter that I just read today [my emphasis]: “But Rands, I need to follow this person, but they won’t shut up.” There’s a legitimate complaint here. I’m certain there’s a sensible feature request based on this complaint, like “Please don’t show me tweets contain RT or @” … Continue reading Leave, follow, or get out of the way
I love that Flickr user Hitachi GST favorited this photo. Do you know what happened to this hard drive? IT FAILED. Less than a year after I installed it. Then guess what? I ordered a new Hitachi hard drive for my MacBook. That one failed, too. I then ordered a TOSHIBA HD to replace the … Continue reading Hitachi Travelstar 2.5-inch hard drive FAIL
I’m not picking on Gothamist, because this isn’t really their fault, but the standard password-recovery system that Movable Type (G’mist’s blogging app—and ours at Serious Eats) uses to send you your lost cypher is a bit logic-challenged. In order to get my password, I have to remember my username and some secret recovery phrase I … Continue reading Crazy password-recovery system
Dennis Brown’s “Things in Life” is one of my favorite songs ever. It came up on the iTunes today and I figured I’d blog about it. I first heard it in Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express, where a bar owner plays it on his jukebox. As much as WKW gets props for his visual style … Continue reading Dennis Brown, ‘Things in Life’
This bad Russian food styling item on Serious Eats was probably my favorite weird-ass thing on the site all day. I only wish more people would have been into it. I mean, look at it. WTF?!? Continue reading Bad Russian food styling
I just saw blog impresario Lockhart Steele tweet about the New York All Media Bowling League. Seems like it’s back on after a long hiatus.
But I would like to point your attention to the original New York Media Bowling League, aka NYMBL (pronounced nimble).
I’ve stupidly failed to keep archives of all my hatchback.net site designs, but above is a screenshot from archive.org of a May 2002 iteration of what once served as my personal site.
The original NYMBL predated the All Media Bowling League by a good four years. At the height of its powers, NYMBL boasted six member teams—Martha Stewart Living, Jane magazine (RIP), Bon Appétit, Blender, Us Weekly, and YM (RIP). Continue reading “The original New York Media Bowling League”
I love some of the emails we get at Serious Eats. Many are from people who think we’re the Food Network. Most are from sane, civil people. Some are from assholes. Here’s one of the latter: saw your wing comparsion….you are sooooooo STUPID and clue-less when it comes to chicken wings….comparing kfc and other stupid … Continue reading Dear Serious Eats
This 1981 video, about a very early form of Internet-accessible newspapers, is making the rounds. It’s more prophetic than it intends to be, with the San Francisco Examiner‘s David Cole saying, “This is an experiment. We’re trying to figure out what this means to us as editors and reporters and what it means to the home user. We’re not in it to make money. We’re, uh, probably not going to lose a lot, but we’re not going to make a lot, either.” [My emphasis.]
Continue reading “Primitive Internet video more prophetic than we could ever imagine”
For the past couple of weeks in Serious Eats Talk, I’ve been meddling with Talk topic titles, trying to help make them more precise and reflective of what’s being asked in the thread.
In some cases, I truly think my meddling is helpful. For instance, “Need a butcher in Phoenix” is a better title than “Need a butcher.”
Well, the Serious Eats community is sharp, and they’ve noticed. I’ve been called out a couple times now on it, the latest in this thread that SE member PerkyMac started early Tuesday morning.
I’ve been following the conversation and commenting there over the last two days and have realized that maybe a large part of my headline meddling had to do with some of the recent off-topicality in Talk. We’ve gotten more than a few emails in the last couple months about threads going off-topic and becoming too filled with chit chat. And now I’m wondering if my playing with Talk titles was a way to try to correct that and steer things in a more serious direction.
Anyway, I have more to say about it in this comment on that thread. What I’m blabbing about here is my Style Bites site, which I’ve now taken out from behind its privacy wall.
SE member dbcurrie, who works at a newspaper, brought up AP style in the abovementioned thread, and it reminded me that I had been keeping Style Bites to myself. I really love talking about copy-editing and blogging and writing for the web (which is also why that Talk topic has been so fun to participate in). And now that I’m sharing the Style Bites blog, I hope to do more of it on Kublog/Style Bites. Continue reading “adamkuban.com/stylebites now public”
nameredacted: ok, i’m sure you’re much too busy to want to talk about this, so i’ll just type it and you can tell me what you think later nameredacted: it’s a reality website concept called BLOG IDOL nameredacted: people audition with blog entries nameredacted: and then the finalists have to write a post on whatever … Continue reading It’s an idea
They argue that some stones are encased in trees that may have sprouted before the arrival of the first colonists, point to similarities between the ruins and Phoenician architecture, and say that marks on some stones resemble some ancient writing systems of the Old World. The late Barry Fell, a marine biologist from Harvard University, … Continue reading Mystery Hill: ‘America’s Stonehenge’
The story behind the guidestones is as mysterious as the monuments themselves. In June 1979 a well dressed, articulate man walked into theoffice of the Elberton Granite Company in Elberton, Georgia and said that he wanted to know the cost of building a large monument to the conservation of humanity. He identified himself as Mr. … Continue reading The Georgia Guidestones
The Best Line on Today’s ‘New York Times’ Op-Ed Page, originally uploaded by Adam "Slice" Kuban “This is William Kristol’s last column.” Good riddance! Continue reading The best line on today’s NYT op-ed page
If you’re a speculative-fiction fan and aren’t plugged in to Escape Pod, shame on you.
There’s a great series of stories you’re missing by Jeffrey R. DeRego. DeRego’s Union Dues series is sort of the Revisionist Western of the superhero world, imagining all the mundane details of superhero recruitment, training, and PR spin that go along with a legion of “supers” trying to live among—and apart from—us “normals.”
Think of it as Studs Terkel’s Working meets Watchmen (minus the epic arc of that Alan Moore alternate-history superhero story).
The most recent tale, “All About the Sponsors” (published on Escaped Pod on Jan. 2) finally gives us the origin story of “The Union.” And while it answers some long-burning questions, it’s not the best of the Union Dues series.
My favorite so far has been “All That We Leave Behind”, in which Megaton, a “superstrong” is charged with recruiting a bullied teenage boy whose own superstrong powers are just starting to manifest. The Union’s policy is to remove manifesting supers from normal society, give them an “identity,” write them into comics, and send them on missions that are often little more than glorified disaster relief—all to create and preserve a fragile, self-serving myth that allows the morphed characters to coexist (however tenuously) with a public that doesn’t always appreciate their “help.”
“All That We Leave Behind” sees Megaton wrestle with a crisis of conscience over what to do with a teen superstrong whose single-parent mom is dying of cancer and needs him as her sole caregiver. It’s a touching story that perfectly illustrates DeRego’s antihero universe, touching on all the themes—doubt, frustration, a sense of pointlessness—that are hallmarks of this world in progress.
Continue reading “Jeffrey R. DeRego’s ‘Union Dues’ series on ‘Escape Pod’”
From the Wooster Collective website: Here’s Poster Boy’s Flickr photo stream. [via Matty] Continue reading ‘Spending Time with Poster Boy’
Oh, well. Not that big a deal. Would be nice to be removed. Continue reading They want to kill my Wiki page
Yes, there is an @everyone on Twitter. Continue reading @everyone on Twitter
Saw This on the R Train Last Night, originally uploaded by Adam "Slice" Kuban. I heard this guy before I saw him last night as I boarded the R train at Pacific Street. He marched down the car, stiffly, robotically, with an old-school boombox, which he put on the floor near the front of the … Continue reading Lazer Dancer Guy on the NYC R Train Subway Last Night
California Academy of Sciences ‘Living Roof’, originally uploaded by Adam "Slice" Kuban. Continue reading California Academy of Sciences ‘Living Roof’