August 2010
36 posts
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Hello Again to All That →
I’m linking to this old post from when I used to write on LiveJournal, just because I ran across it and I still like it. It begins:
Joan Didion’s 1967 essay “Goodbye to All That,” about falling in love with New York in her twenties and falling back out by her thirties, has a line about “those of us who came from places… where Wall Street and Fifth Avenue and...
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Cycle lanes encourage motorists to drive closer to... →
“Drivers give cyclists a wider berth on roads where there is no lane because they assume that they should share the road and make more allowance for the risk of wobbles.”
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WatchBest opposite-sex couple ever. I really think these kids are gonna make it.
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30 Days of Biking →
I spent the first week of April doing this in the Twin Cities, then kept it up when we got back to San Jose, until I sprained my ankle. Now they’re doing it again.
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Buffalo Daughter - Cyclic (Live - Factory 2004) +... →
Whoa. I guess this is what it would mean to learn to play “Cyclic.”
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“If you want to be invisible, you have to actually become invisible.”
– Doug Orleans
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18 national heat records set so far in 2010 →
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The Unemployed, Organized Online, Look to the... →
(I’m always on the lookout for signs that Americans are starting to wise up.)
programming note
I enabled comments on this blog.
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“That’s one of the cool things about Wikipedia. It’s easier to fix vandalism than...”
– Ed Kohler, over on The Deets
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“… a recent non-motorized planning analysis found that over 90% of the...”
– “Would Sharrows work in Detroit?” | m-bike.org
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“I found him extremely like a bro.”
– Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, on Kanye West (via hennepinave)
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Tumblr and Facebook →
isopod:
I like Tumblr and Facebook as separate worlds. I’m less discriminate about my facebook friends, and so express myself less intimately there. Here, I feel as if I can choose my community, while on Facebook, friends, coworkers, acquaintances pile together.
I’m fascinated by this because I have almost the opposite feeling. I used to post a lot of links, media, and short...
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On May 26 the temperature in Mohenjo-Daro, Pakistan, reached 128 degrees, “the hottest reliably measured temperature ever recorded on the continent of Asia”.
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Yes, Biochar Really Might Be That Magical →
“A new study in Nature Communications finds that the world could, in theory, sustainably offset a whopping 12 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions by producing biochar.”
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“The typical jobless person has been out of work six months. The typical worker...”
– David Leonhardt, “For Those With Jobs, a Recession With Benefits”
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Why [Jeff Rosenberg is] supporting Margaret... →
Rosenberg wrote, in a longer post with more points:
Strongest against Tom Emmer. Yes, I know Dayton currently leads in the polls, but with Minnesotans not accustomed to watching politics until the State Fair, I think that’s mostly due to name recognition. I think we need to keep in mind that Tom Emmer would love to run a folksy, populist campaign portraying himself as A Regular Guy. It will be a...
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Paul Krugman - America Goes Dark - NYTimes.com →
swirlspice:
I tweeted the other day that I wished the government (local and/or federal, whichever) would go ahead and raise my taxes. Food stamps can’t possibly be the place where we have room to give. The racism and classism at play there is astounding. I don’t see it as redistribution of my wealth. I see it as my contribution to the common welfare.
My dad had a bumper sticker that said...
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CD5 DFLers: Don't forget Keith Ellison →
A Tea Party Republican is running against Keith Ellison in his Democratic primary, hoping for an upset from low voter turnout. Minneapolis friends: turn out!
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I forgot to mention Ethan’s own talk, on how the Internet can make us “imaginary cosmopolitans” as technology offers us a broader view of the world than we actually choose to take in… and how we can build tools (from web sites to governments) to help us actually make the connections we mostly miss. I’m not summarizing it well, so go read what he wrote.
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Ethan Zuckerman's notes from TEDGlobal 2010 →
These are probably all available in video form - oh, look, here they are - but I get impatient with video so I’m grateful to Ethan for giving the gist of the talks he attended. Some of my favorites:
Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa on the Islamic superheroes of The 99
Nic Marks on happiness that doesn’t cost the earth
Sheena Iyengar on cultural attitudes toward choice
Eben Bayer makes...
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“The American military has been eagerly reading “Three Cups of Tea” but hasn’t...”
– 1 Soldier or 20 Schools? (via onalonelyscreen, irresistiblerevolution) (via azspot, graceisred) (via thememegeneration) (via edkohler)
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Haikyo Tokei →
I want this web site on my wall.
(via Global Voices)
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WatchStreetfilms | Cycling Copenhagen, Through North American Eyes
(via Twin Cities Streets for People)
Two things struck me while watching this:
Is Copenhagen’s bike culture dependent on cars not going very fast? The cars I saw seemed to be moving pretty slowly. Is it possible to get Americans to drive slower?
Most of this video is about Americans getting their minds blown by visiting...