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What happened over the weekend? At 8:34 on Friday night, Kanye West tweeted. He said he’d be premiering a song in a half hour and we’d have to do what he said to hear it – we’d have to go to a particular address and stand outside with other people and watch a video projected onto the side of a building. Of course, the first video of the video was up within minutes, so most people didn’t have to do any such thing. “New Slaves” spread, the texting and Vineing and opining ran rampant. A few hours later even Michael Moore was Rap Genius-ing the song. The next night Kanye was the musical guest on the season finale of ‘Saturday Night Live,’ where he premiered another new song, “Black Skinhead,” performed “New Slaves” for the first time and stood alone while the cast hugged around him and the credits rolled.
He came for us on wavelengths old-fashioned and new, inserting into our conversations two songs that are stacks of questions without answers. Received as part of Kanye’s 15-year career, they make sense – from the composition that is both heavy-handed and deft to the singsong retort of his flow and the lyrics that combine insecurity with callous certainty, that decry consumerism while refusing to give it up, that drag internal conversations in front of a mass-market, hair-trigger, blinkered audience. “New Slaves” is the “c’mon, c’mon” in the “All Falls Down” hook 10 years and millions of dollars later. He’s got more on the line now — a decade of living has made him less inclined to sugarcoat.
” — Kanye West Stands Alone : The Record (via npr)(via npr)
LSD in the ORD.
(via calumet412)
“Every dollar spent at a locally owned business generates two-to-four times the economic development impacts as a dollar spent on an equivalent non-local business.” —
Forbes piece on the amazing power of spending locally. (via poptech)
It’s not only healthy for you to eat fresh and local food, it’s healthy for your neighborhood’s economy.
(via jacquesofalltrades)
(via jacquesofalltrades)
Power Is Finally Back in Manhattan. Here's How to Make Sure It Never Goes Out Again -
“The basic idea is to make the electric network more like the Internet. The key is to decentralize: to turn a regional electric network into a network of smaller, neighborhood networks, that no single points of failure, so no one substation can take down half a million homes.”
[video]
the last pay phone.
all across downtown, all day and night, i saw people waiting around in line to use the pay phones on various street corners. i think somehow i’d trained my mind to ignore them, because before yesterday, i wouldn’t have been able to tell you where the last pay phone i saw was, let alone whether one worked. i seem to remember always keeping around a quarter in a bag or a jacket somewhere in case of an emergency where i found myself stranded and i had to call home. (it still takes 25¢ to make a call, right?*)
standing there on the corner last night, looking at this girl on the phone, blinded by the high beams of the truck behind us, i couldn’t help but smile. here are two technologies supposedly on their way out (landlines and fossil fuel), but when all the “new” stuff can’t support us, we’re back to square one. what will happen in a future where both are truly extinct, instead of just endangered?
* and, omg, remember the pay phones in ‘the matrix’?!
(Source: naveen)
From $0 To $1 Billion In Two Quarters – Facebook's Mobile Ad Business Is Suddenly Huge -
“Nine months after having a mobile ad businessthat generates $0 per year, Facebook now has a mobile ad business generating $1 billion per year.
AND: Facebook hasn’t even started putting ads in Instagram yet, which now has 100 million registered users, up from 27 million when it bought it in April.
It’s funny: Mobile was supposed to be Facebook’s weakness. It’s not.”
PwC recently reported that vc investments in the third quarter of ‘12 are down. The industry analysis data from the report tells what’s going on regarding dollars committed per deal.
The shift continues: deals = smaller, vc funds = smaller, vc size = getting smaller, ventures = require less to start…it all adds up. But the beat goes on…
