I think this warrants a “wow.”
My old view makes an appearance on the new post at Christopher Niemann’s always-delightful but rarely-updated Times blog.
It feels good to know that Analee Newitz, who I loved to read as a teenager, really is effing awesome.
# When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”?
(via an article in today’s Times about the many critical responses to the movie.)
The 2008 election was long and tumultuous, but one clear winner emerged from the rumpus: typography. An immeasurable amount of ink was spilled on the Obama campaign’s slick identity work, particularly on the thoughtful use of Gotham, the HFJ font.
John McCain famously used Optima in that election cycle. Today, I clicked over to McCain’s site to listen to him curry favor with the teabaggers in the first radio ads for his 2010 Senate reelection campaign, and guess what! Gotham.
Not a bad move – it certainly has accomplished more than Sarah Palin in the last couple years.
I laughed hysterically through the entire synopsis.
Harold E. Ford Jr. Discusses Potential Run Against Gillibrand
I’m a newcomer to New York State politics, too, but personally can’t imagine a less appealing Democratic candidate. I didn’t even include the part about pedicures:
He called for a major reduction in the corporate tax rate and a payroll tax holiday to encourage hiring.
He blasted [Gillibrand’s] support for the proposed health care overhaul, which is expected to cost New York an extra $1 billion a year, and for opposing the taxpayer bailout of the financial industry.
On many days, he is driven to an NBC television studio in a chauffeured car. He and his wife, Emily, a 29-year-old fashion executive, live a few blocks from the Lexington Avenue subway line in the Flatiron district. But Mr. Ford said he takes the subway only occasionally in the winter, to avoid the cold when he cannot hail a cab.
Asked whether he had visited all five boroughs, he mentioned taking a helicopter ride across the city with fellow executives, at the invitation of Raymond W. Kelly, New York City’s police commissioner. “The only place I have not spent considerable time is Staten Island,” he said, adding that “I landed there in the helicopter, so I can say yes.”
He has breakfast most mornings at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, and he receives regular pedicures. (He described them as treatment for a foot condition.)
Mr. Ford twice voted for legislation in the House that would make same-sex marriage illegal. In 2006, when Tennessee voters considered a ballot initiative to outlaw the practice, he vowed to support it. “I oppose gay marriage,” he said at the time.
Mr. Ford has repeatedly described himself as “pro-life,” and has voted to ban a procedure opponents call partial-birth abortions and to require that minors receive parental consent before receiving an abortion.
In the interview, however, he said: “To describe me as pro-life is just wrong. I am personally pro-choice and legislatively pro-choice.”
Mr. Ford, a member of the National Rifle Association, also voted for legislation to limit lawsuits against gun makers, and he cast one of the few Democratic votes for a bill to repeal the District of Columbia’s restrictions on guns.
Asked about his own experience with guns, he said he was an occasional bird hunter. “I shoot at things that can’t shoot back,” he said with a smile, “and will continue to do that.”
Mr. Ford has officially been a resident of the state only since 2009, and did not vote in November’s mayoral election.
# Officials Obscured Truth of Migrant Deaths in Jail
Gripping – and appaling – from start to finish. Try to read this and still deny the need for comprehensive immigration reform.
I think about this graph a lot. At the moment, it’s because I’m rereading Clay Shirkey’s magnum opus from last spring, on the future of the industry. Click-through for a readably-large version.
# A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades
Rilo Kiley’s Incidental Pop Album
A rather old article, whose content no longer really interests me, but which nonetheless answers all the sorts of questions I wondered a year and a half ago, and so I feel I should link for my former self’s sake: Was Under the Blacklight a shameless money grab? Are they proud of it? Is there still a Rilo Kiley anymore?
Song and Video by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.
[after a whirlwind trip through my life stateside i am taking the redeye back tonight and feeling reflective and happy, happy like a stoned dog]
from a spoken interlude 2/3 through the song:
Him: Do you remember that day you fell out of my window?
Her: I sure do, you came jumping out after me.
Him: Well you fell on the concrete, nearly broke your ass, you were bleeding all over the place and I rushed you off to the hospital, you remember that?
Her: Yes I do
Him: Well there’s something I never told you about that night
Her: What didn’t you tell me
Him: While you were sitting in the backseat smoking a cigarette you thought was gonna be your last, I was falling deep, deeply in love with you, and I never told you till just now.
Sometimes all of life feels this way. No one can strum the chord the way Rosie can, either. It makes me glad that she found this song for herself.
