Tristyn’s Neighborhood

Maxwell, "Simply Beautiful"

Anil
4 days ago
1 comment

Duringi the Al Green tribute on this year's BET Awards, one of my favorite singers performed one of my favorite songs.

Maxwell covers "Simply Beautiful"

As with when he covered Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work", Maxwell's got the chops to actually best an artist while covering their work. And, as I was explaining the other day, I basically only use MySpace as a dedicated Maxwell blog-reading service. Hooray!

they don't run these ads in the U.S.

Anil
7 days ago
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yahoo mail mj ad

As ever, Yahoo's latest efforts are baffling, inexplicable, but still somehow charming. It's like the place is run by an overeager six year old who has no ability but lots of enthusiasm. Anyway, Yahoo Mail's latest brilliant marketing move is "hey, remember Rocketmail? No? Well, good news -- it's back! Also, YMail! or Y!Mail. Which is nothing like Gmail, except that it's exactly like Gmail!"

The campaign, in Canada at least, features shoddy, third-rate Michael Jackson and Madonna lookalikes explaining that they, respectively, want the "Jacko" and "Madge" Yahoo Mail addresses under the new domains. Even if you could get past the idea that you're supposed to identify with people who want to adopt the identity of insane 50-year-old pop stars, the worst part is that both "Jacko" and "Madge" are names bestowed upon the singers by the British tabloids, and both epithets are detested by the singers they've been applied to.

It's a win all around, really.

Trails Less Traveled - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com

Alaina
Jun 26, 2008

Trails Less Traveled - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/20...

entral Park was designed for refuge, discovery and communing with society. Not for running. Yet 150 years later, its 843 acres are a paradise for runners. Learn new trails inside Central Park and listen to experienced runners describe their favorites.

On the Street

Alaina
Jun 21, 2008
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falling pants + glitter

I always look forward to Bill Cunningham's photo feature "On the Street" in the NY Times where he captures the fashion of the moment on the streets of New York in a photo collage. I'm a jeans and t-shirt person, but fashion is interesting to me in terms of how a look is put together (even though I don't practice this art form myself), and how/why fashion trends spread and emerge. And Cunningham is my favorite kind of expert: gleefully passionate, and driven by an unquenchable curiosity. This week's audio slideshow on the trend of men's falling pants paired with glittering belts is especially good. To hear his voice (vs reading his words), is delightful.

tyrannosaurus dash

Anil
Jun 18, 2008
1 comment

My wife has me doing the holy shit 100 pushups thing, which basically ends every other day with doing pushups until you collapse. as a result, my arms are now useless and vestigial, like a tyrannosaurus, and my giant head has only a walnut-sized brain with which to understand why the heck we're doing this.

However, join our Vox group, and then some day soon a pile of us nerds will show up in a park, set aside our smartphones for a few minutes, and then drop and throw down 100 pushups. And that will be awesome. :)

about:robots

allaboutgeorge
Jun 17, 2008
8 comments

About_robots

George Kelly

2 comments

(We have come to visit you in peace and with goodwill!)

About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots, about about:robots

I downloaded Firefox 3
because all of the people I obsessively read
were doing it too, not doing-it doing it
'cause that would mean taking their hands off their mice

Dday_badge_fox

I downloaded Firefox 3
because I heard they want a world record
for most-downloaded browser as if a browser
is the right tool for keeping up with fights between Scoble and Eric Rice

And then I learned about:robots, about about:robots
About:robots (the one with the colon in between)
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots (the one with the colon in between)
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots

I downloaded Firefox 3
because I wanted to see how well it performed on my PC
Then I saw it really was a mess,
kinda slow, really not a success (all right, I'm kidding)

I downloaded Firefox 3
because I didn't want to be left behind with an unpopular browser
The kind you use to access the Net
in my cubicle when I'm learning

About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots
The one with the colon in between
The one with the colon in between
Put it in your browser, see what I mean
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots
The one with the colon in between
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots

Robots may not injure a human being
or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Robots have seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Robots are Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With.
Robots have shiny metal posteriors which should not be bitten.

Step one: open up a Firefox 3 browser
Step two: Type the word "about" and then a colon
Step three: Type the word "robots"
Step four: Hit return, and learn!

Shout out to all Bay Area nerdcore crew
Doctor Popular
MC Slutsky
I see you
I'm'a see you
And we have a plan.
Seen!

100 Push Ups

Alaina
Jun 13, 2008
17 comments

Via Get Fit Slowly, the one hundred push ups program. In a nutshell, it's a 6 week progressive training program to get you to one hundred consecutive push ups. It consists of 3 workouts a week, for a total workout time of less than 30 minutes. Sounds easy! If I start next week, I could run the NYC Half Marathon, then drop for 100 push ups at the finish line! OK, maybe not. But I could do a 100 push ups and that sounds like a fine goal. So who wants to join me?

A theory: Hillary's Dean Scream

Anil
Jun 4, 2008
4 comments

I should blog this idea while it's still (barely) timely. Yesterday, I was on a plane home to NYC and everyone on the flight had CNN on and was watching, first, Hillary Clinton's non-concession speech and then Barack Obama's acknowledgement that he's going to be the Democratic party's presidential candidate. Pretty amazing, historical stuff.

But the vast majority of people I talk to (understanding and acknowledging that there's no small amount of selection bias here) feel that Hillary's speech was off, being insufficiently conciliatory towards Obama and a bit too aggressive about puffing her own chest out regarding "her" 18 million supporters. That's probably true.

The thing that I think has been misdiagnosed, though, is the case of the problem. Basically, everyone wants to say that Hillary is a dick, who was being a total sore loser. I am not so sure that's what happened.

I'm a little bit familiar with trying to communicate complicated, nuanced messages to the public, though of course no where near on the scale of a presidential campaign. I have had a bit of a glimpse into campaigns in the past, in the tiny capacity of having friends or colleagues working on the technical part of such endeavors. But I understand the machinations of press and publicity very well, and I also happen to live just a few blocks from Baruch College, where Hillary made her announcement.

A few bits of background info:

Most of the attendees at Hillary's rally had likely lined up hours and hours in advance, well before the day's primaries were called or the superdelegates began piling on to Obama's count
Baruch College's auditorium is underground, as I was reminded by seeing Choire tonight and re-reading his piece on Hillary's speech
As a result, Hillary's diehard supporters in that room had almost no cell phone coverage or data plan coverage with which to receive updates on the day's progress as they waited, relying instead on word of mouth and (likely skewed) reports from organizers
The bulk of Hillary's speech was her standard stump speech of the past few days and weeks, delivered with such familiarity that supporters were able to chant along with signposts such as her recitation of her website's address

So here's what I think happened: Hillary said, "we're not going to plan for failure", and had only prepared what was basically a standard stump speech/victory speech. When it became clear Obama had a lock, whomever (if anyone!) is in charge of communication said, "just preface your comments with a nod to his success".

Hillary did exactly that, opening with a (likely genuine) tribute to Obama and then launching into her traditional schtick. But the people in the room, remember, were underinformed, extremely zealous, and word-for-word familiar with everything but her comments on Obama.

So, the points that seemed most inflammatory and aggressive got amplified by the reaction of the crowd and the energy of the room. Moments that seemed surprising or even irrational, such as the chanting of "Denver! Denver! Denver!" may have seemed entirely plausible to that crowd. And the impression of the crowd and Hillary amplifying each other played worst of all on television and on replay on the web.

In some ways, right down to the recitation of a list of states where she'd seen primary success, this was kind of a mirror-image of Howard Dean's fateful scream. It was a perhaps-canny reading of a room at the expense of being extremely off-putting in all the living rooms where she was also appearing at that moment. And it was, like Dean's scream, a moment that seemed to confirm everything that opponents or the unconvinced might have feared about her.

There's one shot at undoing that legacy, and we'll know this week if it's going to happen.

On being Boddhisattva of the gender non-Euclidean

(inspired by Sarah Dopp)

If gender hath its own geometry,
its Euclidean arc the eye can mark,
then the non-Euclidean girl or guy
may also some new queer discussion spark.

If boddhisattva be what you are called,
it's not a label I'd consider dumb
for those Nirvana-bound are not at fault
for existing in that continuum

So those who classify and catalog
all people as they live and love and play
with every Twitter or post to their blog
they doth inform and lighten others' way,

thus broader bound be how we all exist,
how we are kith and kin, but also kissed.