Journalism Fail

Journalism died with the coming of social media. This piece of crap is spitting on it's grave.

It's All About Presentation

Check out Fancy Fast Food. It's a blog that, well, rearranges fast food so it looks really fancy and expensive. My kind of blog. I'm the opposite of a foodie and I'd eat at McDonald's and White Castle everyday if it wasn't for the shame I would feel when I bring it into the office. Imposing class structure food is ridiculous and this blog proves it.

Profit from Hate and Ignorance

A Manhattan synagogue found out that an anti-gay and anti-Semitic church from Kansas was coming to town to protest their existence, but managed to turn it into a nice fund raiser to support their own community.

What happened was that they asked supporters to pledge a dollar or more for every minute the protesters were at it. After 50 minutes they hauled in $10,000.

This is innovation isn't it? The most expected way to deal with those types of protesters is to have counter protesters and get into this huge shouting match that frankly makes both parties look pretty bad. But at the same time you don't want to let them go at it without a response - you still want to win. I think their tactic of turning it into a fundraiser essentially reframed the battle and made their enemies' actions a benefit.

Some related Sun Tzu wisdom right here:

Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's
troops without any fighting; he captures their cities
without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom
without lengthy operations in the field.

I like it. More on the protest here.

via @molluskbrigade

Silhouette Masterpeice Theater

Does it get any classier than this? Artist Wilhem Staehle takes classic paintings and stories and gives it one of those modern, ironic, hipster-ish spins. It's a lot of fun.

More here.


via Divine Caroline

Fixing Marriage

National Geographic has an article about an ethnic group in China that is a matrilineal society (woman dominated). The women in the village own all the property and are heads of households. But the most unusual aspect of their culture is the idea of a “walking marriage.”

What happens is that when a woman is interested in a man, she will invite him to spend the night with her and leave early in the morning. That basically establishes the relationship or marriage. When a child is born, the father can visit, but he doesn’t play a role in raising it. Instead, the father is responsible for raising the child that their sisters, aunts, cousins have (they all live in the same house). The women are allowed to switch partners, but more often than not, they usually just have one. A better way to describe this is like “serial monogamy.”

They say the benefits of doing this is stability within the family – meaning no divorces that will muddy up things like dividing property and creating a bad environment for the kids.

Interestingly enough, just this week, the Atlantic published an article questioning the purpose of marriage in our society. The writer argues that it’s an outdated institution that hasn’t kept up the cultural trends that have women working more and men taking on a larger role in the home – but it’s not always a rosy situation as she describes the tension:

That said, it’s clear that females are dissatisfied—more and more, divorce seems to be initiated by women. If marriage is the Old World and what lies beyond is the New World, it’s the apparently stable men (comfortable alone in their postfeminist den with their Cook’s Illustrated and their porn) who are Old Worlders, and the Girls’ Night Out, questionnaire-completing women who are the questing New Worlders.

To work, to parent, to housekeep, to be the ones who schedule “date night,” only to be reprimanded in the home by male kitchen bitches, and then, in the bedroom, to be ignored—it’s a bum deal. And then our women’s magazines exhort us to rekindle the romance. You rarely see men’s magazines exhorting men to rekindle the romance.

I’ll admit that the writer may have a slight chip on her shoulder, but the frustrations she draws seem honest and real (I say “seem” because I’ve never been married myself). In one of her proposals for alternatives to marriage concerning child rearing she suggests that:

As far as the children are concerned, how about the tribal approach (a natural, according to both primate and human evolution)? Let children between the ages of 1 and 5 be raised in a household of mothers and their female kin. Let the men/husbands/boyfriends come in once or twice a week to build shelves, prepare that bouillabaisse, or provide sex.

And strangely enough, that sounds awfully similar to a “walking marriage.” But what’s interesting is that in both cases the call is to move men out of the household and to use them as needed. It is sad to see the marginalization of men as the solution for stability. Obviously, gender relations within marriage is an issue that affects every culture. There is an interesting tension in how we just don’t get along and we’re better apart. And interestingly enough, this insight is relevant even after the coming of the “Modern Man,” who is supposed to be more progressive and female friendly.

Homeless Sims

A student of game design in the UK (Robin Burkinshaw) created a couple of homeless characters in Sims 3 to see what would happen to them. Alice is the innocent daughter who is extremely clumsy, yet good willed. Her father, Kev, is a huge jerk. The result is actually quite interesting.

Kev provides a lot of the comedic fodder in the experiment while Alice’s struggles tug harder at the heartstrings. She spends a lot of time being stressed out and sleeping on the park bench and occasionally on people’s couches (uninvited most of the time). The best story was when she got a part time job but then donated her first paycheck to charity despite the obvious fact that she needed it. It inspired Burkinshaw with this thought:

What does it mean when a character you’ve created makes you re-examine your own life through their astonishing selflessness?

Check out the blog here. I think it’s an interesting experiment and shows how powerful video games have become. I would argue older videos came with the objective to win and finish the levels. New video games were more immersive, but still come with an objective. But these open ended games are interesting because you don’t know what the story is going to be.

When is the Best Time to Pee?

This handy little website will let you know which part of a movie is slow so you can dart out to the bathroom without missing anything. Check it out here.

via Popgadget, photo from there too.