John Jones

Warning sign stick figure on black background with four white stars. Caption reads "Warning Black Hole / Darkness"

When I worked at Best Buy in Lexington, I saw John Michael Montgomery twice. The first time, I sold him an absurd (to me, a broke kid) amount of camcorder batteries. The second, he brought in his camcorder for repair after it was rained on and warped when he tried to dry it with a hairdryer.

The one time I felt bad was when an Informatica marketing person came by and yelled something like "who do we thank for this party?!?" and people yelled "TECHDIRT!" instead of Informatica. Oh well.

Anyway, if Salesforce wants to throw us a party too, let me know.

Congrats, Johanna!

Eggs are pricey again. What’s the government doing about it? And four other burning bird flu questions, answered.

This was a fun explainer because it was written two days ago and half of the public health infrastructure it refers to is either incommunicado or destroyed

The greatest trick capitalism ever pulled was getting us to watch a commercial before a movie trailer.

my bar for quality is a lot higher on obvious AI output than it is for human output:

I’m interested in reading your B-minus tweets but absolutely uninterested in reading the B-minus stuff you got the AI to say

Kids today don't like school, a totally new thing that has never happened before.
bsky.app/profile/daed...

Singin' in the Public Domain

KICK OFF THE NEW YEAR WITH THE INTERNET ARCHIVE! 🍾

Starting at 12:01am ET, we'll be revealing the creative works from 1929 and sound recordings from 1924 that are entering the public domain in the US.

Learn how you can celebrate throughout January: blog.archive.org/2024/12/26/c...

This is a good thread. And as well as the huge financial hit and the threat to safety, there's the way car culture erodes community. It creates a lot of people who effectively live in fearful bubbles.

Yes, Americans are much richer than Japanese people GDP is not a perfect guide to wealth, but it's pretty darn good.

Never lived in Japan. But I spent enough time in Berlin that I almost lived there (3 1/2 weeks at a time for months), and the quality of life there is vastly better than here.

Noah Smith says crime is the #1 disadvantage of the U.S. I disagree; it's cars./1

www.noahpinion.blog/p/yes-americ...

Animated gif of a scene from Airplane! where Leslie Nielsen's doctor character removes eggs from a sick passenger's mouth as other passengers look on.

New investment plan

Anybody teach a unit on crisis communication and willing to share their materials with me? Bonus points if you do so through a case study or simulation.

I was fully convinced I could win that bike

There Is No Mary Problem in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ George’s vision of his wife without him is essential to the film, but critics continue to miss its true—and profound—meaning.

“Mary could marry any man in town. She doesn’t want to. She wants George. She takes the measure of George, seeing something in him that he can’t see, and which is perhaps only partially visible to us. What Mary sees in him does not reflect any of the abortive visions George has for himself.”

This is a very good and important paper for scholars of race and identity. Also just one of those papers you read that makes you wonder how this wasn’t done much sooner.

Highly recommend it.

#TeamRhetoric, what books/articles on composition theory & pedagogy have worked in your classes recently? What do new teachers really need to be learning about right now?

I'm teaching our MA composition seminar this spring -- it's been a couple years so I'm looking to spruce up my syllabus.

When I was a kid, I thought the line, “I want a yacht and really that’s not a lot” from Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” was “I want a lot and really that’s not a lot,” and I think my version is better.

Can I share another gem from this piece that I think is super relevant to current discussions of GenAI?

Lately I've seen more on here about how AI relies on exploited labor in the Global South for data labeling & content moderation. Selfe described this dynamic quite clearly more than 25 years ago.

pretty grim when health insurance company executives have to try to hide their identities online like they're public school history teachers, government employees or doctors who care for transgender people

FIFTH ANNIVERSARY CATS (2019), Zoom Screening One Butthole INCLUDED! 18+ DM @clapifyoulikeme for link Bluesky or Twitter DEC 20th, 2024, 9:30PM ET "You can't believe what you're looking at because it's so hideous to behold." - Alonso Duralde

tell your friends and foes

I miss what Boing Boing was.

Way worse, but you get used to it

People dressed as Nazis are Nazis this isn't a street performance of Sound of Music

Steve Martin is the Menendez Bros. DA?

Hoo-boy