interesting things
Your decision to ditch your friends on the middle school field trip to the Pearl Brewery has ended badly. How badly? You can read the many ways in which you have failed at You Chose Wrong, a blog filled with terrible endings in Choose Your Own Adventure novels.
Last year’s tsunami in Japan, the elections in Russia, and turmoil in the Middle East were the most popular topics for news watchers on YouTube in the 15 months that ended in March, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The group says that the Google-owned platform is beginning to become a major news source; in one third of the months in the study users searched for news terms more than anything else including entertainment. “The data reveal that a complex, symbiotic relationship has developed between citizens and news organizations on YouTube, a relationship that comes close to the continuous journalistic ‘dialogue’ many observers predicted would become the new journalism online,†Pew says. But it warns that videos often can’t be verified, or are copyrighted and used without permission, which â€creates the potential for news to be manufactured, or even falsified, without giving audiences much ability to know who produced it or how to verify it.†Pew says that personalities don’t necessarily drive interest in news: At least 65% of the most-watched news clips didn’t feature an individual.
Although the length of YouTube news videos varies, the median length of the most-watched ones was 2 minutes and 1 second — far longer than local TV news, where stories average 41 seconds, but less than the network evening newscasts where they average 2 minutes and 23 seconds. By and large audiences look for the same kinds of stories online that they see on TV, led by disasters. But Pew adds that protests — the second most popular topic on YouTube — were not as closely tracked on network newscasts. What’s more, “four subjects that might be described as less strictly visual—foreign affairs, economics, health and business—were all subjects that received more coverage on the evening programs than they did attention on YouTube.â€
via Deadline.com http://www.deadline.com/2012/07/youtube-news-viewers-flock-to-natural-disasters-and-political-upheaval-study/
Corn sex is complicated. As Michael Pollan observes in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,†the whole affair is so freakishly difficult it’s hard to imagine how it ever evolved in the first place. Corn’s female organs are sheathed in a sort of vegetable chastity . . .
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/07/23/120723taco_talk_kolbert
paragraph class=”noindent”>Joanne Trattoria is a simple mom-and-pop outfit, but the mom and pop in question are Joseph and Cynthia Germanotta, the parents of Lady Gaga. The music idol is not involved in the restaurant, but it has other celebrity connections. In the kitchen is Art Smith . . .
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/tables/2012/07/23/120723gota_GOAT_tables_carey
Protestors yell “Monica†at motorcade in Egypt.
Mitt Romney currently has no plans to give Sarah Palin a role at the 2012 Republican National Convention. In fact, John McCain’s 2008 running mate hasn’t even been invited to the GOP soiree in Tampa.
via Yahoo! News – Latest News & Headlines http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/where-palin-convention-invite-083953582.html
If aides can’t talk in person or by phone, they are told to use the BlackBerry PIN-to-PIN messaging system — a function that leaves no lasting trail because it bypasses data-saving email servers. It allows users to connect directly through their devices using Personal Identification Numbers.
Atrios links today to a Ryan Chittum piece at CJR that revolves around a small businessman named Drew Greenblatt who seems to have a side business as man-on-the-street for news reporters. Just in June alone, he got quoted by the New York Times (three times), NBC Nightly News, PBS Newshour (twice), NPR’s Morning Edition, and The Hamilton Spectator. Earlier in the year he got hits from CNN Newsroom and Fox Business (four times), the Financial Times, Reuters, and the Associated Press.
You will be unsurprised to learn that Greenblatt is not just some random steel wire manufacturer from Baltimore. He’s an executive-committee member of the board of the National Association of Manufacturers, a DC trade lobby. Chittum explains:
Here’s how you should assume this works, because it’s how it very often does: A journalist is on deadline on a story and needs an anecdote to make it feel “real†with some color—preferably someone who will add balance and/or support the journalist’s thesis. A speed-dialed call is made to industry flacks to supply a quotable small-business person…and, voilà !
Right. But don’t assume this is only the case for industry flacks. Suppose you need an anecdote about credit card fraud. Who ya gonna call? Consumer groups will be happy to hook you up with a fully vetted sob story. An anecdote about malpractice abuse? There are plenty of business groups that can put you in touch with a doctor who has an outrageous story to tell. Someone ripped off by a mortgage lender? You get the idea: just call a group that specializes in lobbying for tougher mortgage regulation. They’ve got plenty of examples.
Journalists like to talk a lot about ethics and transparency. But here’s a transparency rule I’d like to see: when you quote an alleged random man on the street, tell us how you found him. Did you really hoof around until you finally got what you wanted? Is he a friend of your cousin’s? Did you call an interest group and ask for someone? Did you ask for contacts via Twitter or Facebook? If reporters were required to tell us, I think you’d be surprised at how few of these random examples turn out to be truly random.
via Kevin Drum Feed | Mother Jones http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/random-news-quotes-not-random-you-might-think
The U.S. has moved beyond attention-grabbing predictions from “experts” that housing is bottoming, writes David Wessel. The market has turned—at last.
via WSJ.com: Today's Most Popular http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303644004577520414196790098.html?mod=rss_Today’s_Most_Popular
Reddit is an internet hive, somewhere above, below, or in direct rivalry with the creative and news-breaking potential of 4Chan. Reddit can do great things, like supercharge a charity drive for a tormented bus monitor by 400 times its original funding goal. Reddit can also do terrible things, like disbelieve and publicly shame a user’s rape claim.
But post a neural challenge and the hive knocks back the moral kickstand and boots into high gear, as happened last night when a user posted about a homeless man handing him $50 and a massive sudoku grid littered with characters and numbers. Within hours, the buzzing community deduced characters in Russian, Basque, and Hebrew, ultimately culminating in user SirSpam28′s revelation that the century-old Bifid Cipher was in use. The unencrypted message:
There’s plenty more money to make.
Figure this out and prepare to meet July 19th, 56th & 6th.
There’s a hot dog stand outside Rue57 cafe. Ask for Mr. Input.
Government spook theories aside, I’m inclined to agree with the outpouring of other stories Reddit users threw into the discussion about freak job offers cleverly encrypted by ultratech companies. It could also be an ingenious marketing ploy using a seemingly innocuous post targeted right at Reddit’s skeptical heart–in which case user delverofsecrets is himself a secret to be delved (i.e. a corporate plant)! Circles within circles. CELLAR DOOR.
Of course, as Mashable pointed out at the end of their post, who isn’t going to show up at 56th and 6th on July 19th and ask for Mr. Input?