Tag: Recently Read

Forget Walter White. Netflix may be “the one who knocks.” If there were any skepticism left about the clout the streaming service possesses, it may have been put to the rest Sunday after the AMC drama series “Breaking Bad” obliterated its own personal-best ratings by scoring 5.9 million total viewers– more than double the previous season… Read more »

via Variety http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/netflix-flexes-new-muscle-with-breaking-bad-ratings-boom-1200577029/

via kottke.org http://kottke.org/13/08/lovely-world-maps-made-with-a-spirograph

A Flickr group called “The Art of 3D Print Failure” chronicles the beautiful monstrosities that emerge from glitches in 3D prints.

via Boing Boing http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/35208/f/653965/s/2fdee45c/sc/4/l/0Lboingboing0Bnet0C20A130C0A80C120Cart0Eof0E3d0Eprint0Efailure0Eflickr0Bhtml/story01.htm

It’s easy to spot the superficial rewriting of others’ work when they’re lists and you haven’t changed so much as a single item.

via Boing Boing http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/35208/f/653965/s/2fdb0bd7/sc/4/l/0Lboingboing0Bnet0C20A130C0A80C120Cdaily0Email0Eplagiarism0Esurprise0Bhtml/story01.htm

Bill and Hillary Clinton have summered in the same East Hampton home belonging to Elie Hirschfeld for the last two years, and aside from the fact that he wanted photos with them in addition to the rent, the deal seems to have been routine enough. Almost too routine, as Hamptons rental properties apparently go. Hirschfeld’s not renting the place out to them this year but according to the New York Times, “the Clintons indicated that they were not necessarily interested in returning anyway after enduring last year what so many Hamptons renters have before them — the loss of a large chunk of their security deposit.” Good god, did they turn the pool water to Jell-O or improvise a skylight or something? Alas, no.

One Times anonymous sources revealed that “the expenses associated with the home — which has lush landscaping, a large heated pool and eight bedrooms in 12,000 square feet of space — ate up the bulk of the deposit. Security deposits are typically applied to household expenses like heating oil, electricity, housekeeping and lawn maintenance, and Mr. Hirschfeld said the Clintons did not make a fuss about it.” They can afford it, after all. According to the Times, their vacation house this summer in Sagaponack is in a neighborhood where homes go for about $100,000 a week in August.

Read more posts by Adam Martin

Filed Under: real estate
,hamptons
,the clintons

via Daily Intelligencer http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/clintons-lost-part-of-hampton-security-deposit.html

Met Opera insiders are buzzing over a recent performance by Anthony Weiner to disrupt the outdoor concert series at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Sources tell Page…

via NY Post: Page Six http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/weiner_met_opera_vibrato_Ffn7m97Io2iDCAE9JL6f9L?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=

The first thing Washington’s latest VIP made clear is that he doesn’t want to live here. “I am happily living in ‘the other Washington’ where I have a day job that I love,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos wrote to his new employees after buying The Washington Post this week.

With that sentiment, Bezos will fit right into his new terrain. Much of Washington’s decision-making class never misses an opportunity to declare how happy they are to be away from the city that provides them status, power, and influence. It’s a convention of modern politics that elected officials who spend years scrambling to reach Washington must immediately demonstrate how eager they are to escape it.

Bezos is a much more accidental power broker. By all indications, he acquired The Post almost by happenstance, as if picking up an alluring, though somewhat frayed, novel on remainder. And yet by keeping his distance from his new domain, he is displaying the intuitive understanding that almost no one is enlarged by close association with the modern Washington of maximum conflict and minimum achievement.

via Homepage http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/political-connections/why-jeff-bezos-will-feel-out-of-place-in-washington-20130809

Leah Remini, the King of Queens star who noisily and publicly left Scientology after three decades of membership over disagreements with church leader David Miscavige, filed a missing person report for his wife Shelly who supposedly hasn’t been seen in public in six years. The LAPD has taken the report and “ruled as unfounded.” The missing person case is closed.

Read more…

via Gawker http://gawker.com/tv-stars-missing-person-claim-against-scientology-rule-1076869636

The reign of the House Republicans has not yet resulted in the crisis of a government shutdown or the calamity of a debt-ceiling failure. But the avoidance of disaster has created a false complacency, or so I’ve argued. Republicans have defused the bomb before by crafting last-second deals between Mitch McConnell and the White House and working around the anarchists of the House.

But, for one thing, the anarchists have grown increasingly angry at their marginalization, and increasingly determined to force their leaders not to cooperate. For another, McConnell is now facing a tea party challenger stoking conservative resentment over precisely this inside deal-maker role, which means McConnell probably can’t defy the anarchists anymore. If all that weren’t grim enough, Lori Montgomery reports an additional new danger — the small number of rational Republican staffers who cut those deals has cleared out.

John Boehner’s policy aide, Brett Loper, who cut the big budget deal with the White House in 2011 that the House GOP caucus blew up, is now a lobbyist. But the big departure, she reports, is Rohit Kumar, McConnell’s aide and the key Guy in the Room when the administration and the Senate Republicans defused the debt-ceiling bomb. Kumar is not what you’d call a moderate, but he does understand policy detail — an “evil genius,” one Obama adviser calls him:

“If you have to do business with the dark side, it’s better to negotiate with an evil genius than with someone who only knows how to say no and doesn’t understand the details,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment.

Kumar is “negotiating on behalf of an irrational, unpredictable crowd, and he likes to run out the clock, which is a dangerous combination. But to his credit, he never wanted to let the clock strike midnight and the world to blow up,” the official said.

Things have gotten pretty bad when the departure of an evil genius actually makes the situation more dangerous. But the implication here is that other Republicans are evil non-geniuses, or possibly are so evil they actually want to blow up the world. Autumn in Washington is going to be fun.

Read more posts by Jonathan Chait

Filed Under: the national interest
,politics
,debt ceiling hostage crisis
,mitch mcconnell

via Daily Intelligencer http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/evil-genius-departs-washington-more-dangerous.html

If there’s one actor on television who understands sleazy lawyers, it’s Bob Odenkirk, who portrays Breaking Bad‘s resident shyster Saul Goodman with gleeful shamelessness. When we first saw Saul, it was in the show’s re-creation of one of the great American art forms: low-budget local lawyer commercials. So now that fans prepare for Saul’s final episodes on Breaking Bad (which may launch him into his spinoff), we thought we’d sit Odenkirk down with Vulture‘s own Julie Klausner to get his thoughts on some of the country’s best so-bad-they’re-good lawyer ads. Prepare yourself for green-screens and jingles galore!

Read more posts by Abraham Riesman

Filed Under: bob odenkirk
,breaking bad
,saul goodman
,vulture with julie klausner
,video
,better call saul

via Vulture http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/bob-odenkirk-breaking-bad-lawyer-videos.html