Today in Umbrage: Someone named Mark whose keyboard was broken sent me this long essay about outrage in pop music criticism last night. It's about the way our critical discourse takes interesting cultural artifacts and pulps them down into one of a few big stupid categories, and what we lose by doing that. I don't agree with all of it but it really gets at something that I'm trying to do here, which is complicate the brutal Fargo woodchipper of internet outrage to the best of my ability. I liked the essay a lot and you should read it even though it's long.
Today's subjects of outrage include Jason Segel being cast as David Foster Wallace for an upcoming biopic, Time's Person of the Year generating outrage in a country where Time magazine is not even read, and this nifty video of casting an ant colony in molten aluminum ("I disabled comments because I'm sick of your bickering. Also, I couldn't get YouTube to stop sending me an email every time someone posted "What if I poured aluminum in your house." for the 100th time").
Thought Catalog's Chelsea Fagan would be the best troll of our time if she wasn't serious. And, in that same vein, 5 things every girl should know about what this misogynist toolbox thinks of you.
Yesterday in Umbrage: Pax Dickinson (remember him?) posted an "apology," which closes by praising his "ladyboss." The so-called "homeless coder" finished his app, so that's homelessness solved then. Or is it? The South African fake sign language interpreter was apparently hallucinating on stage so that's not any more reassuring yet I'm afraid. Oh yeah, the criticism of the Obama selfie was dumb too, like we all knew.
Look: here's the whole year in hatereads so just have at it and enjoy your umbrage.
Bitcoin's Libertarian Paradise Would Be Hell On Earth says BI Australia. tl;dr: this guy.
Someone teach Marissa Mayer how to use Tumblr please.
Robinson Meyer wrote this great little post about "Here be dragons" on old maps. Impulse domain purchase regretted. Fix your bricked Xbox by also bricking your PC (not enough lols in the universe for this). Does everyoneknow about jq already? Looks like a handy botmaking tool.
This io9 article on the linguistics of locats and doge includes the phrase "what our memes allow us to express."
wowBuzzfeed had a holiday party and white teeth teens were out. Knowing whether something is a date or not just seems basic? Have we considered that Samantha West, the robot telemarketer, might not know she's a robot? The Data & Society fellows program looks pretty cool. Sick flute drops. Sriracha not being shipped or whatever igdaf honestly.
Today's Song: White Teeth Teens obvi
Ye Tabbes of Yesteryeare: RATS NEED SNACKS & Rusty says "I don't think you can hijack the popular voice."
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