Abby knows I love my stories, in this case the 75 or so blogs I subscribe to and read regularly (believe me, at one point it was over 150, so this is nothing). Most tend to be meaty, and incredibly satisfying to me, but this complexity creates a barrier to entry. (And yes, I am aware that I do the same thing here.)
I know not everyone knows or cares about these or any other blogs, but people just like you and me are doing incredible work to uncover the truths about our recent past and define a more harmonious way forward. As I read them, I always search for the one sentence or couple of paragraphs that really cut to the heart of the matter; and when I blog about them here, I want to share with you something that’s immediate and obvious, easily digestible and eminently repeatable.
I hope to find a better way to simplify and amplify these ideas, but for now I’m more interested in identifying what strikes me as illustrative and meaningful. With that in mind, here are a few gems from this past week:
- Environmentalism: “We’ve also got to toss aside the mindset that the status quo is reasonable.” Imagine What Comes After Green by World Changing.
- Patriotism: “It’s one thing for gluttony to be an individual right, cherished as much as freedom of speech. It’s quite another for it to be a rite of patriotism. And it’s still another for it to put us in direct conflict with other nations that profit from and/or reject the monetary policy that piggishness requires.” Outeat Them Back To the Stone Age by The Cunning Realist.
- Conservatism: “The labor movement is the greatest anti-poverty program in American history, but to the corporate profiteers, it means one less yacht in the harbor.” Sam’s Club Conservatism by dday at Digby’s blog.
- Corporatism: “Do we need razors with ten blades — or a single blade that never dulls?” America’s Addiction and the New Economics of Strategy by Umair Haque. This post truly requires a more complete quote:
Let’s re-examine the house of cards that is the global financial system. Emerging markets seek export-led growth: they undervalue their currencies, so their exports are more competitive purely in terms of price. That’s essentially a subsidy to consumers on the other side of the table — those in the developed world. As emerging markets accumulate surpluses, they recycle them: they lend them back to the US and UK in the form of government and mortgage debt, stabilizing their economies, and amplifying the existing consumption subsidy through leverage.
Amplifying that artificial cheapness is the simple fact the true costs of production haven’t been factored in — until now: very real costs like pollution, community fragmentation, and abusive labour standards.
So we’ve been able to consume mercilessly and remorselessly — with no regard for the human, social, or environmental consequences, to us or to others.
It’s not just cheap oil we’re addicted to: it’s cheap everything. And the world we’re entering isn’t really of Peak Oil as it is one of Peak Consumption.
But consumption wasn’t the only choice we could have made. We could have chosen, instead, to invest. In what? In anything: anything would have been a more sensible choice than naÏve consumption — education, energy, healthcare, transportation, even a more sensible and rational kind of finance.
Umair is almost single-handedly moving this entire discussion forward.
- John McCain: “McCain’s primary talent has always been his ability persuade simple-minded people (i.e. his media cheerleading claque) that he is flipping or flopping as a matter of great personal principle and at great possible cost to his political career — even as he has used his various flips and flops to climb the greased pole and become the presidential nominee of his party.” The Great White Hope by Billmon at Daily Kos. Here’s more:
Now, finally, all that hard work and twisting and turning have paid off, and McCain IS the GOP establishment candidate. In April, as Clinton and Obama were tearing into each other (or rather, as she was tearing into him) the McCain campaign clearly saw an advantage in positioning their guy above the fray, as the “kinder, gentler” candidate — the better to pick off supporters of the loser in the Democratic primary race. Thus McCain’s promise to run a “respectful campaign.” (He didn’t explain that what he meant was respect for HIM.)
But McCain and his new team of Rovian handlers now realize they won’t have a prayer in November unless they can motivate the conservative base and (to use Lee Atwater’s charming phrase) “strip the bark” off Obama. And they have to do it NOW, so McCain can pivot back to a softer, more upbeat message in September.
So that’s exactly what McCain is doing – instantly, unapologetically, without shame or embarrassment. His enormous cynicism about the political process and his contempt for the voters – not to mention his vast sense of self-entitlement - have led McCain to take exactly the same low road as the Bush family and its various henchmen (Atwater, Rove): Whatever works; whatever it takes.
Billmon quit blogging at Whiskey Bar a few years ago, but I never unsubscribed — it’s the only dinosaur in my feedreader! Needless to say, I was thrilled to see this new post at the Great Orange Satan. It’s a lengthy post, but well-worth the read, and I guarantee you will never see anything written about McCain that’s as open or brutally honest as this is.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that George W. Bush’s Republican party is hell-bent on preserving the political and economical status quo in America with the election of John McCain. Baring that increasingly impossible feat, they will stop at nothing to destroy anyone who attempts to call any of their policies into question. Which is the perfect segue into this:
- Me: “Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.” Rules for Living from Nassim Taleb by Barry Ritholtz.
I have had this inverted for much too long. Even as I railed against the powers that be, my skepticism has always been directed inward. At me. Never willing to trust my instincts. Always questioning the fitness of my ideas and doubting my power to critique, curate, and communicate a more considerate and compelling narrative.
If you read through any of my earlier posts, you’ll see this theme emerge time and time again. Until now, I never realized the barrier was my own relationship to my strengths and the things that make me, well, me.
Truly, finding my voice and using my gifts to bring about a more honest and equitable world is not a matter of large consequence, it’s small and aesthetic. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. And that freedom to be imperfect, foolish, and human is incredibly liberating.
Watch this brilliant ‘videologblog’ from The Colbert Report writers:
As you might expect, it effortlessly and effectively mocks the absurd claims of the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers — which is of course a thinly veiled front for the Big Media corporations like ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX / News Corporation, Time Warner, Sony, MGM, and Time Warner, among others — and their demand that writers give up all rights and residuals for works presented online.
And don’t miss this one from The Daily Show writers:
Writers, represented by the Writers Guild of America, are simply asking to be compensated when their work is shown online (supported by advertising) or sold by the download, but Big Media has the audacity to assert that there is no additional revenue created by either one. Meanwhile, Viacom brags to Wall Street that their online businesses bring in $500,000,000 per year as it continues to pursue a $1,000,000,000 lawsuit against YouTube. Do they really think we aren’t paying attention? Or worse, that we don’t care?
Clearly, if these clips are any indication, writers can and will get along just fine without their employers. In fact, it becomes much more likely that some of them will build an audience outside of the Big Media confines, especially with those of us who sympathize with their cause, likely the very same audience of the shows Big Media pushed off the air.
And of course, I love to see my generation turn our talents loose on such ridiculously wealthy and needlessly evil incumbents. We are far more powerful than either side realizes, and these tests only make us stronger.
Speaking of which, for my next post: why I am cancelling my Facebook account and you should too — hint: Facebook is even more evil than Big Media (and that’s not even half of it).
Slowly catching up on the past two weeks…
John Gruber, on the unique constraints and enormous potential of the iPhone interface, saidbest:
The iPhone’s screen measures just 3.5 inches, but it’s now the biggest frontier in interface design.
I am so much more dependent on my iPhone after traveling for the past two weeks. It performed flawlessly. In fact, I have since become very attached to Twitter’s mobile interface (it’s much less cluttered) and I am truly blown away by the iPhone specific Facebook interface (though far from perfect, it may be the one thing that keeps me interested in Facebook, for now). I have an idea for game too, but no idea how to make it happen. =)
Fred Wilson, on the near ubiquity of Twitter and his desire (mine too) to see it work natively with Facebook, saidbest:
I want to use Twitter to update my Facebook status. I don’t update my Facebook status. I twitter it to my blog, my friends phones, and countless other places on the web. I hope that Facebook will be another of those places soon.
Easy prediction: Twitter is the next big thing for everyone. My mom will never join Facebook, but I bet she’s following my tweets by year’s end, and adding her own shortly thereafter. Without a doubt.
Khoi Vinh, on consuming information online not for convenience alone but for the opportunity to do something with it, saidbest:
But, truth be told, the lion’s share of my recreational non-fiction reading happens online now. It’s not just that the diversity of content and the immediacy of that content is so much richer online, it’s the fact that there’s so much more one can do with content when it lives online.
Even my modest attempts at joining the conversation are incredibly satisfying and richly rewarding. I find I’m much more engaged with my thoughts, more coherent in their expression, and more passionate in their application (no doubt much to my father’s dismay).
Seth Godin, on using contrast to define an identity, saidbest:
One of the hardest things to do is invent a brand with no opposite. You don’t have an anchor to play against.
Perfectly obvious, yet often forgotten, and even then rarely done well. See the following for proof.
Digby, on the overwhelming data that indicates an incredible opportunity for Democrats to change the terms of debate in America, saidbest:
But you have to be optimistic, at least, that the American people are eager to hear a new story. The question is whether the Democrats can tell it.
I have some thoughts here, as you might imagine. Now if only I can find the time…
Peter Semmelhack, on the absolute brilliance of his just-announced Fred Wilson-backed company, BUG Labs, saidbest:
So what is BUG exactly? It’s Legos meets Web services & APIs. Imagine being able to build any gadget you wanted by simply connecting simple, functional components together. Now imagine being able to easily program, share and connect these gadgets in interesting ways. In essence, we’re building an open source-based platform for programmers to build not only the applications they want but the hardware to run it on.
You had me at legos. Sign me up now!!
Umair Haque on the creative bankruptcy, strategic blunders, and epic failure of imagination of old media’s new internet plays, saidbest:
More simply: before you can worry about capturing value, you’ve gotta understand how value is created.
There is a lifetime of wisdom in that one simple sentence, and a fortune for whomever figures out how best to apply it.
John Edwards, on the dichotomy of being hopeful by nature but incredibly frustrated by world we have allowed George W. Bush to dictate, saidbest:
“I’m a naturally optimistic person who feels an outrage that should be expressed, and I think that will come across as genuine and authentic. There is no strategy to it. I just have to be myself.”
This is me to a tee. Consider yourself warned. =)
On Rupert Murdoch’s expected purchase and likely dismantling of the Wall Street Journal, Umair Haque saidbest:
Rupert is gonna absolutely eviscerate the Journal, and spit out something like a cross between the Sun and the business section of your local free paper. Yes, it’s speculation - but it’s also what he’s done to every newspaper he’s ever owned.
Absolutely right. He’ll try to transfer the WSJ’s respect and relevance to FOX News, all the while tearing it apart from the inside out until it’s nothing more than a hollow shell. And we’ll lose yet another reasoned and rational (even it is representing the right-wing) voice in the great American debate.