Gatsby is a book that has come to mean something to peoplethat sometimes feels disconnected from the book itself. Fitzgerald great trick was to write about two people who wanted each other, but not write a love story. Of course I root for Daisy to leave Tom every time. But my rooting is wrong, and by the end of the book, Fitzgerald has really shown you why. Daisy is the one that got away—except you have no idea what that means. That “one” isn’t some better future. She is a person—a indelibly flawed American. Like you.
Icarus Smicarus
I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.
—
President Obama, on why he supports same-sex marriage. (via theatlantic)
(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
In 1993, Art Spiegelman visited Maurice Sendak and drew the experience. Now, The New Yorker has unlocked the archive to commemorate Sendak, who passed away today at the age of 83.
Abraham Lincoln Filed a Patent for Facebook in 1845 →
Nate St. Pierre writes:
Lincoln was requesting a patent for “The Gazette,” a system to “keep People aware of Others in the Town.” He laid out a plan where every town would have its own Gazette, named after the town itself. He listed the Springfield Gazette as his Visual Appendix, an example of the system he was talking about. Lincoln was proposing that each town build a centrally located collection of documents where “every Man may have his own page, where he might discuss his Family, his Work, and his Various Endeavors.”
He went on to propose that “each Man may decide if he shall make his page Available to the entire Town, or only to those with whom he has established Family or Friendship.” Evidently there was to be someone overseeing this collection of documents, and he would somehow know which pages anyone could look at, and which ones only certain people could see (it wasn’t quite clear in the application). Lincoln stated that these documents could be updated “at any time deemed Fit or Necessary,” so that anyone in town could know what was going on in their friends’ lives “without being Present in Body.”
A patent request for Facebook, filed by Abraham Lincoln in 1845.
I’ve long argued Facebook is working towards natural or timeless (for lack of better words) human interaction. That their central idea is relevant in any age should not be surprising.
(Though it is astounding Lincoln was imagining a nearly identical privacy system.)
(Via The Next Web)
FJP: Color me fascinated — Michael.
This is amazing. Wow, I need to look into this.
Head asplode.
EDIT: Oh balls, this is fraud. Fool me once, etc.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?
— William Faulkner, during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. December 10, 1950.
Forget about Kurt Cobain for a second: For kids like me, the Beastie Boys invented the 90s. Technology was changing fast and the world was shrinking rapidly. Between their music and label/magazine Grand Royal, the Beasties showed how to reach out and scoop up all the best parts. New York hip-hop and punk rock, Japanese pop, Jamaican dub— all of it could be gathered and re-assembled into something that reflected who you were. This sort of cultural mixing was nothing new, but the Beastie Boys brought it to the mainstream. They were ambassadors, but their hipness didn’t look down on anybody. It felt inclusive.
— Mark Richardson remembers MCA.
(Source: pitchfork)
View Larger I haven’t posted anything in a while, so here’s a box of bananas. #bananas (Taken with instagram)
If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.
— Albert Einstein (via lucifelle)
(Source: veeneversleeps)
