“A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.”
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Samuel Butler
Martha Nussbaum.
“It is a part of mankind to play games. We played in the Stone Age. We played in Roman times. It’s an escape from the everyday grind. Every day we work hard and we make mistakes and we are punished for those mistakes. Games take us to another role where you can make mistakes and you don’t get punished for them. You can always start another game.”
One single incident serves as a perfect illustration of just what an extraordinarily unusual and charismatic person the US musician Frank Zappa, who died in 1993, must have been. In 1968, a year that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, a man turned up on the doorstep at the Log Cabin, the ramshackle, open-all-hours-to-all-comers crash pad in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, that Zappa and numerous other weird people called home. “My name is Raven. I brought you a present,” this stranger announced, handing to Zappa a transparent bag, apparently filled with blood, before pointing a revolver at his chest.
Calmly, Zappa cajoled and manipulated Raven into walking with him, and numerous spectators, including Zappa’s 24-year-old English secretary, to a nearby lake. He then persuaded everyone present to start throwing things into the water, including Raven, who threw in his gun. The secretary, Pauline Butcher, threw in a twig, which “floated on the algae” causing her to look round “apologetically”. After that, Zappa, shoved the bag of blood back into Raven’s hand, saying: “You must leave now.” Raven did. Immediately exhorted by the many witnesses to call the police, Zappa refused. Why? “Because if I call the police, the police will arrest him and he’ll go to jail and no one deserves to go to jail.”
5 days ago
via 
CNBC is reporting that Yahoo will hold a “product-related” news event this Monday in New York City. None other than CEO Marissa Mayer will be speaking at the event. Exactly what Yahoo plans to announce hasn’t yet been disclosed, but news of the event comes in the midst of rumors pointing to an acquisition of Tumblr. The extraordinarily popular microblogging site is based out of Manhattan, so the location would make sense if a deal has indeed been finalized.
Reports indicate that Yahoo could spend up to $1 billion for Tumblr, which would represent Mayer’s biggest spend yet after high profile acquisitions of Summly and Astrid. The company has also recently signed exclusive content partnerships that will bring it video programming from Saturday Night Live, World Wrestling Entertainment, and others.
Update: Yahoo has made the event official, providing The Verge with an invitation that reads, “Join us as we share something special.” Clearly the company isn’t being shy about hyping its coming announcement. We’ll be bringing you all the news as it happens Monday starting at 5PM EST.
Cool announcement graphic.
Chad Kouri, local cool-guy.
These pretty flowers are on every tree in Madison right now. And they smell like rotting garbage. I call them poopblossoms, but surely someone out there knows the actual name of this tree?
[Jeremy Clarkson’s] fondness for wearing jeans has been blamed by some for the decline in sales of denim in the mid-1990s, particularly Levi’s, because of their being associated with middle aged men, the so-called “Clarkson effect.”
Being so lame that you make cool things lamer by way of sheer proximity is called “The Clarkson Effect.”
Earlier this week, Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman spoke at JP Morgan’s Global Technology conference and underscored the need for the aging Silicon Valley Internet giant to attract more users from the coveted 18-to-24-years-old age bracket. Along with more marketing, he explicitly said Yahoo needed to be “cool again.”
“One of our challenges is we have had an aging demographic,” said Goldman at the Boston event. “Part of it is going to be just visibility again in making ourselves cool, which we got away from for a couple of years.”
According to sources close to the situation, that could mean a strategic alliance and investment in or outright buy of perhaps the coolest Internet company of late: Tumblr.
Sources said the talks were serious, but any kind of deal — of course — could come to naught.
Nothing is less cool than the belief that you can become cool by buying cool things.
I managed over 12,000 people at Groupon, most under the age of 25. One thing that surprised me was that many would arrive at orientation with minimal understanding of basic business wisdom. ”Haven’t you read any business books? Good to Great? Winning? The One Minute Manager?” I’d ask. ”Business books? Not really our thing,” was the typical response. I came to realize that there was a real need to present business wisdom in a format that is more accessible to the younger generation.
It was with this in mind that I spent a week in LA earlier this month recording Hardly Workin’, a seven song album of motivational business music targeted at people newly entering the workforce. These songs will help young people understand some of the ideas that I’ve found to be a key part of becoming a productive and effective employee. I’m really happy with the results and look forward to sharing them as soon as I figure out how to load music onto iTunes, hopefully in the next few weeks.
Is this a real thing or a joke thing?
“[Cards Against Humanity’s] business plan has the sophistication of a lemonade stand.”
Two weekends ago I was invited to a small shindig to check out some indie games including the awesome-looking indie fighting game, Divekick, which Ben had made me positively salivant for earlier this year, and I was excited for the chance to play it for myself.
The event was being hosted by Max Temkin, creator of the runaway hit Cards Against Humanity, a comedy card game which every PAX-goer is very likely familiar with at this point.
It was being held in a somewhat shabby, rundown building with scuffs and scrapes as the only decoration on the walls, no furnishings, and one giant plasma screen TV around which a couple dozen people would crowd to cheer on Divekick competitors while discussing the game’s unique two-button controller, art style, writing and strategy.
Hip people with scarves and hats mingled freely with others in comparatively shabby yet-still-somehow-cool clothing.
And the beards. Good heavens, the beards. I have a beard, but in the face of such beards, what I have could not rightly be called a beard. I am a pretender.
“Cool” people surrounded me on all sides, sipping locally brewed Revolution beer from red cups and discussing game design.
When I saw the beer, that’s when it hit me. I’ve been here before. Not in this same building, but I’ve been to this show, although it wasn’t a video game in front of the crowd. It was an up-and-coming local band. Or a small art gallery. Or a poetry reading.
This was that same scene except I was discussing the learning curves of Divekick vs Street Fighter instead of pretending to be interested in a punk band.
This whole experience forced me to start wondering: am I suddenly cool? Did the wave of time change my social standing?
After all, there I was mingling with the mightiest beards in the city of Chicago, attending a dingy art show just like a cool person might. And I didn’t even have to feign interest, this was a scene I was invested in. I fit in.
More and more I hear stories about things that I’d normally assume were the province of traditional artists. I hear reports of game developers living together in artist houses, or struggling with artistic inadequacy, and it reminds me that gamers’ best days are ahead. We’re struggling with the happy problems of the indie scene truly growing up.
I’m the brand of nerd that almost compulsively thinks about the future. I love to imagine what things might be like 30+ years down the road. Not in a fantastical, colonizing-the-galaxy sort of way, but in a functional and realistic way. When I can see the future developing in front of my eyes at events like that underground game demo it’s an inspiring moment that makes me wonder.
One day the Baby Boomer generation will be gone, and we will inherit culture itself. We’re already taking pieces of it as gamers and game designers continue to age. What will that world look like when its most respected elders grew up on Mario Kart?
There’s precendent for that too. Just look at what happened with comic book culture once the children of the Bronze Age, roughly 1970 to 1985, of comics reached a certain age. Americans have now elected a presidential administration that has referenced Star Wars not once, but twice.
I look forward to a day when not only has gaming’s generation aged to fill the indie artist scene, but when we’re rich snobs lusting after rare pieces (imagine what Chain World will be worth if it surfaces in 30 years,) and politicians referencing games in an effort to connect with the common voter.
This party gave me a vision of what the future will be like for video gamers: pretty much the same as the past except with far more video games. I look around today and I see older people sit around the coffee table to play Ups and Downs or Charades. These games seem boring to us, but they play them because they’re a common language that everyone can relax and understand easily.
I can’t wait for the day when the games that we can all relax and understand in our retirement are Settlers of Catan, Street Fighter, and Super Mario Kart. When I think about it that way, aging into retirement doesn’t seem so bad. It sounds kind of amazing, actually.
Nice counterpoint to this ridiculous troll article from earlier in the week.
dave-parnell asked: “If you happen to have a stringed musical instrument handy would you find out the gauge of the highest string?”
I don’t have a stringed instrument at the office but this didgeridoo is 2 and 7/8th girths wide.
