Trevor Filter works in branding, media and modern culture as an analyst at Siegel+Gale (disclaimer). He lives in New York City. This is his personal tumblelog, which is mostly a conduit for exploring the proper way to use sarcasm on the internet.

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internethistoryvideo

The internet in our era, as conceived in 1969

Source: kottke.org

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My photo made the Onion again! In this issue, I’m an aloof and self-involved douchebag who can’t remember names. Which is funny, because that’s who I am in real life. Here’s last time. Special thanks to Terra and Lisa for pointing it out! Also in this week’s Onion, don’t miss “8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live”—it’s hilarious, especially if you’ve ever spent any time in NYC.

My photo made the Onion again! In this issue, I’m an aloof and self-involved douchebag who can’t remember names. Which is funny, because that’s who I am in real life. Here’s last time. Special thanks to Terra and Lisa for pointing it out!

Also in this week’s Onion, don’t miss “8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live”—it’s hilarious, especially if you’ve ever spent any time in NYC.

Source: The Onion

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Things Organized Neatly

I think I just found my new favorite Tumblr (via Kottke).

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Today in cyclical bullshit

The New York Times reports:

BP is warning Congress that if lawmakers pass legislation that bars the company from getting new offshore drilling permits, it may not have the money to pay for all the damages caused by its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The bill they’re talking about would prevent companies with recorded fatal accidents and environmental fines from receiving drilling permits, e.g., BP. Basically, if BP is not allowed to continue their irresponsible drilling, they won’t make enough money to cover their obligations related to the oil spill that they caused by irresponsible drilling. (Don’t confuse this legislation with the federal moratorium on deepwater drilling. Incidentally, the rig that caught fire yesterday was not drilling nor was it in deep water.)

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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“The End,” by Best Coast (Crazy for You)

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“The Wilderness Downtown,” by Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire have teamed up with Chris Milk and some Google engineers to produce one of the best seamless emotional experiences I’ve seen on the internet lately: an interactive music video for the single “We Used To Wait”—just type in the address of the house you grew up in, and prepare to get wrapped up in the warm, fuzzy feeling of sepia toned teenage angst.

Despite all the extra browser chrome and pop-up windows, this really brings out my favorite part of the internet: creative, personal, and interactive pieces of art that leverage modern tech for new meaning. In that sense, Wilderness Downtown is most similar to Office Max’s holiday elf videos and the related Jib Jab flash presentations, except far, far more polished (and entirely HTML5).

In this case, most of the content for the video is already out there (Google Maps satellite photos), but it’s been repackaged in a fresh and totally unexpected way. Very well done.

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Facebook Places is a really fun and interesting product. The main thing we are doing is allowing our users to share where they are in a really nice and social way.

— Mark Zuckerberg blowing hot air and “reassuring users” about the privacy implications of his latest product announcement, location-based check-ins Places. I don’t like writing about Facebook, but I will say: today, the company is like a giant cruise ship helmed by an overzealous computer nerd who wants to take over the world—think the Titanic mashed up with Microsoft.

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We try hard to shed our old image as stodgy and out of it. Perhaps too hard, sometimes… In any case, hipster’s second life as hip slang seems to have lost its freshness. And with so many appearances, I’m not sure how precise a meaning it conveys. It may still be useful occasionally, but let’s look for alternatives and try to give it some rest.

— New York Times standards editor Phil Corbett, delivering a slap on the wrist to his staff today. This time, it’s for overuse of the word “hipster” (a mere 250 times in the past year—the Village Voice has geographic breakdowns and charts). Those crazy kids.

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I wasn’t sold on these proposed pylon designs from Choi+Shine until I read the allusion to Easter Island moai—how exciting it must be to think about design from the perspective of eons for a change: “Like the statues of Easter Island, it is envisioned that these one hundred and fifty foot tall, modern caryatids will take on a quiet authority, belonging to their landscape yet serving the people, silently transporting electricity across all terrain, day and night, sunshine or snow.”

I wasn’t sold on these proposed pylon designs from Choi+Shine until I read the allusion to Easter Island moai—how exciting it must be to think about design from the perspective of eons for a change:

“Like the statues of Easter Island, it is envisioned that these one hundred and fifty foot tall, modern caryatids will take on a quiet authority, belonging to their landscape yet serving the people, silently transporting electricity across all terrain, day and night, sunshine or snow.”

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The New York Times is for real

(In which I write a few too many uptight paragraphs about journalistic style on the internet, in the form of a “Letter to the Editor”—which I will ironically post on my blog, but never send.)

* * *

Dear Breaking News Alert editors at the New York Times,

When did you start being so colloquial? Over the past several days, I’ve noticed quite a bit of inconsistency in your tone—far more casual in some cases than it ever used to be.

Earlier this evening, for example, while informing me via email about Francisco Rodriguez’s altercation with his father-in-law, you mentioned that it resulted in “a ton of bad publicity” for the Mets. A ton? Like two-thousand pounds of negative press?

I don’t think that all the bits in all the bytes of all the press he received since last night would amount to even half of that. Using “ton” in this sense is pretty informal and colloquial (depending on your dictionary) for a publication whose standards editor prohibits common-use neologisms like “tweet,” don’t you think?

Honestly, I wouldn’t have said anything, if yesterday you hadn’t fudged another Breaking News Alert on something arguably more important. At 8:49 p.m., reporting on China’s “spectacular growth” in the second fiscal quarter, you wrote the following (emphasis mine):

The milestone, though anticipated for some time, is the most striking evidence yet that China’s ascendance is for real and that the rest of the world will have to reckon with a new economic superpower.

What! What do you mean China’s rise to power is “for real”? Of course China is becoming a substantial economic force. So just say that instead.

I’m not disillusioned yet; and I still love you, Gray Lady. I understand that most of this text is taken verbatim from the opening paragraphs of the breaking articles themselves. However, your job is to edit the news for an audience who appreciates straightforward language and uncluttered facts. Or we’ll take matters into our own hands.

A little more substance and a little less sensationalism is welcome in a time when newspapers can become the sources of record on the internet, too. After all, just because it’s not on paper doesn’t mean it can sound like Tumblr.

Sincerely yours,

Trevor Filter