Too Much Nick

"The apostrophe chatter business, according to Chairman Richards, is booming. He gets 30 or 40..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 16:51:10 -0400

“The apostrophe chatter business, according to Chairman Richards, is booming. He gets 30 or 40 apostrophe-related inquiries each month via email. “My website has received over a million hits,” he says.”

- Slate, it’s not nice to quote people’s piddly numbers when you know how piddly they are. Especially when you’re not even using them to make your point.

Your Laura Mvula for the day: “Green Garden”

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:30:44 -0400

Your Laura Mvula for the day: “Green Garden”

"[Ryan] suggests, during a group stacking effort in the warehouse, that they form a bucket brigade to..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:20:50 -0400

“[Ryan] suggests, during a group stacking effort in the warehouse, that they form a bucket brigade to work more efficiently. The minimum-effort Loser Stanley tells him coldly, “this here is a run-out-the-clock situation.” The line could apply to Stanley’s entire life.”

- The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”

Nick sent me a link and it turned out to be one of the most fascinating/terrifying things I’ve ever read, which is cool because I naturally expected it to be a steampunk ukelele remix of a Skrillex song or something.

(via stryker)

Step 305: Do not listen to random angry anonymous internet strangers

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:11:51 -0400

rachelfershleiser:

adulting:

Here is the thing about making anything for public consumption: Some people will like it, some people will dislike it, and some people will be so so confusingly furious at you for even existing.

The first category is the people you should be focusing on and making things for.

The second category will sometimes have valid criticism; when they do, listen to them. But don’t get too hurt or caught up on their dislike of what you make — you don’t like everything other people like, after all.

The third category is absolutely useless and you need to ignore them. Seriously. Do not read what they say. Go do something else, something fun, something that doesn’t even involve the internet, maybe.

This post brought to you by the wonderful commentariat of Yahoo! News.

ASTERISK: People will be much angrier at you for existing if you are a young, attractive, confident woman who is also succeeding.

I find my brain is overly engaged by shitty reactions and underengaged by great ones. But likely the reactions to your work from other cool people with their own good work are going to be far more positive than the reactions from shitballs who’ve never done something you like.

If you made the mistake of reading a shitball comment, go look at praise you’ve gotten from someone you know is definitely cooler than the shitball. Don’t be afraid to wrap yourself in smug self-satisfaction; a shitty reaction is like a sunburn, and you need to drown that thing in lotion. Shitty reactions are not a good inspiration to self-edit. Only good-faith critical reactions can help with that.

Don Jon Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Joseph Gordon-Levitt,...

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:17:13 -0400

Don Jon Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson

yes please

There were over 168,000 stop-and-frisks of black guys in NYC between 14 and 24 last year. There are only 158,000 black guys in NYC.

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:49:19 -0400

There were over 168,000 stop-and-frisks of black guys in NYC between 14 and 24 last year. There are only 158,000 black guys in NYC.

"There are many teens out there that could benefit from messages like these. They are not saying..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:46:45 -0400

“There are many teens out there that could benefit from messages like these. They are not saying “DON’T HAVE SEX OMG OMG!”. They are saying “BE CAREFUL: HAVING A CHILD IS NOT A GAME”.”

- Bobby’s Blog

No they’re not. They’re saying “fuck you for having a kid in your teens. You asshole, you ruined your child’s life and your child ruined yours.”

You named the message NYC Social Services wanted to say, but definitely not the message they did say. These posters are extremely bad at their job, with so much ill consequence that those who approved them should eat major public-relations shit.

It's pretty cool how Gawker ripped apart Zach Braff for Kickstarting something they feel he could easily afford himself.

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:23:07 -0400

It's pretty cool how Gawker ripped apart Zach Braff for Kickstarting something they feel he could easily afford himself.

I know these are old news, but I ran across one today and...

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:04:27 -0400

I know these are old news, but I ran across one today and honestly, I will pay $10 for proof that you permanently defaced one of these NYC subway ads.

They’re so fucking offensive they make it embarrassing to make eye contact with most families on the subway because there’s a giant bright ad saying “fuck you” to young, poor, or unmarried parents, like they all planned to be raising kids in the toughest situations, because they’re idiots who don’t understand life is hard and if only we recited some facts at them we could knowledge the babies away.

I’m shocked the person who greenlit these was never fired.

An idea for a new Kevin James movie

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:56:54 -0400

tehawesome:

Kevin James stars as a clumsy doctor who hilariously loses all of his patients in… Hippocratic Oaf

—————

“Kevin James you left a scalpel in the patient! And your lunch! And your phone! And a bomb!”

KJ: “Is it too late to get my lunch back?”

—————

Other doctors: “Promise us you won’t do any more harm, Kevin James!”

—————

KJ: “I’ll get that surgery right some day! I have to impress Out of My League Lady Doctor!”

Lady Doctor: “Oh Kevin James you tried. I mean that guy is dead because of your hilarious bumblings but that earns you a peck on the cheek at least”

KJ: (receives kiss) “Whooooaaaa!” (slips on bloody surgery room floor)

—————

Boss Doctor: “Your track record as a pediatric surgeon is terrible, Kevin James”

KJ: “It’s just that my hands and these scalpels are so big and those kids so small! I can’t get, like, a tiny kid-sized scalpel? I’m really bad at my job but in an endearing way!”

KJ: “I guess I should go back to my old job as a zookeeper, or a kickboxing guy, or a mailman!” (winks at camera)

—————

Movie poster is Kevin James in scrubs making a silly “Oh no!” face and he is just COVERED in blood.

Somebody make a poster cause I wanna see that title in big red letters.

24-Year-Old Receives Sage Counsel From Venerable 27-Year-Old | The Onion

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:02:33 -0400

24-Year-Old Receives Sage Counsel From Venerable 27-Year-Old | The Onion:

GPOYW

"Bitcoin can no longer be ignored. At first, the allure was mythical: Anonymous genius invents a..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:55:32 -0400

“Bitcoin can no longer be ignored. At first, the allure was mythical: Anonymous genius invents a currency built to mimic cash on the internet, then disappears without a trace. ‘It’s such a good story. It’s such a fun world,’ comedy writer Nick Douglas told me in June of 2011. ‘I love imagining the stories something like Bitcoin conjures up; a market of Libertarians and criminals.’”

- Why won’t Bitcoin die? | The Verge

I forgot I’d said this, and that I said it in such mockable-by-Cole terms.

New jam: It’s A Wonderful Life by 2 Ton Bug

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:24:26 -0400

New jam: It’s A Wonderful Life by 2 Ton Bug

slacktory: Goldman Sachs Kickstarter campaign (by Slacktory) I...

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:41:33 -0400

slacktory:

Goldman Sachs Kickstarter campaign

(by Slacktory)

I wrote a parody Kickstarter! It’s inspired by criticisms of Zach Braff’s project, even though I don’t agree with most of those.

Laura Mvula: “Like the Morning Dew.” I saw a poster...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:04:00 -0400

Laura Mvula: “Like the Morning Dew.” I saw a poster for this album on 13th St., I looked it up on Spotify, and now it’s my favorite. If you don’t like this track you are dumb and a boy.

In high school I listened to an experimental/classical music piece where different instruments play at different time signatures

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:36:58 -0400

It was a musical piece where different instruments play at many different time signatures, all convening after many bars, with each conjunction signaled by a gong (or some other deep sound). I’m pretty sure all the instruments were percussion. The liner notes talked about a “life beat” or some similar phrase; the piece was supposed to evoke the rhythms of life.

This was one track on a compilation of experimental music from various artists. The track may have been one movement of a longer piece. The collection was out on CD by 2002 or so, but it could be much older.

Google hasn’t helped so far.

Any ideas?

bellsandforks: Side by Side (2012), dir. Chris Kenneally My...

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:52:38 -0400

bellsandforks:

Side by Side (2012), dir. Chris Kenneally

My new process.

bn2b: If you don’t have to do it simultaneously, seems Dropboxable, no? Not a Premiere expert, but...

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:31:00 -0400

bn2b:

If you don’t have to do it simultaneously, seems Dropboxable, no? Not a Premiere expert, but the source videos don’t change much right?

Oh duh, that’s probably the best solution for now. I think the real bottleneck is the excruciatingly slow upload times for the source files (and the real answer to that is nationwide Google Fiber), but as you say, those only need one upload, and then the project file is basically a thin layer of metadata. And a $700/year corporate Dropbox account will pay for itself.

Background: This is mainly about Slacktory, where I publish two to three supercut/remix videos a week, each edited by one of several freelance video editors working from various cities. We can’t afford to hire an editor fulltime.

Slacktory has grown enough that I’m wasting too much of my time dictating edits that I could make myself, just like an editor working with text. When I don’t do any of the actual work on a project, I feel like a plantation owner. But I don’t even get a white three-piece suit.

Trying to collaboratively edit Adobe Premiere projects over the internet—

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:20:15 -0400

I shouldn’t even try, right?

And none of the web-interface video editors are nearly as powerful (video-in-video, gain adjustment, automatically matching sequence settings to original clip settings), right?

Ben: cole

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:09:37 -0400

Ben: cole
a black lady asked me outside how to get somewhere
and i didnt know so i pull up my phone and look for it
manhattan municipal building
so while im showing her on my phone shes looking at it, and then says ok thanks and walks away
then i look down and my thumb must have hit another location and it said african burial ground
thats what she saw