Posts in: General
- On life post-Katrina
- I know not everyone feels they are better off since the storm, but I do. Now I can barely recall the restless and unfulfilled person I used to be. Five years ago I spent my time obsessing about my career and ambitions, now I spend it enjoying my family and friends via backyard BBQs, music [...] [28 Aug 2010]
- On Light Skin Privilege
- In most situations where I am with other people of color, white people will try to communicate with me first. I am more likely to appear in the media, especially if my skin affords me the designation “omniracial.” (Hello, Beyonce.) People will think I am pretty. full stop. I am more likely to get a [...] [27 Aug 2010]
- On scalability
- Twitter certainly had such an easy win when, while at a fraction of the scale the service now operates at, one of their engineers rewrote their in-house Ruby-based message queue in Scala. That was great, but it was scaling in the small. Twitter is still fighting an uphill battle to scale in the large, because [...] [28 Jul 2010]
- On short sales
- A short sale is going to be the only way for many people who bought at the peak and who are now underwater to move on with their lives if they have to relocate or downsize. From Jonathan J. Miller, president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel and a market analyst in New York City [...] [25 Jul 2010]
- On blacks and gays and gals in New Orleans
- Big Freedia and Galactic at the Fillmore from Big Freedia on Vimeo. As far back as the ’40s and ’50s, it was a really popular thing. Gay performers have been celebrated forever in New Orleans black culture. Not to mention that in New Orleans there’s the tradition of masking, mummers, carnival, all the weird identity [...] [24 Jul 2010]
- On Western colonialism
- it’s increasingly obvious that western colonial expansion was about people wanting to get drunk, get high, and get rich. Jason to me in an instant message conversation after I mentioned that I had my first pisco sour last night. It’s a yummy drink. That’s also a true statement. Also see On sugar, rum and the [...] [16 Jul 2010]
- On books
- The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium. What matters is the way people think about themselves while engaged in the two activities. A person who becomes a citizen of the literary world enters a hierarchical universe. There are classic works [...] [11 Jul 2010]
- It’s not what you earn. It’s that you earn more than your friends.
- His ranked-income hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests that utility is based on an individual’s rank among peers. As he describes it, “People might care about whether they are the second-most highly paid person, or the eighth-most highly paid person, in their comparison set.” Gender, age and other factors become very relevant in comparing income, [...] [10 Jul 2010]
- On insuring your art and workspace
- Most of the time, renter’s, homeowner’s or condo owner’s insurance are for personal considerations, not commercial. Therefore, understanding whether or not your art is a hobby or a business is key to understanding whether or not you need any additional insurance policies for your art business. If it’s a hobby, then you may be covered. [...] [9 Jul 2010]
- White flight, Hungarian style
- Segregation in Hungary doesn’t happen as a result of racist laws. It’s de facto segregation. For different reasons in different locations, all of the Roma children, or at least large majorities of them together with financially disadvantaged non-Roma, wind up in the same classrooms or schools. So says Lilla Farkas, a lawyer with the NGO [...] [8 Jul 2010]