zadi:
THIS. IS. AWESOME.
***Download link is down the page below the fold. Beware the malware links high on the page.***
O.M.G. Nicki Minaj KILLS it on this album. Her sound is amazing. Sweet to diabolically evil in 8 bars.
This is fucking crunchy.
This is actually uncomfortably close to an argument I had with a friend of mine which went as follows:
Him: We’re a Christian Nation, our founding fathers meant for us to be a Christian Nation!
Me: We’re not, at least according to most of the founding fathers themselves when they signed The Treaty of Tripoli which stated “As the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion…”
Him: Maybe, but they were all Christians and founded this country on Christian Principles.
Me: A) Some were, most weren’t. Most were nondenominational deists. B) Thomas Jefferson made his own bible by ripping out all the supernatural parts (which he referred to as “misguided” and “nonsense,” amongst other things) and just focusing on what Jesus said. It’s called The Jefferson Bible, by the way, and it was 46 pages long, if memory serves. So if you want to return to the “Christian Principles upon which this country was founded,” they’re in part the principles of calling the vast majority of the bible “misconceptions” and “nonsense.”
Him: Where do you hear this bullshit, MSNBC? You’re way out of line.
Me: I’m quoting other people here - people you brought into this conversation as voices of reason and respect - so I’m not sure how you get to call me out of line. You’re somehow simultaneously on the wrong sides of both history and verifiable reality. Do you want references?
It sort of went downhill from there.
Beers you thought were indie, import or craft beers but are actually just Anheuser-Busch InBev (AKA Budweiser) brands
- Stella Artois
- Beck’s
- Leffe
- Hoegaarden
- Bass
- Michelob
- Boddingtons
- Bohemia
- Labatt
- Lowenbrau
- Murphy’s
- Spaten
- St. Pauli Girl
- Widmer Brothers
- Redhook
- Rolling Rock
- Kirin
- Chechvar
as well as fake microbrews like:
- SkipJack
- ZiegenBock
- Wild Blue
- Redbridge
I knew all of these except Hoegaarden and Widmer. I’m now disappointed with the former and enh about the latter.
Now the thing is I have nothing against some of these beers. Hoegaarden, Boddington’s, and a few others are good beer. There’s nothing wrong with the quality of the craft. And I’m not making a stand saying that I refuse to buy them because of some beverage version of “Damn the man!” I just think that the further conglomeration of huge beer manufacturers isn’t a good thing for those who like a healthy selection of beer. AB, Miller/Coors, InBev, and the other conglomerates at the time nearly killed craft brewing in the United States a decade or two back, and they’re now doing their best to finish the job.
Now, we’re in a good place right now, due to a record number of craft breweries opening up in the United States, and a welcoming - if faddish - palate from the public at large. I would even go so far as to say that it’s the best time in history to be a beer fan in the United States. So long as craft brews remain in fashion that’ll remain, but once that fad ends, and only it’s the people who enjoy beer for beer’s sake and not fashion’s sake, we’re going to be in a very bad place. Hopefully I’m wrong, and people will have gotten used to variety - or a whole new generation will begin to love beer and demand more styles and variations - but I’m not confident that love of beer will be any less faddish than when gin, tequila, or rum were in fashion for 4-5 years each.
So I try not to patronize AB or InBev brands, not because the quality is low (in some cases it is, in others it’s not) but because I love beer and I want to continue to have variety. Less “Damn the man!” and more “Save the Empire!”
It’s been a while since the last New Mediacracy, so we took an opportunity to go back to basics with the core group of NM, Zadi Diaz, Chris McCaleb, and Steve Woolf. In the theme of getting back to basics, most of this episode’s discussion centers around the identity of web video, or the lack thereof.
Currently downloading. If you work in or care about online media, consider NM part of your continuing education.
Coming soon, to a transparent LCD based biometric contact lens near you. This isn’t about phones or TVs, this is about bringing something very close to your eye and not having it look like pixels.
On a Best Buy commercial I just saw, this guy shows off the new Samsung TV that you can run apps on. At one point, he addresses the camera and positively beams as he says:
“You can tell everyone: ‘Hey, I just Tweeted…from my couch!’”
And then presumably everyone will say: “Well, yeah. I did too. Because seriously where the fuck else would you do it from, besides literally wherever you’re standing if you do it on your phone, which is actually kind of a bigger, more-impressive thing when you really think about it. See, I can just go like this with my phone and LOOK- I’ve already Tweeted, while you, if you want to Tweet from your couch but do it on your TV instead of on your phone or laptop, the way people have been doing it since the very dawn of Twitter, you would have to turn on your TV and then go to the main menu and scroll down until you find the Twitter app, and then you’d have to wait for it to load up, and then you’d have to type your Tweet out on your remote control, which would take 9 minutes. Don’t brag about stupid things.”
And then you’d be like: “Damn you, affable everyman Best Buy salesman. Damn you and your enthusiasm.”
Dave Holmes hates your television.
Doug, from Nostalgia Critic, framed this tweet from Roger Ebert. I would’ve framed it, too.
I also framed Roger Ebert.
For murder.
Re: The “Ground Zero” Mosque
I encourage everyone who visits this blog to read this in its entirety.
I’ve avoided commenting on this subject for a number of reasons. But things have gotten so out of hand that I decided to enter the fray. So here goes.
In the winter of 2001 about three months after 9/11 I traveled to Normandy to visit the D-Day beaches and the American Cemetery and Battle Memorial. It was a profound experience. Men - mostly boys really - so much younger than I was then (25) died taking those beaches. Almost all of the soldiers in the first wave were killed or mounded. There was nothing between them and the German guns. When you stand on the beach and look up at where the German bunkers were you can’t help but shiver. To be on that beach on that day was to be death.
But they prevailed. They took the beach. And then, one town at at time, they took France and marched all the way into Berlin. My father, a native of Lyons, was 13 years old on D-Day. After his parents were carted off to their deaths in a concentration camp in 1942 he became part of the French Resistance. He did and saw terrible things to survive. He helped American troops find their way around and pointed out German positions. He saw men get kill and be killed.
These soldiers died to end a war. They died to stop Hitler’s war machine. Say what you will about America in the 1940’s, but America stepped up, got involved and ended WWII (quite convincingly). The Cemetery at Normandy is a living memorial to the Americans who died not only on D-Day but throughout WWII.
On September 14, 2001 my mother decided that we were going to walk to Ground Zero. My dad and I thought this was a terrible idea but she insisted. We got as close as we could, about ten blocks away. The devastation was amazing. We saw burning wreckage, cars flattened like pancakes hundreds of police, fireman, soldiers and EMT’s. It was still very chaotic. I don’t know why she wanted to go down there but she said she just wanted to get as close to it as she could. My mom and I are native New Yorker’s. Our home had been attacked and she needed to see it. I will forever be grateful that she made us walk down there. Seeing it in person provided a perspective that was impossible to get via television.
Many people who use 9/11 as an excuse for their politics or as a basis for their arguments were not affected by 9/11. I knew no one who died on 9/11. I am very lucky. But New York City, Manhattan, is my home. It is the only home I have ever had. And people attacked it. They also attacked the Pentagon in Washington, DC and would have done more damage if not for the heroic efforts of the passengers on United Flight # 93. America was not attacked. ”America” was attacked. And the proxy was New York and Washington, DC. Alaska was not attacked. Alabama was not attacked. Mississippi was not attacked. Arizona was not attacked. Minnesota was not attacked.
I am tired of people using what happened to my city as the basis for their hate. I am tired of people so fundamentally misinterpreting our Constitution and Bill of Rights. I am tired of people turning the word “Muslim” into the word “terrorist.”
We are coming dangerously close to a point in our history where those who died on D-Day and are buried in French soil at Normandy died for naught. Those men saved my dad. Those men defeated a tyrant. Those men died to ensure others could have the freedoms it is so often said we take for granted. It is our duty, our most important job as citizens, to make sure their sacrifice continues to be for the cause of freedom, justice and acceptance.
We need to take a stand. We need to stop this madness. I will fight to protect what America stands for at all costs. If I have to stand in front of that Mosque with a shotgun so young Muslim children can safely pray to their God, I will. We are allowing a scary and dangerous faction to control the course of our society. If it takes force to stop them, then this is what we must do. The stakes are too high. It is time rational people took a stand. It is time Americans took a stand.
A year ago, Todd Levin got the job of a lifetime—writing for ‘The Tonight Show.’ Nine months later, he was packing his desk. Now he recounts what it was really like: helping reboot a fifty-six-year-old franchise; watching his boss, Conan O’Brien, get screwed; and saying good-bye to the funniest late-night show to barely exist
hmwt:
Shit Jon, you nailed it this time. Nice assist from J.O. and Wyatt too.
Damn. You really can’t eviscerate Fox News much more conclusively than this.
i still cannot understand why there is not more news about this in the mainstream media.
Because by all reports of consumption and audience, Fox News is the mainstream media.
hmwt:
Shit Jon, you nailed it this time. Nice assist from J.O. and Wyatt too.
Damn. You really can’t eviscerate Fox News much more conclusively than this.
Mashup of the Day: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Fire Lord Ozai: Avatar mashed up with audio from SPvtW.
[reddit.]
This is right. this is so right.
I love both of these things so goddamn much. I also might have to go see Scott Pilgrim again soon. Or this afternoon.
Sweet. Campaign talking points distributed by an “guest blog” endorsement.
She may be pro-business, and pro-“spending a record metric shit-ton of her own money since she can’t seem to get contributions,” but she’s anti-humanity and anti-human progress.
Her rhetoric has allowed some part of her brain to believe that some people should have more privilege than others; that they are better or more worthy - and that’s an inexcusable dealbreaker.
Sorry Meg Whitman Campaign but I can read and write, and therefore will not be voting for your candidate.
