January 2012
3 posts
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“[T]echnology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar...”
– Vint Cerf (via azspot)
“Your competition is not other people but the time you kill, the ill-will you...”
– JAMES ALTUCHER, How to Eat What You Kill
December 2011
4 posts
When years from now I remember this sparsely lettered time when I didn’t make time for whole books, when I only read poetry for pleasure, and only two poets at that, that it was the biggest, most meaningful commitment I could keep in the the monsoon of my early adulthood.
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Dear OKCupid,
Yours is a brilliantly conceived and well executed product. That said, there is a dynamic on OKCupid that makes it unlikely that serious, eligible people will engage each other successfully, whether for the purposes of a romantic relationship or something more casual…
Some high percentage of messages sent through your site are discourteous, offensive or generally low quality...
You Say You Want a Devolution? →
Really interesting read on cultural stagnation in the US. Perhaps the most compelling observation is that style companies today have a bizarre set of incentives. On the one hand they must produce constant novelty to drive consumption and growth. On the other, they must keep things predictable and constant enough that they don’t have to deal with fundamental re-invention and the risk of...
November 2011
17 posts
(Founder Stories) How Michael Bloomberg Got His... →
I think Bloomberg is a pretty brilliant entrepreneurial mind, but it bothers me that when he talks about starting his company he makes it sounds like he was just-scraping-by, when he actually had a couple million in funds to work with. It bothers me more that Techcrunch goes along with this, writing, “But it might never have happened if he hadn’t been fired from Wall Street during the early...
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The woman working the deli counter at the Safeway today decided that I should sample of all of the meats. She was quite kindly and seemed more invested in my sampling the meats than I was in not sampling them, so I sampled away, all but the ham, about a quarter pound total, off of wax deli sheets with her standing there beaming at me. “You like?” She was middle-aged, Ethiopian,...
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It’s plain to me in retrospect, that I was drunk off the abundance of you. The fact that you were the most wonderful person to find me worthy in so long opened my mind to the possibility that I could meet and be loved by women as beautiful and intelligent and kind as you. That, bizarrely, was part of our undoing. In my youthful un-wisdom, knowing you introduced the possibility of finding...
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When I read Friedman’s piece “One Country: Two Revolutions” my response was as follows:
Interesting piece. Friedman is giddy about the potential of a new wave of technologies to empower and connect individuals and groups, helping them to create value for themselves and society more broadly while avoiding the old middle-men and traditional barriers-to-entry. I share that same...
“The proper question is: How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to...”
– David Brooks, “Let’s All Feel Superior”
I am wary of some part of the broader message in this op-ed, but this quote rung true.
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Remember tonight for its its extremes of dignity and indignity. Among the latter, remember the woman passed out on the curb, covered in vomit, clothes in disarray, the whites of her eyes on full display. Strangers look on with voyeuristic almost-amusement, not quite concern.
Among the former, remember the one concerned stranger who comes with you to care for the woman, and...
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Nice Guys Finish First
David Brooks’ op-ed ‘Nice Guys Finish First’ reviews a sampling of books and essays that are adding color and nuance to existing ideas around evolution and “survival of the fittest”. He highlights a trend towards acknowledging the survival advantages of cooperation, and how human beings might be wired for it.
The science of a given age tends to reflect the societal...
“I don’t have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my...”
– Warren Buffet (Lowe 1997:165–166)
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On Monday I had a sudden craving for tomato. Not in salad or anything, just a whole tomato, to eat like a peach. I thought it was peculiar, but I indulged the craving that night, and these two nights since. Tomatoes are delicious whole, but messy. There is only one person I’ve ever known to enjoy biting into a ripe tomato, eating its juicy entirety - my brother Malik.
This week marks nine...
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“The mutual rivalry for piling up (the good things of this world)
diverts you...”
– Holy Qur’an 102:1-5
This passage form the Qur’an reminded me of that old Porter Waggoner song, sung so beautifully by Jeff Buckley, Dylan, Cash and Fitzgerald among others:
How many times have you heard someone say, “If I had money, I would do things my way.” But little...
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“And one begins to suspect an awful thing: that people believe that they deserve...”
– James Baldwin, “White Man’s Guilt”
Reading Baldwin’s remarkably lucid and powerfully articulated “White Man’s Guilt” I am reminded, thematically if not in terms quality, of an essay I wrote in undergrad. I was writing about apartheid era South Africa, but also, I’ve...
October 2011
5 posts
3 tags
“I’m a pretty lousy coder - I’m actually just doing stuff w/ scripting languages...”
– Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare (via nateberkopec)
Story of my life.
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“As a litigator who practiced for more than a decade in federal and state courts...”
– Glenn Greenwald (via azspot)
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I love how Marian Wright Edelman moves so easily between the analytical and the spiritual, between devastating statistics and poetry. Her oratory posits great moral truths with quiet, almost casual, certainty - as if decency is common, and she expects it, and shouldn’t need to raise her voice or ask us twice.
Jimmy Wayne speaks like the soul of country music - honest, full of faith but...
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“We pray for children
Who sneak popsicles before supper,
Who erase holes in...”
– Marian Wright Edelman, “A Prayer for Children”
September 2011
7 posts
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A recollection of 9/11
It struck me a couple months back, talking to the girls I mentor, that despite growing up in its shadow, many kids today don’t really have a sense of what 9/11 was, what it meant, what it means.
I remember the day well. I was coming out of first period English class when I got news that the first plane had struck. Students and teachers huddled around TVs, excited, hushed, then horrified. My...
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“Now’s the time to act. We’re not a people that just look and watch and wait to...”
– - Barack Obama, Jobs and the Economy | Jun2 9, 2011
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“Nothing you become will disappoint me
I have no preconception that I’d like to...”
– Kahlil Gibran (via tortillaknife)
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WatchIt’s odd and a little sad I suppose that the character I most identify with right now is a middle-aged, divorced, balding loser with two kids and no game. It’s scenes like this that I just revel in (starting around 12:30) - there is this brilliantly crafted, cringeworthy awkwardness, sincerity, vulnerability. It’s pathetic, and absolutely beautiful:
Louie: Can I just tell you...
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The Souls of DC Folk
The premise that black and poor people were, for the most part, forced out of DC by direct economic pressures is a problematic one. “A Hard Look at Gentrification” by Ta-Nehisi Coats, deconstructs this idea while touching on why the racial and class transformation of American inner-cities is such an emotionally charged topic for those of us who survived their decline.
Coats writes,...
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“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a...”
– Cicero, circa 43 BC (via qglas, ayse)
August 2011
5 posts
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A note to my brother in search of himself
The path of greatness is one of constant assault; people in your life and society more broadly will attempt to comfort and harass, flatter and undermine, seduce and break you into mediocrity. An inclination towards greatness, such as I see in you Qadir, is an existential threat to mediocrity; faced with the realization of the former, the latter cannot continue to justify its own existence. Your...
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“The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie...”
– John Swinton, New York Times editor, Twilight Club in NYC, 1883
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“Sometimes we let things we thought we wanted go by some sort of enlightened...”
– Tariq, On This Day In 2009
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“Sucede que me canso de ser hombre.
Sucede que entro en las sastrerías y en los...”
– Neruda, Walking Around
A good friend of mine is having a tough time finding authenticity and meaning in her new job. She tells me she feels like this poem. The first three stanzas (above) resonate particularly with me. They seem to capture well the feeling of suffocating staleness that I...
July 2011
9 posts
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“A friend who is blissfully engaged to a beautiful woman recently asked me why I...”
– My brother Omari (perhaps borrowed from elsewhere)
This kind of describes my place in life right now.
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Institutionalizing "Lois"
A couple months back I stumbled upon an essay by Malcom Gladwell titled ‘Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg’. In this piece he proposes that certain individuals serve as critical conduits for access to opportunities and resources, and further, that privilege might be measured by the degree to which one has access to these people. The following excerpt sums up the idea:
If the world really...
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Nobody tells this to people who are beginners →
nprfreshair:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is...
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Recreational substance entrepreneurs take lessons...
After a visit to Sweet Green, a DC based retail salad shop, marijuana entrepreneur Mike Brown is considering diversifying his product portfolio. “Young, urban professionals love weed, and apparently, they’re way into salad as well.”
Mr. Brown went on to note some compelling features of the retail edible plants market saying, “The markup from raw product to street price...
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Why the Future of College isn’t on Campus →
Thank you for this thought provoking piece. My reaction is mixed. On the one hand I tend to agree that many of the benefits of college could be had by other means. This is especially true as knowledge repositories and forums for the exchange of ideas are digitized and democratized. On the other, the social and intellectual space of the university can provide some unique and extremely valuable...
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Coming soon: DigitalGrio.com →
gri·ot [gree-oh, gree-oh, gree-ot] –noun
a member of a hereditary caste among the peoples of western Africa whose function is to keep an oral history of the tribe or village and to entertain with stories, poems, songs, dances, etc.
I was reading through an old cover letter in which I touch on the idea of using data and qualitative insights to tell compelling stories, and it occurred to me...
Just A Dog →
This beautiful reflection on the many meanings of a dog reminded me of something I wrote once on a scrap of paper and let slip out the window of a metro bus.
There are days when I am so delicate that the glances of strangers shatter me.