December 27, 2015
Janet Wolfe, 101
Jerry Springer: 'This might seem strange'
Yes, that Jerry Springer: Host of the world’s least classy TV show, former mayor of Cincinnati and one-time newscaster. He tapes The Jerry Springer TV show every Monday and Tuesday in Connecticut, then on alternate Tuesdays takes his Gulfstream jet to Cincinnati, where his old friend Jene Galvin picks him up. They go over to Ludlow to record a podcast called "Tales, Tunes and Tomfoolery."
[more inside]
How to write comics
Comics writer Kieron Gillen answers the question How do you go from story idea to finished script? Further tips from Kelly Sue DeConnick, Warren Ellis and Mort Weisinger via Alan Moore.
I imagine we'll get an episode per mod for the 800th MeFi podcast
In honor of reaching the 500th episode of its DJ mix podcast, venerable electronic music review website and community Resident Advisor has both:
- Put all of the old episodes online for streaming, along with those for RA Exchange their electronic music discussion and interview podcast
- Assembled five different 500th episode mixes by established powerhouse DJs, and ensuring that there’s a little something for everyone…
Are we fully in control of our technology?
A two-part essay by Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post on the growing unease among some technologists. [more inside]
"That was just a beautiful lineup of great writers"
Newsweek takes a look at the death of several pop culture sites in 2015. Spearheaded by film oriented Pitchfork spin-off Dissolve (previously), ESPN-owned and Bill Simmons-created sports and pop-culture Grantland (also previously), this year was particularly grim for new media, as the same problems of traditional media - declining ad revenue and failure to compete with sensationalism (or in this case, clickbait) and slow growth - put a shade on what was until very recently considered the future of journalism.
Lucas told us Han Solo was married to a Wookiee
“I told them I would not change a word,”
French journalist accuses China of intimidating foreign press. by Tom Phillips [The Guardian]
China is facing accusations of attempting to muzzle and intimidate foreign press after it said it would expel a French journalist who refused to apologise for an article criticising government policy. Lu Kang, a spokesperson for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, claimed Ursula Gauthier, the Beijing correspondent for French magazine L’Obs, had offended the Chinese people with a recent column about terrorism and the violence-hit region of Xinjiang. “Gauthier failed to apologise to the Chinese people for her wrong words and it is no longer suitable for her to work in China,” Lu said in a statement, according to Xinhua, Beijing’s official news agency.[more inside]
Secret Hitler, the party game!(?)
At The Awl, Rob Dubbin describes a sincere unease about a new Kickstarter card game smash hit, "Secret Hitler". [more inside]
The Normalization of Deviance
In 2014 a Gulfstream plane crashed and burst into flames in Bedford, Massachusetts, killing seven people (NTSB animation). Aviation writer Ron Rapp argues that the cause was not defective equipment or simple complacency, but the normalization of deviance, whereby "people within [an] organization become so much accustomed to a deviant behavior that they don’t consider it as deviant, despite the fact that they far exceed their own rules for the elementary safety." This was also considered to be a factor in the crashes of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. The creator of the concept and author of The Challenger Launch Decision, sociologist Diane Vaughan, is interviewed here. (transcript)
Bad Mother: Understanding Maternal Ambivalence
Dear Sugar: I love my children. But I hate motherhood. "[W]e might be content with loving some parts of motherhood, and not liking others, until we are confronted with the well-intentioned acquaintance who asks, 'Aren’t you just loving every minute of it?!' So we smile, gush 'Yes, it’s wonderful!' and then feel guilty because it really isn’t." [more inside]
1981 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
Mashable: In 1977, Radio Shack's 3,000 stores started selling the TRS-80 (Tandy/Radio Shack, Z-80 microprocessor). Largely forgotten by the general public, the TRS-80 was, with Apple and Commodore's products, one of the pioneering personal computers of the late 1970s, and a key machine in the personal computer revolution. Byte magazine described the "1977 Trinity" of computers: Apple, Commodore and Tandy. [Images by Mefi's own Jscott]
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