November 2011
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Milestone? China could send its first female...
We suppose a Chinese space station would be a real blast to reside in. China will be sending a spacecraft up soon to collect data regarding a future space station. “Although Shenzhou-8 is unmanned, we equipped the spacecraft with devices recording real images and mechanical parameters during its flight, both of which are vital to future manned missions,” said Wu Ping, a spokesperson...
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East Coast snowstorm bad for staying warm, good...
3 million people still without power in the northeast after snowstorms source
» At least five states reported major outages this morning. With record-setting snowfalls snapping tree limbs, power lines were severed cutting power off for millions. The official winter season doesn’t start for 52 more days, so start preparing now. Worst. Halloween. Ever.
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"I Hope That's A Halloween Costume" →
sds:
A man accidentally cuts of his arm with his homemade guillotine, walks himself into the clinic, and a passerby quips “I hope that’s a Halloween costume.”
The comments section is full of brutal puns, as you can imagine. Some of them are in bad taste, but I suppose that as long as he doesn’t read them, then no arm no foul.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s probably not...
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If anyone's in San Francisco this Thursday and... →
Why just San Francisco? This seems like a great conversation to have around the country. Great idea by Storify.
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“You made a huge mistake in taking one of us. Release him, and if anything...”
– A message from Anonymous • Threatening a Mexican drug cartel with the disclosure of information if they do not release an Anyonymous member taken by the Zetas. Anonymous threatens to release the names of officials, taxi drivers and police officers who have allowed the Zetas to have a run of the...
October 2011
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The WaPo's Kathleen Parker asked Herman Cain about... →
What Cain remembers doing — standing close to a woman, commenting on her physical stature and comparing her to his wife — probably crosses the line for some people. Wives and their husbands are intimate together and co-workers generally don’t want to be considered in terms of a spouse. Physical proximity is also fraught with potential tension. Some women wouldn’t blink at such a comment; others...
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Replacing $1 bill with coin could save $5.6... →
A proposal to phase out the $1 bill and replace it with a $1 coin could be gaining currency as the “supercommittee” looks to find ways to save the government money.
Now that’s CHANGE we can believe in! Zing! Conan, you need any writers?
In all seriousness, this seems like a largely reasonable proposal that, like all reasonable proposals, has a few interest groups working against it....
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United Nations agency admits Palestine as member;...
A step forward for Palestine? Today, the United Nations agency UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) admitted Palestine as a full member. In response, the United States is cutting off all funding to the agency. This will effectively gut one-fourth of UNESCO’s budget. The move is in accordance with US law, which prohibits the government from funding any...
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“Simply put, [marijuana] is not a benign drug.”
– Gil Kerlikowske, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy • In the official White House response to a number of petitions calling for weed legalization. This is part of the Obama administration’s “We The People” program: Anybody can submit a petition on a topic of...
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“This is an investment of taxpayers’ money that’s gone bad. After...”
– Rep. Cliff Stearns, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight • Discussing his plans to subpoena the White House regarding Solyndra, the energy company that the government loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to in 2010, only to see the company go belly up just over a year...
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Because sometimes we get press, here's an... →
What are the main differences between ShortFormBlog and a traditional news media outlet?
The most important thing is the pivot — the idea of the blog is broad enough that we can make stuff up as we go along. One day we might be a breaking news outlet, another day we’ll be the opinion page and another day after that we might be the place to go for serious analysis or conversation. The effect is...
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This Startup Costs Me Thousands Of Dollars...
parislemon:
…simply because they didn’t exist yet.
Codecademy.
About 6 years ago, I decided I was going to go back to school to learn how to code. I had very casually dabbled with some simple stuff ranging from HTML to C++, but decided I needed a more formal setting to truly learn. I was wrong.
It’s not that I didn’t learn anything going back to school — I did. But I was wrong that I needed...
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A tool might be able to create a shiny artistic... →
joshsternberg:
Good post up at Nieman Labs about journalism and technology.
The secret: Do something cool. But don’t do it assuming it will be the future. Do it because it’s cool. (Fun fact: I knew nothing about PHP until I dipped into SFB. My HTML was rusty. My CSS was outdated. But I still figured it out. Create a reality distortion field for yourself — assume nobody else will...
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Politico: Herman Cain accused of inappropriate...
allegation Today, Herman Cain got grilled by a Politico reporter who asked him about detailed sexual harassment allegations dating back to the 1990s: “Have you ever been accused, sir, in your life of harassment by a woman?”
response Cain denied the allegations, then as things got tense and the question was repeated, Cain asked the reporter: “Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?”...
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Before simply accepting the Steve Jobs-was-a-jerk... →
None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to...
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“Any problem in Syria will burn the whole region. If the plan is to divide Syria,...”
– Syrian President Bashar al-Assad • Discussing the situation in Syria, and in the process discouraging Western intervention in the region. While admitting that he expected pressure from the West, he tried in the process to paint a line between his country and other Arab Spring countries....
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The heat is off: Michele Bachmann's Iowa polling...
winners In the Des Moines Register’s influential Iowa primary poll, leading lights Herman Cain and Mitt Romney effectively tied (23 percent and 22 percent, respectively), and Ron Paul had a solid third-place finish in the poll.
losers Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll back in August, but the poll showed a massive decline in support — just eight percent. Her staff downplayed the...
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Didya guys hear about all this snow in the...
22″ the amount of snow that fell in one Massachusetts town on Saturday — one of the highest points for the major storm
2.3M the number of people that lost power during the storm, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (oh no!)
three the number of deaths reported from the storm, including an 84-year-old hit by a tree that fell into his home source
» A Halloween surprise? For many people, the...
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“Republicans moralizing about deficits. That’s like an arsonist moralizing...”
– Vice President Joe Biden • Turning up the funny at a speech to Florida Democrats at Walt Disney World on Saturday afternoon. source (via • follow)
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More on Mediaite's biased Michael Moore piece
seldo says: It is one of the weirdest things about America that “communist” is automatically considered an insult rather than a description of a political position. Communism != evil.
» SFB says: No disagreement here; the problem is that the word was clearly meant to evoke bias from the reader due to the way it was used. — Ernie @ SFB
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“I don’t want for a second for anyone to think that we didn’t screw...”
– Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson • Owning up to his longshot presidential campaign’s total fail, in which they had to rush to New Hampshire on Friday to fill out paperwork in person ahead of a major deadline, because they forgot to file. “Bottom line, we just screwed up,” he...
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Samsung ships more smartphones than Apple does...
27.8 million number of smartphone units Samsung shipped in the past quarter, way up from the prior quarter
17.1 million number of smartphone units Apple sold in that quarter, down a bit from the prior quarter source
» A fast ramp-up for Samsung: Samsung entered the smartphone market in earnest just last year, and suddenly they’re bigger than Apple. How the heck did that happen? Well,...
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Occupy Wall Street: Protesters lose generators,...
bad Claiming a fire hazard, yesterday FDNY officials showed up at Zucotti Park and took the generators Occupy Wall Street was using.
worse To put salt in the wounds of the protesters, it’s expected to snow tonight (in freaking October!), with 2-4 inches hitting NYC tonight.
betterHowever, the Occupy folk aren’t getting too down — they plan to set up bike generators, which will be...
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“Obviously we are here in October — we were supposed to do this show in August....”
– Sugarland singer Jennifer Nettles • Speaking at a concert in Indianapolis on Friday night, the duo’s first since a devastating stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair that killed seven people and injured dozens of other people — just before they were to go on stage. Some of the injured were...
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JP Morgan Chase is off the debit-card-charging... →
On Friday, Bank of America bent. A source at the bank, who asked not to be identified because the policy is still evolving, said it likely it will offer ways for its customers to avoid debit card fees through using direct deposit, maintaining minimum balances or using Bank of America credit cards.
They sure Netflixed that up.
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“I just figured that the video would be a simple love story. And then Bob leveled...”
– Lionel Richie, describing when the blind-girl-plus-giant-Lionel-head-statue idea was pitched to him for the “Hello” video. Bob Giraldi got his way for a video once seen as groundbreaking and now seen as an absurd laughingstock. It’s all a part of this article on the history of MTV.
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You Could Own Jack Kevorkian's Old Sweater (and... →
villagevoice:
Well, our Halloween costume issue has been solved
Fun fact: Jack Kevorkian’s lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, is the older brother of the dude who sang “My Sharona.” He also ran for governor in the late ’90s.
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Et tu, Redbox? Netflix isn't alone in raising its...
$1.20 to rent a Redbox DVD — a 20¢ increase source
» And its stock is struggling, too: Coinstar, the parent company of the suddenly-hot DVD-rental kiosk brand, is struggling to keep prices at a level to compensate for operating expenses. Not exactly a good time for Redbox to do this, though — because, you know, Netflix is feeling the heat. And while 20 cents doesn’t sound like much, if you...
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Anyone want an invite to Clipboard? We have ten of... →
Read more about it here, and leave a comment here. Our public page is here. (Must have your ask box open and be willing to hand out your e-mail address so we can send you an invite.) What are you waiting for?
EDIT: We have ten, thanks; please get back to me if we DMed you!
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“Don’t build Twitter clients; but more specifically, don’t build any features for...”
– Twitter’s advice to developers in its ecosystem, from @jolieodell
In a commitment to honesty, Twitter finally buries the hatchet with third-party developers | venturebeat.com
(via felixsalmon) The rub about building your product around another company’s API.
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More on Herman Cain, Mark Block and his checkered...
jeffmiller says: To be fair, the election board counsel felt he was railroaded. From Time: “George Dunst, the Board’s former general counsel, recalls that the evidence was shaky. ‘[Block] got screwed,’ he says. ‘They really did a number on him.’”
» SFB days: Fair enough. The AP story didn’t bring up that particular detail. But it’s also worth noting that the...
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Herman Cain aide Mark Block's checkered past,...
rise Mark Block started his career in 1974, becoming, at age 18, the youngest elected official in Wisconsin’s history. He spent much of the 1980s coordinating Republican political campaigns in the state.
fall In 1997, Block was blocked from Wisconsin politics for a few years for allegedly doing some sketchy stuff with a special interest group. During this time, he worked at Target and his...
