Today in people who inexplicably hate bikes … Wall Street Journal editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz, who slams Michael Bloomberg’s new bike-sharing program like a person who has never seen joy.
The WSJ has a story about the cottage industry around Daft Punk replica helmets. And oh yes, there’s a stipple print.
(Side note: Their new album is pretty awesome if you haven’t heard.)
Ed Koch, the iconic former New York City mayor who died Friday, has some of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s last words — “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.” — on his tombstone. Koch explained his reasoning for doing this in a 2011 blog post for The Huffington Post: “I believe those words should be part of the annual services on the Jewish High Holiday of Yom Kippur, and should be repeated by the congregants.”
Pearl was brutally murdered by al-Qaeda terrorists after being kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002, with his death videotaped and used as a propaganda tool. He died on February 1, 2002, eleven years ago exactly — making Koch’s usage of Pearl’s words symbolic in another way.
In 1983 there were 50 different corporations that had control over our media, today there are only six: Viacom, Comcast, Disney, TimeWarner, CBS, and News Corporation.
Is anyone surprised by this?
For what it’s worth: The article is is linked over here if you’d like to read (I’ve skimmed through and it seems to be focusing on changes to the tax law and the effects they will have on various groups of people). But here’s something of note: With the piece, there is a link specifically to an interactive infographic that describes how the tax law changes would affect people in most income ranges. It goes as low as “single unemployed person” making less than $10,000 per year. Here’s what it looks like:
It’s not a situation where they don’t think low-income people exist. It’s just that they were showing one set of examples in the top one, and left the more granular examples for the interactive graphic. That doesn’t explain why the interactive graphic got flat orange stick figures and the one above got frowny-faced upper-middle-class people, but the WSJ has people making under $180k covered — at least online.
So the Wall Street Journal ran a story about a nudist organization, the American Association for Nude Recreation, and its efforts to draw corporate sponsorship by pitching itself to companies that have “Naked” in their brand or product name. Which is fine, albeit weird. But the real problem with this story? The stipple print. If you’re gonna stipple print a nudist, they better be naked.
It was like pulling teeth to get information yesterday…a lot of senators were frustrated. And you pick up major newspapers in the country and you find details not shared with you.Senator Lindsey Graham • Voicing frustration within the Senate GOP caucus that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal received more detailed briefing on the Libya attacks than did congress. Senator Bob Corker called it “the most useless, worthless briefing I have attended in a long time,” and John McCain accused the Obama administration of holding the Senate in “disdain.” The closed-door briefing in question presumably also included Senate Democrats, but none have made hay about it in the way Senate GOPers have.
It’s Rough to Make a Living as a Pro Golfer on the Bar Circuit - WSJ.com
Wrap it up. Will never top this. Greatest stipple portrait of all time.
The McRib would like to have a word with you, Verge. So would Snooki.
The reason for the sensation: The column was an earnest, detailed review of the Olive Garden.
“After a lengthy wait for Olive Garden to open in Grand Forks, the lines were long in February,” begins the piece by longtime Herald columnist and 86-year-old Marilyn Hagerty. “The novelty is slowly wearing off, but the steady following attests the warm welcome.”
(Disclosure: Hagerty is the mother of Wall Street Journal reporter James R. Hagerty.)
She also once reviewed Taco Bell, and doesn’t really care what you think. Her Olive Garden review is delightful, though.
seldo says: This massively understate’s Twitter’s real influence, since its consumption is primarily mobile (and Facebook’s is 50% mobile, so it’s actually even bigger).
» SFB says: It doesn’t count third-party app usage, either. So I agree with you on that. I’ll link to this conversation on the post. As far as desktop goes, I think that it’s a more accurate gauge of the other services than Twitter. Which is actually pretty bad for G+, as most people use that through the Web site (though it does have a mobile presence) and third-party apps are still pretty much nonexistent. — Ernie @ SFB
Morgan Stanley is expected to lead the IPO offering, but Goldman Sachs will likely play a key role in what’s expected to be an initial public offering of up to $100 billion in size, the WSJ reports. In recent days, private trading has reportedly been halted on the company’s stock, raising the spectre of a forthcoming IPO. That sound you hear is Eduardo Saverin cheering from over in Singapore. (ht MarketWatch)
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The tech industry says it wants to stop such crimes, but it also calls any tangible effort to do so censorship that would “break the Internet.” Wikipedia has never blacked itself out before on any other political issue, nor have websites like Mozilla or the social news aggregator Reddit. How’s that for irony: Companies supposedly devoted to the free flow of information are gagging themselves, and the only practical effect will be to enable fraudsters. They’ve taken no comparable action against, say, Chinese repression.
Now, let’s take a step back here. Let’s go back to the prior post we put up. Are we gonna have to throw out some motha@*&!in Clay Shirky on ya? The problem is not the law as written. It’s the burden of proof. Basically, you’re going to put any mom-and-pop startup in a position where they have to monitor every single transaction that goes through their site to ensure it doesn’t link to an illegal foreign site. And to twist the issue to make them look like hypocrites for not taking political stances on other things? Come on. This directly affects their bottom line. It weighs them down in bureaucracy. If Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had to work around barriers like this, they probably would’ve stuck with phone phreaking. The problem here is not the explicit solution; it’s the consequences and side effects.
The Wall Street Journal is a great newspaper saddled by an editorial page written by a bunch of people who haven’t been outside of their bubbles in the past 20 years, buoyed by a subscriber base unlike any other in newspapers, and influenced by one of the more obsessive minds in the business industry. And here’s this board, scolding a sector that bothered to defend itself against a lobbying prowess the best way they know how — through word-of-mouth. These sites that went down today should be lauded for not letting themselves get bullied. Yes, the people who wrote this article? They’re bullies, shouting off in the distance, far away from the crowds.
This is a travesty of an editorial; it damages the reputation of one of the greats.
Of these YouTube-driven CEO apologies the Wall Street Journal has thrown together, who’s the sorriest? Judge for yourself by watching them one by one. On the list? BP, Groupon, Sony and Netflix. Four of our favorite companies!
Walt Mossberg had perhaps the closest relationship with Steve Jobs amongst journalists. Here’s his take on Jobs’ passing — about a post-surgery meeting he had with Jobs, and a walk they took despite Jobs’ clear illness. Jobs really wanted to go. “That’s not a story I would have told before now,” Mossberg said, ” but I think it says a little bit about the way he sets goals and goes after them.”
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