hello, my name is:
Marc Hummel. (Philadelphia.) Writer; coffee enthusiast; reader; computer/internet nerd; stationery geek; music fan; literacy advocate.
recent tunes:- Shearwater – You As You Were
- Shearwater – dread soverign
- Shearwater – Breaking The Yearlings
- Shearwater – Meridian
- Shearwater – Star Of The Age
- Shearwater – Believing Makes It Easy
- Shearwater – Pushing The River
- Shearwater – Run The Banner Down
- Shearwater – Open Your Houses
- Shearwater – Believing Makes It Easy
Author Archives: Marc Hummel
A Look Inside an Apple Factory
A quick, fascinating look inside the Foxconn factories that assemble Apple products {nightline/abc news}.
Hi I made this
Made a new writing portfolio tonight; more to come!
Introspective to a Fault
Heard a really really good conversation about the “hidden value” of introverts on WHYY’s Radio Times. The guest was Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
It made me feel a little less crazy and a lot more organized. Check out the conversation here. Seriously an amazing piece of public radio. Good host, good guest, and great callers.
Good News for Journalism
And good news for a site I used to love, Salon. They’re bucking the journalist = aggregator trend and publishing less stories but with more original content. As the article says, this just feels right.
And it’s working:
In December and January, Salon published 33 percent fewer posts than it had in those same months the previous years — but it saw 40 percent greater traffic. Slashing the amount of content it published by a third, the site still logged record-high unique visitor numbers — 7.23 million at the end of January — and without any “big viral hits” that would have skewed the numbers, Lauerman said.
From What Charlie Sheen Taught Salon About Being Original {nieman journalism lab}.
Why Google will never have a successful social network
The first reason is competitive. It hit me while reading a Nick Carr piece from back in July, when Google had recently lost its deal with Twitter to provide real-time information in Google’s search results.
Of course Twitter didn’t renew their deal with Google. Google Plus is now treading on their own territory; they pissed off the wrong company. (Again.)
The second reason is personal. Google has enough of my information, thankyouverymuch, and as their sweeping new privacy policy reveals, they aren’t going to give me control over my data that they’ve collected if I still want to use their services. In other words, I can opt out of their new rules; but I can’t have a YouTube or Gmail account. (Android users face an even simpler choice: agree to Google’s new terms or buy a new phone.)
Which brings me back to my original point. I like that emails to my family and Facebook Likes are kept separate. If these companies have no requirement to disclose what information they’re keeping and for how long, at least I can make their job (selling my info to advertisers) a tad bit harder by diversifying my social holdings (if you’ll accept my mixed metaphor). If that’s the deal we have to accept as users of a free service, we can at least make it harder for them to consolidate the various compartments of our lives. And that’s what’s creepy evil about Google’s new policy.
Clementi Redux
Just got done reading a heartbreaking report on the Tyler Clementi saga in the New Yorker this week.
The story clarifies a few principal facts, muddled by the hysteria of tragedy as they often are. Most telling to me:
It became widely understood that a closeted student at Rutgers had committed suicide after video of him having sex with a man was secretly shot and posted online. In fact, there was no posting, no observed sex, and no closet. But last spring, shortly before Molly Wei made a deal with prosecutors, Ravi was indicted on charges of invasion of privacy (sex crimes), bias intimidation (hate crimes), witness tampering, and evidence tampering. Bias intimidation is a sentence-booster that attaches itself to an underlying crime—usually, a violent one. Here the allegation, linked to snooping, is either that Ravi intended to harass Clementi because he was gay or that Clementi felt he’d been harassed for being gay. Ravi is not charged in connection with Clementi’s death, but he faces a possible sentence of ten years in jail. As he sat in the courtroom, his chin propped awkwardly on his fist, his predicament could be seen either as a state’s admirably muscular response to the abusive treatment of a vulnerable young man or as an attempt to criminalize teen-age odiousness by using statutes aimed at people more easily recognizable as hate-mongers and perverts.
From “The Story of a Suicide” {new yorker; full text available}.
REAL ESTATE {music}
Diggin’ the Cars-esque guitar lines in this ridiculously catchy song…
Real Estate — “It’s Real” {mp3}.
From Days
Posted in music
Tagged i don't care if this band isn't news to you, music, real estate
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The Two Things
A few years ago, I was chatting with a stranger in a bar. When I told him I was an economist, he said, “Ah. So… what are the Two Things about economics?”
“Huh?” I cleverly replied.
“You know, the Two Things. For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay, here are the Two Things about economics. One: Incentives matter. Two: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
Especially liked the two about driving and women.
From The Two Things {via swissmiss}.
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Carr Cuts into Zuckerberg
Nick Carr serves it to Mark Zuckerberg in a piece criticizing the opening line of Facebook’s SEC filing, as the company prepares for its IPO later this month. Zuckerberg claims that Facebook wasn’t started as a way to generate revenue; it was started to fulfill a “social mission” of making the world a more “open and connected”.
Carr:
Just look at what Zuckerberg was doing, as a sophomore at Harvard, in the days just before he created Facebook. Working selflessly at his computer in his dorm, he created a site called Facemash. It pulled photos of Harvard undergrads from other campus sites, put two of the photos side by side on a web page, and allowed people to vote for which of the two was the “hottest.” It then tallied the votes to create lists ranking students by their looks. It’s hard to imagine a more altruistic project. What Zuckerberg had already realized is that, in order to create seamless online connections between people, you have to first turn them into objects.
From “Saint Zuck” {nick carr’s blog}
