Category: Uncategorized

The schedule of events saw four white writers each give separate talks (topics ranged from poetry, to a critical theory of Kanye “rants” and even the Gamification of Kanye West) and a panel of four black people. (Are you actually surprised?) While the room was full for the first talk, a drop-off was expected for the second. Meanwhile the panelists and I stood in the back drinking (for four hours!), listening to the presentations and rolling our eyes at their conclusions: either they were truisms, already covered by writers of colour, or simply uncomfortable for us.

Taking the stage, we agreed to keep a good humour but not lie. By the time we were done, half the crowd was gone. I watched them walk out. I saw them gasp for air once they reached the outer courtyard, gesturing to friends to “get the hell out of here”. I was so unsurprised that I had to stop myself from making a joke about it from the stage.

I am still trying to figure out how to get my hands on original ‘Ant-Man’ comics, where you get them. I’ve been given a couple recent ‘Ant-Man’ comics. No offense Marvel, but they are total crap. I really want to read the original ones, because I got through two and I was like, dude, you can’t force-feed me another one of these magazines. It was terrible.

The talent network was designed to give all editors at the Post a universal system to identify writers for blogs, breaking news, or long features, across a variety of desks. While editors can post assignments to potential writers, freelancers can also use the system to pitch story ideas of their own to the paper.

I was still uncomfortable with signing all of my digital ownership rights away; practically, it was the obvious solution. There was a lesson there. The entertainment industries had morally hectored their consumers for years, with no perceivable results. Their trade organizations had sued thousands of average file-sharers and cooperated with law enforcement to go after the site operators. Again, no effect. Finally, they’d changed course and adopted new technologies to provide unlimited access. People, especially young people, scrambled to sign up, and generational attitudes toward copyright rapidly reversed, precipitating a cultural shift. Piracy was never cool, exactly, but it had once brought a certain cachet. In the streaming era, it was the equivalent of operating a ham radio.

It could soon pay more to write lengthier books, if you are an author self-publishing on Amazon.com’s Kindle ebook platform. Starting next month, the e-commerce giant will pay independent authors based on the number of pages read, rather than the number of times their book has been borrowed. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform lets authors set list prices, decide rights and edit the book at any time.

President Obama was addressing same-sex marriage in a speech in the East Room of the White House when he was interrupted by a pro-immigration campaigner.

Obama seemed less patient than he has been in the past, telling the heckler, who called for a halt to all deportations, to leave.

“Hold on a sec,” Obama said. “OK. You know what. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. No, no, no, no.

"Hey, listen, you’re in my house,” he added, to cheers from the audience.

The passage in question appeared in a story by Frances Robles that was posted on nytimes.com on Saturday. The anatomy of how the hoax was perpetrated was outlined in an article on fusion.net.

The passage read:

“Benjamin Wareing, a blogger in Britain, said the writings (in the Charleston shooter’s online manifesto) are nearly identical to blog posts that Mr. Roof posted several months ago on a separate Tumblr page. Mr. Wareing was preparing to write an essay on the dangers of Tumblr and troubled youths, so he took notes on the writings.

” ‘He just made really stupid but obvious statements about people from other races,’ Mr. Wareing said in an email. ‘He would call black citizens ‘nuggets’ and such. He never made direct threats at all on Tumblr, at least it didn’t seem like that, just weird ramblings about how he felt he ‘didn’t fit in.’

“Among his writings were images of 9/11 ‘memes’ and of My Little Pony, Mr. Wareing said.”

Trouble was, the story was total fiction.

We have now reached a point where we’re no longer able to continue news production as-is. Our ongoing plan was to monetize Circa News through the building of a strategy we had spent a long time developing but unfortunately we were unable to close a significant investment prior to becoming resource constrained. We could have compromised and included off-the-shelf advertisements or charged a subscription for the product but we never felt like any of the simplest solutions would pair well with the high-quality experience we wished to achieve, or even bring in enough to make a difference. It’s with a deep sadness that we find ourselves in this position.