Tag: Internet

In an interview with Stern, Rivers pushed the conversation to its bizarre endpoint, saying that Dunham is “sending a message out to people saying, ‘It’s OK! Stay fat! Get diabetes. Everybody die. Lose your fingers.”

As for that Vogue cover, Rivers said: “She was on Vogue’s cover looking gorgeous. You didn’t know it was her.” She said Dunham shouldn’t have appeared on the cover because she didn’t deserve it based on her physical appearance.

Obviously, artists do respond to new technology, but it takes time. Real art comes from within. It has soul. There is a time lag for technology to be absorbed and experienced to the degree that soulful art can be made with it.

Video art is the obvious example. Television became universal in many places in the 1950s, but it took until the 1970s for artists to start making worthwhile experimental art with it. And it was not until the 1990s that such experiments entered the mainstream.

I reckon we will start to see the really intelligent, serious art of the digital age in about five to 10 years. On the other hand, the technology may have already changed so much by then that art cannot catch up.

Facebook today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Oculus VR, Inc., the leader in immersive virtual reality technology, for a total of approximately $2 billion. This includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock (valued at $1.6 billion based on the average closing price of the 20 trading days preceding March 21, 2014 of $69.35 per share). The agreement also provides for an additional $300 million earn-out in cash and stock based on the achievement of certain milestones.

Oculus is the leader in immersive virtual reality technology and has already built strong interest among developers, having received more than 75,000 orders for development kits for the company’s virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift. While the applications for virtual reality technology beyond gaming are in their nascent stages, several industries are already experimenting with the technology, and Facebook plans to extend Oculus’ existing advantage in gaming to new verticals, including communications, media and entertainment, education and other areas. Given these broad potential applications, virtual reality technology is a strong candidate to emerge as the next social and communications platform.

But as I get older and sort of wiser, one of the major things I’m realizing is that it doesn’t really matter whether it did or didn’t happen in your head or outside of it or even at all, if it’s “legitimately” bad or just a “first world problem” or whatever the hell hashtag strangers are using to diminish your experience nowadays- if something’s shitty it’s fucking shitty and that’s it. Your personal shittiness is 1) intangible and 2) illogical and 3) entirely unrelated to anybody else’s so 4) who cares? If something’s shitty it doesn’t matter if it’s actually shitty or if it’s just your own bullshit creeping in to say what’s up and poison something average. Your happiness is not a fucking academic essay or an opinion piece some jack-off who’s a worse writer than you wrote for some blog you’ve never heard of that “seems” important but probably isn’t. You don’t have to explain anything to anyone. You don’t have to justify what lets you down.

What a fascinating example of how millennials are using innovative technologies to deal with the most basic of human problems. Except that Rebecca Soffer is not a millennial. She’s 37. According to the Times itself, Neil Howe and William Strauss—the men who literally wrote the book on millennials and are credited with coining the term—establish the start of the millennial generation with people born in the year 1982. That means that today, even the eldest millennials are no more than 32 years old. And yet, the Times trend story on millennial mourning quotes Soffer, the 37-year-old founder of online grief resource Modern Loss; her co-founder Gabrielle Birkner (at 34, not a millennial); 35-year-old Modern Loss blogger Melissa Lafsky Wall (not a millennial); and Jason Feifer, the 33-year-old creator of the Tumblr “Selfies at Funerals” (so close, and yet, not a millennial). Also cited is Esther D. Kustanowitz, another contributor to Modern Loss, though the paper doesn’t divulge her age—perhaps because she is in her 40s. All told, the piece quotes more Gen Xers than it does millennials, even when you count the obligatory reference to Girls protagonist Hannah Horvath, who is 25, and made up.

Internal documents obtained by WW show that a quota system is being put in place that calls for steep increases in posting to Oregonlive.com, and promises compensation for those employees who post most often.

The new policy, shown to the editorial staff in a PowerPoint presentation in late February, provides that as much as 75 percent of reporters’ job performance will be based on measurable web-based metrics, including how often they post to Oregonlive.com.

Beat reporters will be expected to post at least three times a day, and all reporters are expected to increase their average number of posts by 40 percent over the next year.

In addition, reporters have been told to stir up online conversations among readers.

“On any post of substance, reporter will post the first comment,” the policy says. “Beat reporters [are to] solicit ideas and feedback through posts, polls and comments on a daily basis.”

The Oregonian will hand out yearly bonuses—if the finances of the company allows it—to reporters who exceed these goals. The policy says “final performance ratings will determine merit pay.”