According to a survey conducted last month, your partnership ranks as the second most doomed on your block, behind the couple who stand on their lawn and shriek at each other. Yours is statistically guaranteed to end three years sooner than that really attractive woman's, the one who recently moved in across the street and is home a mere 32 percent of the week. Of the 16 occasions you've peered through your blinds and noticed her walking to her car, she is on the phone with her boyfriend 53 percent of the time and there's an 91.5 percent chance that it's serious. [...]
Ultimately, please don't give me too much credit for this accumulated data. Although 0.0 percent of your mutual friends were willing to say anything, 93.9 percent of them saw this coming from the start.
Nate Silver Offers Up a Statistical Analysis of Your Failing Relationship.
McSweeney's:
Tags: doomed
Amanda Palmer's TED talk
Hey, have you seen Amanda Palmer's TED talk? Here it is:
Wealthy musician Amanda Palmer, who last year raised $1.2 million on Kickstarter to produce and release a record, recently used a TED talk to expand on the idea that artists should be willing to work for free. After relaying a story about how she used to be a street performer, Palmer, who is married to a very successful author named Neil Gaiman, told an audience of people who'd paid $7,500 apiece to be there that musicians shouldn't "make" people pay for their work, but rather "let" people pay for their work. She also explained that she found it virtuous when a family of undocumented immigrants huddled together on their couch for a night so that she and her band could have their beds, because her music and presence was a fair exchange for the family's comfort. After about 13 minutes of explaining why she is content with people giving her things, Palmer received a standing ovation.
"Oh snap", as the kids say.
Please note: I'm not saying she doesn't have a reasonable point in there somewhere, I'm saying that her talk is the talk of a tone-deaf narcissistic putz.
SXSW scraper
I updated scrape-sxsw.pl to function in 2013. It scrapes the SXSW web site, intersect it against highly-rated tracks in iTunes, and generate an iCal calendar. It worked out pretty well for me last year. Read the comments at the top to see how to use it.
Tags: firstperson, lazyweb, music, sxsw
