Waxy reflects on XOXO 2013, and links to each of the talks with some commentary.
#Minnian-Wong: Do you still have a zero tolerance for drugs, guns and gangs?
Ford: Yes
Minnian-Wong: Have you purchased drugs in the last year?
Ford: Yes.
— Today’s city council meeting has been entertaining. Nothing beats a rich entitled white dude.
But in the aftermath of an almost unimaginably humiliating week, he pulls off what could only be described as a public relations coup by hiding in plain view.
The man is a champion.
#“It’s hard out there for a bitch.” Lily Allen has a new single out.
# [1]11 November 2013, evening time
The Elements of Typographic Style advises a single word space two separate two sentences. Most books on typography and layout do. Like most people my age, I had been taught to type using two spaces after a sentence, a hard habit to break. Or so I thought. Apparently sometime between junior high and right now I stopped typing two spaces after a period, but never noticed.
Two spaces? One space? It’s actually a complicated story.
It is, of course, fantastic. (He has a brief followup to talking at XOXO on the pinboard blog.)
#About losing a baby.
#Long before the Toronto Star labeled me the ‘broker’ as part of their story about a video of Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine, I was helping young men in my community negotiate a future that did not involve a life of crime.
His whole op-ed is really great.
#It ends with a quote from Jon Steward: “Must be nice to live in a city so problem-free it can be run for years by a hard-drinking crack mayor.â€
#This is apparently the 3rd video of Rob Ford. The 1st is the infamous crack video. The 2nd is one that Chief Blair alluded to. Rob Ford is drunk and batshitcrazy in this one.
#One of the most entertaining and frustrating things about being a fan of M.I.A has been watching white critics struggle to articulate her style while challenging her right to the aesthetic she cultivates. Artists of color aren’t often recognized for their sophistication or intent. Rather, they’re ascribed a “primitive rawness.â€
An interesting look at how M.I.A. is presented in the media.
#America has a sense of cultural blackness and a sense of cultural whiteness. M.I.A disrupts America’s nascent sense of South Asianess—one still orbiting just-happy-to-be-here spelling bee champions and accented sidekicks (Aziz Ansari and Mindy Kaling being exceptions not the rule).
He was busy saving tax payers money, no doubt.
#“If you want to hammer the mayor on his racism and homophobia, that’s great, but if you want the masses to care you need to take the right angle.”
#10/31/2013: It’s real, and it’s spectacular.
#There is so much going on right now here in Toronto. So much juicy stuff is coming out. The mayor has back peddled on that whole not being a crack head thing. His defence seems to be that he smoked while he was in a drunken stupor. Seriously. Rob Ford is such a god damn asshole, his fall from grace is some seriously satisfying stuff. All of this almost makes up for the fact he basically ruined this city for however many years.
#An interesting thread on Quora. The smartest guy from my CS program works at Google.
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