Hungry reporter. Anti-brand.
My general lack of enthusiasm for the Obama campaign has been challenged this week by the news (from a brilliantly reported Washington Post story) that Mitt Romney was a real jerk even back in high school, mercilessly bullying a now-deceased gay classmate, mistreating other students and faculty, and choosing associations – even at the prestigious Cranbrook School – on the basis of family wealth.
The New Yorker‘s Alex Koppelman notes that the same ways in which the story resonates with the distant, uncaring narrative Romney has struggled unsuccessfully to fight are similar to the ways attempts to attach a similar tone to Obama have failed — Obama admits to having eaten dog meat, but there’s no evidence he ever mistreated a dog; he concedes he was cruel to a classmate, but it was when he himself was struggling to fit into a new school.
Romney, on the other hand, says he can’t even recall the incidents specifically.
But it’s getting harder to escape the conclusion that there’s a pattern to Romney’s behavior, that he has a real problem understanding and caring for those with whom he can’t easily identify. As Amy Davidson writes, “This story is resonant because one can, all too easily, see Romney walking away even now, or simply failing to connect, to grasp hurt.” That may or may not be a fair conclusion—we are none of us mind readers—but given what we know about him, it’s certainly a reasonable one.
If it were just this incident, things might be different. Then we could dismiss it as a youthful indiscretion, just another of the standard outrage-baiting campaign moments we’ll all forget soon enough. But there’s a small string of these kinds of things now. We know that when he’s on the trail, Romney has a real problem connecting with ordinary people—or even just talking to them. We know about Seamus the dog, how Romney put him in a crate and strapped it to the roof of the family station wagon for hours of driving. We know that he’s said he likes being able to fire people. (And yes, the comment about firing people has been taken out of context, but he still said it, and without any ear for how it might sound.)
Of course, Obama is still only limply progressive — from his tepid, “personal” embrace of same-sex marriage, to ongoing drone warfare, to actively pushing for new backdoors into online communication — but biography isn’t completely irrelevant in a presidential race.
Bloomberg reports that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin – the one played by Andrew Garfield in The Social Network – has renounced his United States citizenship in advance of Facebook’s planned IPO, for tax purposes. It’ll let him duck some portion of what he’d have to pay as a citizen, but he’ll still owe something.
The IPO is expected to raise as much as $11.8 billion.
Saverin, 30, joins a growing number of people giving up U.S. citizenship, a move that can trim their tax liabilities in that country. The Brazilian-born resident of Singapore is one of several people who helped Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook in a Harvard University dorm and stand to reap billions of dollars after the world’s largest social network holds its IPO.
“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” said Tom Goodman, a spokesman for Saverin, in an e-mailed statement.
Update: This post has generated fairly significant traffic. It’s worth noting, as several people have in the comments section, that Mr. Pearce (from whom I have not yet heard back) has used similar stock photos in the past – so it is likely that he added the photo, rather than it having come from the ostensible mother.
A post by Dan Pearce titled “A Teen’s Brave Response to ‘I’m Christian, Unless You’re Gay’” has gone viral on social networks in the past day. But something about it doesn’t sit right.
Most of the post is a reproduction of an email from a mother who details a heartbreaking course of events during which her teenage son came out as gay in spite of her hostility toward homosexuality. The mother describes how her son wrote an essay in response to a previous blog by Mr. Pearce, and how she eventually came to accept his sexual orientation.
As compelling as the message of the email may be, it doesn’t read quite right – sort of like a cross between a Sarah Palin transcription and the Hallmark Channel. Of course, I’m sure there are people who write like that, so that’s not much of a criticism. But something else is much more suspicious.
Accompanying the post was a photograph of a smiling young man. I did a TinEye reverse image search on the image and found that it was a stock photo from 123RF.com, originally snapped by Danish photographer Yuri Arcurs, which has actually been used commercially on several occasions.
Here’s another photo featuring the same model. And another. Here he is on the website for an orthodontist, and again on a tutoring service.
Unless the purported brave teen moonlights as a model in Denmark, I doubt that’s him in the photo.
That the image is a stock photo casts some doubt on the veracity of the email, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the story was fabricated. It’s a long shot that a real mother would have attached the photo to a real email, but it is conceivable that for difficult-to-imagine reasons Mr. Pearce may have added it himself.
I emailed Mr. Pearce asking for clarification, and will post his response here.
The Pirate Bay posted an unusual blog entry today.
We were down a few hours earlier today. There’s no need to worry, we haven’t been raided this time. We’re only upgrading stuff since we’re still growing.
One of the technical things we always optimize is where to put our front machines. They are the ones that re-direct your traffic to a secret location. We have now decided to try to build something extraordinary.
With the development of GPS controlled drones, far-reaching cheap radio equipment and tiny new computers like the Raspberry Pi, we’re going to experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air. This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war.
We’re just starting so we haven’t figured everything out yet. But we can’t limit ourselves to hosting things just on land anymore. These Low Orbit Server Stations (LOSS) are just the first attempt. With modern radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km away. For the proxy system we’re building, that’s more than enough.
But when time comes we will host in all parts of the galaxy, being true to our slogan of being the galaxy’s most resilient system. And all of the parts we’ll use to build that system on will be downloadable.
A gentleman going by the handle Eric Moneypenny has posted an unusual Kickstarter project. He has currently raised $0.00.
I would like to raise money to buy Kickstarter. WorthOfWeb.com estimates Kickstarter’s worth at 18.6 million dollars. Therefore, I estimate that I will need at least 19,000,000 to make this happen.
But don’t imagine Mr. MoneyPenny isn’t the giving type. If you pledge $5,000, he’ll help you make your indie film (“You deserve to be a star, and will probably go to a ton of festivals, where you will win many awards,” he writes) and for $10,000 or more, he’ll throw you a pizza party.
Maybe Nigeria has become too mainstream. I’ve been noticing similar scams claiming to originate in Somalia, Hong Kong and even Great Britain lately. But today I got one that stretches even generous bounds of plausibility, not to mention sympathy – signed by the purported wife of recently deceased Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Safia Farkash (spoiler alert: she wants me to send her cash.)
I question the sophistication of anybody who gets sucked into such a straightforward scam – though it does happen – but wouldn’t the author risk alienating the valuable subset of people gullible enough to send money overseas, yet cagey about becoming involved in international intrigue?
Text is as follows:
I am Mrs. Safia Farkash Gahdafi the wife of the late Libyan Leader Colonel
Muammar Gahdafi. Following the recent rebellion in my country and the
brutal death of my husband on the 20 Oct 2011, I have been thrown into a
state of utter confusion, frustration and hopelessness, I have been
subjected to physical and psychological torture by the security agents in
Algeria where we seek refuge at present.
My son was killed by the rebels for an offense he did not commit. As a
widow that is so traumatized, I have lost confidence with anybody within
the country. You must have heard over the media reports and the Internet
on the recovery of various huge sums of money deposited by my husband in
different security firms abroad, some companies willingly give up their
secrets and disclosed our money confidently lodged there or many outright
blackmail. In fact the total sum discovered by the Government so far is in
the tune of $900,000,000 Million United State Dollars. And they are not
relenting to make me poor for life, I got your contact email address
through my research and out of desperation decided to reach you through
this medium. I will give you more information as to this regard as soon as
you reply. I repose great confidence in you hence my approach to you due
to security network placed on my day to day affairs I cannot afford to
visit the Embassy so that is why I decided to contact you and I hope you
will not betray my confidence in you.
With the help of my acquaintance in West Africa, with the past United
Nations Secretary General Mr. Kofi Annan, I was able to move two trunk
boxes which content the sum of 7.5 Million United State Dollars plus a 200
kg Gold Bar were evacuated to Accra Ghana through the UN office of Foreign
Disaster Assistance (OFDA). Upon arrival in Africa the trunk boxes
{Consignments} where deposited in a security company and declared as
relief materials awaiting further directives from me. I shall be grateful
if you could receive this boxes into your custody for safe keeping or
better still invest into any lucrative Business. This arrangement is known
to you and my son alone. I am seriously considering relocating to your
country once the fund is transferred to you. I will be wiling to offer you
30% of the total fund if only you will receive this boxes and keep it for
us.
Please note that honesty is the watch word in this transaction. I will
furnish you with further details on how to contact the Attorney in West
Africa that will help with the paper work to effect the change of
ownership of the consignments to your names before the final diplomatic
delivery to you. I will give you a more detailed picture of things. In
case you don’t accept please do not let me out to the security as I am
giving you this information in total trust and confidence .I will greatly
appreciate if you accept my proposal in good faith.
I appreciate your timely suggestion and interest over this matter, contact
me Via: mrs.safiafarkashgahdafi83@yahoo.com
Best Regards
Mrs. Safia Farkash Gahdafi
Boston-based programmer Morgan Quirk has a collection of, well, quirky 8- and 16-bit-styled browser games that call to mind the excellent 8-bit Ancient Greek Punishment.
The winner in my opinion – though to be fair, I haven’t given them all significant play time – is Swarm, a bleak, slightly Liquid War-like effort with a haunting lo-fi soundtrack. They’re not all extremely polished, but some were made on a tight deadline for game jams. The Terry Gilliam-esque Get Out Of Heaven is particularly wonderful in its simplicity.
The main page of his site randomizes the selection. This page has a (full?) list. I’ve got a more substantial story about Quirk’s employer, Demiurge Studios, coming out in the near future.
Steven Kurutz has a short feature in the New York Times Magazine responding to the rash of recent attention focussed on the growing number of people who choose to live alone. He dredges up some genuinely amusing, candid monohabitators who describe some of their quirkier habits, and sometimes their fear of ever having to share living space again.
Like many, Ms. Bennett also talks to herself — or, rather, to her cat. “I’ll try things out on him when I’m writing,” she said. “He’ll look at me like he’s actually listening. I wouldn’t discuss what I’m writing with my cat if someone were around.”
A gentleman named Chad Griffith, who has never lived alone, reflected on his overindulges when his girlfriend leaves town, which include videogame binges and eating pizzas for every meal of the day: “I literally have zero self-control. If I lived alone and didn’t have somebody to monitor me, I’d be a fat, out-of-work alcoholic.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a guide to turning off and deleting your Google Search History. It’s not very hard.
On March 1st, Google will implement its new, unified privacy policy, which will affect data Google has collected on you prior to March 1st as well as data it collects on you in the future. Until now, your Google Web History (your Google searches and sites visited) was cordoned off from Google’s other products. This protection was especially important because search data can reveal particularly sensitive information about you, including facts about your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, health concerns, and more. If you want to keep Google from combining your Web History with the data they have gathered about you in their other products, such as YouTube or Google Plus, you may want to remove all items from your Web History and stop your Web History from being recorded in the future.
[How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect]
I recently wrote about coderpreneur/hacktivist/internet-person Rich Jones’ Gun.io, a marketplace for programming jobs. Then, he posted the entirety of our email interview on the Gun.io blog. I think it’s fun to look at the source material for a story, even a straightforward one like this, and think about the different directions it could have taken.
I’m funding Gun.io out of my own pocket right now. ‘Bootstrapped,’ they call it.
Currently, it costs $99 to post a career opportunity and $25 to post a freelance gig (though it’s free for open source projects!). I’ve been giving out a lot of free-post key codes, though. I’m hoping that there’s some kind of critical mass out there, and once the community reaches that point, gigs will come in at a rate fast enough to support the site.
The site is growing at a rate I’m happy with, but it’s a huge marketing challenge, which is something I don’t know anything about. I’m learning a lot about it, but I still don’t know anything. I’m a hacker by nature, not a marketer, so I keep trying to solve marketing challenges with technical solutions, which isn’t how things really work in the marketing field. Still, I’m happy with the site and the way things are headed. Fingers crossed.
As for the cowyboy motif.. I just like to zig where everybody else is zagging. I’m sick and tired of shiny blue and white websites with cartoon characters everywhere. That’s just not who I am, and I don’t think I’d be able to put as much energy into a project that looked like every other stupid startup website. The aesthetic of the site is much more what I’m about, dust and whiskey and pistols.
