Category Archives: Asides

Interesting links.

Seattle’s decision to throw the ball at the goal line with 20 seconds to go in last night’s Super Bowl was a costly one. But in the long run, it won’t be nearly as costly to the rest of the United States as the National Football League (NFL) itself.

Every year, the NFL rakes in around $9.5 billion in revenue. Its commissioner, Roger Goodell, meanwhile, has an annual salary of $44 million. And while those numbers might make sense for any big business, the NFL isn’t a business – not technically, at least.

According to the Public Law 89-800, it’s a 501(c)6 tax-exempt nonprofit. That’s right, a nonprofit. In other words, the NFL, one of the most lucrative organizations in all of sports, is subsidized by you and me the taxpayers.

From The Real NFL Scandal. If you’re curious, here’s a list of other notable 501(c)(6) organizations.

The Pun-Off, held annually since 1978, matches the peculiar energy of a place where the unofficial slogan is “Keep Austin Weird.” This is the city, after all, that organizes Eeyore’s Birthday Party, an outdoor costume party honoring the depressed donkey from Winnie-the-Pooh. […]

It’s a reunion of legends past. Steve Brooks, a country singer with a mop of gray hair, is the only other person besides Ziek to have won both Punslingers and Punniest of Show in the same year. Retired from competition, he now serves as a judge and emcee.

Everything about this article about the World Pun Championships in Austin is amazing, I want to quote the entire thing.

A federated Wikipedia by Jon Udell talks about the ossification happening in the Wikipedia community, caused in part by its attachment to rules that were created with the best of intentions. All open source communities, including WordPress, have to be vigilant against this. Sometimes we have to throw out what worked before to create what will work tomorrow.

I write novels. And with just about every novel I write, I try to do something new or different that I haven’t done before, in order to challenge myself as a writer, and to keep developing my skills. In The Android’s Dream, of example, I wrote in the third person for the first time; in Zoe’s Tale, I had a main character—a sixteen year old girl—whose life experience was substantially different from my own; with The Human Division, I wrote a novel comprised of thirteen stand-alone “episodes.”

And now? With Lock In? What new thing have I done to stretch myself as a writer and teller of tales? Well, I’ll tell you; it’s something I’m really proud of, actually:

I’ve written a novel entirely free of semicolons.

John Scalzi in Pacing Doesn’t Just Mean Wearing a Groove in the Floor.

You might remember a few years back I talked about why Automattic has a creed, and shared ours. Here it is again:

I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.

One of the parts of Automattic that has grown the most over the past few years is our design corps, now over two dozen people. This group, led by creative director Dave Martin, has come up with a supplemental Designer’s Creed for followers of their craft at A8C:

I take pride in my craft. I ensure that everyone — regardless of ability or device — can use my designs. I routinely ask for feedback, even when it’s uncomfortable. I regularly watch people use my designs, because testing leads to clarity. I will never stop at “good enough.”

You can read more about it on Dave’s blog. »

 

SPIEGEL: One of the reasons Snowden didn’t approach the New York Times was that the paper had refused to publish the initial research about the NSA’s bulk collection in 2004. The story was only published almost a year later. Was it a mistake to have held back on that reporting?

This interview with Chief New York Times Editor Dean Baquet is remarkable both for its frank, direct questions and its frank, direct answers. I got to meet with Dean a few months ago and it really struck me how excellent he and the other editorial and product folks inside of the NYT are.