Robin Williams, Comedian →

Jim Norton:

What struck me the most about Robin was how important it was to him that the other comedians liked him. He was always gracious to the performer he had bumped off the lineup. That first night and during his many subsequent returns over the years, he would always come upstairs and sit with us at the “comedy table” in the back (made famous on Louie).

He easily could have dominated the conversation; we all knew the difference between who he was and who we were. Robin was one of the few larger than life comedians who could have actually gotten a table full of other comics to just shut up and listen. But he didn’t. He joked and laughed with us and went out of his way to not tower above us. He probably never knew how much we loved him for that.

Marc Maron, Podcast Legend, Tackles the Internet in 1995 HBO Special →

Marc Maron, in 1995:

So I go to my friend’s house. So yeah, I’ve got to get on the net. He’s like, ’You got to get on the net. You got to get on, man. This is the future, man.’ This guy spends eight hours a day playing video games with a guy in France. And I go, ‘What are you, an asshole?” And he goes, ‘No, man, the computer’s a tool. And I’m like, ‘No, the computer’s a toy! You’re a tool!

I love Marc Maron—but I’ve got to be fair and point this one out. I wonder what he thinks about this bit now that WTF, his internet-only podcast, has been downloaded over 100,000,000 times.

The Theory of Everything (Trailer)

I started crying three different times during this trailer. Smells like—an Oscar.

/via Devour

Israel, Gaza, War, Social Networks, and Data →

Gilad Lotan:

It’s hard to shake away the utterly depressing feeling that comes with news coverage these days. IDF and Hamas are at it again, a vicious cycle of violence, but this time it feels much more intense. While war rages on the ground in Gaza and across Israeli skies, there’s an all-out information war unraveling in social networked spaces.

Not only is there much more media produced, but it is coming at us at a faster pace, from many more sources. As we construct our online profiles based on what we already know, what we’re interested in, and what we’re recommended, social networks are perfectly designed to reinforce our existing beliefs. Personalized spaces, optimized for engagement, prioritize content that is likely to generate more traffic; the more we click, share, like, the higher engagement tracked on the service. Content that makes us uncomfortable, is filtered out.

You have to, have to, have to check out the cluster graphs included in this piece.

Mansplaining Beyoncé and Nicki and the ‘Flawless’ Remix →

Rembert Browne:

At the top of the list of Beyoncé songs that truly aren’t mine to co-opt as a man, “Flawless” may be no. 1. Even though waking up “like this” knows no gender, that phrase followed by “we flawless, ladies, tell ’em” makes it clear she is not concerned with my early-morning beauty regimen. So a remix of this song, with new, more aggressive lyrics, takes this notion even further. And then adding in Nicki Lewinsky makes it all bubble over.

This perfectly explains every reaction I’ve ever had to female artists in several mediums. And then I had a daughter. And I realized that I needed to be literate in what she would need to learn about one day.

The Danger of Financial Jargon →

John Lanchester:

The world is full of priesthoods. On the one hand, there are the calculations that the pros make in private; on the other, elaborate ritual and language, designed to bamboozle and mystify and intimidate. To the outsider, the realm of finance looks a lot like the old Nile game. In The Economist, not long ago, I read about a German bank that had some observers worried. The journalist thought that the bank would be O.K., and that “holdings of peripheral euro-zone government bonds can be gently unwound by letting them run off.” What might that mean? There’s something kooky about the way the metaphor mixes unwinding and holding and running off, like the plot of a screwball comedy.

Today’s Tweet of the Day: Gyros

View fullsize

/via John Riche

Blue Bottle—The New Starbucks? →

Alexis Madrigal:

I have seen the future of iced coffee.

There I was, wandering the grocery-store aisles—when suddenly, next to the kombucha, opposite the rotisserie chickens, I spotted something I never thought I’d live to see.

A blue and white carton—like the half-pints of milk that come on elementary school lunch trays—emblazoned with the words Blue Bottle New Orleans Iced Coffee.

This coffee is legendary in the Bay Area, and now that Blue Bottle has expanded to New York, I’m sure its name echoes on the streets of Manhattan and Williamsburg, too. Brewed with chicory, cut with whole milk, sweetened with cane sugar, it’s a cold coffee beverage that is at once sophisticated and unpretentious. It’s not an austere challenge to the Starbucks-trained palate like so much of high-brow coffee culture. It just tastes good in an interesting way.

I had a similar reaction when I saw these in my local Whole Foods. At $5, it’s pricey, and in my unscientific opinion, even pricer than Starbucks, but for some reason, it feels—different. That’s mostly marketing and knowing what Blue Bottle as a brand stands for, though. I’ve passed them by several times since. They’re tasty, but I view them as a treat, not part of my every day routine, which is what Starbucks—for better or for worse—has become. I don’t know if Blue Bottle will be able to make that leap.

The Crooked Ladder →

Malcolm Gladwell:

But Ianni’s portrait was markedly different from the romanticized accounts of Mafia life that have subsequently dominated popular culture. There were no blood oaths in Ianni’s account, or national commissions or dark conspiracies. There was no splashy gunplay. No one downed sambuca shots at Jilly’s, on West Fifty-second Street, with Frank Sinatra. The Lupollos lived modestly. Ianni gives little evidence, in fact, that the four families had any grand criminal ambitions beyond the illicit operations they ran out of storefronts in Brooklyn. Instead, from Giuseppe’s earliest days in Little Italy, the Lupollo clan was engaged in a quiet and determined push toward respectability.

As always, I'm taking Gladwell's conclusions with a grain of salt, but it's a fascinating theory all the same.  I'd argue that what he's stumbled upon has a bit more to do with race; I think there's still a look-the-other-way element in our society today. It just doesn't apply where he looked.

Arcade Fire-‘Rebellion (Lies)’ (Live at Rock en Seine 2007)

I’m on an Arcade Fire jag tonight and I just thought I’d share what, in my opinion, is an amazingly raw, emotional live performance of an exceptional song. If you’re not familiar with it, listen to the album version first. And then watch the video above.

I don’t know. Maybe it was just a long day and I’m not all there but—just look at their faces.