bloggers

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Crashing Andrew Sullivan’s Anniversary Party

October 11, 2010 | Comment

As of today, Andrew Sullivan’s blog The Daily Dish is ten years old. His assistants/staffers/co-conspirators/whatever they are have solicited contributions from a host of prominent bloggers, inviting them to “Toast or Roast” their boss. Needless to say, I did not hear from them. No hard feelings, of course — given my lack of attention to SEO and the (in)frequency with which I post, I am sanguine about being (to paraphrase Triumph) a prominent obscure blogger. So here’s my unsolicited Toast or Roast post, for whatever it is worth, a few bucks at most. (Yes, I will stop that.)

One need have only the slightest awareness of the worldwide web’s developmentally hyper-accelerated nature to appreciate how remarkable it is for any web site to have remained in place for a decade. Still more remarkable is for that site to be a blog, one which speaks in the same voice on the same subjects as it did ten years ago. Yet while Sullivan’s voice maintains its distinctive tone and timbre, Read the rest of this entry »


Jon Swift, Gone Too Soon

March 6, 2010 | Permalink

The well-loved blogger and political satirist known as Jon Swift has died. Swift, whose real name (as we now know) was Al Weisel, was 46 years old.

The news was broken to the blogosphere in a comment posted to his blog by his mother:

I don’t know how else to tell you all who love this blog. I am Jon Swift’s Mom and I guess I’m going to OUT him. He was Al Weisel, my beloved son. Al was on his way to his father’s funeral in VA when he suffered 2 aortic aneurysms, a leaky aortic valve and an aortic artery dissection from his heart to his pelvis. He had 3 major surgeries within 24 hours and sometime during those surgeries also suffered a severe stroke. We, his 2 sisters, his brother, his partner and his best friend since he was 9 years old were with him as he took his last breath. We have all lost a shining star who warmed our hearts, tormented us and made us laugh as he giggled at our pulling something over on us. He passed away on February 27, 2010. My beloved child will live on in so many hearts. I miss him more than I can say. If you are on Facebook, go to organizations and join “Friends of Al Weisel, Unite!” It will give you just a taste of how special he was. Farewell, Jon (Al)

I’m a late arrival to the outpouring of tributes to Al/Jon, and since I didn’t know him personally I have little to add. Little, but not nothing. Read the rest of this entry »


Bursting from the Blogroll: Darren Hutchinson Hits the Reset Button

September 18, 2009 | 1 comment

Keen observers of detail may have noticed that my blogroll has grown, and indeed expanded into four categories. I’ll go into detail about this in a forthcoming post (or perhaps even a dedicated page) soon. Right now I’d like to draw your attention to a particularly astute post by a potential new blogroll-ee.

Darren HutchinsonOver at Dissenting Justice, Darren Hutchinson makes a clear-eyed case that the current charges racism in the political health care clusterfuck are acting as a smoke screen:

I am a law professor who teaches Constitutional Law, Civil Rights, Race and the Law and other areas related to equality. I have spent nearly two decades researching and writing about race relations and public policy. With respect to the rightwing attacks on President Obama, however, I find the issue of race largely uninteresting. Read the rest of this entry »


Iran: They’re Killing People

June 20, 2009 | Permalink

WARNING
The following series of three images is not for the squeamish.

Read the rest of this entry »


Facebook Usernames: The Indifference is Deafening

June 11, 2009 | Permalink

The tepid reaction to Facebook’s upcoming implementation of usernames has been amusing. Don’t get me wrong — I’ve been as big a Facebook addict as nearly anyone, but there is something cynically satisfying about seeing a web power player make a “big announcement,” only to be left tapping the microphone and asking “is this thing on?”

This morning brought a pitch-perfect jibe of a post by Anil Dash, a veteran tech blogger. He goes on just slightly too long, but does nevertheless hit the humorous bullseye. A sampling:

The whole worldA small number of super-geeky obsessives is abuzz over the upcoming launch of Facebook Usernames, an exciting new feature that will let you put some parts of your name into a web address.

Since its announcement yesterday, there’s been a lot of excited discussion of the feature, but in a dashes.com exclusive I can exclusively report this exclusive look at the future of the feature…

June 13, 12:01am: Facebook launches Facebook Usernames. The gold rush is on!

June 13, 12:01:45am: The first completely irrational, highly unlikely theory about how Google indexes Facebook Usernames is emitted from the ass-end of the SEO industry. …
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