Cover it on Twitter, says newspaper editor’s daughter

via lostremote

You know, I love Twitter as much as the next guy who found a beautiful woman and a whole heap of amazing friends there (hi, guys!!), but I’m more than a little surprised by the sudden willingness to outsource publishing to what is at best a quasi-reliable, third party platform. Yes, Twitter’s API is great (when it works and when I’m not being woken up at 8am on a Sunday morning when Tweets are being delayed by 15 minutes because of API caching issues. (Seriously.)) and yes they clearly “get it” and are being very smart about being open and all of that. But at the end of the day news operations are being rebuilt around a company or two that seem largely disinterested in those very operations. To put it another way, imagine if there were only one network for email and one, albeit pretty cool, company controlled that 1. Would we be so excited about newspapers jumping on that trend?

I’d love to believe that this is a shining example of news orgs finally abandoning the very annoying “not invented here” habits that have hampered them for so long but they seem to be doing it by chasing a trend without much thought. Is real time communication important? Of course. Is Twitter a critical part of that still burgeoning ecosystem? Naturally. Instead of just relying on the chatter tools of “the younger generation”, though, it’d be nice to see a more vested interest in creating and using open, sustainable publishing platforms.

1 The “one network to rule them all” thing almost happened, remember. Before the web took off, AOL, Prodigy, the MSN network, eWorld, etc. were all trying to be the way we connected.

Someone sends me the links every time there’s a new one. I think I’ve seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I’m laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn’t get a better compliment as a director.

—Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel is actually quite amused by all of your pissed off Hitler parodies. Which is actually kind of a shame because I could think of a really funny to way make fun of him if he were upset about it.

Is Wyclef’s charity a sham?

He paid himself $100k to perform at his own charity concert? It may have fewer hit records, but the Red Cross is a better place to send your money.

Tea Party convention organizer is a bankrupt tax evader who’s bilking supporters

This is almost too perfect. Teabaggers are certainly getting the political party they deserve.

NASA is launching an investigation after cocaine was found in one of its shuttle processing facilities.

—Astronauts smuggling blow to extraterrestrials, maybe? I hear the Venusians pay a premium for that uncut Colombian.

Rachel’s right, this is the best thing ever. At least, once you get the joke. Being the old fart that I am, I had no idea why this was funny until I spent about 30 seconds figuring out what a Team Jacob was and and then it was only a matter of time before, well… it would seem this poor girl confused Pat Robertson, douchebag supreme, with teen heartthrob and Twilight “star” Robert Pattinson.

One being a soul sucking monster destined to spend eternity in anguish, the other a talentless hack who exploits people’s insecurities. I guess that doesn’t help, huh?

Apes will always need to groom each other, and Twitter is great for that. So while Twitter is important, a lot of what it’s used for today is not new content. It’s retweeting or sharing links to content outside of Twitter. Gestures like retweeting or “liking” something on Facebook are more akin to applause than to dialogue. I don’t just write for applause, I like to write to start a dialogue.

—Anil Dash, in a quick chat with the New York Times about blogs, anonymous comments and gov2.0.

Is it merely coincidental that Obama signed this executive Interpol order and that he often goes out of his way to sympathize with and advocate pro-Muslim culture, beliefs and issues?

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One of more bizarre of several illogical and meandering hypothetical questions that renown international security expert Chuck Norris asks in his probing (read: wingut conspiratorial) investigation (read: rant) about a procedural executive order President Obama signed granting certain immunity to Interpol. Right wing nuts love to lap up these kinds of conspiracies as proof of some sort of New World Order despite defending actual threats to our foundational democracy, such as President Bush’s violation of the 4th amendment with warrant-less wiretapping. And since one of Interpol’s charter missions is to fight child pornography, is it fair to ask why Chuck Norris and Glenn Beck support the international trafficking of child porn?

Chuck has already corrected the record about his tears curing cancer, has anyone checked to see if they cause stupidity?

I am so fucking psyched. Spreadsheets fucking rule. And I have to imagine that spreadsheets on a tablet ultra-mega-rule, what with the smaller screen size. Just think, we’ll be able to do spreadsheets or write business letters or create presentations – but mostly do spreadsheets – in the bathroom!

I mean, I do that already, but now I’m gonna do it on a tablet! Wow!

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“Mac user Jim Ray” is pretty excited about the new tablet over at C.A.R.S.

MOOOOOOOOOOLTZ!

(Seriously, what a mensch, that guy)

I have this hulk mode that I sometimes find irrepressible when stupid, stupid technology gets in the way of accomplishing an otherwise reasonable task – at work, they call this “Jim Raging”. You’re most likely to see it when I have to use the MOTHERFUCKING, MOTHERFUCKING fax machine. I’ve sadly destroyed at least one desk phone.

The Oatmeal gets it.