Padma wants the chefs to take a trip down memory lane. For the Elimination Challenge, each chef will cook a dish related to a “memorable moment” in Top Chef’s history. The winning dish will, in turn, inspire a new Healthy Choice “Café Steamer,” which sounds like a sex act from a French frat house.

—I just found out that David “Get Your War On” Rees is writing Top Chef recaps for Grub Street and they are fantastic (though, mostly if you hate shows like Top Chef, I suspect).

Robert Bork, who died Wednesday, was an unrepentant reactionary who was on the wrong side of every major legal controversy of the twentieth century. The fifty-eight senators who voted against Bork for confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1987 honored themselves, and the Constitution. In the subsequent quarter-century, Bork devoted himself to proving that his critics were right about him all along.

—Jeffrey Toobin, writing in the The New Yorker, neither mincing words nor feeling any particular need to sugar coat an obituary.

“All These Ridiculous Old Rules”

Dave Brubeck refused to sub in white musicians for black ones when he toured. That’s nothing less than heroic.

You can’t hold it against a person that they’re involved in a profession that’s been in existence since before Jesus walked around in his sandals. This state was formed from gambling, drinking and brothels and there’s no shame in that.

—Corrie Northan, a bartender at the Bucket of Blood Saloon in Virginia City, Nevada on the election of Lance Gilman, owner of the Mustang ranch, to county commissioner. America, man.

I know people like to blame the industry for taking advantage of the incentives, but you go back to what your fiduciary responsibility is to the stockholders. As long as you’ve got people that are willing to better the deals, the management owes it to their stockholders to try to get the best economic deal that they can.

—

This is quite possibly the best, most succinct, summation of what is wrong with the balance of power today. It comes from a retired real estate executive at G.M. but really it’s a summary of the corporate ethos. “Fiduciary responsibility” and “maximizing shareholder value” are two of the more awful, pernicious justifications for corporate malevolence and yet they’re basically taken as givens.

I’m going to say that the story this quote came from (about the real price of corporate tax breaks to local governments) is the most important political story you’ll read this year – yes, this, an election year full of all kinds of nonsense, promises, and pronouncements, this story about local governments, tax breaks, outsourcing, and state budgets is at the heart of so many of the big problems we’re dealing with. Read it (and spend some time with the accompanying interactive co-produced by our own Tiff Fehr) and try not to be outraged by the giveaways to already wealthy corporations. Try not to seethe with rage at the billions of dollars going towards “maximizing shareholder value” instead of fire departments, schools, roads, or public transportation.

While I’m typically a rather proud, unapologetic partisan, this should be a non-partisan issue. This should be the kind of thing a functioning democratic government is meant to protect us from, not be complicit in. And while it’s infuriating to watch this happen, I want to believe that this is the kind of thing we can help fix. So far, my thoughts are around public accountability and using data to help local governments stand up to well funded multi-national corporations. What are your ideas?

Evening Edition’s big rush to return to slow news

My pal Anna Rascouët-Paz and I sat down with Ryan Graff at the Knight News Innovation Lab at Northwestern to talk about our news site.

[Harper Reed, CTO of Obama for America] compares the advanced modeling and analytic techniques of his comrades and guys like Nate Silver to MP3s, thus making traditional pollsters and political “experts” akin to the music industry. They both had been going about their business for decades without competition, and they both reacted violently when their worlds were disrupted. However, these are smart people, and Reed expects they’ll come around in the next election cycles.

—

The thing is, this was the lesson from 20081, not 2012, but like most disruptions, it took a while to go from being noticed to commonly held belief.

Analytics have changed just about everything, I expect they’ll change the news business very soon. I can’t imagine anyone will try to cover the next presidential race, let alone the next midterm election, without their own squads of Nate Silver wannabees churning out hyperactive collated poll aggregates. It’s a glorious time to be a news nerd.

buy me a beer sometime and I’ll regale you with tales of futilely trying to convince a major national news organization of the value of Nate Silver way back in 2009, after he correctly predicted 49 of 50 states but before he was a household name. It might take two beers. ↩︎

Winning the Election (Coverage)

Last year, I started an awesome new job in San Francisco at Mule Design. It’s been going great, thanks.

It also meant leaving the world of online news, where I started and spent the subsequent decade of my career. I love news and media so I’m going to keep thinking and occasionally writing about it as an outsider on the Mule Design weblog. Should be fun.

My first post is about, what else, the election and who covered it best. Spoiler: it wasn’t FOX News.

Lifecaster Sarah got in a fight with Lady Brit about a perceived slighting at a previous year’s South by Southwest festival. They yelled at each other on a bed and then Lifecaster Sarah asked if Lady Brit was upset that she made out with Gentleman Brit. See? Weird.

Superbro drank too much, wore a toga, then drank too much again. He did pullups on a doorframe and then fell down.

—Dan Nosowitz watches and makes fun of Randi Zuckerberg’s awful, horrible, terrible reality show about Silicon Valley so you don’t have to.

Lost Change: A Real San Francisco Tech Dude

Real San Francisco Tech Dudes are overrated.

Mapping caps lock to control, however, is not