linkage, the mr. tee edition

On Hawaiian tee-shirt Fridays and change at the White House by the NYT.

The Official Run DMC tees. $30 a pop.

Dope. But I’m feeling the ‘09 version better. Plus they’re cheaper.

There’s also the slick Barack the Ruler tee, by Jeepney.

Obami One Kenobi. Available in a galaxy far, far away…

And last but not least, the one that started it all with the now ubiquitous image, Obey Obama by Shepard Fairey. No longer in production.

the new york times vs the miami art culture

The New York Times tackles a budding art scene in Miami on Sunday’s paper. From the warehouses/galleries in Wynwood to the studios in the Design District to the after parties, you get a solid redux of the current state of a scene that’s coming of age in a post Art Basel Miami.

A good place to start if you’ve been curious about the local scene. Of course, there’s always this, this, this, and this (and most likely many more).

Link.

sometimes, a picture is worth much more than a thousand words.

All political cynicism aside, not only is one of them -a black man or a woman- poised to earn the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States, either of these two will most likely become the next Commander-in-Chief.

Is that so crazy? Technically it shouldn’t be, but it is and that has nothing to do with political cynicism.

blogging starter kit

In honor of the 10th anniversary of the web-log, I’m posting 10 tips for n00bies courtesy of Jorn Barger, the man who coined the term blog, otherwise known as a guy who still posts like it’s 1999. I’ve taken the liberty of doing a little editing updating some of his tips to better reflect the blogging experience in the year 2008.

1. A true weblog as envisioned in 1997 is a log of all the URLs you want to save or share. Nowadays they call this a blogroll, del.icio.us, or Robot Wisdom Auxiliary.
2. You can certainly include links to your original thoughts, posted elsewhere … but if you have more original posts than links, you probably need someone other than your mom to read it. Links will likely help you get an audience if the material is there.
3. If you spend a little time searching before you post, you can probably find your idea well articulated elsewhere already, specially since there are some 112 million blogs worldwide. Just remember, plagiarism in 1997 is still plagiarism in 2008.
   
4. Being truly yourself is always hipper than suppressing a link just because it’s not trendy enough. Your readers need to get to know you. If you have any readers whatsoever. Or at least readers that think you’re hip and/or trendy. (?)
5. You can always improve on the author’s own page title (or material), when describing a link (or material). (At least make sure your description is full enough that readers will recognize any pages they’ve already visited, without having to visit them again.)
6. Always include some adjective describing your own reaction to the linked page (great, archaic, imaginative, clever, etc.)
7. Credit the source that led you to it, so your readers have the option of “moving upstream.”
8. Warn about “gotchas” — weird formatting, flash!, not-firefox-friendly, registration required, extra-long files, etc. Don’t camouflage the main link among unneeded (or poorly labeled) auxiliary links.
9. Pick some favorite blogs, websites, authors or celebrity stalkers  and create a blogroll or a Google News feed that tracks new mentions of them, so other fans can follow them via your blog.
10. Re-post your favorite links from time to time, for people who missed them the first time.

Link. (flash! ads)

rational people don’t vote

I caught quite an interesting article on the NYT about the economics of voting. With local elections just passed (maybe someone knew something the rest of us didn’t) and national elections less than a year away, the issue of voting is about to heat up. I bet you can count the days till your friendly neighborhood rapper starts asking you to Rock the Vote.

Anyhoo, according to freakonomists Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt reasonable people would not bother voting. They give us three good reasons why people do anyway:

1. Perhaps we are just not very bright and therefore wrongly believe that our votes will affect the outcome.

2. Perhaps we vote in the same spirit in which we buy lottery tickets. After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it’s fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you’d spend the winnings – much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy.

3. Perhaps we have been socialized into the voting-as-civic-duty idea, believing that it’s a good thing for society if people vote, even if it’s not particularly good for the individual. And thus we feel guilty for not voting.

Me thinks they make some good points throughout the article, albeit, I think voting becomes more relevant (valid?) the smaller the community gets. I always thought voting for local elections made more sense, at least in relation to national elections. It might just be that the Electoral College doesn’t make much democratic sense to begin with. On the flipside, sometimes not enough rational people show up to vote -or maybe it’s a simple case of urging too many clueless people to vote.

Personally, I don’t vote for social esteem, but mostly cuz I can and the option of voting via the internets would be like a precious gift from heaven. Oh so convenient and simple. And yes, if you ever catch me buying a lottery ticket, they’re for my mother. I swear.

a few things

One.

Wiretap has got to be one of the greatest things on the radio right now (if you happen to be listening to 91.3 fm at 1pm on a Saturday in Miami that is).

Two.

Stephen Colbert from The Stephen Colbert Report takes up on a dare by Maureen Dowd and ends up writing both her and Frank Rich’s columns this Sunday. He was also on Fresh Air last week. Hilarious.

Three.

Why is this still an issue? In a way, I think it’s a good thing because it shows we care, but on the other hand, there are more important things out there… like world peace. Thank God Al Gore doesn’t have to worry about such things.

banking on irrationality

“Do you guys like Radiohead?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what I have on right now. It’s their new album.”

“Oooh.”

“D’you want a copy? You can download it from their website for free if you want.”

“What?!”

“They’re giving it away?!”

“Something like that. You go to their website and they let you pay whatever you want. They even have a disclaimer for the price that says IT’S UP TO YOU.”

(NO REALLY, IT’S UP TO YOU)

“So I didn’t pay them anything for it.”

“That’s messed up!! You know that’s how they make their money right?!”

“Umm, not the only way.”

“Still, that’s messed up. I don’t want a copy, I’ll just go online and pay for it.”

Our conversation went somewhere along those lines. I didn’t pay for my transaction, but it looks like my brother just might. I’m not so sure if his girlfriend was sold on the idea though.

At first, I had an itch to rationalize my decision: they already have way more money than I do, I’ll give them my cash when ever they stop by (or more likely nearby) Miami, etc. But not like any of those reasons actually mattered or were the real logic behind my no-cost transaction.

The correct reason was that I was offered the option to pay nothing for something (good, something extremely good), and I chose what was best for me (and as it turns out what was best for Radiohead because there might be somewhere around $20 more heading their way). Not that I’m trying to get on their street team, but if I know someone who likes this type of music, I’m going to recommend it to them. Whether they pay or not, or how they decide to pay for it -buying their music directly, or seeing them live for example- is up to them. Maybe this word of mouth marketing is my subconscious way making up for my zero payment to the Radiohead cause. But probably not. Maybe I’m just the kind of person who likes letting other people know when something worthwhile is out there waiting to get got.

Meanwhile, In Rainbows is currently clocking at about $8 a pop which I’m not sure it was something Radiohead was counting on, but they’re sure banking on it.

the art of free

On October 10th, Radiohead will release a new album online for which they will supposedly be leaving the price tag up to the downloaders’ imagination. The idea itself is priceless but its execution is beyond words. You would think it takes a lot of balls to be culturally avant-garde when the culture is profit and you are one of the biggest bands in the world, but all it takes is simple common sense.

If you make your way to Dead Air Space, their official site, you will not see a single ad -unless you consider the list of links on the left side ads, but I’m pressed to remember ever seeing a link to an ad with a small description of what’s on the other end, written by the band itself. Neither will you see ads anywhere near the links to their forthcoming piece (which I guess this is subject to change, but I’ll take the odds).

Fanf*ckingtastic. Emphasis on fan.

I bet that if you like their music, regardless of how or where you got your copy of OK Computer or Kid A, you’ll be down to check them out if they roll through your town. I know I would, and I had all their albums other than OK Computer taped for me by a friend (ok, not all their albums, at least not yet but he promised). So it turns out I would still gladly give them a handful of my money. Ridiculous.

On another completely-not-unrelated note, there’s a recent article on the NYT (via Slashdot) about the upcoming gPhone from Google. It’s not necessarily the second coming of the Jesus Phone, because for starters, the Google phone has more to do with software than hardware. The bottom line is that Google will not charge the phone companies for licensing, and in turn, they should provide the service to their costumers free of charge. And it’s Linux based (i.e. it’s got free written all over it).

Whatever Sergei’s and Larry’s M.O. -full scale war with Microsoft, taking over mobile apps market, or a magnanimous move to loosen the carriers’ control over the mobile phone networks (can you imagine having to pay for the phone but not the service?!!?! U.S. carriers are not behind them, but oddly enough European carriers are, *?*)- it won’t be bad for either us or them. And it will bring back meaning to the definition of progress.

FOR FREE.

jen stizark gets wired

First Critical Miami, then boingboing, and now…

Miamian Jen Stark gets her surgical cuts featured on (one of the best mags evar) WIRED.

someone get him a violin

White Dade gets a taste of what it is being a minority and not being able to do anything about it?

I gotta say, I don’t know much about White Dade, I seldom read his blog, but when I do he makes me laugh. And his last post did not disappoint. I’ll give him that much credit, but this has got to be the first time I’ve heard anyone rant about being called a gringo.

He must know something other gringos don’t. It’s definitely not that *cough* Hispanics are some of the most politically incorrect people out there, cuz that is no secret. I’m not condoning it. And coming from a country in Latin America where one of our most prominent figures in recent history was affectionately called “el chino” despite being Japanese, it’s hard to miss. Of course, el chino loved it, plus it didn’t hurt that he happened to be President at the time. The remainder of the Japanese population in Peru utterly hate this. A bit like me finding it f@^%ing annoying when Jimmy Kimmell infers that Peruvians and Mexicans are one and the same. Just a little bit tho.

In any case, I feel you White Dade. My family calls me gringo all the time, specially when I mess my Spanish up. On top of that, one of my cousins loves to throw the word cholo right in front of it. Double pejorative.

And you thought you had it hard.

*rolls eyes*