littlelazer's tumblog

"Ruby Lerner, the president and the executive director of Creative Capital, which helped fund Lessin..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:28:57 -0500

“Ruby Lerner, the president and the executive director of Creative Capital, which helped fund Lessin and Deal’s Katrina film, said that she regards the “self-censorship” practiced by public-television officials to be “a scarier thing” than the overt kind: “They seem to be putting themselves in the Koch brothers’ shoes and trying not to offend them.” Even on public television, she argued, patronage buys influence. “It raises issues about what public television means,” she said. “They are in the middle of so much funding pressure.””

- Jane Mayer: How Far Did PBS Go to Avoid Offending a Sponsor? : The New Yorker

Long-term unemployed face ferocious statistical discrimination.

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:53:31 -0500

Long-term unemployed face ferocious statistical discrimination.:

What’s becoming clear is that a three-year span of weakness in the labor market is much much much worse for society than a one-year span of weakness. A normal recession disrupts people’s lives, but a long recession destroys them. You lose output, prosperity, family stability, self-esteem, and many other qualities on what looks to be a semi-permanent basis. But instead of recognizing an urgent need to develop a politically tractable strategy for the next time, policymakers seem largely focused on congratulating themselves for having avoided a situation as severe as the Great Depression.

Disheartening.

calinative: Best married couple ever, Part 2. LOL.

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:59:25 -0500

calinative:

Best married couple ever, Part 2. LOL.

calinative: Best married couple ever. Love it.

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:59:16 -0500

calinative:

Best married couple ever.

Love it.

Panama City Rising - NYTimes.com

Wed, 08 May 2013 08:43:23 -0500

Panama City Rising - NYTimes.com:

Despite being founded in 1519, Panama is really only 13 years old, Mr. Fábrega argued, its birthday being Dec. 31, 1999, the day the United States gave the Panama Canal and its surrounding land back to the Panamanians. For the first time in a century the country was whole and independent. “My generation inherited this blank canvas,” said Mr. Fábrega, his salt-and-pepper hair fluttering slightly in the Audi’s air-conditioning. “Now we have the chance to make it our own.” Today, that canvas is far from blank, however. Over the past 13 years, Panama City has been racing to become a world-class metropolis, and for travelers, the changes have been enormous. In 1997 there were perhaps 1,400 hotel rooms in Panama City. Now there are more than 15,000 with another 4,582 rooms in the pipeline, according to STR Global, a London-based agency that tracks hotel markets. In the last two years alone, Trump, Starwood, Waldorf-Astoria, Westin and Hard Rock have opened hotels here. A new biodiversity museum designed by Frank Gehry is nearly complete. The country’s first modern dance festival unfolded last year, the same year Panama held its first international film festival. The Panama Jazz Festival is going strong after 10 years. The country even has its own year-old microbrewery.

If you’re planning a vacation soon you should think about Panama. And this is just what’s in Panama City. The rest of the country is great too.

crackerhell: beeishappy: TDS | 2013.04.18 welp

Wed, 08 May 2013 07:52:22 -0500

crackerhell:

beeishappy:

TDS | 2013.04.18

welp

samhumphries: Second only to “Mordor Was The Case That They...

Mon, 06 May 2013 19:29:06 -0500

samhumphries:

Second only to “Mordor Was The Case That They Gave Me”

Second to none

"[W]hen you add an ample amount of fear and a lack of vision, and a lack of leadership, you’ve got a..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 14:15:37 -0500

“[W]hen you add an ample amount of fear and a lack of vision, and a lack of leadership, you’ve got a trajectory that I think is pretty difficult to reverse.”

- Steven Soderbergh’s State Of Cinema Talk - Deadline.com

Soderbergh was only talking about the movie business here, but he could easily have been talking about this country, or life in general.

Greenwashed | The Classical

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:53:40 -0500

Greenwashed | The Classical:

So truthful that it almost brought me to tears.

Without question, winning an NBA title is a distinguished accomplishment, irrespective of any ill-gotten personnel windfall enabled by GM friendships or melodramatic wheelchair scares. But the Celtics are not an epochal team; one title does not define an era, particularly when set against other, better decorated contemporaries. This is all fine—the Celtics get to keep the rings, and the moments they authored that year will endure on their own. The plain story is important, though, because Boston has stumbled at various playoff stages since 2008, devolving from championship standard bearers to grandiose neighborhood bullies.

Is Avenues the Best Education Money Can Buy? - NYTimes.com

Mon, 06 May 2013 09:28:25 -0500

Is Avenues the Best Education Money Can Buy? - NYTimes.com:

Parenting in a pathologically competitive, information-saturated city can make anyone crazy, even those parents lucky enough to be worried about fennel burgers in school lunches. And while Avenues offers its students every imaginable educational benefit — a 9-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio, a Harvard-designed “World Course” — it has also tapped into an even deeper, more complicated parental anxiety: the anxiety of wanting their kids to have every advantage, but ensuring that all those advantages don’t turn them into privileged jerks. As Manhattan, and particularly downtown, is transformed by a staggering infusion of wealth, there is a growing market for creating emotionally intelligent future global leaders who, as a result of their emotional intelligence, have a little humility. In fact, when the nearby Grace Church School was researching whether to start its own high school, it asked top college-admission officers what was lacking in New York City applicants. The answers coalesced around the idea of values, civic engagement, inclusiveness and diversity — in a word, humility.

So much to quote in this that will make your stomach turn. You have to just read it. I guess my question is, how do I become a parent someday without being as detestable as these.

How Social Networks Drive Black Unemployment - NYTimes.com

Mon, 06 May 2013 05:38:20 -0500

How Social Networks Drive Black Unemployment - NYTimes.com:

When I asked my interviewees what most contributed to their level of career success, they usually discussed how hard they had worked and how uncertain were the outcomes — not the help they had received throughout their lives to gain most of their jobs. In fact, only 14 percent mentioned that they had received help of any kind from others. Seeing contemporary labor-market politics through the lens of favoritism, rather than discrimination alone, is revealing. It explains, for example, why even though the majority of all Americans, including whites, support civil rights in principle, there is widespread opposition on the part of many whites to affirmative action policies — despite complaints about “reverse discrimination,” my research demonstrated that the real complaint is that affirmative action undermines long-established patterns of favoritism. The interviewees in my study who were most angry about affirmative action were those who had relatively fewer marketable skills — and were therefore most dependent on getting an inside edge for the best jobs. Whites who felt entitled to these positions believed that affirmative action was unfair because it blocked their own privileged access.

Yet so many people still claim that we live in a meritocracy.

Sunday afternoon green thumb: repotted these four guys.

Sun, 05 May 2013 18:53:45 -0500

Sunday afternoon green thumb: repotted these four guys.

dciskey: latenightjimmy: GIF YO SELF: We caught up with Retta...

Sat, 04 May 2013 21:37:57 -0500

dciskey:

latenightjimmy:

GIF YO SELF: We caught up with Retta backstage and she made some beautiful GIFs just for Tumblr.

[Previously]

Hey @solarpowerspork.

Life advice?

Fri, 03 May 2013 18:54:33 -0500

Life advice?

May Day Marxism: Capitalism is looking pretty shabby.

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:19:01 -0500

May Day Marxism: Capitalism is looking pretty shabby.:

In summary, I’m not a Marxist. But I worry that political conservatives are going to turn me into one. My view is that full employment and robust systems of redistribution from the more fortunate to the less fortunate are possible. I see real evidence for this in the world. The Obama administration has actually enacted a lot of redistribution programs, and the government of Australia has maintained consistent full employment policies for a long time now. But the collapse of the Soviet Union, a good thing on its own terms, has had the bad consequence of breeding massive complacency among the upper classes in the West. It used to seem important to people in the rich countries to prove that market economies not only could but in fact would lead to broadly rising living standards. But today we’re living in a 401(k) world.

It’s important that everyone has the opportunity to earn a living wage. That does far more to get people off social welfare programs than just heartlessly cutting them.

"The United States remains the only country without any sort of mandatory, paid leave for new..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 09:53:45 -0500

“The United States remains the only country without any sort of mandatory, paid leave for new mothers. The Family and Medical Leave Act covers 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave, and even that’s only if you’re “eligible”—a term that houses a whole set of criteria including time worked at the company and the company’s size.”

- A New Parenting Policy Brings Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo Closer To Silicon Valley Culture | Fast Company | Business Innovation

This needs to change, and these companies that are enjoying record high profits need to start it. Mothers AND fathers need more time off.

"Career is never as important as family. The better you are at your job, the more you’re rewarded,..."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:53:43 -0500

“Career is never as important as family. The better you are at your job, the more you’re rewarded, financially and spiritually, by doing it. You know how to solve problems for which you receive praise and money. Home life is more chaotic. Solving problems is less prescriptive and no one’s applauding or throwing money if you do it right. That’s why so many young professionals spend more time at work with the excuse, “I’m sacrificing for my family.” Bullshit. Learn to embrace the chaos of family life and enjoy the small victories. This hit me one night after we’d won an especially emotional game against the Celtics. I’d left the stadium listening to thousands of strangers chanting “Kareem! Kareem!” I felt flush with the sense of accomplishment, for me, for the Lakers, and for the fans. But when I stepped into my home and my son said, “Daddy!” the victory, the chanting, the league standings, all faded into a distant memory.”

- Life Lessons with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - Kareem on What He Wished He’d Known - Esquire

Life Lessons with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - Kareem on What He Wished He'd Known - Esquire

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:53:01 -0500

Life Lessons with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - Kareem on What He Wished He'd Known - Esquire:

When I was thirty, I was living my dream. I’d already accomplished most of what I’d set out to achieve professionally: leading scorer in the NBA, leading rebounder, leading blocker, Most Valuable Player, All-Star. But success can be as blinding as Bill Walton’s finger in the eye when battling for a rebound. I made mistakes. Plenty of them. In fact, sometimes I wish I could climb into a time machine and go back to shake some sense into that thirty-year-old me. If I could, here’s the advice I would give him:

Kareem dropping some knowledge.

New York Study of Pedestrian Victims Leads to Unexpected Conclusions - NYTimes.com

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:55:19 -0500

New York Study of Pedestrian Victims Leads to Unexpected Conclusions - NYTimes.com:

[I]n 80 percent of city accidents that resulted in a pedestrian’s death or serious injury, a male driver was behind the wheel. (Fifty-seven percent of New York City vehicles are registered to men.)

That number is just insane. Why are men hitting so many people?

"I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay. I didn’t set out to be..."

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:37:48 -0500

“I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay. I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, “I’m different.” If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.”

- Jason Collins, the first openly gay player in the NBA