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McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Open Letters: An Open Letter to Your Unreadable Hashtag.
” Of course hashtags existed to convey emotion and tell a story! Once the possibility presented itself, there was no going back. Suddenly, it was literally trending to cram multiple words together behind a pound symbol, and you were born: the unreadable hashtag. Tweets went from 90% update, 10% hashtag to 30% update, 70% hashtag. Some tweets were 100% hashtag, 80% of the time. (Source: Think about everyone you went to college with.) What was once intended to track data is now used ironically as a way to convey un-ironic feelings about mundane topics. We started sacrificing SEO for… I’m not exactly sure what. Popularity? Illegibility? A running inside joke with the Internet?”
McSweeny’s on hashtags http://t.co/hpvDhgXo1z #thoughtvectors— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) May 3, 2014
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Standardized testing and schools as factories: Louis CK versus Common Core – Boing Boing
” The rise of standardized testing, standardized curriculum, and “accountability” are part of the wider phenomenon of framing every question in business terms. In the modern world, the state is a kind of souped up business. That’s why we’re all “taxpayers” instead of “citizens.” “Taxpayer” reframes policy outcomes as a kind of customer-loyalty perk. If your taxes are the locus of your relationship with the state, then people who don’t pay taxes — people too young, old, disabled, or unlucky to be working — are not entitled to policy outcomes that reflect their needs.”
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Breaking Bad Character Trolls Advice Columnist
Advice column responses to literary/historical figures in trouble.
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World War II Dinosaur Poster by BenjaminDewey on Etsy
World War II Dinosaur Poster by BenjaminDewey on Etsy http://t.co/p9d8xcxwqS
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) May 2, 2014
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Why Rich Lacrosse Parents Are Making Their Kids Repeat A Grade
“In hockey, and most kids’ sports, teams and leagues are organized by year of birth; Gladwell’s book purported to show that a disproportionate number of successful hockey players were born in the first few months of the year. But many top lacrosse camps, including Madlax, group so-called “select” teams by the players’ projected high school graduation year. That scheme encourages redshirting. Held-back players are guaranteed to be older than their non-redshirted campmates, and thus, the thinking goes, they enjoy better odds of making the select squads, which means better coaching, which means better exposure to college recruiters, which means a better shot at winning an athletic scholarship. A redshirt also has a greater chance of gaining admission to, say, an Ivy League school because of the weight given sports extracurriculars.
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