The New York Times published a devastating and detailed piece on decades of sexual advances by powerful movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein responded with a strange statement about taking a leave from his movie company to take on the NRA and President Trump. Weinstein’s statement is bizarrely sensible — but only if you believe, in…
Words With Friends has just added 50,000 new pop-culture words. This is horrifying. According to the AP: WORDS WITH FRIENDS ADDS 50,000 POP CULTURE WORDS by Mark Kennedy, AP ENTERTAINMENT WRITER NEW YORK (AP) — Tell your bae or your bestie: The mobile game Words With Friends is adding thousands of pop culture words as part…
Robert Scoble had predicted the next iPhone would be focused on augmented reality (AR) and transparent, like a piece of glass. It wasn’t. But his description of why he was wrong is revealing, both about Scoble and about the future of both AR and iPhones. I’m a little deeper into this story than most people reading…
Investor Shervin Pishevar wrote a letter defending his friend, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, as investors attempted to eject him from Uber’s board of directors. It’s the most florid business communication you’ll ever see. In a moment of passion, you may be tempted to write like this. Don’t — it’ll come back to haunt you….
Yesterday, Rich Rowe, CEO of Arkema, warned that his chemical plant near Houston might explode. Today it exploded. When you know something like this is going to happen, you need to get right to the point. Rich Rowe didn’t. The Arkema plant is in Crosby, Texas, about 25 miles from downtown Houston. Houston, of course,…
President Trump tweets lots of spelling errors. In the New York Times, Farhad Manjoo says this is just a sign of the times. It’s fine to spell things however you want on social media your friends, but when you’re communicating with people who matter — like, say, the entire citizenry of the United States —…
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) exists to defend people’s constitutional rights. Its California chapters (later backed up by the national organization) recently backed off its defense of alt-right protesters. It’s a nuanced stance, and a confusing statement didn’t help. People think of the ACLU as a highly liberal organization. It has recently defended imprisoned…
The Daily Stormer — the site that sponsored the white nationalist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia this weekend — has apparently been under attack. It appeared that the hacker collective Anonymous took it over, then the site owners regained control, and then GoDaddy cancelled its domain registration. The GoDaddy part is true, but as I’ll show, the…
James Damore, a Google engineer, published an internal manifesto about gender and discrimination at the company. He’s either a sexist tech bro or a First Amendment hero bravely proclaiming forbidden truths, depending on your perspective. His generalizations about how women think are the problem here — they’re what got him fired. A fresh look at the…