A Kickstarter to help Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt finish his documentary about, “Cuba’s drag-racing community and their quest to hold the first official race since the Revolution.” Awesome.
via Kickstarter Tumblr

Elie Mystal on student loans:

Student loans haven’t made education “affordable,” they’ve made education accessible. That’s a huge difference. Once you access your education, you still have to pay for it. And if you’ve happened to access more education than you can afford, well, you’re going to have a hell of a time “accessing” other life goals: like a house, a car, or a modicum of financial security.
He calls bullshit on the ‘wise words’ from boomers with a Forbes article by Steve Odland:
Since 1982 a typical family income increased by 147%, more than inflation but significantly behind the huge increase in college costs. College costs have been rising roughly at a rate of 7% per year for decades. Since 1985, the overall consumer price index has risen 115% while the college education inflation rate has risen nearly 500%.
And then yesterday in The New York Times, Richard Pérez Peña tells us how rough it is for those special kids applying to elite colleges:
Enrollment at American colleges is sliding, but competition for spots at top universities is more cutthroat and anxiety-inducing than ever. In the just-completed admissions season, Stanford University accepted only 5 percent of applicants, a new low among the most prestigious schools, with the odds nearly as bad at its elite rivals.
The reality is college isn’t giving people the advantage it used to over people without college degrees, with our ever-shrinking job pool.
While computer automation is partly to blame, Tyler Cowen says that’s only part of the story:
Many of the new jobs today are in health care and education, where specialized training and study are required. Across the economy, a college degree is often demanded where a high school degree used to suffice. It’s now common for a fire chief to be expected to have a master’s degree, and to perform a broader variety of business-related tasks that were virtually unheard-of in earlier generations. All of these developments mean a disadvantage for people who don’t like formal education, even if they are otherwise very talented. It’s no surprise that current unemployment has been concentrated among those with lower education levels.
And:
A new paper by Alan B. Krueger, Judd Cramer and David Cho of Princeton has documented that the nation now appears to have a permanent class of long-term unemployed, who probably can’t be helped much by monetary and fiscal policy. It’s not right to describe these people as “thrown out of work by machines,” because the causes involve complex interactions of technology, education and market demand. Still, many people are finding this new world of work harder to navigate.
I am constantly reminded of these words by Charles Darwin, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

John Gruber on mobile apps versus mobile browsers:

Lamenting the falling share of time spent by people in web browsers at the expense of mobile apps is no different from those who lamented the falling share of time spent reading paper newspapers and magazines at the expense of websites.
I agree with Gruber. Who fucking cares what you use to access your favorite services?
What you should be asking yourself is, “am I using the right tool for the job?”

Trent Wolbe on Fugazi’s Ian Mackaye cataloging 15 years of their music:

There is a lot to be excited about in the ways we produce and consume music in 2014, but it’s often difficult to decipher where the music ends and the contextual media structures around it begin. The best thing about Fugazi, and the live series, is that the music is always the message. There are no Facebook or Twitter logos polluting its pages; no publicist blasting emails about how Dischord is revolutionizing music; no attempt to sell to a nostalgic market. For MacKaye, it remains a matter of completing a simple task demanded by a pile of tapes that captured a small slice of American history.
I listened to a good amount of Fugazi with my friends growing up in the ’90s. I’ll have to look at this mammoth catalog.

Slate: Here’s Why Developers Keep Favoring Apple Over Android

This map showing the locations of 280 million individual posts on Twitter shows a depressing divide in America: Tweets coming from Manhattan tend to come from iPhones. Tweets coming from Newark, N.J., tend to come from Android phones.

If you live in the New York metro area, you don’t need to be told that Manhattan is where the region’s rich people live, and the poor live in Newark. Manhattan’s median income is $67,000 a year. Newark’s is $17,000, according to U.S. Census data.
The tech press keeps saying Apple needs to release a low-cost iPhone.
Maybe none of them know what they’re talking about.
The noise I’m referring to:
John Paczkowski: Why Build a Cheaper iPhone? Because It’s Stupid Not To.
CNet: Apple needs a low-cost iPhone, says analyst
Enough About China, Apple Also Needs A Low-Cost iPhone In The US
Cult of Mac: Why Apple Needs A Low-Cost iPhone More Than Ever
As Gruber points out, Apple has been offering low-cost iPhones for a while now.

You like sliding app ‘cards’ up from the multitasking screen, don’t you?
You think you’re being smart quitting apps running the background, right?
Wrong, silly people. You’re making things worse:

By closing the app, you take the app out of the phone’s RAM . While you think this may be what you want to do, it’s not. When you open that same app again the next time you need it, your device has to load it back into memory all over again. All of that loading and unloading puts more stress on your device than just leaving it alone. Plus, iOS closes apps automatically as it needs more memory, so you’re doing something your device is already doing for you. You are meant to be the user of your device, not the janitor.
Leave shit alone, ok?

Melena Ryzik on Jim Jarmusch (via kateopolis):

The filmmaker Jim Jarmusch is old school. He writes all his scripts out by hand and then dictates them to a typist. Ideas are jotted down in small, color-coordinated notebooks and, despite the presence of an iPad and iPhone in his life, he doesn’t have email. “I don’t have enough time as it is to read a book or make music, or see my friends,” he said. “People don’t believe me, too. They think I’m just saying that because I don’t want to give it to them. But no, I do not have email.”
Successful artists possess the ability to say “no” to shit, so they can get shit done. I said no to the awesome weather this past weekend.
[I love Jim Jarmusch’s films, particularly Stranger Than Paradise and Coffee and Cigarettes.]

via Aeon Magazine via Chasing Tremendous

Despite the amazing weather in San Francisco this past weekend, I spent most of my time in the studio making posters for my Kickstarter backers. I’m not complaining, it was fun.







[A version of this post original appeared on The Combustion Chamber]

Amazon continues to chip away on tradition retail stores.
Interesting shit indeed.

via ParisLemon

Awesome exhibit of photo booth images at my alma mater, Rutgers (via Junk Culture):

He likely hailed from the Midwest, sometimes sported a fedora and smoked a pipe. He dressed in casual plaids or in a suit. His demeanor ranged from jovial to pensive. His hair evolved from thick black to a thinning white widow’s peak. And sometimes, a “Seasons Greetings” sign hung over his head.

We might know a lot about how this man aged, but what we don’t know is his identity or why he took – and saved – more than 450 images of himself in a photobooth over the course of several decades.

My friends know I have an addiction to photo booths. I’m talking about the real ones, with smelly emulsion and fixer (exhibits A and B to name a few).

—Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Geoff Alday talks to the creator of the ‘hamburger icon’:

You’ve done your homework and found the right guy. I designed that symbol many years ago as a “container” for contextual menu choices. It would be somewhat equivalent to the context menu we use today when clicking over objects with the right mouse button.

Its graphic design was meant to be very “road sign” simple, functionally memorable, and mimic the look of the resulting displayed menu list. With so few pixels to work with, it had to be very distinct, yet simple. I think we only had 16×16 pixels to render the image. (or possibly 13×13… can’t remember exactly).

Interesting inside joke… we used to tell potential users that the image was an “air vent” to keep the window cool. It usually got a chuckle, and made the mark much more memorable.
Air vent. Love it. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people who actually believed they truly functioned as vents for windows.
Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people who believed that now.