A Spedthrift Flaneur in the Attention Economy

delicious.com/willis.creative/blindfla links for the week ending today.

Map depicts location of brothels in 1870. Today the Soho block of Greene Street between Houston and Prince is part of Soho and one of the wealthiest blocks in the New York City (and the world). [Source: aidwatchers.com]Wilderness to brothels to Apple store: the History of Development in one block 022711
Writing at the Aid Watch blog, development expert William Easterly finds the history of development in one block in New York’s Soho neighborhood. “Its history had been a series of unexpected events involving many actors, from Nicholas Bayard to the yellow fever mosquito to Anthony Arnoux to James Bogardus to Jane Jacobs to George Maciunas, few or none of whom could have anticipated the outcomes of their actions. Like many other examples, Soho illustrates that a lot of economic development is a surprise.” (Left)
Location of brothels in 1870. Today the block of Greene Street between Houston and Prince is part of Soho and one of the wealthiest blocks in the New York City (and the world).
Tracing Development Of Manhattan Block : NPR 032911
A few weeks ago, Bill Easterly, an economics professor at New York University, wrote about the history of this single block in Soho.
Elizabeth Taylor, Lifelong Screen Star, Dies at 79 - NYTimes.com
Elizabeth Taylor, the actress who dazzled generations of moviegoers with her stunning beauty and whose name was synonymous with Hollywood glamour, died Wednesday in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure, her publicist, Sally Morrison told The Associated Press. She was 79. In a world of flickering images, Elizabeth Taylor was a constant star. First appearing onscreen at the age of 9, she grew up there, never passing through an awkward age. It was one quick leap from “National Velvet” to “A Place in the Sun” and from there to “Cleopatra” as she was indelibly transformed from a vulnerable child actress into a voluptuous film queen. In a career of more than 70 years and more than 50 films, she won two Academy Awards as best actress, for her performances as a call girl in “Butterfield 8” (in 1960) and as the acid-tongued Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (in 1966). Mike Nichols, who directed her in “Virginia Woolf,” said he considered her “one of the greatest cinema actresses.”
BBC - BBC World Service Programmes - The Strand, 22/03/2023
The Canadian writer Kathleen Winter talks about her acclaimed novel Annabel which tells the story of a baby born a hermaphrodite - both boy and girl. | The Nobel Prize winning novelist Gunter Grass has said that his new book - the title of which in English roughly reads as Grimm’s Words: A Declaration of Love, part of his memoirs - is practically untranslatable. So he invited his translators to discuss with them the various ways to take on the challenge. | Practice for Everyday Life is a new exhibition opening in London this week featuring a group of young artists being heralded as the harbringers of a brave new wave of contemporary Russian art. Anna MacNamee talks one of the artists featured, Taus Makhacheva, and to the curator David Thorp.
of what was happening in Benghazi and elsewhere in eastern Libya.
CNN And Fox Spar Over Choices In Covering Libya : NPR 043322
A report Monday on the conflict in Libya by Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin sparked a brief spat between two leading cable news channels, but it also revealed the tricky choices involved in reporting on armed rebellion and authoritarian regimes. On Sunday, missiles launched on Tripoli from U.K. submarines struck a building in the compound of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
Remembering Mo Nabbous, ‘The Face Of Libyan Citizen Journalism’ : The Two-Way : NPR 032211
A reporter who lost his life trying to tell the world about what Moammar Gadhafi’s forces were doing to the people of Libya is remembered today on All Things Considered. NPR’s Andy Carvin talks about Mohammed Nabbous, a man he came to know via the Web in the past month as Nabbous used his Libya al Hurra (“freedom”) Livestream news channel to record some remarkable accounts
Cover art for remixable comic Vision Machine #3
Vision Machine
Vision Machine #3, the final issue of the sci fi comic book miniseries written by Greg Pak with pencils by R.B. Silva, was released for free at VisionMachine.net and at Comixology.com.
Something to be said.
A blog by Jamillah Knowles: “I’m a journalist – but this is by no means an official outlet or in line with any place that I work. I’ve been a journalist for more than 18 years now, from printing images with light on paper to be set for the newspapers to messing with codecs for video news clips on mobile devices. I’ve lead on social news, advised on news aggregators and tested too many wonderful bits of kit and technology related to news to name here. ”
BBC - Outriders: Tales of SXSW - Part 1 031511
This week I’ve been in Austin, Texas for the South by South West conference SXSW. The event celebrates 25 years this year so we catch up on the origins and chat with people in attendance. Each year SXSW is split into music, film and interactive sections, naturally we were wired into the interactive panels, speakers, activity sessions and meet-ups. The event is large, with many locations for sessions spread across the city of Austin. So best to be wearing comfortable shoes.
BBC - Outriders: SXSW - part two 032211
This week the podcast holds the second part of our run around SXSW. With so many great people to talk to, it was a close thing to fit this many into one episode.
This WEEK in GOOGLE 86 - The Official TWiT Wiki 031611
Opens with debriefing/kvetching about SxSW.
BBC - BBC World Service Programmes - Digital Planet, 15/03/2023
Is openness in the digital space killing creativity? With so much amateur content online, there is a strong desire to consume it all for free. Culture is rotting away before our very browsers. Or is it? Isn’t this a great time to be alive – all this collaboration, untapped talent that now has an outlet thanks to the web. That is up for discussion in this special edition of Digital Planet from the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Texas, third in a series of programmes on openness made in collaboration with the Open University. Gareth Mitchell travels around the festival to witness the wonders of ‘open source hardware’ at the Dorkbot hacker fair, a comic book that embraces Creative Commons, and a crowdsourced version of Star Wars. He also talks to the internet contrarian Andrew Keen, who is sceptical about the benefits of online openness for creativity.
CBC.ca | Writers & Company | Sarah Bakewell on Montaigne 031311
Eleanor Wachtel speaks with England’s Sarah Bakewell about Michel de Montaigne, who lived in south-western France from 1533 to 1592. A “one-man literary revolution”, it has been said that he was the first writer to make his own personality the subject of his writing. Sarah Bakewell has produced the first full biography of Montaigne in English in almost fifty years. “How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer” is available in paperback from Vintage.
Alan Lomax and the Salvation of American Song | Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon 031511
Alan Lomax (1915 – 2002), “The Man Who Recorded the World” in Szwed’s subtitle, was the son of a proper folklorist at the University of Texas. The old folklore compiled texts; the new would revel in the truth of sound that had body language in it, too. Together in the early Thirties, father John and his teenage apprentice had set out across the South with early Edison recording equipment on what John Lomax used to call a “hobo-ing” trip. What Alan ended up compiling was a sort of unofficial, non-commercial people’s soundtrack of the Great Depression. Homegrown songs of spirit seem in retrospect to be pouring out of the suffering soil wherever Alan Lomax turned. Makes you wonder: what is the music of the meltdown today, and where’s to find it?
On The Media: Transcript of “James O’Keefe” (March 18, 2023)
If James O’Keefe is staging guerrilla theater to expose hypocrisy and hate, a la Sasha Baron Cohen of Borat fame, maybe that’s no big deal. But O’Keefe claims to be acting in the tradition of undercover investigative muckrakers. Bob asks James O’Keefe about misleading editing, distorted quotes, and how much untruth he is entitled to in his quest for veritas. Listen here to the full James O’Keefe interview
On The Media: Transcript of “What the Media Can Learn from James O’Keefe” (March 18, 2023)
James O’Keefe’s undercover sting videos resulted in the resignations of two NPR executives last week. But what is O’Keefe, anyway? A prankster, an activist, a muckraker, a citizen journalist? None of the above? Poynter’s Steve Myers helps Brooke try to label this new phenomenon, and suggests what the media can learn from him.
Jay Rosen: Bloggers Vs. Journalists mp3 (audio/mpeg Object)
Jay Rosen’s talk at SXSW.
Rebooting the News #87 « Rebooting The News 032211
Jay’s presentation at SXSW on the Twisted Psychology of Bloggers vs. Journalists: it worked! (The text, the audio.) | Scripting News: What Twitter and the New York Times have in common. “Neither company has a way to sustain itself financially.” | Twitter’s announcement to developers at SXSW. Dave’s post: Twitter’s new developer roadmap.
Rebooting the News #86 « Rebooting The News 031511
Great moment in history of podcasting: Adam Curry and Dave Winer apologize for being “such a dick” to one another.
Rebooting the News #85 « Rebooting The News 031311
Jay Rosen on Twitter’s curatorial/archival barriers: “I’m building an edifice but it’s lying around in ruins. It’s just a bunch of bricks that are actually hard to retrieve.” | Minimal blogging suite ‘o tools: an update, and why Dave’s doing this. | Why bloggers vs. journalists is still with us: Jay’s upcoming presentation at SXSW.
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