January 2012
1 post
The World of Today: My @Horse_ebooks offer →
worldoftoday:
Like thousands of people who spend too much time the internet, I’ve become strangely obsessed with the mysterious spam Twitter bot @Horse_ebooks. Not much is known about Horse_ebooks, though it appears to be part of a network of spam accounts promoting dumb ebooks.
Thing is, I really want…
I’ll throw in another $50 to sweeten the deal, btw. Adrian can handle it from...
July 2011
1 post
May 2011
6 posts
3 tags
Tremors films, in order of tagline quality
Tremors 2: Aftershocks: “The Worms have turned”
Tremors 3: Back to Perfection: “The food chain just grew another link”
Tremors: “They say there’s nothing new under the sun. But under the ground…”
Tremors 4: The Legend Begins: “A revolution has begun”
There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between this list and the...
1 tag
1 tag
April 2011
5 posts
Objective Correlative: Three actual items from the... →
objectivecorrelative:
“What’s new this month:
University Elects New Chancellor
HRH The Princess Royal has been elected as Chancellor of the University. She succeeds HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who stepped down from the role in 2010, having held it since 1953. The Princess Royal has been elected as…
“BY THE WAY PLEASE DONATE”
"Thumbscrews?"
Ken Layne’s brilliant final thought on the whole Wonkette/Trig debacle:
Steuf [will] be punished “In the exact way politicians are always punished: He accepts full responsibility for his actions.”
Can’t wait for his book to come out.
2 tags
Best phone call of the day
Me: John Herrman speaking.
Blocked number: Do you have a son?
Me: What?
Blocked number: Or a daughter?
Me: What? Who is this?
Blocked number: THIS IS THE PANAMA DRUG POLICE, we have someone with your name here we caught trying to smuggle drugs.
Me: I'm in New York.
Blocked number: We have a guy, he says you're the boss. This is very serious, you need to get on a plane to Panama right now and pay a fine.
Me: This sounds like a scam.
Blocked number: A scam? Ha! A fucking scam? I can have the FBI, the DEA at your house in 20 minutes. You need to come down here right now, the fine is $6,000.
Me: (Laughing) Then I guess I'll talk to you soon!
Blocked number: MOTHERFUCK YOU SOON
1 tag
March 2011
16 posts
The worst job at Facebook
Facebook has rules that bar precisely these kinds of pictures, but they generally are enforced only when members complain about them, not through advance screening done by the company. Photos come in by the millions every month; Facebook says its users share 30 billion pieces of content every month. They also grant the company nearly unlimited rights to use that data any way it wants.
From an...
I've run every possible life scenario through a...
U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes’ bill to reaffirm “In God We Trust” as the national motto and encourage its display in all public schools was approved by a House committee Thursday after a sharp partisan debate.
I imagine most Christians don’t think of God as so vain or insecure that he needs 9,000 plaques screwed to public school and post offices, so this is pretty...
Joshua Topolsky: Switching to Tumblr, full stop →
joshuatopolsky:
I think I’ve made a major decision. Well, it’s semi-major. I’m going to switch to Tumblr as my main blog. It just feels far more vital than the island of a standalone site, but also allows plenty of tweaking and customization. There’s something much… stickier about Tumblr that I really like….
NICE THEME
“Clearly, it will be a shitshow. Last year, there were 30,000 people, with...”
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The full quote I gave for this story where nearly everyone said exactly the same thing: group messaging will be huge. But not everyone was as grumpy as me. (via fimoculous)
Me? I just took a cheap shot at a thing that I actually like.
makin' news
So this letter/piece is being passed around as a story about how a British tabloid writer is resigning from his post over baseless anti-Islam content published by his paper. I mean, that is what it is, so, ok!
But the letter spends more time describing the brazenly cynical way in which these papers create content:
Daily Star favourite Kelly Brook recently said in an interview: “I do...
STOP TALKING: THE SUICIDE QUOTA HAS NOT BEEN...
So I finally got around to reading Joel Johnson’s Wired cover story on Foxconn. It’s thorough and important, but I’m not surprised at the pushback.
The only thing I took issue with, really, was the packaging. Suicide was a consistent thread in the article, but, contrary to the suggestion of the cover splash, I don’t think the primary purpose of the piece was to map or...
February 2011
11 posts
Choire Sicha: The Last Photograph of Cat →
choire:
Cat believed that everything was a prison. He was born in the early mid-90s and grew up between Avenues C and D, in a nice vacant lot that was becoming a garden. His mother and brother, now both long since dead, would later move from that neighborhood to, as their circumstances improved, a…
IsItSnowingInSanFrancisco.com →
Seriously just had a VERY IMPORTANT PHONE CALL about this
HELLO, MY NAME IS JOHN HERRMAN
I’m a freelance writer living in New York. Most of my work has been focused on technology, but I’m open to (read: would desperately like to try) other things. Formerly of Gizmodo, I contribute or have contributed to CBS Smartplanet, Popular Mechanics/Popularmechanics.com, Popular Science, Forbes, The Awl, Splitsider and a few others.
I can be reached at jwherrman at gmail.com, or on...
December 2010
38 posts
Today’s dumb internet thing: Julian Assange leaks state secrets, therefore he shouldn’t complain about his compromised legal process!
According to this video, the new Motorola tablet will be called the “Fart Bee”
RT @davidcho: The trending of “Ask Don” is WHY WE DON’T LET THE MACHINES PICK OUR TRENDING TOPICS. (Because: Don’t ASK DON’t Tell)
I would finish listening to this song, butttttttt, but
When’s the last time you used Second Life? Rephrase: When’s the last time you met anyone who’s used Second Life, ever, even just once?
Parrot sings butt rock http://is.gd/iR3yE
RT @juliweiner: Download these tracks to your phonograph now: .@pitchforkmedia’s Best Songs of 1910 http://bit.ly/eHTjoG
RT @dasracist: DETAINED AND DEPORTED: http://dasracist.net/?p=469
RT @DAVID_LYNCH: I ask for a 50’s style haircut. #lynchqa
“Because what you can do is pour the chips into a cloth bag, and then it’s like ‘finally, some peace!’” http://bit.ly/gqRfyp