Warehouse of the damned

One of the people I follow on Twitter is a Brit, Ben Gunn; an articulate, outspoken advocate for criminal justice reform and non-violence.

(My readers know that when Bas Bleu calls someone “articulate”, that means he’s reached the higher echelons of those who have an actual idea, arrange their thoughts before writing, and express themselves well. I don’t toss that word around like beads from a Mardi Gras float. You can see what I mean at Gunn's blog.)

He’s also an ex-con who was released from prison not long ago after serving 32 years for the murder of a friend when he was 14. (I don’t understand the niceties—if that be the right word—of the British justice system, but it seems as though he’s on some form of never-ending parole, and can be busted back to prison for any one of a number of infractions. That is, he’s always got a sword of Damocles hanging over him.) He’s not burdened with bitterness by his experience, which I find remarkable.

As I said, he’s outspoken, which puts him on the firing line for a lot of Twittercrap. And if you don’t know what I mean by that, well, let me just say that you don’t want to know. He invites it by asking questions and then debating whoever slews over to lambaste him. No death threats so far (that I know of), but I've seen at least one person publicly call on the prison service to haul his ass back to the slammer. 

He followed me a couple of months ago, after I replied to a retweet of his tweet, “I’m trying to think why stupidity shouldn’t be made a crime. All I can come up with is that there will never be enough cells…”

I was honest: “Uh, they’d certainly have to make room for me. Several times a day. #guilty” On account of, I can be as big a dimwit on occasion as the next guy.

Since then I’ve watched the firestorms Gunn provokes, although I’ve mostly stayed out of them. But the Twitter-dot-com is kind of like a British public school: it fosters shoot-from-the-hip opinions backed by a minimum of fact or ration and propelled by a turbo-charged and vehement viciousness. Well—start-ups are like that, too.

But I’m not here to talk about that. No, of course I’m not; it's Friday.

Yesterday he tweeted, “There are times when I wonder whether people have lost their intellect, moral conscious, or just their balls. #twitter”

And all of a sudden I got this image of a great cosmic “lost-&-found” social media warehouse, chockablock with all the decent human qualities people heave away in vast numbers when they get a Twitter handle or a Facebook page.

(Or, indeed, when they join any online forum. I was on a World War I discussion list back in the 90s and you would not believe the mud-slinging, character assassination and multi-syllabic versions of "get stuffed" that flew back and forth amongst the academic set.)

So, I envision stacks and stacks of tattered civility, discarded moral compasses, dysfunctional synapses, disused intellectual rigor, lost gonads and the like. All waiting hopefully to be claimed by their owners, or auctioned off to someone who’ll appreciate and use them; but all the while knowing there’s small likelihood of that.

Sadly, there’s obviously another building full of massive egos, blaring voices and atrocious spelling, writhing with activity, metaphorical elbows flying; everyone trying to shout above the din of all the other inmates. It’s like a 24x7 rugby game—muddy, bloody and painful—without a goal.

See, the term “social” media is really a misnomer, and now whenever I sit back gobsmacked by some new piece of stultifyingly grotesque inanity or mean-spiritedness on one of the platforms, I’ll just see another addition being made to that warehouse.

And another. And another…

We're gonna need a bigger warehouse.

More spam in the queue

So here are the contents of the spam folder of one of my email accounts recently:

I don’t know why I’ve got multiple spam for laser services; I don’t want to speculate as to what they know about me. Also—I kind of wonder how much hair removal you can get for $6K? But not enough to open the email.

No, I didn’t open the PRIVATE MESSAGE! I’m guessing it was Svetlana or one of her mates.

The Pimsleur people have been round a few times. They were actually reviewed fairly well in some magazine story I was reading about the best ways to learn a language. But I’m in the midst of learning Python, and that’s all the language I can handle at the moment.

As for the expanding hose… No.

Ideas for free (continued)

I mentioned last Friday that I have library cards for six systems in the Silicon Valley, and that I got them simply by presenting myself to the various entities and showing photo ID.

I thought I’d just give you empiric proof of that claim:

America, gonif!

Changing guard at WaPo

Well—big news in the, uh, news business: The Washington Post Company announced yesterday that it’s sold its flagship property, The Washington Post, to Amazon founder/CEO Jeff Bezos, for $250M.

Some interesting things about this sale:

WaPo senior management kept the fact that the paper was on the block secret from everyone, including its own employees. Reaction all over the place was stunned disbelief. I don’t know what that says about their newsroom’s investigative abilities.

Bezos, 49, has bought the paper as a private individual. It’s not Amazon making the purchase. But there have been some wags on Twitter capitalizing on the connection between the man and his company:

Apparently $250M is chump change to Bezos, who has a personal worth of $25.2B, according to Forbes.

I don’t know what to say about this—I loved WaPo. It was one of the best things about living in the D.C. area, having a first-class newspaper to read every morning.

When I moved to the UK, I was appalled by what passed for journalism there, the conflating of news and editorial commentary, the massive delta between the quality of national/international and local coverage, the lack of comics and coupons. I was accustomed to having a local paper what was also national, staffed by professionals (with one or two exceptions, like Janet Cooke) who were great news people and fabulous writers. I used to check WaPo regularly online to get my reportage.

Back in Virginia at the end of 2001, and without a job, I still had the consolation of a first-class newspaper to curl up with everyday.

But, of course, you don’t step into the same river twice, and the news industry has been struggling with the changes wrought by the Internet for at least a decade. A lot of great newspapers have come as near as dammit to folding; WaPo itself has had several rounds of lay-offs/early retirement offers that have changed the nature of its coverage.

After Ken Ringle left, to tell the truth, it just wasn’t the same for me.

Even now, as I went to their site to get the Bezos sale story from the horse’s mouth, I was greeted by a popup telling me I’ve used one of my 20 free story views for the month. Sigh.

Bezos issued a six-paragraph letter to WaPo employees. In it he assures them to the extent possible that the transition will be smooth, he’s not going to be involved in day-to-day management, etc. But there will be change. (Or death, but of course he didn’t say that.)

Here’s one graf that gives me some hope that the paper won’t turn into a three-times-a-week publication, or a scandal-rag:

“Journalism plays a critical role in a free society, and The Washington Post – as the hometown paper of the capital city of the United States – is especially important. I would highlight two kinds of courage the Grahams have shown as owners that I hope to channel. The first is the courage to say wait, be sure, slow down, get another source. Real people and their reputations, livelihoods and families are at stake. The second is the courage to say follow the story, no matter the cost. While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.”

Well—he certainly understands the purpose and the past of this paper. I hope to God he equips it for the future. I’d like to move back there and have it to read everyday again.

Gratitude Monday: Paris by way of Seoul

There’s a bakery/café in Santa Clara, a couple of miles from my place. It’s called Paris Baguette, but it’s actually a Korean-owned chain with outlets on both coasts. Since Santa Clara is the Northern California equivalent of Koreatown in LA, it makes sense that you’d find this where it is.

  

There are other PB stores in Palo Alto and Cupertino; both of them are more upscale and attitudinal than the one in Santa Clara, which is in a somewhat downmarket shopping center that also has a cheesy furniture store, a Korean market, a shoe repair shop, a hair salon and the like. The shoe guy is how I happened on the center in the first place.

The café part is a little run-down looking, but they’ve got good wi-fi, and power outlets to plug your laptop into. And their croissant-based pastries are lovely—flakey and tasty; you can’t eat them without making a complete mess with all the little crumbs.

Plus—they make the best latte of any place in the Silicon Valley. It’s my treat for the days I hit the gym; it’s silky, luscious and it sometimes comes with latte art:

The pastry offerings fascinate me. I tried the “Strewed Pea” twist a couple of times. For the life of me I cannot discern what “Strewed Pea” might be, but it’s kind of good. I’ve not tried the Tuna Pastry, but it seems pretty popular with the other customers.

(It’s interesting that they put it out next to the cream cheese pastry. You’d think the latter would pick up some of the taste of the former. But maybe not.)

Recently they’ve added a Tiramisu pastry, just at the weekend—a kind of croissant rolled around mascarpone filling & dowsed in cocoa powder. It’s completely decadent. I have to tap off a couple of tablespoonsful of cocoa and powdered sugar before I can eat it. Even so, I’m sure I walk around with cocoa smears on my face for half the day.

I enjoy spending a couple of hours at PB of a morning, writing, checking target companies and so on. I could do that at a couple hundred cafés in the valley; but the added attraction of PB is that I’m often the only Meeguk saram there. I love watching the Korean housewives who get together there for a nibble and some gossip. It reminds me of my time living in Seoul, although I never experienced anything like this when I was there.

(I can’t pick up much of the discussions any more, which is what comes of learning a language in a “conversation” class, not a proper language class. But there you are.)

It may be partly because I’m decidedly not Korean, and therefore stand out, but I’ve achieved “regular” status by virtue of me being there once a week. If counter people are free, the moment they clock me walking through the door someone starts making a latte. I was there a couple of weeks ago—the last time I had to take my car in to get the antenna replaced—and mentioned it to the blonde at the counter. This past Saturday she inquired after the car. I’ve definitely arrived.

So for Gratitude Monday today, I’m grateful that I have Paris Baguette, where I can savor a latte, get croissant flakes all over me and my keyboard, sit with a friend for a couple of hours talking, and people-watch to my heart’s content. I hope you’re lucky enough to have a similar place to get away from it all.