13 November 2013

Insanely Busy Drive-By Internet Link Sausage Platter

And, you know, that other thing.

  • Tina Brown once again demonstrates — to a less-credulous-than-usual reporter — that her views about publishing are now, and always have been, about her. The reporter doesn't quite go and point out the difference between beginning state and end state of each of the publications...
  • So Jeff Bezos is saving both WaPo and the US Postal Service, with Sunday package delivery. Actually, the best way to save the USPS (and more than a few trees) would be to eliminate the discounts for junk mail, and make purveyors of non-requested mass mailings (that is, not bills!) pay full rate... but still be required to presort, based just on volume. And it wouldn't hurt to require only the same allowance for pensions that any other equivalently sized organization makes, either. It's not that I'm against Sunday delivery; it's that I don't think it will do enough.
  • The wretched film of The Golden Compass is an example of what happens when you let self-declared marketing considerations determine artistic content (and linkage to another item on this platter is not a coincidence). As my then-teenaged elder remora remarked about the film (having read the book), "Kids don't have to be scared of the bears. Those are shaving scars."
  • Two words sufficient to make any moderately educated person cringe: Opera fanfic. Really: So many operas seem to be fanfic to start with... it's not a form known for the, umm, literary aspirations of its librettists.
  • You keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think it does.
  • Here's today's candidate for internet bacon meme.
  • He's not your bitch. Get over it.