"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Manic Monday -- Weekend Update

And so another week begins. I've got to get back into the autobio practice (what this is trying to return to) so I'll recap my weekend. I want to be a little careful and intentional here, as I'm trying to walk a couple of lines:

  • No a secret diary -- the original genesis of this whole thing was to open up my life a bit more and to lift up my conduct and being all around, not to have a place where I write things instead of saying them. It's a easy slip to have this be a substitute for more immediate expression, rather than the poetical mass-communication and aspiration I want it to be.
  • Don't burn people -- I've gone over the general concept of what stories are mine to tell and what aren't, usually in the context of "kissing and blogging," but trying to get back into autobiographical writing means being careful about what I say about other people. I've already done things like remove old posts about friends who've become lawyers and have questionable google results because of something i wrote in 2002.
  • Keep it interesting -- while I've got a certain confidence in the palatability of the reality-TV equivalent of blogging, I don't want to tumble down some hallway of self-obsession and inward-looking myopia. Intriguing introspection is the ideal; don't want to run off my little readership with a bunch of pathetic navel-gazing.

Anyway, enough disclaimer. This is an evolution. Let's get started. 1500+ words after the jump.

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Competition For The Rebel Unicorn

Tresler points me to Joi Ito talking about Six Apart's new joint, Vox. It's a good name for a good product, and a nice logical next step between typepad and livejournal (which they bought).

But I like the name "Rebel Unicorn" better.

Basically my take is that the future is not in having some magic technology that lets you run a huge site that everyone uses. That's why the myspace and youtube buys don't seem like good moves to me: the functionality can and will be replicated 100 times over, so all you're buying is the community. Google may have a chance at holding that, but Fox is almost guaranteed to fuck it up over the next five years.

Not that myspace will evaporate, but it will cease to be the phenomena that it is, and just become a national "scene" site for emo kids. You might as well have bought makeoutclub.com, Rupert.

Where the future is at is in running a more modest site (or if you're not modest, a site that lets people run sites) which actually serves a real community, but which can interoperate. The future is in enabling a network of social websites, not in running some kind of monolith.

I'll write about this and how it wiil happen on my work blog soon.

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War Snark

Two of the things I love about this medium, especially as it relates to politics, is that it infuses humanity and personality into the process, and that it is a decidedly literary form. This means there's a pretty low bar for entry, lots of room for expression, and the things you say stick around. It's a good blend.

On those notes, two links. First, a lovely bit of flash-powered parody:

War of the Words is the story of the so-called "warbloggers":

Theirs is a story of courage, determination, and above all, typing. They are the conservative bloggers, pundits, and commentators whose loud and prolific support of Republican foreign policy goals helped change the course of American history in ways that will be felt for many years to come.

They are the men and women--mostly men--who have come to be known as the 101st Fighting Keyboarders. And now, at last, their story can be told.

It's humorous faux-Ken Burns stylings belies the fact that what's going on here is quite unprecidented: shameless propagandists, shills, and plain old idiots with megaphones (that's you, Jarvis) are being held accountable for the things they said at a historically important time. This isn't talk radio or your Sons of the South underground newsletter, and so much the better.

Secondly, a recent scientific study showed the civilian death toll in Iraq as a result of the war to be over half a million. Of course this caused the warbloggers to collapse and begin speaking in tongues. Lindsay Byerstein has a delightful takedown of the responses. My fave:

8. Sure the study's methodology is standard for public health resesarch. But don't forget that public health is a leftwing plot.

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