The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
A few weeks ago, I made arguably the biggest splash of my modest writing career: a paid publication on the virtual cover of the lefty web magazine, Salon.com. The piece was a pared-down version of a narrative essay I had been shopping around for some time, the story of a Woofing (volunteer farming) trip my girlfriend and I took two summers ago to Alabama, Texas, and New Mexico. …more
Moral problems that do not fit tidily into preconceived ideas are fascinating and a good way to occupy oneself in the years of Mild Cognitive Impairment. Moral problems, when sufficiently complex, require complicated sentences, and I enjoy complicated sentences. …more
Life is the one disaster that is also a miracle. Or perhaps life is the one miracle that is also a disaster. …more
This is a vocabulary-based reference for Roxane Gay’s recently published “Still With the Scarlet Letters”
Definitions of Key Terms: …more
Last week journalist Mac McClelland wrote a brutal, exceptional essay for Good where she plainly discussed her experience with PTSD and her desire for violent sex as one means of coping with the atrocities she had witnessed as a human rights reporter. Early in the essay, McClelland writes about being in Haiti. As a Haitian American, I immediately tensed and worried about what she might say. …more
Anthony Weiner, the brash congressman from New York City, resigned this past Thursday, after it was revealed that he sent photos of himself, and sexually yearning text messages, to several women. …more
Dear Dudes:
As a fellow white male, I understand how tough it is to get oneself noticed above the din of all the other white male voices out there. …more
In 2003 I was fresh out of college and interning at Ms. Magazine. I first saw Arianna Huffington at the magazine’s editorial offices, where she was holding a press conference to discuss the numerous sexual harassment charges against her gubernatorial opponent, Arnold Schwarzenegger. …more
A week ago the labor writer and activist Jonathan Tasini filed a $105-million lawsuit in United States District Court, in New York’s Southern District, against HuffPost’s new owner AOL Inc., and HuffPost co-founders Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, seeking to “vindicate the fundamental principle that creators of value deserve to be compensated.” …more
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle and is currently working on a novel set in Virginia prior to the Civil War. …more
A special Rumpus Note from comedian Eugene Mirman regarding a commenter at NPR: …more
(Yet Another) Rumpus Lamentation:
It’s a sunny winter day in Tucson, Arizona. There’s an event being held in the parking lot of a supermarket called Safeway. …more
In our eleventh episode of Rumpus Radio we have an in-depth interview with Marc Maron. We go deep into the roots of alternative comedy and how Marc transitioned from unable to book a show to one of the most popular and successful podcasts, a star of the new medium. And The Rumpus gives Maron some advice on how to live.
Direct download. Open in iTunes.
A few months ago, Emily Gould posted something on one of her blogs that got me choked up. She wrote about the difficult time she and her mother have been having since the publication of Gould’s memoir in essays …more
At an anti-G8 demonstration in San Francisco in 2005, police and demonstrators clashed. Josh Wolf, then 23, videotaped the whole thing. When he refused to turn over his tapes to a federal grand jury, Wolf was jailed for 226 days—longer than any journalist in U.S. history for protecting sources. …more
Two debut novels addressing – amongst other topics ripped from the Zeitgeist – the symbiotic relationship between terrorism and the media, appear this month in bookstores: …more
This winter’s Olympics have seen the usual sentimental media saturation of weepy or aw-shucks back stories on the athletes. …more
The editor of The Rumpus sits down with Anthony Ha, senior technology reporter for VentureBeat, to try and understand Foursquare and Google Buzz. …more
1. Don’t expect any warm up. Jon Stewart comes into the green room before the show and chats with you for about 3 minutes. …more
If you won’t read a newspaper on a New York City subway, where will you read it? As zeitgeist, as canary in the mine, the habits of New York subway riders signal the end of print newspapers. …more
I think we’re really at a place where it’s hard to predict the future, where governments haven’t fully realized just how much power is falling into their laps, nor have people realized how much power they stand to lose.
…more

What motivates bloggers? They care. It’s as simple as that. To a lot of journalists that comes as a shock, because for many (not all) it’s just a job, and it’s a job they’ve been doing many years, and they’re jaded. …more
I have been thinking a lot about funny women.
I’m going to tell you what’s good before I tell you what’s very, very bad. …more
A couple of weeks ago a Huffington Post blogger suggested a system for paying Huffington Post bloggers. Michelle Haimoff isn’t suggesting paying everyone, but creating a series of categories and giving a bonus to the top performers. Not enough to live on, but something to “wet their beak,” as the Godfather would say.
We asked C. Max Magee, Eve Batey, and Richard Nash to respond to Haimoff’s suggestions. …more

An HTMLGIANT/Rumpus Joint Publication …more
Meet Next Issue Media: a newsstand tablet app that will allow you to read multiple magazines from a five major publishers all in one place.
The app will start out with 32 titles–including big names like the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Time, Elle, Wired, and Fortune, but hopes to gain more. An unlimited subscription of all monthly magazines costs $10, and a subscription including weeklies costs $15. The app is only available for Android tablets for now, but Next Issue is working on a version for the iPad. Next Issue is still figuring out how exactly revenue, circulation or advertising will work. But the “experiment” might be much needed for magazine publishers, whose digital circulations are increasing at nominal rates.
In an interview at the New Statesmen, photojournalist Don McCullin reveals his thoughts on image fatigue, his age, religious convictions, and voting habits.
“Where I grew up, most of the people gravitated to becoming criminals. I was surrounded by criminal elements and violence and things like that. And all the boys, they notched up quite a few years in prison, some of them for armed robbery, even murder. It was difficult to swim in that kind of pool without the infectious kind of necessity to prove yourself. And you had to prove yourself by fighting, stealing or doing something outrageous like armed robbery . . . So, you know, I grew up in an impossible place for me to graduate to where I am now.”
More on McCullin’s work can be found here, here, and he can be heard here.
Rumpus bud Josh Bearman tells the tale of the Baghdad Country Club. You can preview the story before scooping it up at The Atavist and check out an excerpt here.
“Welcome to a place where even beer runs are a matter of life and death. As the Iraq War draws to an official close, Joshuah Bearman tells the funny and poignant story of the real-life Baghdad Country Club, a bar in the Green Zone during the conflict’s bloodiest years. Against all odds, its proprietors struggle to keep their raucous watering hole safe and well-stocked as the insurgency rages outside.”
The New York Times has published a fascinating (and heartbreaking) three-part examination of the life and death of professional hockey player/enforcer Derek Boogaard.
From childhood dreams to devastating addiction and brain damage, reporter John Branch’s bloody but beautiful profile of “The Boogeyman” is not to be missed.
So apparently Siri’s (the new iPhone software) inability to direct women to an abortion clinicis just an *accidental* glitch.
This ridiculous anti-piracy video (which compares bootlegging digital media to child labor & drug trafficking) is basically Reefer Madness, 2011.
Google’s revenue this year is more than the GDP of the 28 smallest countries combined… and other interesting tidbits.
Bacteria-powered lights. Bacteria-powered lights!!!
This software can tell you how dramatically a photo has been digitally altered. The editors of fashion magazines are shaking in their boots.
Apparently your printer could be hacked and set on fire.
Facebook’s about to go public.
The British Library just opened its online archive of over 300 years of newspapers. Awesome.
If you look at one internet video today, it should be this inflatable soft undulating robot.
Americans are oftentimes painted as ethnocentric and unaware of global issues, and this interesting photo, comparing cover images of Time Magazine for U.S. residents versus the rest of the world, isn’t helping.
Apple now owns several porn domains that could potentially be affiliated with the company’s trademarks. Somehow I doubt they’ll be making their own iPhone porn.
The US public is willing to accept experts’ consensus on climate change, for the most part… sadly, most of the public just doesn’t know what the consensus is.
Maybe I need this analog turntable for watching animated GIFS, yes?
“Gawker Media chief Nick Denton told All Things D this morning that Fleshbot ‘Just hadn’t fit for a long long time’ but that he held onto the property ‘because [he was] slow to realize the inevitable.’”
First of all, that’s what she said. Secondly, Fleshbot’s for sale!

The horrifying crisis unfolding at Penn State reminds us, yet again, of the carelessness of language used when we write about sexual violence.
In an AP article printed in the New York Times the headline reads, “2 Top Officials Step Down Amid Penn State Sex Scandal.” In countless other articles across far too many publications, journalists have also used the phrase “sex scandal” to refer to Penn State’s former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, allegedly raping and otherwise sexually abusing at least eight young boys.
A sex scandal is when, for example, a politician has an extramarital affair with a young female intern or when an evangelist preacher has an extramarital affair with a young masseur or another politician has a history of visiting escorts. In any such situation, there is (consensual) sex involved and the circumstances within which that sex was had are scandalous.
When we are talking about rape, sexual abuse, or sexual assault, and/or when these terrible acts of sexual violence occur between adults and children, we are talking about scandals of sexual violence. They are rape scandals, sexual abuse scandals, or sexual assault scandals but they are not sex scandals. Sex is consensual. Rape, sexual abuse, and sexual assault, as well as violent sexual acts forced upon children by adults are not consensual. …more
“I’ll know it when I see it. That was Jobs’s credo, and until he saw it his perfectionism kept him on edge.”
Malcolm Gladwell examines (what be believes to be) “the real genius of Steve Jobs.”
Should the FCC carry the Emergency Broadcast System over to social networks? Common sense says yes.
It’s easy to forget the Internet actually comes from somewhere, namely data centers like these.
This “flirtatious” dress changes the transparency of its fabric based on the heart rate of the wearer.
It’s November, but let’s hunt for Easter eggs. Google Easter eggs, that is.
The government thinks it can track anyone using GPS 24/7 without a warrant… here’s hoping the Supreme Court says differently.
Republic Wireless unveils a new, contract-free $19/month cell plan that relies heavily on existing WiFi networks… AWESOME.
British computer whizzes begin a cutting-edge computing project… oh wait, no, they’re building a 1830′s Babbage analytical engine.
Wired is now releasing its images under Creative Commons licenses, which is rad… but reopens the debate on exactly what “some rights reserved” means.
An adhesive inspired by geckos can support the full weight of a grown man… walking up walls, here we come!
Julian Assange lost his appeal to British courts and is facing extradition to Sweden.
Hactivism fail: Even Anonymous won’t take on the Mexican cartels.
Playing video games makes you more creative.
Don’t worry about the toilet flusher … gas pump handles are way more bacteria-laden & disgusting.
“Back in the seventies, feminists touted the slogan ‘the personal is political,’ arguing that women had been trained to dismiss their own struggles as personal matters with no greater meaning. If women could share stories, they would find patterns. They could be allies instead of rivals.”
NY Mag studies how blogging has helped feminism.
NYPD reportedly telling drunks to “take it to Zuccotti.”
Some banks are renouncing their plan to charge debit cards.
Winter is coming… and also #OccupyWallStreet has “custom made bicycle generators that charge batteries.”
Not only did the protesters’ permit application get ignored by the city, but police brought in bulldozers to break up Occupy Richmond.
“OccupyHarlem: ‘Occupy Wall Street Is Not A White Thing’”
#OccupyVeterans is growing.
#OWS has a lawyer, and he’s applied to trademark the name of the movement.
“Author Steve Almond shows Marc that writers can be just as tortured and self-doubting as comedians. The two of them discuss the highs and lows of a writer’s creative process.”
Marc Maron, Rumpus friend (who has been interviewed on Rumpus Radio), features Rumpus columnist Steve Almond in his latest WTF Podcast. Steve Almond’s segment starts around 24 minutes in.
A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star, right? Well that’s what New York Times book reviewer Glen Duncan thinks.
In his Sunday Book Review of Colson Whitehead’s complex new zombie novel, Zone One, Duncan sets the parallel between dating porn stars and what he initially perceives as slumming in genre fiction, and lets the rest of the review ride on the back of this comparison. While he’s busy offending sex workers, he also speculates that readers attracted to the story for its post-apocalyptic zombie tale will encounter so many big words as to be morally affronted. Duncan praises the book and comes around to the idea of intellectually stimulating genre fiction, but never quite comes around to the idea of sex workers as intellectually stimulating people, concluding of his imaginary couple only that, “they look pretty good together.”
The piece came to our attention via a witty retort by Savvy stripper and staff writer over at Tits and Sass, Bubbles (whose thoughts on this issue you can read here):
Samsung now sells more smartphones than Apple.
A new anti-piracy bill would give the DOJ the power to shut down websites permanently. Scary.
You can now look at the interior of (public) buildings with Google Street View.
It’s sad that he’s dead and all, but Steve Jobs might not be the best role model.
Patent lawyers have turned their sights on social networking sites.
Edible spray paint. I don’t trust it.