Sillybean

New college-educated NY street food vendors are doing Sharks vs. Jets with the old hot dog guys. “The owners of Street Sweets both left six-figure jobs to build their business, and the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck is driven by Doug Quint, a doctoral candidate in bassoon performance at CUNY. ‘The whole Brooklyn Philharmonic season was canceled,” he said. “I have to get through the summer somehow.”‘ (via Shaima, who needs to get a blog so I can credit her for this stuff)

Why does Flash hog memory and crash your browser a lot? Because Adobe doesn’t care, and thinks you should be using a Flash blocker in browsers other than IE, although admittedly it “Will still crash, but slower cycle.” I have to agree with Mr. Welch: “Where the FUCK does Adobe find these nitwits, and WHY are they allowed to interact with the public?” Between Adobe and Microsoft, I’m really feeling the need to punch a developer in the nose right now.

‘You’re not a director. You’re a girl.’

Buffy vs. Edward — sublimely brilliant mashup video.

Mythbusting the Canadian healthcare system — compare this view to ours in light of the delightful practice of recission, as described by insurance CEOs in Washington this week.

equality isn’t actually a subject for debate

The A-Z Killing Spree, verses A-D and E-G “A is for Alfie, whose life was Abridged,/When pickled in Aspic and stuffed in the fridge.” Delightful! The Twitter grapevine tells me the author has just sold a novel; can’t wait to see it. (ETA: H-K, L-N, O-Q, R-T, U-W, and X-Z.)

Seth Godin on textbooks — “This industry deserves to die.” Couldn’t agree more.

The Big Picture covers the post-election riots in Iran

CNN Debates Twitter’s Relevance While Ignoring Important World Events Being Reported on Twitter — “In what could be viewed as a watershed moment for social networking and the internet in general, here you have an oppressive regime with little tolerance for dissent doing everything in its power to stymie an uprising and failing miserably because of the ability of individuals to bypass the state-controlled media outlets and communicate with each another directly. To think that the very social networking tools conceived as intangible ideas by young Americans just a few short years ago in dorm rooms and basements and garages have now come to fruition as something tangible with the power to influence the course of events halfway across the world—Well, it’s kind of breathtaking.”

Overcoming Your Cooking Obstacles

The field guide to Ewoks — “After several cycles of exhaustive fieldwork, we can unequivocally report that Ewoks are not the naïve companionable canopy dwellers initially reported by Alliance military sources, but rather a singularly violent, cunning species, driven by perpetual internecine combat and territory acquisition.”

Boy in the Bubble — Josh Friedman’s first blog post since Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was canceled. It’s… wow. “Losing your show is more like a surprise divorce where you get served papers in the morning and your (ex)wife is fucking Human Target by three in the afternoon using the same time slot your child was conceived in and also where she did that one thing that one time on your birthday.”

‘Now, it’s like the Stone Age, it’s like a Muslim country here [...] This is the most backward law, it is not for a civilized country. If this was Iran, Iraq, I wouldn’t be surprised. But to pass this law in the United States, what is this government doing?’ (via Sarah Monette)

Gwenda Bond’s article for Publishers Weekly on the origins of urban fantasy and paranormal romance is a wonderful antidote to the NY Times profile of Charlaine Harris that claimed Stephenie Meyer made the genre what it is today. What arrant nonsense that was! Bond does a lovely job, mentioning Sherrilyn Kenyon, Marjorie Liu, and Harris along with lots of newer authors — and pointing out that Buffy was a turning point for the younger generation.