Disqus - Latest Comments for MichaelDuff

Re: PredictIt | Will the Democratic nominee mention Islam in acceptance speech?

MichaelDuff — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 23:36:43 -0000

Hillary name-checked Hamilton. Wish I could have bet on that.

Re: Ep. 316 Who Will Build the Roads?

MichaelDuff — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 00:53:35 -0000

Great reply, thank you.

Re: The Guy Fawkes Mask Is The Perfect Symbol For The Millennial Generation

MichaelDuff — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 00:53:10 -0000

The mask was reappropriated but not by Millennials per se. The symbol was redefined by Alan Moore in his V for Vendetta comic as the ultimate protest against Margaret Thatcher's England. Thus it became, weirdly enough, an anti-conservative, progressive symbol for the previous generation, and became cool again thanks to the 2005 movie. The movie made it an even more generic "anti-totalitarian" symbol and took aim at homophobes and other old-fashioned conservative stereotypes.

Then the Anonymous hackers adopted it for questionable but vaguely progressive digital protests and we were off to the races.

It's really part of that eternal paradox, progressives defining their beliefs as cool and trendy and anti-establishment, even when they are the establishment.

Re: Ep. 316 Who Will Build the Roads?

MichaelDuff — Sun, 11 Jan 2015 17:29:19 -0000

I'm always frustrated by these discussions because they seem to spend all their time on theory and avoid the hard numbers that can actually help you win an argument.

Forgive me if I haven't read Walter Block all the way through, has someone done the math on how much advertising billboard rights are worth? Do we have a solid "revenue per mile" figure that compares the revenue brought in by advertising versus road maintenance cost per mile?

Just an average or an approximation.

I know tolls are trivially easy in this day and age, and that systems like E-Z Pass are good real-world examples, but I need to tell my socialist relatives how roads can be paid for without any tolls at all.

I know roads in town could be established by merchants who want to help people get to their businesses, but once you raise that point the argument will instantly shift to the federal highway system, and that's the argument we need to win.

Re: iOS 8 early adoption is significantly slower than iOS 7 and even iOS 6

MichaelDuff — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 23:08:53 -0000

I want to know why South Korea's update rate is so high. Is it just a phone culture or did IOS 8 have some critical feature that's useful there?

Re: 6 takeaways from part 2 of Tim Cook’s interview with Charlie Rose

MichaelDuff — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 11:01:29 -0000

Hey I think you want to use the word erred instead of aired in the Snowden quote.

Re: A Final Note on Mark Levin

MichaelDuff — Sun, 12 Jan 2014 15:02:43 -0000

Larger issues aside, I'd encourage everyone to take comments like this with a grain of salt, before jumping on Mark Levin, or on any public figure, as a thin-skinned zealot limiting free speech.

Anyone who has ever moderated an Internet forum can tell you, commenters react passionately and personally to being banned, and you're only hearing one side of the story.

Even when you've got clearly stated terms of service, most commenters don't read them. The commenter may think they've been perfectly nice and reasonable, but could still get banned for profanity, spam, or external links.

Also don't assume Mark, or even one of his official representatives, is sitting there personally banning people. Facebook pages are usually moderated by interns or volunteers.

Re: Today in It's Funny Until it Happens to You

MichaelDuff — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:03:33 -0000

Big props for responding honestly and not getting huffy here. It's much harder to pick on people when they're polite in the face of criticism. And you've obviously on the right track.You (and Newsweek) deserve credit for having this Tumblr at all. The only thing missing is the name of the individual author at the bottom of each post.

I'm not suggesting that this blog needs to be "about you." But every post needs to be owned by a person with a name who can be identified and held responsible for what he writes.

The audience doesn't really care if this is a Newsweek blog or a Mark Coatney blog, but they get nervous when they can't match an opinion with a person. Internet audiences are skeptical of anything written anonymously under a corporate banner.

Nobody cares what "Newsweek" thinks about anything, but they might just care what Mark Coatney thinks, in the context of who you are and what you do.

I disagreed with everything in your original post, but I like the fact that you were responding honestly, like a human being, to something that affects you professionally. Ironically, you're defending Old Media in a very New Media way.

Re: Today in It's Funny Until it Happens to You

MichaelDuff — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:08:02 -0000

New Media isn't just replacing one information delivery system with another. It's exposing fundamental flaws in the way journalists interact with the public -- mainly by forcing journalists to interact and take responsibility for what they say as individuals, not protected by some abstract institution.

And that's the first problem with this Tumblr. The only reason we know the name Mark Coatney is because you showed up in the comments. Your name isn't on this post and I can't find it on the blog.

Who was actually disagreeing with Rachel up there? Was Newsweek objecting to her points? Does this abstract corporate entity have feelings we can hurt?

Everything about old media is engineered to keep people at a distance. Editorial voice, he-said/she-said reporting, faux objectivity, omniscient 3rd-person narratives, and wading through layers of editors and gatekeepers when you try to correct writers who get things wrong.

If you don't want to change the way you do business, you'll need to convince readers that the old way really is better. I think readers have been sick of the old way for a long time, they just didn't have an alternative until now.

Personal brands aren't just about ego, they're about openness and accountability, two things that the old system has been running from for a long time.

Re: Also, Keith Gessen?

MichaelDuff — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:51:27 -0000

So is there a category for "private intellectual?"

An intellectual for hire perhaps?

What's the hourly rate for a good think?

I think Jonathan Ames has already made this movie.

Re: editor's response

MichaelDuff — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:12:36 -0000

You know, on most of the Internet, that "straight answer" bit would seem subtle.

I'm curious about this issue of credibility from outside things because I'm genuinely pissed off about the civil rights abuses that this group has to suffer, but I feel like being who I am and living where I live, I'll sound like an asshole even when I'm trying to be supportive.

Like a typical Southern racist trying to overcompensate by telling people how much I love Tiger Woods...

Is there a right way to do this?

Re: editor's response

MichaelDuff — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:58:12 -0000

I'd like to skip over all the substantive discussion here and ask a tangent question.

I think the core issue here, the issue that made the piece worthy of ridicule in the first place, is that the article was perceived as condescending to gays.

Can anyone think of an essay written about a subculture from a point of view outside that subculture that was NOT condescending or simplistic in some way?

Is there a straight de Tocqueville out there somewhere, capable of writing brilliant essays about gay people without offending them?

Is there a hopelessly suburban white guy out there somewhere capable of writing brilliant, insightful essays about life as an American minority?

Is it possible for anyone to write authoritatively and intelligently about a subculture from outside that subculture?

How much of the backlash here is due to the specifics of the essay and how much is about the unspoken conviction that you have to be part of something before you can write about it?

I originally started writing this in the giant Awl post about the email exchange but figured I would have a better chance of getting a straight answer here.

P.S. Didn't mean to sound like I was judging the original piece here. I haven't read it yet. I'm just responding to the perception of it I saw at The Awl.

Re: d.c. restaurants

MichaelDuff — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:56:45 -0000

Keith, I also have a long list of suggestions on how you could change your personality to better serve Me.

I'll just blog about it.

Re: vainglorious

MichaelDuff — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:10:59 -0000

I was thinking, wow, I need to write a really thorough and interesting review and explain this show to rednecks who don't have cable.

Now you've done it for me so I will simply link to you.

The supernatural elements are right on the edge of being tacky. So close, I'm worried that the show will either go X-Files or X-Men on us before the season is up.

I know Alan Ball is better than that, I just hope HE knows he's better than that...

Re: cvxn

MichaelDuff — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:51:15 -0000

Subtle!

Re: thank the russians

MichaelDuff — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:41:17 -0000

Don't sweat it. You inspired a column, and that trumps everything. Getting me over writer's block is so valuable, I'm going to fabricate three more comical misunderstandings in your blog for next week.

Re: thank the russians

MichaelDuff — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:27:08 -0000

Sorry to hear that. I thought you guys were friends or at least friendly or I wouldn't have tried the joke.

Take care.

Re: thank the russians

MichaelDuff — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:16:46 -0000

Any time...

Re: thank the russians

MichaelDuff — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:12:54 -0000

What's up with this, Keith? My program says you're one of the good guys.

Anyway, I love your stuff so I'm going to give you one more chance to finance my Balk & Choire Show sitcom pilot.

This premise is comedy gold. I just need the right cast. Is Bronson Pinchot dead?

Re: thank the russians

MichaelDuff — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:58:19 -0000

So my attempt to look cool and make an inside joke about people I don't actually know has failed so utterly that you don't even know what I'm talking about?

I was trying to connect two things that maybe I shouldn't have taken for granted.

First, we were talking about wild, improbable attack strategies from the Russians. That led me to wonder if there's one guy or small team of guys whose job it is to go to all our old missile silos and make sure that our nukes still work.

Second, as an obsessive reader of Balk's blog, I was referring to Balk's tendency to assign increasingly wild and random story ideas to Choire, just to see if he can pull it off.

This has become a delightful running joke, perhaps just to me, as Choire's article topics seemed to get progressively stranger and more bizarre.

It started to look like Balk was going beyond the expected article topics and starting to assign stories based on anything that popped into his head.

He started with normal stuff like, "Why don't you write an Emmys roundup?" and would eventually end with things like, "Whatever happened to that guy from Full House?" and "How do bubble gum machines work?"

And no matter how crazy the idea was, Choire always did his sincere best. This has become a fragmented blog sitcom in my head, with Choire going to progressively weirder and shittier locations in an attempt to get quotes.

Maybe I'm the only one who's noticed this, or maybe I've lost my mind and crossed into the realm of fan fiction.

I guess I should stick to Stargate slash.

Re: thank the russians

MichaelDuff — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:39:33 -0000

Is there a guy in a jeep somewhere, driving all over the country to make sure our nukes still work? Probably cruel of me to post the idea here. Now Balk will make Choire find the guy.

Re: cvxn

MichaelDuff — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:47:22 -0000

So I finally get my first Gawker link, get excited like a fat southern girl at prom, nervous but a bit excited about the degradation that awaits me in the comment section and I get...nothing.

I mean, 15 comments about pants? Where did all my people go? Mr. Hippity and CCG and Elijah and...

It's like I finally had my graduation party and all my friends were out of town. I expected the Gawker comment section to be cruel but I was unprepared for this level of LAME!

Somebody tore the living heart out of that community. Now, who do we know who might have a motive for something like that?

*ominous dramatic glare*

Re: Too Much Awesome. - soupsoup: Last night’s New Rules. The second half...

MichaelDuff — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 06:24:47 -0000

The phrase "corporate welfare" needs to be resurrected and returned prominently to prime time news coverage.

Re: The Doree Chronicles

MichaelDuff — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:19:40 -0000

Because they all quit?

Re: cvxn

MichaelDuff — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:42:25 -0000

I don't know which phrase I like more:

"brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn"

"It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag."