Disqus - Latest Comments for JonPincus

Re: Monday Open Thread

JonPincus — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:44:32 -0000

The Boston Globe article has more information on this.

Re: App Development Request: The Web’s Opinion About One Topic

JonPincus — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:35:01 -0000

Yes, this would be an awesome app! As well as being able to see the entire conversation, in a perfect world it'd also be great to highlight and summarize the most interesting comments.

JS-Kit Echo looks interesting, and I'll certainly check it out.

jon

Re: Thursday Open Thread

JonPincus — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:05:50 -0000

I noticed this too, and in fact I tweeted something similar to @BlackEngineer.

Much as I hate to say anything good about the military-industrial complex, one possible explanation for this is that process of getting large DoD/NASA contracts tends to make a company more diverse -- something to do with the procurement process, or a cultural norm that's somehow established. [It might be true for government contracts more broadly, not just DoD/NASA.]

jon

Re: Thursday Open Thread

JonPincus — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:57:50 -0000

BlackEngineer's posted their results for Most Admired Companies for Minority Professionals. Here's the top 10:

1 Lockheed Martin
2 Northrop Grumman
3 Booz-Allen Hamilton
4 NASA
5 The Raytheon Company
6 IBM
7 The Boeing Company
8 Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)
9 General Dynamics
10 Microsoft Corporation

Back when I was at Microsoft, I proposed that we set a corporate goal of getting to #1 on the various lists of "best places for X to work" -- blacks, Latinos, women, people with disabilities, ... I mean, a top-10 ranking is great, and certainly something to be proud of, but when it comes to other things that the company really cares about, they're not satisfied until they get to #1. Why should this be any different? Yeah, yeah, I know, it's hard. That doesn't make it less important.

Unsurprisingly, very few of the (predominantly-white, predominantly-male) executives saw things my way. Funny how that works.

jon

Re: Thursday Open Thread

JonPincus — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:51:19 -0000

Apologies if somebody's posted other links to this, but Sarah Burris has posted videos for Van Jones Talks Green Jobs & Green Technology at 80MS on Future Majority. Definitely worth checking out!

Re: Did Twitter ignore user feedback?

JonPincus — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:27:45 -0000

Thanks for the link! Great catch on the post from last year with feedback that Twitter appears to have forgotten about ...

As for their short-term fix, it seems really problematic. Not only will it irritate the users who had previously chosen not to see these replies, there's the weird additional case of "that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon". This means that if I want a message to show up as "in reply to", it'll be invisible to everybody else. On the other hand, if I want my other followers to have the chance to see it, they -- and the person I'm replying to -- don't have any easy way to discover what it's a reply to.

Weird. It's almost like they don't understand how people use Twitter for conversations.

jon

Re: Quote of the Day

JonPincus — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:08:33 -0000

I pretty much agree with Renee here (although I also agree that John could be more supportive while still stating his disagreement). And I have no idea what discussions the two of them have had ... for all I know, perhaps Meghan has asked him to emphasize the distance to highlight generational perspective differences.

The article Liss linked to is a really interesting example of bias. McCain's original quote leads with love and respect, appreciation for her ideas and what this brings to the party, and then talks about disagreement in neutral terms. At least two-thirds of it is positive. The lede and the headline only emphasize the disagreement. BREAKING: Father doesn't always agree with daughter. Why not a lede like "Sen McCain thinks his daughter's ideas, which include opening up a debate about marriage equality and other issues, are good for the Republican party, although has some disagreements with her on specific issues"?

jon

Re: More Amazon Fuckery

JonPincus — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:33:53 -0000

Yeah, what Manjax said. I have a link list, as well as and some background on internet mobs up at #amazonfail and we're not done yet.

The way i see it, a diverse alliance of margainlized communities (queers, feminists, people with disabilities, authors, indie bookstores) stood up against their voices getting silenced, and kicked off some extraordinarily good discussion/awareness of systemic biases of software, the risks of centralized ownership, and the DRM in the Kindle. People are now working on a wiki and exploring what's needed for an effective boycott (in a way that helps independent bookstores and doesn't hurt authors). This seems like a good outcome to me and although nobody's quite sure what's next, virtually everybody I talk to sees it as a huge [albeit partial] success. Then again I'm in the "righteously indignant" camp in case that wasn't clear.

Strangely though many people take the view articulated by Meg Pickard, head of communities and user experience for Guardian UK in Spreading like wildfire: Twitter, Amazon and the social media mob and Clay Shirky's The failure of #amazonfail. It was a rush to judgment, an Internet mob, a failure.

I disagree on a lot of levels. My replies to them at the time are here. And specifically I really don't think it was a mob. It could have turned into one; it didn't, and I think it was already clear substantially before Clay's essay went up that it wouldn't.

And really, what damage has been done? Their stock took a quick dip, and then recovered. Big deal.

The potential consequences for Amazon are clear: they could lose a huge chunk of business. The longer they wait to apologize and introduce meaningful reforms, the more business will trickle away. And at some point there will be an alternate solution that includes small publishers, authors, and independent bookstores as stakeholders, and that treats lesbians, gays, bis, transgendered people, queers, feminists, people with disabilities, customers -- and everybody else -- with respect. At which point Amazon has a real problem.

A mob won't be able to accomplish that, but a bunch of smart people working together very well might ... especially if they've come together in an exciting, successful, high-profile and fun action.

We shall see.

Amazon still hasn't apologized, by the way. Looks like they need to reread PD's How to Fuck Up.

jon

Re: The Hampton Roads, Virginia #TeaParty From A Black Conservative Who Was There

JonPincus — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:11:50 -0000

Yeah, what rikyrah said ... thanks, D., for the first-hand account.

And thanks also to JJP for posting it!

Re: Ask The President. A New Project To Open Up The White House

JonPincus — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:16:04 -0000

I really like the way you used the link there, RobM.

You might be better off submtting one or two of these as separate questions -- most of the ones I've seen are one-question-per-submission. The site says each person can submit up to five ... but I don't know if that's five per week, five per press conference, five per year or what so probably best not to burn them all up now.

Everybody else, RobM's question is here -- the green thumbs-up is a yes vote.

Re: Ask The President. A New Project To Open Up The White House

JonPincus — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:12:09 -0000

Conserv1, have you posted this? I really like the unifying way it's phrased ...

Re: Ask The President. A New Project To Open Up The White House

JonPincus — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:31:28 -0000

Great questions ... you should really think about submitting them!

Jack and Jill Politics is in good company as sponsors. According to Katrina vanden Heuvel in Huffpo:

The Nation, The Washington Times, Personal Democracy Forum, Change.org, Democrats.com, Care2.com, Citizens for Civil Discourse, Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist), Professor Larry Lessig; Professor Hugh Hewitt (HughHewitt.com); The Field Blog; Jack and Jill Politics Blog; Culture Kitchen Blog and the Smart Mobs blog, among others.

How come Craig and Hugh get their names twice? But I digress.

I'm helping Ask the President with Twitter outreach and looking at diversity issues too. My latest update, hot off the Wordpress, is here</>.

Re: Your Resident Humorless Feminist Strikes Again

JonPincus — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:11:02 -0000

So, FWIW and since you asked, I would discourage it. It's not my style, anyway.

Thanks for the feedback, Liss ... yeah, you're right, it was a bad idea. Good thing I asked :-)

It was Paul who originally invited me to guest at Open Left for the series that, IIRC, was coordinated by Paul and Jon.

samanthab and Aviva also helped coordinate ... Paul was the only Open Left front-pager to be actively involved.

Re: Your Resident Humorless Feminist Strikes Again

JonPincus — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:53:15 -0000

btw OpenLeft has been pushing Sirota for the MSNBC 10:30 p.m. slot. there's even a FB group! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=53711796165

it's sooooo tempting to join, post this link, and kick off a discussion thread ... and then unjoin, of course, so i don't inflate his count.

thoughts?

Re: Your Resident Humorless Feminist Strikes Again

JonPincus — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:16:40 -0000

Yeah, what PortlyDyke said.

@Wiggles: Who wants to talk to a wall?

Yeah really, Here's a thread from May where I challenged Sirota's assertion that The Uprising included a lot of women. Gee guess what, when I counted chapters and pages focused on women, it was overwhelmingly male. Not only didn't he reply in the thread, he stopped answering my Facbook messages. What a loser.

Re: G20 Summit Update - We’re In, Almost

JonPincus — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:56:51 -0000

everything crossed here too ...

it’s not really about me, is it? This is a new age for African-Americans to be in places where frankly, we haven’t been invited nor particularly welcome in the past.

true. AND it's about you; you're not just part of the bigger movement, you're individually and collectively among the leaders.

Re: Help Send JJP to London to Cover the G20!

JonPincus — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:18:28 -0000

done

Re: SCOTUS Section 2 Ruling

JonPincus — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:32:05 -0000

Thanks for the update ... SCOTUSblog has a good analysis. Here's the first couple paragraphs:

Two starkly differing views of the contemporary role of race in American politics emerged in full view in the Supreme Court’s wide-ranging new ruling on federal voting rights law. Both views start with the same premise, but end up in markedly different conclusions. Again, the Court is seen to be as deeply divided on the way out of the racial bind as the entire country may still be.

The opinion deals with an issue that has been considered so difficult that the Court has left it open repeatedly, including five times in the past quarter-century. The array of opinons finally resolving the question is further evidence of its complexity, both as a core legal question and as a wider cultural inquiry....

Re: Making Auto-Follow a Little Easier by Removing the DMs

JonPincus — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:43:48 -0000

Thanks!!!!!!!!

Good decision.

jon

Re: Women’s History Month Daily Thread

JonPincus — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:22:39 -0000

Great idea! I'll be looking forward to the daily threads ...

Re: Let’s Talk About Race: Cenk and Baratunde - Part 2

JonPincus — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:42:01 -0000

agreed. "privilege in action."

Re: The Virtual Pub Is Open

JonPincus — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:47:16 -0000

hi all. I've been down with a cold all week ... a shot of Theraflu, please, with a tussitive chaser.

and now, off to the laundromat. shouldn't there be an exemption for that when I'm sick? but it's better than sleeping on icky sheets ... so make the tussitve a double, and I'll take it to go.

have a great weekend, all!

Re: Jack Back On MSNBC Talking About The Cartoon

JonPincus — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:38:05 -0000

OK, I'll bite. Did Cenk basically say "Sure it's offensive etc. but in light of Eric Holder's saying that we're a nation of cowards about racism, we need to be careful not to call it racism -- because people will react badly and not be willing to engage"?

If so, I'm not convinced that's the point Holder ways trying to make.

Other than that, good job turning it to the positive opportunity, Jack. And thanks for posting so quickly!

Re: Color of Change New York Post Protest - 75,000 people speak out

JonPincus — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:57:37 -0000

Y'know, I was just thinking ... MySpace ... hmmm ...

Facebook sure reacted quickly earlier this week when 90,000 people joined a protest group there about their new Terms of Service -- after their first "nothing to worry about here" response, they restored the old ones within 48 hours. What about trying the same strategy on MySpace?

jon

Re: Black Folks Take Action on New York Post Chimp Cartoon

JonPincus — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:24:31 -0000

right, and for anybody who's been paying attention to the Afrosphere it's not at all surprising. however the NY Post probably hasn't.