Link Salad, the Stand-Alone Complex Edition
-- The Man Who Made Millions Off the Afghan War - Matthieu Aikins, The New Yorker, Mar. 7, 2016
"Millions of dollars were being paid by the U.S. government to private companies, but the intermediary was typically a low-level military officer, contractor, or civil servant. The temptation to take part in the profiteering was substantial. According to a study published in May, 2015, by the Center for Public Integrity, at least a hundred and fifteen U.S. service members who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have been convicted of bribery, theft, and contract-rigging charges since 2005."
-- #Riot - Bill Wasik, Wired, Dec. 16, 2012
"It helped, too, that the medium was BlackBerry Messenger, a private system in which “broadcasting” messages-sending them to one’s entire address book-can be done for free, with a single command. Unlike in the US, where BlackBerrys are seen as strictly a white-collar accessory, teens and twentysomethings in the UK have embraced the platform wholeheartedly, with 37 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds using the devices nationwide; the percentage is probably much higher in urban areas like London. From early on in the rioting, BBM messages were pinging around among the participants and their friends, who were using the service for everything from sharing photos to coordinating locations. Contemplating the corporate-grade security and mass communication of the platform, Mike Butcher, a prominent British blogger who serves as a digital adviser to the London mayor, wryly remarked that BBM had become the “thug’s Gutenberg press.”"
-- The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin - Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Buzzfeed, Feb. 29, 2016
"Decades after Baldwin’s death in 1987, what I found left behind in his house was something similar to what I saw as we waded through my grandfather’s house after it had burned down. In both houses, I found mail strewn in dirt piles in rooms that no longer had doors or windowpanes, and entryways nailed over to prevent trespassers like us. In each case, someone had clearly forced entry in order to drink beer. In Baldwin’s house, the scattered, empty beer cans were recent additions, as were the construction postings from a company tasked with tearing it down. So that nothing would remain. No remembrance of the past. In both places there was not even the sense that a great man had once lived there."
"Millions of dollars were being paid by the U.S. government to private companies, but the intermediary was typically a low-level military officer, contractor, or civil servant. The temptation to take part in the profiteering was substantial. According to a study published in May, 2015, by the Center for Public Integrity, at least a hundred and fifteen U.S. service members who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have been convicted of bribery, theft, and contract-rigging charges since 2005."
-- #Riot - Bill Wasik, Wired, Dec. 16, 2012
"It helped, too, that the medium was BlackBerry Messenger, a private system in which “broadcasting” messages-sending them to one’s entire address book-can be done for free, with a single command. Unlike in the US, where BlackBerrys are seen as strictly a white-collar accessory, teens and twentysomethings in the UK have embraced the platform wholeheartedly, with 37 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds using the devices nationwide; the percentage is probably much higher in urban areas like London. From early on in the rioting, BBM messages were pinging around among the participants and their friends, who were using the service for everything from sharing photos to coordinating locations. Contemplating the corporate-grade security and mass communication of the platform, Mike Butcher, a prominent British blogger who serves as a digital adviser to the London mayor, wryly remarked that BBM had become the “thug’s Gutenberg press.”"
-- The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin - Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Buzzfeed, Feb. 29, 2016
"Decades after Baldwin’s death in 1987, what I found left behind in his house was something similar to what I saw as we waded through my grandfather’s house after it had burned down. In both houses, I found mail strewn in dirt piles in rooms that no longer had doors or windowpanes, and entryways nailed over to prevent trespassers like us. In each case, someone had clearly forced entry in order to drink beer. In Baldwin’s house, the scattered, empty beer cans were recent additions, as were the construction postings from a company tasked with tearing it down. So that nothing would remain. No remembrance of the past. In both places there was not even the sense that a great man had once lived there."