Haiti: "Stop Them Before They Shock Again"

Inside FB

Fascinating interview with an anonymous employee, here (thanks, Ben!) As you know, they track everything you do and save it forever, regardless of any deletions you may think you've made.

I also note that, taking this employee's lowest estimate of the number of active users and her highest estimate of the number of servers, there are 27,500 users per server. She also says an in-progress re-coding of the site is expected to "reduce our CPU usage on our servers by 80%."

I realize FB has expenses other than the servers themselves, but I'm still not clear why a FB-like facility owned by users and accessed for a relatively small subscription fee should be expected to remain economically infeasible forever.

"While There May Be Complacency on Wall St., . . .

uptown . . . the only question is, when is the next crisis going to happen," says Nobel-winning Joseph Stiglitz.



(Thanks, girl gone mad! And to DeSwiss, who adds this quote:

America is run largely by and for about 5,000 people who are actively supported by 50,000 beavers eager to take their places. I arrive at this figure this way: maybe 2,500 megacorporation executives, 500 politicians, lobbyists and Congressional committee chairmen, 500 investment bankers, 500 partners in major accounting firms, 500 labor brokers. If you don't like my figures, make up your own.

– Robert Townsend, former head of Avis)

"blind.ness"

by WaxFactory looks cool:



More at Brooklyn Rail.

C.A.R.T.E.L.

Feeling like your little artists' collective could use some "too-big-to-fail"?

Many years in the making, New York City-based 16 Beaver Group announced today the initiation of a complex multiyear process that will produce the largest global merger of arts and politics collectives known to date. Critics immediately attacked the move as being, “out of touch with recent developments in art and economics.” But the group argued at their press conference that the new mega-art collective, which will use the acronym C.A.R.T.E.L. (the group did not specify what each letter stands for), will soon be ready to compete within the current monopolistic anti-marketplace. C.A.R.T.E.L. plans to bring to a politicized cultural community a significant share of the benefits enjoyed by the recent slew of mega-mergers, also known as rescues, such as the few and well subsidized surviving banks that have risen from the ashes of the economic meltdown.

How about "Conglomerated ARTists of Every Leaning"? At any rate, count me in.

More at Art Work (via Temporary Services; see previous post here). To join C.A.R.T.E.L., e-mail cartel@16beavergroup.org.

And b.t.w. . . .

Happy New Year, and thank you all for coming! Please feel free to send suggestions!

(In case you were dying to know, there have now been 829 purportedly high-quality posts.)

Privacy Compressed: "The New Normal" at Diverseworks

. . . in Houston, opening Fri., Jan. 5, includes some of my favorite artists, such as Eyebeam R & D, Jonah Peretti & Michael Frumin, Harrell Fletcher, Guthrie Lonergan, Jill Magid, and Trevor Paglen. Curated by Michael Connor; more at the-new-normal and at Diverseworks. Also, on YouTube, there's video of a panel discussion of the show here and of Connor discussing the show here.

Facebook Status of a Young Muslim:

"YOU TAKE MY WATER, BURN MY OLIVE TREES, DESTROY MY HOUSE, TAKE MY JOB, STEAL MY LAND, IMPRISON MY FATHER, KILL MY MOTHER, BOMB MY COUNTRY, STARVE US ALL, HUMILIATE US ALL . . . BUT I AM TO BLAME: I SHOT A ROCKET BACK!"

Note the 1st item (you take my water).

(Thanks, Mari333!)