MISCmedia by Clark Humphrey » Blog Archive RANDOM LINKS FOR 7/24/13

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RANDOM LINKS FOR 7/24/13

July 23rd, 2013 by Clark Humphrey

via capitolhillseattle.com

Bauhaus Kunst & Koffee, one of the many businesses being “disrupted” by Pike/Pine’s mega-development boom, has its official gallows-humor “wrecking ball” T shirt.
As we may have mentioned here before, our supposed “progressive” town has aÂ worse gender pay gap than the nation as a whole.
Did Microsoft really waste nearly $1 billion on theÂ Surface RT tablet, or should at least part of that be considered R&D/marketing expense to be carried over into future models?
Microsoft has also quietly shut down the product/service once known as WebTV.
Meanwhile, the end of Barnes & Noble’sÂ Nook Color tablet shouldn’t be seen as foreboding the end of B&N as a whole.
A Calif. tax-planning firm put Seattle as theÂ #2 city for startup companies.
And a Forbes.comÂ “contributor” placed Seattle on a list of world cities with the mostÂ patent applications per population.
Pando Daily’s Sarah Lacy, quoting an anonymous publishing-biz source, insists Amazon is “going to kill” the traditional book industry. Lacy places the blame on book-biz malpractices, such as putting big bucks into celebrity titles instead of the sacred literary midlist that “book people” always whine about. Sorry but no.Â Snooki’s “memoir” will not kill publishing. Just as previous decades’ celebrity books didn’t.Â And neither will Amazon. It needs a variety of suppliers, just as all “media channels” do.
Seattle’s firstÂ dedicated bike lanes are now operational.
Are SeattleitesÂ “snobbish” when they talk about not wanting to have, or be around, children?
Our own Bill Nye made #16 on a list of the 22Â “All Time Hottest Hunks of PBS.” Bob (Magic of Oil Painting) Ross didn’t even make the list.
Meanwhile, a PBS YouTube “channel” is home to a serious discussion on the supposedly radical “gender bending” aspects ofÂ BMO (pronounced “Beemo”),Â a character on Cartoon Network’sÂ Adventure Time. Here comes the “but-duh” part: BMO is an anthropomorphic talking computer, aÂ machine. Machines don’t usually have genders.
IsÂ Sears being driven into the ground by a CEO who likesÂ Ayn Rand’s theories too much?

One Response

Art Marriott AKA "ArtFart" writes:
July 24th, 201312:20 pmat

One of the comments submitted to Krugman’s piece about Sears rather accurately points out the similarity to the way Steve Ballmer runs Microsoft.

As to the “Max Headroom” analogy to Sears’ “phantom” CEO: I used to work for a company that was under a mandate from its absentee owners to downsize even though they still had an official “no-layoff” policy. In such a situation, management doesn’t have many alternatives other than to introduce irritating elements into the workplace, hoping people (hopefully the ones you can best do without) will leave. At one point, the CEO appeared in a “motivational” video, transformed into “Max Headroom”, imploring employees to “G-g-g-g-g-g-GO!!!!”. Quite a few of us did–out the door to pursue other opportunities.