Events

Chris Hughes responds to accusations that he killed The New Republic: At the heart of the conflict of the past few days is a divergent view on how the New Republic — and journalism more broadly — will survive. In one view, it is a “public trust” and not a business. It is something greater than a commercial enterprise, ineffable, an ideal that cannot be touched. Financially, it would be a charity. There is much experimentation in nonprofit journalism – ProPublica and the Texas Tribune are proving the...

Business travel sometimes presents contradictions. Here are mine today: Good news: I got assigned to do a technical diligence in Paris. Bad news: We'll be at the airport for two days, with only one opportunity to see the city. Good news: Hey, it's an all-expense-paid trip to Europe. Bad news: In coach, which is really grim on an overnight flight such as one from Chicago to Paris. Good news: There's a 9am flight to London and the Eurostar to get me to Paris the next morning. Bad news: I have to get up at...

Psy's surreal Gangnam Style video got so many views on YouTube that Google had to change their database schema to count them: YouTube said the video - its most watched ever - has been viewed more than 2,147,483,647 times. It has now changed the maximum view limit to 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, or more than nine quintillion. YouTube's counter previously used a 32-bit integer, which is a unit used to represent data in computer architecture. This means the maximum possible views it could count was...

After Jack Conte got an ass-kicking by the Internet this week, he and Nataly Dawn posted two links to their defenders, who I think are correct: As a tour manager, I have settled shows and handled finances for bands big and small. Some of these bands played the smallest and shittiest venues in the country, and some of them played arenas and the main stage at large festivals. I have slept on people's couches and had bands with big enough budgets to put their crew up at the Ritz. I have read a lot of the...

One of my favorite publications, the century-old New Republic, died today: There was a telling moment at the New Republic’s centennial celebration last month in the stately Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium. New CEO Guy Vidra, recently appointed by owner (and Facebook co-founder) Chris Hughes, took the podium to discuss the magazine’s challenges and opportunities in a digital age, just as any modern-day media mogul would do. When he referenced the name of The New Republic’s top editor, however, he...

Well, little time today. Since I'll be on an airplane for 8 hours on Sunday, I will probably have time to catch up on these: The Chicago Tribune's John Kass doesn't like the Episode 7 lightsaber. Chicago Public Media's Jim DeRogatis doesn't like Pomplamoose. Cranky Flier wonders why American Airlines doesn't like profit-sharing. I will probably really like Microsoft Azure DocumentDB partitioning (but it's a pretty esoteric topic for most Daily Parker readers). Your solid-state drive (SSD) probably likes...

We finished our business here in Baton Rouge last night, so I'm already chilling at the airport waiting for my (delayed) flight to Dallas. Had I taken the flight I booked originally, I'd get to our final Messiah rehearsal late, or missed it entirely. That would be bad. The other problem with spending all day in meetings or airplanes yesterday: my FitBit numbers sucked. I went 27 days in a row getting more than 10,000 steps, and almost 40 days getting more than 9,000, but only got 7,500 yesterday. Pfah....

December 2014 opened the coldest in 118 years in Chicago, but all the forecasts point to a huge warm-up over the next two weeks: he scope of the warming being predicted is really something. The global scope of the milder than normal temps is evident from the depiction at the top of this post. The Weather Service’s GFS model, Environment Canada’s GEM ensemble and the European Center’s deterministic and ensemble model are all on board with the onset of a significantly warmer than normal pattern. This...

Pomplamoose front-man and Patreon CEO Jack Conte published a blog post last week discussing the economics of touring musicians. I commented here, both as a fan of Conte's and as a supporter of Pomplamoose (including through Patreon). Within a few days, music critic Bob Lefsetz accused Conte of fabricating his figures, and also of concealing his role with Patreon. Master click-bater Mark Teo piled on, Conte responded, and it's now a standard Internet catfight. I don't see the ethical problem here. I do...

The modern Daily Parker started in November 2005. Since then I've posted 4,376 entries, averaging 1.32 per day—though, for the past 48 straight months, I've averaged more than 1.32 per day, with pretty high consistency: The green line is the 12-month moving average, which I have (alas) brought down most of this year. The red line is the raw mean, which, because of mathematics, has gone up every month since December 2010. Is there a point to all this? Nope. Not at all. It's just a testament to a habit of...