I have a lot of affinity for Newsweek. I first started reading it when I was around 12. Slowly I grew from reading one substanceless entertainment article per issue to reading the meatier, real news articles to reading entire issues cover to cover. I started to remember the names of the people who worked there: Fareed Zakaria, Michael Isikoff, Jonathan Alter, George Will, Sally Quinn, Steven Levy. I don’t remember ever really reading the news on the internet, or watching cable news during that time; Newsweek was pretty much my primary news source. In the days and weeks after September 11th, the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the 2004 presidential election… Newsweek was the place I turned to for answers. If not for Newsweek I doubt I would’ve become a news junkie, an armchair politico, someone with Opinions on Things.

Eventually I got smarter and came to recognize the magazine’s many faults, and as I went off to college I stopped being a regular reader. And yet, like Mad Magazine, I still wish it well. I’ll check it out every once in a while at the library, or in bookstores, or in airport newsstands. I even liked the widely-panned 2009 redesign. Over the past two years, it’s been distressing to see this humble print magazine flailing around, just trying to survive in a dying medium during an economic recession, hemorrhaging millions of dollars each year, trying desperately to figure out this “web” thing as it’s sold off by its parent corporation, seeing its staffers flee the sinking ship, being ridiculed by its many critics, before finally grabbing ahold on Tina Brown in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. How did Newsweek get into this mess? Can it ever get out of it? I just want Newsweek to get to a point of fiscal stability, to become profitable, and, if it’s not too much trouble, to become worth reading again.

And then I see garbage like this, and I realize it deserves all the flak it gets, if not more.

Yahoo! Kids (née Yahooligans!) is terrible

Here are the search results for “phineas and ferb,” the name of a popular Disney cartoon:

Are you freakin kidding me

p>So, Google+ looks interesting. They’ve clearly put a lot of thought into these things. The “Circles” thing sounds boss for people like me who like putting people into lists. Facebook has “lists” like that except they’ve been sorta phasing it out and hiding it in drop down lists because no one used it, which annoys me. I don’t get the “Sparks” thing, isn’t that just Google Reader? And what is Google Buzz’s place in this whole thing?

Over on Regular Google, they appear to be getting rid of the colorful icons that I love so much in favor of some unGooglely red & gray jazz:

current	redesign

Is there no end to their tyranny?

remind me what we’re doing again?

jesus chloe get a freakin pen

for the last time: im gonna dive into the ocean, save bin ladens brain, and implant it into a robot body so america has a constant threat, and i can go back to torturin people & stuff

i don’t know about this jack i rather like fighting greenhouse gases

it’s really calming and i feel like i’m actually doing something you know? back when we were bombing terrorists all we did was create new generations of terrorists… it was really bummin me out

dammit chloe stfu and open another socket, im about to put on the wetsuit

heh heh… id like to see jeff try to shoot an undestructable robot… thatll show him… maybe then hell stop bragging about shooting osama… then mom will see who the true hero is… and ill finally get the love and affection i never got as a kid…

uh i’m still on the line jack

6:23:57
6:23:58
6:23:59
6:24:00

• Big Oil
• Big Tobacco
• Big Govt.
• Big Box
• Big Hollywood
• Big Pharma
• Big Water
• Big Milk
• Big Corn
• Big Mac
• Big Gulp
• Big Dog
• Big Boy

Wow, eight years. I remember back when I was writing the fifth anniversary post, and now here we are. If this website were a child he’d (yes, my site would be a boy, deal with it) be starting third grade in the fall. Or maybe fourth grade, because he’d probably have skipped a grade, on account of being so smart #whoa #crazy

 

Cowboys & Aliens is paying Michael Kupperman royalties, right?

Well, that was a scary forty-five minutes… I was trying to renew my hosting and the thing wouldn’t let me use my dang card

But it’s all good now, I think

Last night, there was a hockey game and a political debate happening AT THE SAME TIME, so I attempted to liveblog both

5:26 PM: what a cheap shot

5:35 PM: the man from massachusetts makes a good point

6:03 PM: too many men

6:13 PM: blatant pizza advertising

6:48 PM: nice deflection

6:49 PM: these guys are like twins

Accidentally looked at a tech blog again