I’m really hoping that the title will just grab a couple extra hits for the blog. The only hot thing about them is that it’s 77 in my tiny part of the world and I’m being a whiner about it. I had a lot to say about the links this week so I’ll post them after the jump to save on space. After the jump, Colin Cowherd and the least safe city in America, YouTube’s redesign, Famous Last Tweets, Eduardo Saverin, and the Mighty Ducks

There’s this running joke from friend of The Compass, Chris (Paul and James’ roommate) who once described Buffalo as statistically, the 4th worst city in America. We all jumped over him for it because it was impossible to prove and was an absurd statement. And a couple of us hail from the Buffalo area, and you know how that goes. ANYWAYS, earlier this week, Awful Announcing (which is a great blog for anyone who watches sports but hates announcers) posted about Colin Cowherd’s rant that New Orleans is, statistically, the least safe city in America. The article goes on to destroy Cowherd for even attempting at making the claim, not only because of NO not being unsafe, but that it has been hosting sporting events for decades. I would love to discuss this with people because I feel it’s one area where society needs to improve. I’ll save it for a later time but the basics is that people (generally on tv or radio) make these outlandish statements to gain viewers, listeners, hits (HOT LINKS!!), ratings, in some sort of claim to relevancy. But the biggest problem is that people confuse relevancy with quality. But again, that’s for another time. And honestly, that’s probably a little farther down the list of societal problems.

Speaking of hits and followers, The Daily Dot posted a little blurb about YouTube’s redesign and how some of it’s more prominent users are unhappy with it. I honestly didn’t notice the change because I don’t run a channel and I’m brought to YouTube almost exclusively through links. After the dozens of redesigns that Facebook has gone through since I joined in 2006 and growing tired of being upset with them after the 5th one, I accept that websites redesign all the time. If prominent websites don’t update they run the risk of losing relevance and becoming stale which is much more terrible than it sounds in the online world and this modern age of freshness and hip factor. But there seems to be a larger issue here because YouTube’s new set up is to be more personalized for the user, another chic direction. This in turn has dropped the hits/views for even the most popular YouTubers, some of which, depend on ad revenue from YouTube as a living. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes and to find out if it was a money grab by Google/YouTube or not. 

The Daily Dot also posted a link to an artist’s new project “Famous Last Tweets.” It’s pretty early in the site’s existence but it’s an interesting thing to look at considering that Twitter/Facebook can be the last words for anyone, not just celebrities. I remember back in 2010 when Declan Sullivan died after his camera tower collapsed from a gust of wind, filming a Notre Dame football practice. One of the last things he tweeted was “Gusts of wind up to 60 mph. Well today will be fun at work. I guess I’ve lived long enough.” 

There was a ton of talk about Facebook’s IPO last week, but the most interesting story was about Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook. He renounced his US citizenship to avoid a higher tax rate after Facebook went public. A law was quickly proposed to stop this in the future (although I’m unaware of anything done yet to stop/prevent JP Morgan from losing another $3 billion). The Slate article outlines the potential problems this law could pose, including deterring future thinkers, investors, and money makers from even becoming US citizens in the first place. Here’s another article about the details surrounding the issue from Yahoo.

Finally, here’s an article from the AV Club discussing on the nostalgic impact of the Mighty Ducks series and if the movies hold up. I loved these movies as a kid and haven’t watched them recently to nitpick them about how absurd they actually are. I think I came across D3 one day and wasn’t too bothered by it. I know a lot of people condemn it for the ridiculous hockey scenes, but those are awesome. Connie was a prostitute on Mad Men one time and that REALLY shocked the 8 year old me, though. 

And here are three songs:

New Pornographers- Moves — I forgot how great this video was. And I forgot how great the album was. You should also remind yourself of these things.

Curtis Mayfield- Move On Up — I’ll be honest, I first heard parts of this song from Kanye West, but this original is stellar. And funky.

Against Me!- The Disco Before the Breakdown — After finding the article about the lead singer, I went on a huge Against Me! kick. They have some tremendous stuff and I really need to track down their albums so I don’t have to keep playing YouTube playlists. This song showcases some of the stuff you may not hear in their more recent outputs.

—Tim