Dear comic/sci-fi/fantasy/etc. convention organizers:
You may have read about the galactic frack-up at New York Comic-Con last week, in which hundreds of convention-goers learned that NYCC was posting hideously uncreative, gratuitously gleeful promotional tweets from their personal Twitter accounts. As a convention organizer yourself, these tweets and the subsequently trollful complaints may have filled up your feed. Nightmares of similar PR disasters may have (should have) have kept your heart racing as you tried to sleep.
NYCC attendees contacted us to ask what can be done about it, and that's why I entreat you today to think thoroughly through future attempts to lever technology against the fandoms, particularly when it comes to linking convention badges to personal data,...
Lifestyle
Dear fellow INFJ,
Considering we are the rarest of the 16 personality types, I feel it is important we connect and communicate as much as possible. We are complex people, to say the very least. Of course everyone is complex, but the INFJ personality adds extra layers of complexity that are not so easily seen by an outsider.
We appear reserved and calm on the surface, when in fact, we have deeply chaotic and rich inner worlds. We rarely show these worlds to other people. We are fiercely guarded individuals, and it can take years for someone to get to know us.
Others may not understand why we like to plan things out or why we do not like things to change spontaneously. Our outer world must remain orderly because our moods are up and down and everywhere.
It is not easy being an...
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Dear Rich Ross, new President of the Discovery Channel,
I was excited to learn about your commitment to no longer show fake documentaries on the Discovery Channel. These shows have been incredibly damaging not only to Discovery’s goals of being the “number one non-fiction media company in the world” by”telling compelling and accurate stories,” but to public understanding of science and conservation. In recent years, the Discovery Channel has tried hard to actively muddle the fact that these documentaries were fake, including hiding vague disclaimers at the very end. I’ve spoken to hundreds of schoolchildren about sharks, and every time someone asks me about megalodon or mermaids. Viewers believed that they were real, and your channel actively bragged about the fact that people...
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Dear Professors Miller and Myers,
Talk is cheap. Let's see your numbers.
In your recent post on and earlier reviews of my book The Edge of Evolution you toss out a lot of words, but no calculations. You downplay FRS Nicholas White's straightforward estimate that -- considering the number of cells per malaria patient (a trillion), times the number of ill people over the years (billions), divided by the number of independent events (fewer than ten) -- the development of chloroquine-resistance in malaria is an event of probability about 1 in 1020 malaria-cell replications. Okay, if you don't like that, what's your estimate? Let's see your numbers.
The malaria literature shows strong population genetics evidence for fewer than ten independent origins of resistance. The riddle is, why...
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Dear Mr. Krach,
On November 20th, I saw that DocuSign blatantly copied HelloSign’s interface.
We published a blog post about it and Fast Company called you out as well in an article titled, “$230 Million Still Can’t Buy A Startup Original Design?”
Three weeks later, you are still using our designs in what you call an A/B test. This means that it wasn’t some aberrant product manager or designer who snuck in a copy of our interface.
This tells us that DocuSign endorses copying as a legitimate business practice. By not changing your interface, DocuSign has demonstrated that this is willful and deliberate.
While you were spending time copying our interface, you were also busy suing SkySlope for allegedly imitating a single icon of yours. How do you reconcile this?
We could...
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Dear Sigourney:
Please don’t feel sorry for me and the other millions of childfree women across the globe. I’m responding to your recent remarks (link is external) of pity for Katherine Hepburn. I find it sad that you feel the need to express your pity for Ms. Hepburn, a long-deceased actress who can’t even speak out in protest of your rude comments that she missed out on the joy of motherhood. You went further to proclaim that your role as a mom was so much more fulfilling than that of actress, and that your life would not have been as wonderful had you not had a child.
But wait, Sigourney, have you considered the possibility that a childfree woman might just view it differently? When I see what so many women go through as mothers, I often feel great relief that I by chance did not...
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Dear Club Owner,
If you are going to run a music venue, then there are a few things you need to do to make it a success for everyone involved:
1. Pay the musicians! Just like you have to make money to keep your venue running, bands have to make money to sustain themselves. There is equipment to pay for, fuel for the vehicles and oh yeah, they have to eat. I understand that you think all musicians are platinum selling and only play your esteemed venue on Tuesday nights for the fun of it, but the truth of the matter is that most musicians are hardworking, dedicated, passionate and well-practiced individuals who are extremely focused on their futures and their craft. Playing Tuesday night’s at the local bar/club for free just so you can sell more beer shouldn’t be tolerated by anyone....
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Dearest Students:
We write this letter in the spirit of solidarity and love. And we begin this letter with one word, one potentially problematic idea: “to be broken.” And then to ask, “what does it mean to break, to be broken?” Certainly, the events of this last week, this last month, this last semester have left many of us with broken hearts and a more general sense of brokenness: a broken justice system that facilitates impunity and the abuse of power, a broken society where the humanity of the racialized and the poor is subject to daily assaults and being disappeared, a broken world all together where the cracks reveal far too many injustices. There is much that is broken. And we recognize that in this vulnerable moment things and persons nearest and dearest to us feel all the more...
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Dear Ben:
May I ask you something? How long did you spend on BuzzFeed before deciding to invest $50m? I’m not talking of Jonah Peretti’s PowerPoint deck or spreadsheets, which, I’m sure, must be quite compelling. But did you sample the real thing, the BuzzFeed site?
And how many times a day do you log in? Please, don’t tell me it’s part of your mandatory media diet, I’ll have to struggle not to express polite disbelief.
Frankly, your investment leaves me bewildered.
Judging by your blog and your remarkable book (I energetically proselytize both), you embody a mixture of vista, courage, combining focus on details with broad systemic vision, all supported by deep hands-on experience.
In addition, you are of the generous type and I was even happier to buy two copies of your...
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Dear Science,
This is not an easy letter to write. You know I love you very much, and I've always been a huge fan of yours. But this is getting ridiculous, Science. It's 2013.
I want you to know that I am not writing this letter from the moon right now. I want you acutely aware of that fact, Science, just in case you weren't sure. I am not writing this from a robot-proof bunker deep beneath the Earth's crust, or from the captain's chair aboard my starship. This letter is being composed on my four-year-old laptop, aboard the U.S.S "my living room reclining chair."
I don't mean to pressure you, but we are way behind schedule here. Yes, I know you're working very hard, and sure, you've been doing some great things. But seriously? Where's my flying car? Where's my immortality pill,...
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