2 posts have been made private….
Posted: June 17, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »as I would like to use snippets from the last two, as they relate to health care, elsewhere. For money.
If you were linked here, well, you’re out of luck.
Week of the 15 – 19: where I try to function in the worst news week ever and am snubbed for some reason (probably because of my parts)
Posted: April 22, 2013 Filed under: Health, Internet, Internet Vigilantism, Media, Women Leave a comment »
The Enigma of the Oracle, Giorgio de Chirico, 1910
The past week was an incredibly rough news week. I don’t know why I need to write that. Everyone in the US knows what I am talking about.
I knew I had become hypersensitive to the news by Thursday morning and while it’s true bad things happen all over the world every single day, the Boston Marathon bombing set the tone for the rest of the week as one of fear and sadness. I cried over many headlines and news tidbits on every day of the week until Friday, when I decided to read a tenth of the news I usually do. I was hiding under a rock, unwilling to read anything about anything, especially if it had something to do with the Boston marathon bombing.
Add to that me trying to juggle three freelance gigs for the first time. I didn’t do a particularly good job of it, but I’ve been worse during other national tragedies. Stupid super empathy, you’re good for nothing but bouts of anger and tears in times like these. Well, enough about my weird brain chemistry, here’s a recap of this week and a preview of the upcoming one:
On Monday, my Guardian piece about Anonymous and it’s mainstream shift/ now established expertise at PR was published, and it did well throughout the day (and week). I say that based off comments and retweets. I was really surprised no one in the UK or US picked out the best part of it though: that the President of United States fears Anonymous. That great factoid is courtesy of Gabriella Coleman. The Globe and Mail picked up the article though, and so did the Raw Story, which was cool.
Monday also saw me chatting with Jaime Cochran about weev and his legacy, over whiskey on the rocks. I am trying to write a good personal profile on weev for VICE, explaining the man behind the bad boy myth, perhaps even evoke some sympathy for him. I have been talking to various friends for a couple weeks now, and I have my own experiences with him over these last few years, but it wasn’t until tonight (Sunday) that I got the interview with a source I’d been looking for. I think I can finally finish that piece tomorrow, which is great, because maybe Motherboard is annoyed with me now. But they need to pay me – the student loan people have begun to hound me with phone calls again. (Because I am a simple person that loves alliteration, I made Motherboard’s primary day Monday.) Read the rest of this entry »
This is a status update! (because fuck Facebook)
Posted: April 15, 2013 Filed under: Women Leave a comment »Because what is this personal blog for, right? I hardly use this damn thing but here goes:
I took a really long vacation - well, more like an adventure – in India. For all of February. I learned quite a few things about myself (more remembering and reflecting than anything – yeah, depression’s a bitch like that) so I know I will be processing the experience for months to come. It was a kick in the gut. No, really. One night, after 48 hours of being sick and unable to hold down water or food, I had a fever dream of such crisp details.
So I returned to the States determined to be a master of my fate, in a way that I couldn’t be if say, I was born in India.
- I started blogging for VICE’s tech blog Motherboard (a place I like much better than Slate for many reasons) after a piece I wrote about this group of online “trolls and hackers” known as the Rustle League. I think VICE is a good home for my contrarian and weird Internet stuff, and we’ll see what happens there.
- A piece I wrote about labiaplasty was published on Thought Catalog, and it made both my mate and my mother mad. They didn’t understand the value of the piece at first, objecting to its personal nature. I ended up telling my mom I don’t want to live in a world where you can’t talk freely about your body as a woman (aka, an abstinence only education nightmare where women all get plastic surgery) and that convinced her. I had originally written it for VICE which was why there is all those curse words in it. (Ha! ) I need more non-tech venues for my writing. I’ve been tech-exclusive for about 2 and a half years now (half of my writing career!), and the stay-at-home lifestyle sometimes exacerbates my mental health issues.
- My third piece for the Guardian’s op-ed section Comment Is Free should be up any time today. Yes, also very exciting. My first piece went up in January. I want to be an Evgeny Morozov/Nick Carr type (I think my blog subhead of multiple years communicates that desire, but maybe not), but we will see what happens there too.
- I am still at ReadWrite despite it being a constant sea of changes. Now an old boss was recently hired there, so, I am feeling more comfortable there now than when I first returned from my trip.
- Last week I started writing for a content start-up focused on the business aspects of web video, Video Ink. I am excited about this for a few reasons, even if it is a pretty boring job and feels like a job more than any of the other places I am writing for, because 1) it takes the digital space seriously and understands just how disruptive it is 2) out of a core team of 4 people, only one is male.
Now for some (potentially) bad news!
I am 28 now and I have yet to finish any of my books. AHHHHHHH. The one I wanted to finish first was a bit memoir-like: former Soviet Satellite refugee version of Amy Tan mixed with Obama’s Dreams of my Father done in the Collected Works of Billy the Kid style. It touches on having a single teen for a mom, among other darker themes. It’s heavy, but I know I can make it funny. My mother, however, broke down while we were preparing Easter dinner: if I publish what I want to about being a child of domestic violence, it would bring shame to her and her name. She is embarrassed. I should have known, as her and I only began having open discussions of what kind of man my birth father really was, just a few years ago. After he died, actually. But … I think that is also part of the problem – the lack of conversation. She didn’t even tell her second husband, or her last boyfriend.
I don’t know what to do here, as I feel like writing about my experiences is within my right as it was also my trauma - it is part of my coping process – and I actually think my book would make the world a better place. On the other hand, it is very much her life too. Maybe I can suck it up and finish my science fiction novel, but I am very inspired to work on this particular project. RIGHT NOW. But I can’t finish it if she won’t talk to me any more about it, can I?
Nick Offerman is in with the Weird YouTube crowd
Posted: March 14, 2013 Filed under: Film, Internet, Marketing, Strange, Techology, Women, YouTube Leave a comment »
OH MY
Fruzs has style!?
Posted: January 16, 2013 Filed under: Business, Fashion, Style Leave a comment »The other day I had asked folks to nominate me for a Shorty Award in blogging/journalism/YouTube whatever, and instead, two males nominated me for fashion.
Okay. Nothing in any other category.
Thanks fellas, I guess??? But then I thought about it, and realized, hey I do have a sense of style! And I do write about fashion in a weird way!
So I am rolling with it, and launching a fashion Tumblr, Fuck Yeah Thrift Fashion! today. Maybe it will be an outfit of the day too, I don’t know yet.
Because being poor doesn’t mean you have to dress like it.
Asher_Wolf quits Twitter, probably due to sexism
Posted: January 13, 2013 Filed under: Techology, Women | Tags: 9GAG, hackers, internet pranksters, misogyny, sexism, Twitter 5 Comments »
Sexism drove Asher_Wolf away from Cryptoparty and it looks like Twitter as well.
Last night she “ragequit” due to something related to hackers posing as “bronies” attacking her website? That is what the rumors on Twitter are saying, at least. I write “bronies” because Internet pranksters love disguising as them (or anyone they hate, really. The #cutforbieber folks, for instance, tried to blame it on 9GAG in various comment section of YouTube vlogs on the controversy).
The time stamp for the brony attack is from December, but the intention behind whatever drove the people to harass Asher_Wolf is still the same.
Her last tweet, according to Topsy, was “offline.”
While I had yet to attend a cryptoparty – it was on my agenda – I relied on her Twitter stream to keep me updated on all acts of Internet activism. She was in Australia, and her timing jived with my late night Internet wanderings when insomnia kicked in.
I get her point of not having to stick around and take abuse, but why quit Twitter when it was her site that was disturbed, not her news distribution service?
I feel like I am being punished.
1:30 pm Update:
On secondary inspection, it was probably the trolls that came out following her Aaron Swartz post.
1/16, 2:14am Update:
Asher_wolf is back on Twitter, no explanation for the hiatus.
Michelle Obama’s Tracy Reese Dress Sells Out in Less then 24 hours…
Posted: January 6, 2013 Filed under: Fashion, Politics | Tags: Best of Luxe, Democratic National Convention, Dress, Fashion, Michelle Obama, ModCloth, Pink Wallpaper Combo Frock, Tracy Reese 1 Comment »…on ModCloth, the online retailer and my guilty pleasure. On the Tracy Reese website all sizes but 4, 6 and 12 had sold out by 3:30 am the early morning after they went on sale. By 10:45 pm however, it looks like Reese ordered a new batch of dresses for production as now the dress is available in all sizes from 0 -14.
ModCloth, however, is still out of stock.
The official name of the dress, according to the Tracy Reese website is “Pink Wallpaper Combo Frock.” Really boring, and borderline horrible of a name, if I must say.
ModCloth went with “Best of Luxe” which is infinitely better. Pink Wallpaper Combo Frock may be more practical of a name but it lacks imagination and means nothing to me, a woman who would want to buy this dress. Well, actually, it does say something: it says you are wearing a combination of wallpaper as a frock. “Best of Luxe” does not evoke “you are wearing wallpaper.”
Luxe, a word I had not seen before, means “the condition of being elegantly sumptuous.”
Best of Luxe is a rayon/silk mixture though, so not really the best of “being elegantly sumptuous.” Despite the exaggeration of luxury, the ModCloth name implies that while wearing the dress, you then become the best at being elegantly sumptuous. Which again, is better than wearing wallpaper.
The addition of rayon into the fabric, which diminishes the luxury, is clearly an economic choice. Read the rest of this entry »
The city of Chicago, as seen through an airplane window
Posted: December 16, 2012 Filed under: Art 1 Comment »I don’t know how my mate @foundphotons takes as good photos from airplane windows as he does.
My photos of the airplane wing, for instance, always suck.
His, on the other hand, look like this. And he’s on his cellphone, going light on the Instagram filters:
Perhaps I am being the biased and proud mate here, but then look at how the frame is divided into three parts here in this next photo:
That is no accident.
My mate is a photo wizard. A magic man of light and composition.
Most inappropriate PR pitch ever, connecting John Lennon movie “Genius” with Sandy Hook Elementary shooting
Posted: December 14, 2012 Filed under: Business, Crime, Marketing 2 Comments »Okay, so I am just cutting and pasting this in full.
Something tells me John Lennon would not approve.
Fruzsina,
Los Angeles, CA, December 14. Those who murder all have one thing in common, says the producer of new movie on the death of the Beatles’ John Lennon.
Based on initial reports, a masked gunman murdered more than 25 people—including 18 children—at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday morning. Two guns were found near the shooter, who was discovered dead inside a classroom, according to law enforcement officials and media reports. Witnesses said the shooter was wearing a mask but his identity was still unknown. This is the second deadliest school shooting since the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre claimed the lives of 32 people.
Just two days before the Connecticut shooting, a lone gunman had entered a crowded mall in Portland, Oregon, killing two people and wounding a 15-year-old girl, before taking his own life. In what appeared to be a random rampage, police noted that the killer, Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, had no significant criminal history. His mother said that she had “no understanding or explanation” for what he did and that it was “so out of his character.” According to a statement issued by the shooter’s high school, “The motive for such a horrific act is likely to remain a mystery to us all.”
Most experts are as baffled as those who knew Roberts. However, Ray Comfort, the producer of a new movie called “Genius,” believes he knows why people are willing to take innocent life. Comfort said, “His friends say that Roberts was a nice guy and that he lost his job and broke up with his girlfriend. No doubt the Connecticut killer suffered some sort of rejection also. But those things have happened to millions and they haven’t gone out and murdered people.” The best-selling author and TV co-host added, “‘Genius’ points to what every murderer has in common, something the ‘experts’ either don’t recognize or avoid talking about. But it’s there.” In the movie, which is about John Lennon and why he was killed, 15 youths were asked if they would murder for money, and those who said yes all had one thing in common. “Something tragic is happening in our country,” Comfort noted, “and most people don’t know what it is. Those who want to understand why these tragedies are occurring—and are likely to continue to occur—should watch the free movie.”
Nearly 170,000 people have viewed the 34-minute movie since its release on YouTube a week ago. Watch the trailer to see those who would murder for money: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW2lhWfa28g
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