The Grand Inquisitor

2015 posts
The Grand Inquisitor is plotting against you.

Our Favorite Occupy Wall Street Protestor

Yesterday Achilles and I spent the day following Occupy Wall Street. At the end of the day, we ran into this guy. This is Jeffery Marx from Brooklyn, New York. He was part of the OWS group that had been staying in Zuccotti Park. We caught him in front of the Brooklyn Bridge talking about Mayor Mike Bloomberg and why he is participating in OWS. He is a an articulate guy and says some really smart things, but we actually just like him because after a long day of serious political discussion and conflict with the police, he was funny and snarky. Here are his comments on OWS.

 

 

 

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A Brief History of Crasstalk

OK, maybe it didn’t go down like that. It actually started with a casual conversation on Gawker about starting a blog so the Gawker commenters could have a little place of their own to write and amuse one and other.

Bots: So how did Crass come about? Here’s how I remember it.

Back in late 2010, there was a general sense among the denizens of #crosstalk that Gawker was starting to feel like a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop. Any sort of weirdo could stiop by at 2:30 a.m. and poop on the floor before hitting the road again. Around that same time, Nick Denton gave an interview to some magazine (I can’t even remember which one at this point) where he described the burden of entertaining Gawker’s “self-aggrandizing” regulars.

So a few of us started thinking about what would happen if we started our own site. Wouldn’t it be neat if we could write our own blog posts about stuff we cared about instead of merely responding to Richard and Moyland and HamNo all day?

First, there was the Tumblr. However, Botswana Meat Commission FC soon realized the Tumblr was for dirty hipsters and he decided to launch a proper website. He just needed a name. Continue reading

Friday Open Thread

Hello Crasstalk, hope you have an exciting weekend planned. Reminder: Monday is the one year anniversary of Crasstalk. If you want to submit an article for our celebration, please get it into the pending queue by Saturday at midnight. Notice I extended the deadline? Don’t say I don’t love you. Anyway, bring your A game so we can have a really great party. Now here is something to kick off your day. Continue reading