christmasgorilla - { chris muscarella }

"We freak out about the Trillions of dollars in debt our country faces. What about the TRILLION..."

Mon, 14 May 2012 05:55:00 -0400

“We freak out about the Trillions of dollars in debt our country faces. What about the TRILLION DOLLARs plus in debt college kids are facing ?

The point of the numbers is that getting a student loan is easy. Too easy.

You know who knows that the money is easy better than anyone ? The schools that are taking that student loan money in tuition. Which is exactly why they have no problems raising costs for tuition each and every year.

Why wouldn’t they act in the same manner as real estate agents acted during the housing bubble? Raise prices and easy money will be there to pay your price. Good business, right ? Until its not.

The President has introduced programs that try to reward schools that don’t raise tuition and costs. They won’t work. Right now there is a never ending supply of buyers. Students who can’t get jobs or who think that by going to college they enhance their chances to get a job. Its the collegiate equivalent of flipping houses. You borrow as much money as you can for the best school you can get into and afford and then you “flip” that education for the great job you are going to get when you graduate.

Except those great jobs aren’t always there. I don’t think any college kid took on tens of thousands of dollars in debt with the expectation they would get a job working for minimum wage against tips.”

- Mark Cuban, The Coming Meltdown in College Education

"When people talk of gift economies, often they talk about them as a replacement for the market..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 04:45:00 -0400

“When people talk of gift economies, often they talk about them as a replacement for the market economy. But gift economies and market economies have operated side-by-side for much of history. Child care, until recently, was exclusively a gift economy — neighbors would babysit one another’s kids. The creative arts and science have historically been gift economies, and to a large extent they still are. And today, free, open-source software sits alongside ad-supported and paid software.

To me, the most interesting examples of gift economies are when they exist alongside money economies within the same organization. I think this points to where the world is headed. Craigslist doesn’t charge for any of its services other than job postings. Google places advertisements on a small fraction of its result pages. Both companies understand that gifting most of their services leads to short-term costs, but long-term viability. But to think about it this way doesn’t do justice to the real story.

The real story is that their founders thought of the gift first, and the means of supporting it second.”

- Sep Kamvar, The Farmer & Farmer

Food is culture and one of the amazing things about...

Thu, 10 May 2012 06:34:00 -0400

Zeina Talhouni with her Mushakhan Rolls

Reimagined Mansaf

Mother's Mother Crowd

Preparing a modern Beet Shamandar

Food is culture and one of the amazing things about participating in food culture through our work at Kitchensurfing is getting a front-row seat to how that culture is changing around the world.

One of the things we’re starting to see a lot of is extremely talented chefs that learn classical technique, work in a fancy restaurant for a bit, but ultimately want to take their craft and apply it to traditional food that is near and dear to them. In Berlin, we were connected to a pop up restaurant with revolving chefs that is based on exactly that. Mother’s Mother is run by Kavita Meelu and here’s how she described it:

Mother’s Mother is a dinner club that celebrates Mother’s and Grandmother’s food from around the world. Every meal is created by a new chef and pays hommage to one single Mother.

Zeina Talhouni was the Mother’s Mother chef for the Kitchensurfing team in Berlin. Zeina grew up in the UK, became a high-powered lawyer working in Tokyo, and decided to leave the corporate world for culinary school in Paris. She’s in a rotation at a 3-star Michelin restaurant, but for her Mother’s Mother dinner, she paid homage to her Jordanian grandmother by re-imagining classic dishes and lightening them up. It was delicious, it wasn’t precious, it was the future.

Berlin is pretty great, but I’m missing some pretty...

Fri, 04 May 2012 17:58:00 -0400

Berlin is pretty great, but I’m missing some pretty fantastic things happening back at the home office.

thecheekychef:

Artichoke soup amuse w/ fried Sicilian lentils & currants @kitchensurfing #thecheekychef (Taken with Instagram at Kitchensurfing HQ)

"Alan had a culturally rich perspective just waiting to be harvested,” Mr. Rabbito said. “I don’t..."

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:47:00 -0400

““Alan had a culturally rich perspective just waiting to be harvested,” Mr. Rabbito said. “I don’t like the phrase ‘reinvent yourself.’ I think what really happened is that when Alan got to England, whatever he found there allowed him to discover who he already was.””

- Alan Feuer, The Secret Life of a Society Man

People have always gone about reinventing themselves in the mode that they think is true to them—and sometimes that brings up a lot of questions about their authenticity as people. This is a great story of that, but my real interest in reading this kind of thing is to think about culture more generally. It used to be that if you were into a sub-genre of culture (like being a Punk), you dressed that way and advertised yourself—partly as a way of telling the world to fuck off and partly as a way of finding your own people.

The web has changed all that and the idea of identity—that you can participate in a dozen fringe cultures through the web while leading a completely homogenous existence to the casual observer. There’s something amazing and sad about it at the same time.

Eli “Paperboy” Reed - Come and Get It This is the...

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:20:55 -0400

Eli “Paperboy” Reed - Come and Get It

This is the new Brooklyn. via stephen and phillip

On eating your own dog food as an entrepreneur: having an...

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:52:00 -0400

On eating your own dog food as an entrepreneur: having an amazing Kitchensurfing chef cook a Greek Easter brunch for you and ten friends with the following menu:

Baked Eggs with Greek Salsa and Caper Berries
Leek and Feta Pie, Prassopita
Orange-Fennel Country Greek Sausage
Fresh Berry Salad with Mint

Best part: getting to hang out for many hours and not get kicked out of a restaurant, having a price per head that’s cheaper than going out to brunch, and having almost no clean up.

The Wind Map, a beautiful project showing wind speed across the...

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 08:05:08 -0400

The Wind Map, a beautiful project showing wind speed across the United States, built by Hint.fm (Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg).

This makes me want to take my sailing to the sky.

"There are two kinds of creation myths: those where life arises out of the mud, and those where life..."

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 08:00:29 -0400

“There are two kinds of creation myths: those where life arises out of the mud, and those where life falls from the sky. In this creation myth, computers arose from the mud, and code fell from the sky.”

- George Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral

via kevin slavin

"Daylight pours through the elaborate window ironwork onto natural woods and restrained bric-a-brac...."

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:39:33 -0400

“Daylight pours through the elaborate window ironwork onto natural woods and restrained bric-a-brac. Famous young actors eat breakfast over scripts. At night, neighbors stop at tables and chat about the children. Everyone fills up on farm-to-table Northern Italian.

Rucola reflects Boerum Hill’s platonic ideal of itself; it’s full of rootsy Brooklyn good taste… and you might agree that Rucola does what a neighborhood restaurant should: make local life feel good enough that you want to live nearby.”

- Betsy Andrews, Rucola - Dining Briefs - NY Times

"Mr. Bloomberg spoke about the difficulties of leading a city into the future amid a political..."

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 19:52:39 -0400

“Mr. Bloomberg spoke about the difficulties of leading a city into the future amid a political culture that is often focused on the short term.

The mayor noted that technology, despite its benefits, can add new pitfalls to an already grueling process. “Social media is going to make it even more difficult to make long-term investments” in cities, Mr. Bloomberg said.

“We are basically having a referendum on every single thing that we do every day,” he said. “And it’s very hard for people to stand up to that and say, ‘No, no, this is what we’re going to do,’ when there’s constant criticism, and an election process that you have to look forward to and face periodically.””

- Mayor Michael Bloomberg Warns of the Pitfalls of Social Media

That leemur had a little baby that was three days old hanging on...

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:42:00 -0400

That leemur had a little baby that was three days old hanging on to its tummy. Also, the crazy thing about leemurs is how human-like their hands are—it’s like non-fat little baby hands in black gloves.

librarysciences:

Greatest life achievement to date.

Last week, I turned 30—and had a most surreal birthday. I was...

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 20:19:00 -0400

Last week, I turned 30—and had a most surreal birthday.

I was sailing in the British Virgin Islands with a bunch of people I love and we went to visit Richard Branson on Necker Island. He was more hospitable than I could have imagined and after lunch challenged our party to a Hobie Cat race—of course he recruited all the women to his boat—I was the captain of the opposing vessel. He knew his home waters and ended up four boat lengths ahead as David, Jonathan, and I figured out the boat. We came damn near seizing victory at the end with a very bold move cutting between some corral reefs and having to pull the rudders to avoid disturbing them.

The day ended in an infinity pool with champagne looking over a flock of pink flamingos in paradise while we talked about my current project, Kitchensurfing. This third decade looks to be off to a charmed start.

photo: jonathan harris

"Having good ideas is most of writing well. If you know what you’re talking about, you can say..."

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 17:04:00 -0400

“Having good ideas is most of writing well. If you know what you’re talking about, you can say it in the plainest words and you’ll be perceived as having a good style. With speaking it’s the opposite: having good ideas is an alarmingly small component of being a good speaker.”

- Paul Graham, Writing and Speaking

Apropos: TED 2012 remixed and auto-tuned—satirical.

kitchensurfing: Wow. Just wow. Yesterday, Kitchensurfing threw...

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 11:25:00 -0500

Jovi came from Montreal

Julie's Tart

Rachel had a birthday

Brian shaking

kitchensurfing:

Wow. Just wow.

Yesterday, Kitchensurfing threw a Meetup for our community. We had somewhere between fifty and sixty chefs and fifteen to twenty food photographers. Chefs brought some beautiful food for the photographers to shoot, our friend and talented mixologist—Brian Jacobs—made some great drinks, Rachel from our team had a birthday and everyone had a chance to meet the Kitchensurfing team. The positive reception was overwhelming.

Two days before the Meetup, we got a surprising email:
Hey!
To the team of kitchensurfing, I am Jovi and I live in Montreal QC. I got your invitation last week and i am making this weekend the trip to NY to attend to your very interesting gathering of people with the same interest as me. I Am staying in Montreal so i can’t prep anything to bring but i will love to come and meet you all and discuss about the idea and the expansion of this.. please notice if there is something that i can make my self useful.

At first we were shocked that someone in Canada even knew what we were doing and didn’t know how to respond. Then, we emailed Jovi so that he could come early and have a little prep space to make a dish. He made some beautiful vegetarian dishes (which is quite a trick for a Greek). We also had a chef make a pilgrimage from Delaware to participate, again no idea how they found out about us.
That kind of reception from the chef community is what’s really driving us at Kitchensurfing and it’s our mission to reciprocate in kind. To that end, Jovi told us that it’s his dream to be able to travel the world cooking for people as long as he can cover his costs. I hope we can help him do that. Beyond, that, we want to hear from chefs about their dreams. Tell us about the kind of food you want to make, tell us about the kinds of events you’d like to throw, and tell us about how you want to bring people together around food.

Chris Cornell - I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston Cover...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:44:50 -0500

Chris Cornell - I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston Cover live from SF Masonic Hall)

"Once you begin using Dropbox, you become more and more indifferent to the hardware you are using, as..."

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 09:08:00 -0500

“Once you begin using Dropbox, you become more and more indifferent to the hardware you are using, as well as the operating system on that device. Dropbox commoditizes your devices and their OS, by being your “state” system in the sky. Storing credentials and configurations of devices, and even applications are natural next steps for this company. And the further they take it, the less dependent any user becomes of the physical machine (HW and SW) that is accessing that data (and state). Imagine the number of companies, as well as the previous paradigms, this threatens.”

- Bill Gurley, Why Dropbox is Major Disruption

I was rugged in Marrakech; his name was Amor.

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:12:00 -0500

I was rugged in Marrakech; his name was Amor.

The Mullet Theory of Social Software Design

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:49:00 -0500

For several years, I’ve been using the phrase mullet theory of software design to talk about a very special kind of software: the kind where it’s all business up front, but the real party is in the back. Tumblr has always been the perfect example of this: to any random person on the web, a tumblelog looks more or less like any other blog that’s short form or otherwise (though usually prettier)—but most of the real sub-communities and fringe cultures are all jamming in the back room on the dashboard.

I think it’s my favorite mode of social software because it’s the one that combines utility the most with it’s socialness. Because of the utility, it’s not as necessary to shoe-horn users into auto-following awful things that they won’t like (think Gimme Bar vs. Pinterest). Because the social mechanics aren’t gamed, the actual value to the social pieces is much higher.

Some of the original social software on the internet was marketplaces. Ebay was dependent on an engaged network of users mutually reviewing each other to broker trust in the marketplace, though the identities of those users were often obscured and that was fine because those users would never meet face to face. These days, mutual reviews are just as important for building trust in a marketplace, but they’re often taken in wildly divergent directions. For example, Airbnb focuses heavily on real-world identity because their marketplace depends on people actually meeting in the real world. The flip side of that coin is a marketplace like the Silk Road, where the users need an identity to accrue karma in the marketplace, but it’s crucially important that the identity and the actual currency of the marketplace are obscured from real world identity because the participants are exchanging contraband products.

A while back, Chris Dixon asked Roelof Botha:

the “why now” question regarding web-based marketplaces. He said something I thought was really interesting: marketplaces depend on trust, and trust requires knowing the reputation of a prospective counterparty. Today, for the first time, you can get background information on almost any prospective counterparty by searching Google, Facebook etc. Or put more simply: we finally have an internet of people.

But that internet of people is a way of saying that we now have multiple modes of looking at identity and what we actually have is an internet of people with identities that can support real-world needing to meet in person transactions—which is a large part of commerce in the world.

Bringing that back to the mullet theory of software design: it’s a perfect way to build a marketplace. Have a very tuned funnel—it’s all business up front. But build your product around something people love and support multiple kinds of identity with a crazy rager in the back. Airbnb’s taken that torch a very short way to great effect, Etsy is doing a lot of experiments but hasn’t tied them into the core experience of their product, and Fab is doing some great things but ultimately isn’t a peer-to-peer marketplace.

And yes, that’s exactly what I’m working on—if you want to ask about it you have to use the password “Tennessee Flap.”

"A particular problem is that he [Mitt Romney] betrays little indignation at any of our problems and..."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:00:00 -0500

“A particular problem is that he [Mitt Romney] betrays little indignation at any of our problems and their causes. He’s always sunny, pleasant, untouched by anger. This leaves people thinking, “Excuse me, but we are in crisis. Financially and culturally we fear our country is going down the drain. This guy doesn’t seem to be feeling it. So why’s he running? Maybe he thinks it’s his personal destiny to be president. But if the animating passion of his candidacy is about him, not us, who needs him?””

- Peggy Noonan on Mitt Romney, WSJ

There’s probably a phrasing of this that is equally damning of a certain kind of entrepreneur—the one that is pursuing a project not out of passion but out of a kind of megalomania to be the top dog in their own pony show.