Keys & Coffee

NYU Student NYU-Steinhardt/MCC Formerly @ GMU Writer TV Fanatic Geeky & Nerdy with a twist of Indian.

[nitesharora]

Meet 'Super Business Girl'

Super Business Girl isn't a 21st century comic-book vigilante. But, she may just be the superhero that America needs.

Put eleven-year old Asia Newsom against the average businessman and I would rather bet on Newsom. It's easy to find an entrepreneur that lacks the ability to pitch the product or that lacks the charisma to keep the audience's focus. Finding an eleven-year old that knows how to channel her energy into conviction for her pitch? That's a surprise.

I first heard about Newsom on NPR's 'Planet Money'. She comes to New York and makes a 300% profit on lollipops.

She was also recently featured on Ellen. Watch her share her three step plan: become a lawyer, the Mayor of Detroit, and the President of the United States.

[nitesharora]

This is what arriving early looks like. I am here before security opens. (at Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport (PHF))

[parislemon]

LeBron is the girl who hangs out with you all night. And you buy all the drinks. And at the end of the night, she went home with the jerk.

That’s Shawn Brewster, a Cleveland barkeep, on the potential of LeBron James returning to the Cavaliers.

I just came across the above quotation on MG Siegler’s excellent blog. And I thought it was important that we all get clear about something:

LeBron James doesn’t owe Cleveland anything and “that girl” doesn’t owe anything to a guy who buys her drinks either.

The fact that this comparison exists, that it’s printed in the New York Times, and that people nod their heads or smile or laugh about it really highlights what’s wrong with the way so many men in our society think about women.

The fact that basketball fans want to see LeBron return to Cleveland doesn’t matter one iota when it comes to what LeBron wants. You know who gets to decide what LeBron wants? LeBron does. If his decision seems like a slap in the face to you, that’s your problem; it’s not LeBron’s problem.

The fact that a “nice guy” bought drinks for a woman all night doesn’t matter one iota when it comes to whether or not that woman will sleep with him, with someone else, or with no one. The fact that the woman chooses to have sex with “the jerk” is her choice, just as it’s the “nice guy’s” choice to buy her drinks. And let’s not leave aside the fact that the “nice guy” isn’t actually all that nice if he’s thinking about what’s owed to him in this way.

If this still isn’t making sense to you, go read Dan Gilbert’s rant from the last time LeBron made a free agency decision. And then go read some of the horrific things written by that guy who recently killed a bunch of people in California to get revenge on women who wouldn’t have sex with him.

Buying drinks for a woman, or even just being nice to her, doesn’t constitute a transaction wherein the woman now owes you sex. If that somehow isn’t clear — if you somehow think you buy what you want from a woman with alcohol or being nice and that she’s required to keep up her side of a transaction that exists only in your mind — you have some very serious problems that go well beyond your hurt feelings over where LeBron James is going to play basketball next year.

(via kohenari)

[nitesharora]

Does he remind anyone else of Bob Dylan?

[aljazeeraamerica-blog]

"I worked my way through a top notch college on a $10.00 an hour part time grocery store job, but that was nearly 50 years ago. I was also able to afford a car (a souped-up jalopy) and my own studio apartment beginning in the second year. Today, that same college cost six times the old tuition (not including books, etc.)..$10.00 and hour will only feed a family of four by dividing a single meal into four portions. It doesn’t pay for transportation unless you cut out the meal and it definitely doesn’t pay for rent. Of course, in my day, clothes were simply not big-ticket items and they lasted indefinitely, being well made by American Union workers (I actually still have a pair of shoes and several shirts and pants from that time which I still wear now and again)."

Larry Rafey on $10 an hour, with no way out (via aljazeeraamerica)

[pewresearch]

Nearly three-quarters of the Russian population (72%) think that homosexuality is morally unacceptable, with only 18% saying it is acceptable or not a moral issue. 

[nitesharora]

Huh. So, Republican-land?

If Fox News and the National Review are accurate barometers of the right, then yes.

[nitesharora]

Artichoke pizza, kinda.

[readandbreathe]

"Besides cats and porn, most of the Internet is taken up by advice for writers."—Junot Diaz at the Brooklyn Public Library

[nitesharora]

It helps to inspire the many writers that don’t write or creatives that don’t create.

[nitesharora]

Sunrise in the West Village. In the tiny Father Demo Park.

[nitesharora]

Mario & Luigi on Long Island.

[nitesharora]

Boo!

[msnbc]

"If John Boehner were a woman, they’d be calling him the weakest Speaker in history." — Nancy Pelosi

WATCH the interview with Nancy Pelosi: http://on.msnbc.com/1dSR3hT

[nitesharora]

Likely true. (Pelosi's ability to gather the democrats in the house would make her, historically, a good Speaker.)

[kohenari]

[nitesharora]

@kohenari:

I’ve been thinking a lot about last night’s “Breaking Bad” series finale; what follows are some thoughts and impressions about justice and the moral universe of the show.

Spoilers abound, so click at your own risk.

Read More

Agreed. 

Part of the issue is the finality of the series ending. Had Walt lived then there's likely a great section of the audience that would have wanted him to continue being Heisenberg. There would always be that question of "what's next?" Instead, Walt died on his own terms which bring the consequences on him versus everyone else in his world rather small. Then that becomes the writer's problem--does Walt get apprehended before his death going with the notion that "justice prevails!" or does he live leaving the audience without that sense of finality?

Breaking Bad had a good ending, but perhaps not a great one.

[robot-heart-politics]

Republican support of President Obama’s healthcare legislation rose by eight percentage points when identified as the Affordable Care Act instead of “Obamacare,” a new Fox News poll has found.

In Fox News poll, Republicans like Affordable Care Act more than ‘Obamacare’

Raise your hand if you don’t know what you don’t like, but you know you don’t like anything with the word “Obama” in it.

(via kohenari)

[nitesharora]

City nights.

[kohenari]

With only one episode of “Breaking Bad” left, I’ve been reflecting a lot on this stunning half-season. For the longest time, I told people that I didn’t know how the show would end because I didn’t know anything about the morality of Vince Gilligan’s universe. But I have the sense that we know now.

First of all, “Breaking Bad” is phenomenal television. I can’t remember ever watching tv and feeling the way I’ve felt for the past few weeks. My pulse is racing; my mouth is hanging open; I’m feeling anxious; I stand up and walk around, clenching and unclenching my hands; I can’t go to sleep afterward.

These final episodes are very difficult to watch. I very much doubt I’ll ever watch them again. I’m horrified by the way the story has unfolded, by the brokenness of the characters’ world and the unfairness of the violence.

And, as I said to one of my students this morning, I feel like we deserve it.

For all the times, early on, that we rooted for Walt and Jesse; for all the times we didn’t root for Hank or we bad-mouthed Skyler; for the people who made or bought Heisenberg t-shirts because they appreciated Walt’s swagger when he adopted that persona … now we’re being shown the consequences of the choices we made. We never really saw the human costs of Heisenberg’s criminal enterprise, beyond its effect on drug dealers. There aren’t extended scenes of kids smoking meth or anything like that. But now the chickens have all come home to roost in a way that’s just unrelenting, culminating — for me — in the perfectly callous murder of an absolutely innocent person.

You ought never to root for the guy who breaks bad; if you do, the past three episodes show you what you’ve really been rooting for.

[nitesharora]

Yet, anti-hero dramas such as Breaking Bad serve as a great rebuke to classic tales of the White Knight. The show goes to an extreme, but for the longest time, we were (and are) told to be purely good. Shades of darkness and self-realization have a place--part of the show's approach seems to be answering the question "What happens when you decide to stop being good?" Embracing the classic images of "good" work in 50s themed sitcoms, but doing it in reality or even in drama can become a point of frustration. Look at Jack from Lost, though he had issues for many purposes he was the White Knight. His archetypal good guy qualities seemed grating to many viewers. Part of the beauty of anti-hero dramas is not only being able to see the consequences of "breaking bad" as Professor Kohen mentions, but also the ability to see in and seek the gray. Many people now find that Walter White isn't the cool good-guy-gone-bad anymore, he's terrible. However, there's a lack of desire of the Jack Shephard good guy type. We prefer the grayness that reality brings.

[nitesharora]

Classic @NewYorker cartoon.