Watching and Listening

The Post-Punk / New Wave Super Friends
by Butcher Billy x prints x tshirts

Neither of them is very confident, however, about Goodreads’ future. “I’m a very faithful user!” Mickelsen explained, but “I don’t trust Amazon’s business practices.” Shea worries that it will be “difficult to discern what recommendations come from [Goodreads’] algorithm and what have been paid for.” Leah White, reader services librarian from Northbrook P.L. in Illinois said, “I worry about the consolidation of reading resources on the internet—Amazon now owns Shelfari, Audible, and Goodreads” as well being the biggest retailer of books on the internet. “This lack of diversity scares me.

“

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Will Librarians Still Use Goodreads? by your LJ tumblrer, in which collection development and readers’ advisory mavens Erin Shea, Leah White, Anna Mickelsen, and Robin Bradford discuss Amazon’s recent purchase. (via libraryjournal)

“On the other hand, Robin Bradford, a collection development librarian from Indianapolis P.L., is unruffled by the announcement. “Amazon is big (and getting bigger) so it is easy to take shots at them,” she said. If the acquisition prompts people to “look more closely at all arrangements, who owns what companies and what their privacy practices are, that’s great.” A knee jerk reaction, she noted, “isn’t particularly helpful.” Ultimately, Bradford imagines that her (and her patrons’) use of Goodreads will only increase.”

Baseball gives you a very unique canvas to paint on. It allows for story in a whole lot of different ways. Whether it’s being on the mound in front of tens of thousands of people, feeling completely alone, and telling a story through that lens, or whether you’re up at bat, or the length of the game and the pace of the game … I think baseball is a fantastic analogy, if you will, for the things that we struggle with in life.

“

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RA Dickey and his relationship with literature. I didn’t think I could love that knuckleballer more, but somehow, he keeps surprising me.

Please, for the love of all you value, read the whole article at The National Post.

(via oldtimefamilybaseball)

He will probably always be my favorite.

(via lubetzky)

I don’t think another like him will come around again any time soon. Even in Toronto, I’m still rooting for him.

samdingman:

Jennifer and I both had a lot of work to do this weekend, so naturally we elected to spend an absurdly long time designing cover art for our cat’s imaginary folk album.

I’m pretty sure I’d buy that album.

ensemblestudiotheatrela:

“Do you accept credit cards?”

Gates McFadden has a tumblr about the adventures of her own action figure. Words do not express how great this is.

The beginning was absolutely the worst because to the hard-line owners of that day unionism was treason, there’s no other way to describe it. … For very wealthy people who owned franchises, baseball was a respite of the tensions and problems elsewhere; here you could control everything: no unions, a reserve clause that made the players prisoners, no grievance procedure, no salary arbitration, no nothing.

“

—	Marvin Miller, the economist and labor leader who turned the Major League Players Association into one of the most effective labor unions in the country, in an interview with Chris Hayes from his book, Twilight of the Elites. Miller died Tuesday at the age of 95. (via upwithchris)

gifsfln:

Tina Fey speaks at the Center for Reproductive Rights Inaugural Gala.

newcover:

The Odyssey by Homer

The Odyssey is one of my favorite stories because of the epic scale of adventure in it. So, for my cover, I decided I couldn’t just pick one part of the adventure to illustrate and instead tried to give a sense of the plethora of bullshit Odysseus encounters, including my take on the Scylla, the whirlpool, Circe turning his men into pigs, visiting the underworld and talking to spirits, Poseidon’s trident, a saucy siren, and a cyclops. I just wanted to give someone looking at the book the idea that they’re in for an awesome adventure.

Someone hire this man to start designing covers for real.

Attention Lubetzky! This picture is no longer accurate.

courtesy Metsblog.

mdhsphotographs:

[Portrait of baseball player]
April 27, 1935
Hughes Company
8 x 10 inch film negative
Baltimore City Life Museum Collection
Maryland Historical Society
MC7307 .6

This photograph was labeled as “Maryland Country Club. Oriole?” and there were a couple more in the bunch. If anyone has any information about this image, please feel free to comment.

Samdingman, I believe this is of interest to you.