Important sights in Prague
December 2011
5 posts
Velvet Revolution
When I was in Prague in 2005 I went for a walk, following the route of the protesters who were ambushed by the police on November 17th, 1989.
The protest started out as a legal assembly in honor of a Czech student who died during the German occupation in World War II, at the Visegrad cemetery just outside of town. This is the cemetery where Czech heroes like Smetana are buried. The group decided to head to Wenceslas Square (that’s “Vaclav” in Czech) to demonstrate for democracy. Most of the group of students walked down to the Vltava and along the river, but other groups went in different directions. Map of routes—I followed the green route.
Listen
Blue Christmas
- Porky Pig
My favorite Christmas song. It’s funny as-is, but the engineer in the background is what makes this the Best Thing Ever.
Don't Be A Free User (Pinboard Blog) →
blog.pinboard.in
Hey Tumblr! Let me pay you. Otherwise I’m just waiting for the day when your VC’s insist you do advertising, which will not fill me with joy. I don’t want to be a product here, and I’ll never buy enough custom themes to make up for the subscription I’d be happy to sign up for.
What if a little site you love doesn’t have a business model? Yell at the developers! Explain that you are tired of good projects folding and are willing to pay cash American dollar to prevent that from happening. It doesn’t take prohibitive per-user revenue to put a project in the black. It just requires a number greater than zero.
So, today I recorded a future episode of the podcast about this very theme (before I saw this post). I’m a happy paying user of Pinboard, one that even pays the extra money for the archiving feature. Not only do I believe this idea to be true but, as I announce in that upcoming show, I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is by sending, anonymously, cash to a service I use and love daily that has no outward discernible business model.
Here is my idea:
What if, 1% of the users of a particular free service of 36 million clients and growing, were to decide to drop $10.00 cash every month into an envelope and mail it to said service? What if that envelope had no return address? Perhaps there was an note inside that begged them to create a model to let us pay them to use the service. To make sure the service continued on once the bubble inevitably bursts and the VC’s take their payout and fly to the Grand Caymans.
My guess is that such a service would have to keep the money. Perhaps they would go through a couple of months of having their offices flooded with 300,000+ ten dollar bills. This might get to be a hassle so, perhaps, maybe, they finally get the hint and have a few million dollars of starting cash to launch a way for us to pay directly for this thing we use and love.
Crazy, right? Yep.
So, here is the address I’m sending my unmarked cash with the note in the envelope with no return address.
Tumblr, Inc., 35 East 21st Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY, 10010
I welcome those that care as much as I do to do the same.
Update: Forgot to mention, and I never ask this… Please reblog the shit out of this one.
U.N. Says Death Toll In Syria Has Surpassed 4,000 : The Two-Way : NPR →
npr.org
In related Syrian news, the BBC reports that two major opposition groups have decided to join forces. The Syrian National Council, the main opposition group and the Free Syrian Army (FSA), made up of Syrian army defectors, said the FSA would cut down on its attacks on government forces and use force only to protect civilians.
That’s an important move, says the BBC, because it could stop the conflict from sliding into all-out civil war.
The story opens with a UN official describing the situation in Syria as a civil war. And ends with what I’ve quoted, in which the BBC suggests that a decrease of attacks on the Syrian army by defectors from that army may prevent civil war.
My question, again, is: Is it not a civil war when thousands of people in a country attempt to kill each other in systematic ways? Why so reluctant to refer to it that way?
