On Campus - Tuesday, November 10, 2009 8:00 - 0 Comments
NYU Grad Goes By Princess Donna, Directs Porn 2.0
Behold Porn 2.0, a look at pornography in an increasingly digital age. Just a couple minutes into your beholding, you’ll meet Princess Donna, Tisch grad and director for Kink.com in San Francisco. But before you start silent-panicking about graduation and picturing yourself in some hairy dude’s basement telling two butterface girls to “do that, but faster,” The Princess has a few word of wisdom: “Almost everybody has a college degree…porn is becoming a choice; it’s not something you do because you can’t do anything else.” In fact, even a lot of the “models” have degrees, she notes while liberally applying sparkly eye makeup before heading to the office. So there you have it, kids: the old “if all else fails, I can always do porn” standby may no longer be an option. But just think of all the web porn you can watch while unemployed!
Entertainment - Thursday, October 29, 2009 10:30 - 6 Comments
Remember to Wish Your BFF the Internet a Happy Birthday
According to Mashable, “On October 29, 1969, the first two nodes of ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California.” In normal person speak? It’s the internet’s 40th birthday!
This is a momentous occasion. Let us take this time to revel in the wonder of this day with some beautiful things the internet hath wrought:
- The fun of “warning” a friend on AIM in middle school.
- The grave importance of keeping your AIM profile up to date with the latest Blink 182 quotes and initials of your best friends.
- The creation of “memes” which have given us more trite bullshit to discuss during awkward elevator rides.
- Your 8th grade Xanga that got you grounded because “stuff” is not a clever code word for “Smirnoff Ice.”
- The increased societal acceptance of unparalleled narcissism.
Continue…
Entertainment - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 14:25 - 4 Comments
Historical Preservation, Internet Style
I have a hard time living in the 
present, and often spend hours thinking about how I will look back on everything happening now when I’m older and have grandchildren huddled about my hologram wheelchair in my robot house. I never said it was a realistic fantasy. Anyway, one of the things I think most about is dial-up internet and floppy disks and trying to make my own anime website when I was 10 on Geocities.
In a very timely fashion (Geocities is shutting down forever this month, and nerds everywhere are crying into their Domo-kun pillows), a new project has been born out of the Interwebs to immortalize these forgotten formats and fonts. Internet Archaeology, founded by a dude named Ryder Ripps, aims to preserve the spirit of the Internet we all grew up with by archiving old websites and such. Continue…
Entertainment - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 13:48 - 4 Comments
Twitter Stalk FakeAPStylebook
Aspiring journalists would do well to remember that, “if you cannot find the source of a quote, make one up.” After all, “nobody’s reading your story anyway. Get over yourself.” Or so says FakeAPStylebook on Twitter.
Anyone who has a copy of the real AP Stylebook sitting abandoned on a shelf (or possibly be burned in effigy) will understand the particular satisfaction that comes with watching that godforsaken book being ripped to shreds. You can really only read so many rules about how to abbreviate various street designations before going batshit crazy. So in honor of an anonymous destroyer of arcane journalistic writing rules, we are deeming FakeAPStylebook the Official Favorite Twitter Account of NYU Local, at least for today.
Enjoy a few recent gems of appropriate language usage below and after the jump.
- A “cougar” is a large cat native to North America. An older woman who pursues a younger man is “embarrassing herself.”
- When faced with a challenging name, simply refer to the individual by nicknames like “Scout” or “Champ”.
- If you must, use asterisks in the place of letters in the middle of swear words. But, come on, spell it out, pussy. Continue…
Entertainment - Thursday, October 22, 2009 13:31 - 1 Comment
Fancy Report Finds That College Students Use the Internet
As NYU students we have access to eMarketer through the library. eMarketer is a leading internet/digital market research firm, and last Tuesday they released a report called “College Students: Connecting With the Connected Crowd.”
The “executive summary” of the report was that “95.7%” of us (19 million college students in the U.S. for fall 2009) “go online at least once a month.” (To which we respond: who are the 4.3% who don’t?) Although this was not the only “duh” stat from the report, overall it’s a very extensive and informative analysis of how young people are consuming the internet and different kinds of media.
After the jump, old people’s discoveries about young people, broken down into bite-sized portions to please our internet-addled brains.
Featured, On Campus - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 7:30 - 8 Comments
NYU Researcher Rewriting “Moby-Dick” In Emoticons
Not only is NYU research associate Fred Benenson planning to rewrite “Moby-Dick” entirely in emoticons, he’s also convinced 83 people to pay for it.
I’ll give you a moment to process this: Moby the longest book in the history of mankind Dick. In emoticons. And not just any emoticons, either. Benenson will be using Japanese Emoji symbols– the sort commonly available on Japanese phones– for the task. It gives the whole project a rather international edge, don’t you think? Continue…
Featured, On Campus - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 9:25 - 2 Comments
Get Your Next Mediocre Job on NYU Student Site Jatched.com
Unless you’re looking to supplement your Bobst book shelving income with some light prostitution, Craigslist is rarely much help for student seeking legit jobs. The real leads are far outnumbered by jobs unsuitable, age-inappropriate or requiring a worrisome absence of clothing. This fact coupled with a crippling fear of post-college unemployment lead to the creation of Jatched.com, an NYU student-founded site with a ridiculous name but a decent concept behind it. Continue…
On Campus - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 15:16 - 1 Comment
Street-Spotted.com Offers You Yet Another Way To Take Street Style Pics
OMGguesswhat: You too can participate in the totally new street style trend currently sweeping our great nation! Because a camera and a free blog aren’t enough to get your ideas about style out there, Street-Spotted.com, a website started by recent NYU Stern grad Caroline Tseng, now offers a street style iPhone app.
For 99 cents, you can snap stylish folk on campus (or, umm, yourself) and send it directly to Street-Spotted. From there–and brace yourself because this part is actually kind of cool–your photos go to a user-generated section of the site.
The app is new, so there aren’t any user submitted pics yet, but that feature sounds awesome for those of you vaguely interested in street style without the motivation to start your own site. Plus, it totally gives you an excuse to stalk gorgeous, well-dressed girls and pretend it’s not weird.
On Campus - Thursday, September 24, 2009 10:09 - 9 Comments
Gmail Fail Part Two Forces *Some* Users to Actually Remember Contact Info
We are currently in the midst of a crisis. Or some of us are, anyway. Gmail has strayed once again from the path of righteousness and is currently failing. Hard. Sign in to your account and you’ll see an ominous red bar at the top of the screen telling you that “Gmail is temporarily unable to access your contacts.”
Though not nearly as epic as the Total Gmail Fail of September 1, 2009, the current Gmail malfunction is none-too-pleasant for the email obsessed. It means potential chat failures (what to do in class now?!), it means your g chat contact list may not even load in the first place and it means that you’ll have to actually remember an entire email address and type it in because Gmail won’t do it for you right now.
I’m not having any issues with my contacts, but Twitter says I’m one of the few. How’s your Gmail behaving this morning?
Entertainment - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 15:57 - 4 Comments
The Great Gmail Fail
Considering Twitter is infamous for its “fail whale,” you’d think the Twitter masses would be able to withstand a Gmail outage. But it appears that everyone is just completely freaking the fuck out.
Our Editor in Chief, LilyQ, has an iPhone but still demands Gmail web access.
New York Times blogger Jennifer 8 Lee dubbed herself the official NYT source of the Great 2009 Gmail Outage by… retweeting Google. Then she bragged about having a Palm Pre, which I really want (h8 u Verizon).
Poet Tao Lin realized he no longer had anything to write about without Gmail.
WSN Managing Editor Maryjane Weedman discovered there are other things in life besides Gmail.
Comedienne Sara Benincasa memorializes this difficult time.
