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Wednesday Reads

When sharing things on Twitter just isn’t enough… “Violating Sacred Values” in Morocco: Free Speech with an Exception Gen. McCaffrey privately briefs NBC execs on war with Iran What the Quran burnings tell us – though I prefer its other title, “Sorry America: We are the heavily armed thugs in Afghanistan” Ahead of Elections, Iran [...]

29.02.2012

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And the Prize for the Worst (Best) Dictator Fan Website Goes To…

This guy: Seriously, you really have to visit it yourself, the screenshot doesn’t do the animated gifs justice. Bonus: Dude lists his mobile number on his public CV. Semi-related honorable mention (because it isn’t deserving of its own post) goes to… Syrian Ambassador to China (and blogger) Imad Moustapha for his daring use of MS [...]

22.02.2012

2 Comments

You Can’t Take It With You

Lately I have strange dreams of death. In each one, someone close to me (someone different each time) dies and I’m left to sort out the mess. For a self-described packrat, this is a nightmare perhaps worse than death itself as I, grieving, am forced to sort through the ashes of what remains. In real [...]

20.02.2012

6 Comments

On Clay Shirky’s Bread and Digital Dualism

In the New York Times, a piece that caught my eye–in a “an article about Clay Shirky making bread? Must be a slow news day” sort of way–has sparked an interesting conversation elsewhere and caused me to reflect a little on the idea of what Zeynep Tufekci calls “digital dualism” – the idea that online [...]

12.02.2012

4 Comments

140 Character Pre-Written Twitter Obituaries

[View the story "140-Character Pre-Written Obituaries" on Storify]

11.02.2012

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The Arab Digital Vanguard: How a Decade of Blogging Contributed to a Year of Revolution

This article was first published in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs Vol. 13 Issue 1 (Winter/Spring 2012), “Language, Identity and Politics” and is re-published here with permission. A PDF version, with proper formatting, is available for download. “Social media has created a sort of alternate space for reviving a dormant public consciousness into a [...]

11.02.2012

4 Comments

On Syria

In the corner of many Twitter avatars is a small Syrian flag. Whether pro-Assad, pro-opposition, or something else entirely, it is the same flag, the red, the white, the black, and two green stars. Because in Syria, regardless of your stance on the regime, you are a Syrian. (Anas Qtiesh rightly points out my inaccuracy: [...]

08.02.2012

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Global Copycats

It’s difficult to write this blog post in the aftermath of SOPA/PIPA, but honestly, it’s just a coincidence; I discovered an old hard drive in a drawer this morning that contained photos from my first solo European trip–to Munich and Prague–in 2005. Looking through the photos, I discovered this one: Dobrá čajovna, according to Wikipedia, [...]

05.02.2012

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