Slate, you are BREAKING my little heart!

Today's Papers is dead.

UPDATE: I've checked out the new news-aggregator feature, The Slatest, that Slate launched today. I'm sure it's a fine news aggregator, but it's not a replacement for TP. Several things made TP great. One: its simplicity. Just white background, black text, and blue links. No divided page with multiple features; just an ad or two and the regular Slate sidebar. It published once. Easy on the eyes, and also easy to read. Which brings me to Two: its style. The beauty of TP was that it wasn't a news aggregator. It was a news summary. I didn't have to click through to the original article to get a fairly good understanding of what the article said. There are enough sites that provide the "link plus one sentence description" service for headline news. What I loved about TP was that it talked in paragraphs instead of sentences. And finally, Three: it was well-written! I know Daniel Politi is still around writing the morning issue of The Slatest, but will we still get the great narratives? Will he be able to compare coverage between newspapers? Will he pick out that one idiosyncratic story to stick at the bottom of the page? Oh, I'm grieving here. It's taking willpower not to start bawling right here in the library.

Slate. Please, pretty please, with a cherry on top. Do whatever you want with this Slatest thing, but have mercy on us--bring back Today's Papers!

Reader Poll

Should That's Relevant start--ahem--tweeting?

(a) Yes, you're hilarious. The more saisai, the better.
(b) Nah. Your blog's just a bunch of one-liners anyway. Leave twitter for the celebs (and their PR guys).
(c) No, see, you're not very funny, or even all that interesting. Your blog's bad enough. Don't make it worse.
(d) Fuck you.*


*If you ask me, this should be an option in every reader poll ever taken, ever.

Why that was my only post on health care

Because I can't stand it, this flagrant, consequenceless lying. It drives me up the goddamn wall. I can't watch the news; I can't read more than an article or two before reaching my limit and triggering my gag reflex. The fact that people who lie, lie, lie aren't immediately called out, publicly and unequivocally, means there's no disincentive to just lie, lie, lying. I feel guilty for not paying more attention, but it just disgusts me, and I have to back away slowly or risk harming myself or others.

My only post on health care

I understand health insurance reform is something about which reasonable people might disagree. But wouldn't it be nice if the reasonable people were the ones we heard, instead of the psycho loony fear-mongerers on either side? Especially the "Obama will kill all the old people!" And, jeez, look at folks on Medicare worried about socialism and government intervention. Man I hate that shit.

Today, Obama joins the chorus pleading for sanity to prevail.

REQUIRED reading

Liberals and conservatives alike, take 30 minutes and digest this. Not the way I would've written it, but the substance is well worth your time.

The new summer accessory: the man-belly

I hope these guys don't expect their girlfriends to be 36-24-36.

UPDATE: And I'm not the only one.

First pull-up!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Take back the goddamn beep

From the NYTimes (hat tip to one of my favoritest people, J.K.) David Pogue wants to start a movement:

Over the past week, in The New York Times and on my blog, I’ve been ranting about one particularly blatant money-grab by American cellphone carriers: the mandatory 15-second voicemail instructions.

Suppose you call my cell to leave me a message. First you hear my own voice: “Hi, it’s David Pogue. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you”–and THEN you hear a 15-second canned carrier message.

* Sprint: “[Phone number] is not available right now. Please leave a detailed message after the tone. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press pound for more options.”

* Verizon: “At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press 1 for more options. To leave a callback number, press 5. (Beep)”

* AT&T: “To page this person, press five now. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished, you may hang up, or press one for more options.”

* T-Mobile: “Record your message after the tone. To send a numeric page, press five. When you are finished recording, hang up, or for delivery options, press pound.”

(You hear a similar message when you call in to hear your own messages. “You. Have. 15. Messages. To listen to your messages, press 1.” WHY ELSE WOULD I BE CALLING?)

I, the voicemailbox owner, cannot turn off this additional greeting message. You, the caller, can bypass it, but only if you know the secret keypress–and it’s different for each carrier. So you’d have to know which cellphone carrier I use, and that of every person you’ll ever call; in other words, this trick is no solution.

[UPDATE: Apple iPhone owners don't hear these instructions--Apple insisted that AT&T remove them. And Sprint already DOES let you turn off the instructions message, although it's a buried, multi-step procedure, which you can read in the comments below.]

These messages are outrageous for two reasons. First, they waste your time. Good heavens: it’s 2009. WE KNOW WHAT TO DO AT THE BEEP.

Do we really need to be told to hang up when we’re finished!? Would anyone, ever, want to “send a numeric page?” Who still carries a pager, for heaven’s sake? Or what about “leave a callback number?” We can SEE the callback number right on our phones!

Second, we’re PAYING for these messages. These little 15-second waits add up–bigtime. If Verizon’s 70 million customers leave or check messages twice a weekday, Verizon rakes in about $620 million a year. That’s your money. And your time: three hours of your time a year, just sitting there listening to the same message over and over again every year.

In 2007, I spoke at an international cellular conference in Italy. The big buzzword was ARPU–Average Revenue Per User. The seminars all had titles like, “Maximizing ARPU In a Digital Age.” And yes, several attendees (cell executives) admitted to me, point-blank, that the voicemail instructions exist primarily to make you use up airtime, thereby maximizing ARPU.

Right now, the carriers continue to enjoy their billion-dollar scam only because we’re not organized enough to do anything about it. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to sit there, waiting to leave your message, listening to a speech recorded by a third-grade teacher on Ambien.

Let’s push back, and hard. We want those time-wasting, money-leaking messages eliminated, or at least made optional.

I asked my Twitter followers for help coming up with a war cry, a slogan, to identify this campaign. They came up with some good ones:

“Where’s the Beep?”

“Let it Beep”

“We Know. Let’s Go.”

“Lose the Wait”

“My Voicemail, My Recording”

“Hell, no, we won’t hold!”

My favorite, though, is the one that sounds like a call to action: “Take Back the Beep.”

And here’s how we’re going to do it.

We’re going to descend, en masse, on our carriers. Send them a complaint, politely but firmly. Together, we’ll send them a LOT of complaints.

If enough of us make our unhappiness known, I’ll bet they’ll change.

I’ve told each of the four major carriers that they’ll be hearing from us. They’ve told us where to send the messages:

* Verizon: Post a complaint here.

* AT&T: Send e-mail to customerissues@attnews.us.

* Sprint: Post a complaint here.

* T-Mobile: Post a complaint here.

Three of the four carriers are just directing us to their general Web forums. Smells like a cop-out, I know.

Yet all four carriers promise that they’ll read and consider our posts. And we have two things going for us.

First, I have a feeling that the volume of complaints will be too big for them to ignore. To that end, I hope you’ll pass these instructions along, blog them, Twitter them, and spread the word. (Gizmodo, Engadget, Consumerist, and others have agreed to help out.) And I hope you’ll take the time to complain yourself. Do it now, before you forget.

Second, we’ll all be watching. I’ll be reporting on the carriers’ responses. If they ignore us, we’ll shame them. If they respond, we’ll celebrate them.

Either way, it’s time to rise up. It’s time for this crass, time-wasting money-grab to end for good.

Makes me mad

Seriously, reading stories like this drives me batshit crazy.

51-Across

"Don't ____ me, bro!"

Well, it only took two years or so.