It’s been awhile since I’ve done an “Adventures in Spam” piece. Here’s my last one. Anyhow, I received the following email below and thought I would take a break from writing for a few minutes to respond.
My Dear,
It is my pleasure to contact you for a business venture which I intend to establish in your country. Though I have not met with you before but I believe one has to risk confidence to succeed sometimes in life. There is this huge amount of Seven million Five Hundred Thousands U.S dollars ($7.500.000.00) which my late Father kept with a Fiduciary Fund Holder in Abidjan before his death.
Now, I have decided to invest this money in your…
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It’s not always easy giving. First it takes time.
Today I was flying back from 12 days in NYC and really didn’t have any idea of who I was going to give $10 to this Tuesday. I got home. I was tired. I was much more interested in playing with Harper and Oreo than staring at my computer. There was a chance that my $10 for Tuesday wouldn’t get posted until Wednesday.
And sometimes it takes a kick in the pants. Today that kick came from Michele Shaw:
Hi Kelsey! In the spirit of your Tuesday project, I have contributed for a month to Samaritan’s Purse. They do one of my favorite projects-Operation Christmas Child, and are already gearing up to help children around the world come December.
Giving is…
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I’m stuck on a train in Connecticut. You can follow my tale of survival on twitter at #stuckontrain . There’s no AC, but there’s plenty of gaseous kids.
…
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Wall Street brought to you by America. America brought to you by Wall Street.
An $8 whiskey near Wall Street. Where is Windell when you need him? Glad I brought my credit card.
(60 minutes later) Wait, wasn’t there just a flag here? Wall Street brought to you by debt. Debt brought to you by Wall Street?
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If I were paid per page view, I would wake up in the morning and write a headline like the one above.
This is what our world is coming to. Journalist Michael Ayers (@michaeldayers) shared a story with me this morning in the New York Times – In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger.
The piece is about how online journalists are on deadline around the clock and judged by the amount of page views their pieces get. Here’s a passage:
…they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.
Tracking how many people view articles, and then rewarding — or shaming — writers…
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Andrew (my partner on the Nothing Personal project) have a piece in the Huffington Post today – Finance Reform: How Short Memories are Created.
The timing of this piece is more than ironic. Tomorrow we’re hopping flights from Indiana to NYC. Goodbye Main Street! Hello Wall Street!
Our goal in NYC is to treat investment bankers and quants with the empathy that we treated the people we met around the world who had been hit by the crisis. It should be fun….
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It’s sort of funny when a big butter Jesus burns down – in fact, I drove by the site last week and it’s even funnier in person – but there’s nothing funny at all about a homeless shelter burning down.
No one wants to live in a homeless shelter.
I remember the scenes in Pursuit of Happyness where Will Smith and son are waiting in line for a bed at a homeless shelter in San Francisco. The father, Will, was looking down at the ground to avoid eye contact while simultaneously scanning out the side of his eye for anyone that might recognize him.
Making the decision to move into a shelter must be quite humbling.
But then to have the last place you would turn burn would really seem like…
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From Flickr's Creative Commons by Northhampton Museum
Many of you know that I’ve embarked on my latest project – Nothing Personal – with Andrew Newton. We’ve covered 10s of thousands of miles around the globe, crossed oceans and mountains, suffered nights on trains, planes, and buses, recorded days of interviews, and met some amazing people. Andrew arrived to Muncie last week and when we haven’t been getting him tested for malaria (that’s another story), we’ve been working on the Nothing Personal book proposal.
So far our project has been a success. Much more of a success than our recent trip…
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