Brian’s posterous

The fame vs fortune choice matters because of substitutability, the willingness to accept one thing as a substitute for another. Substitutability is neutralized in perfect markets. For example, if someone has even a slight preference for Pepsi over Coke, and if both are always equally available in all situations, that person will never drink a Coke, despite being only mildly biased.

The soft-drink market is not perfect, but the Web comes awfully close: If InstaPundit and Samizdata are both equally easy to get to, the relative traffic to the sites will always match audience preference. But were InstaPundit to become less easy to get to, Samizdata would become a more palatable substitute. Any barrier erodes the user’s preferences, and raises their willingness to substitute one thing for another.

Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content by Clay Shirky

Old, but seemingly relevant these days. Just replace micropayments with [whatever strategy newspapers are trying now].

By some estimates, 100 surnames cover 85 percent of China’s citizens. Laobaixing, or “old hundred names,” is a colloquial term for the masses. By contrast, 70,000 surnames cover 90 percent of Americans.

Yep, I was right. From the NYTimes [via]

Wow, I had no ideas synths had gotten so terrifyingly good. Seeing stuff like this makes me wonder if any of the instruments I’ve heard on the radio in the last several years were real… Bert Smorenburg is also incredibly entertaining - favorite line: “Quantize. Why? Because it’s house, of course.”

A rare piece of spam made it past the ol’ Gmail filter the other day, so I ended up reading it. Here’s the thing: I’ve gotten spam where they claim some obscure relative has died and I get to inherit their fortune, but contacting me on the basis of my last name alone? Come on guys… do you have any idea how many Shihs there probably are in the world? Bonus points for including a wikipedia link to bolster your legitimacy though!

I am Barrister Yang Lim , an attorney at law. I discovered your email and information through internet search so I decided to contact you. A deceased client of mine, that shares the same last name as yours died as the result of a heart-related condition on March 12th 2005. His heart condition was due to the death of all the members of his family in the tsunami disaster on the 26th December 2004 in Sumatra Indonesia. And in the record there is no known successor to this deposit of the deceased who died without a will.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake.

I have contacted you to assist in distributing the money left behind by my client before it is confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this deposit valued at Eighteen million dollars is (US$18million dollars) lodged. This bank has issued me a notice to contact the next of kin, I can be reached on (yanglim8@gmail.com) for more information.

Best regards,
Yang Lim
Attorney at Law.

Raise your hand if you knew “Paper Planes” sampled The Clash.

Keri Hilson ft. Kanye and Ne-Yo - “Knock You Down”

I loved her on Nas’ “Hero”, and this song (once the 16th note hi-hats and the rest of the beat kicks in) is just as good. Plus it has the line “commander-in-chief of my pimp ship”? SOLD. Also, no Kanye auto-tune? DOUBLE SOLD.

This is an amusing and yet incredibly awkward April Fool’s joke. Especially with this line: “Printing presses will fall silent in brave new Twitter-based future.”

It’s never just a joke, right?