Baratunde exists at the intersection of comedy, politics and technology. His official duties include Web & Politics editor at The Onion, co-founder of Jack & Jill Politics and host of PopSci's Future Of on Science Channel. Basically, he's a smart, funny, extremely handsome dude.
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www.baratunde.com
www.twitter.com/baratunde
www.linkedin.com/in/baratunde
conscious comic & vigilante pundit
Co-Founder, Jack & Jill Politics
Web Editor, The Onion
Host, Popular Science's Future Of (Mondays 9p, Science Channel) http://bit.ly/thefutureof
Twitter may seem like a lot of work--yet another way you have to keep up with people's boring minutia and thoughts on Michael Jackson's doctor. But it doesn't have to be! If you pick the right folks to follow (comedians who are not only hilarious in real life but on Twitter too) the whole thing can be fun. They are in no particular order, so make sure to scroll all the way through (DO IT). Please let us know about other funny feeds we missed in the comments section!
Thanks to HuffPo for the inclusion. The list is super dominated by dudes and "official" funny people though, so below I offer my own list of funny people to follow
http://twitter.com/SaraJBenincasa
http://twitter.com/ElonJames
http://twitter.com/basseyworld
http://twitter.com/LizzWinstead
http://twitter.com/katiehalps
http://twitter.com/meganganz
http://twitter.com/LoveRhino
http://twitter.com/BestAt
http://twitter.com/fireland
http://twitter.com/kumailn
http://twitter.com/kyriabeingbanal
http://twitter.com/LeeCamp
http://twitter.com/ListenToLeon
On Monday August 10th, I hosted a launch party for my new TV show, Popular Science's Future Of on the Science Channel (part of Discovery). I wanted to throw a massive public affair but was limited in space and time. We held the party at the lovely apartment of a generous friend. Words were said. Drinks were had. Television was watched.
Also in attendance were two flip cameras operated by my friend Rina Vazirani and Internet pioneer and video maven Bill Cammack. We have Bill to thank for integrating the footage and editing together this piece. I didn't have time to do the titling, but below the video, I'll give props to all who attended (or at least most). It was a great party for a cool new show, and I am humbled to have had so many luminaries, twitterati, facebookerati and just plain old good people honor me with their presence
You too can throw a Future Of watch party in your city. Just do it!
Guests In Attendance:
In catching up on thousands of emails, I found one from a friend looking for my advice on her phone choices: iphone vs. android. at&t vs t-mobile. Here's most of what I wrote.
As for T-Mobile. They're fine. Best network in the U.S. is probably Verizon, but their network is US-only, and so are most of their phones. AT&T for iPhone is notoriously horrible to the point that many high profile iphone fans have dropped the device because they can't use it to make phone calls reliably. Sprint is... well, Sprint. I've found T-Mobile's network to be ok. Nothing spectacular, but ok overall and great in most cities. The customer service has been good especially compared with my previous experience with Sprint.I'm still in the midst of my iPhone/Android dance but lean strongly toward staying with Android at least until the iPhone leaves AT&T. I used an unlocked/jailbroken iphone 2G from Feb 2008 - November 2008. From November until yesterday, I used a G1. From November 2008 - June 2009, I used an iPod touch for my media and gaming (ipod touch broke in mid july, and i haven't yet fixed/replaced). I just switched to the MyTouch 3G, and am very happy so far. here are iPhone advantagesBaratunde Thurston, comedian and web editor at The Onion interviewed White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett at Netroots Nation. Huffington Post was there to cover it. And Thurston objected to their tone. He called them out on Twitter:
Ah mediabistro! I "took on" huffpo. Just me against the 10,000 article-per-month juggernaut :) Click through to see the tweet mining the folks at mb did. Does this mean I'm a celebrity now? If so, I want all the free shit that entails.
Last night in New York, at a TV launch party for Popular Science's "Future Of..." Debbie Myers, Science Channel general manager asked what was missing from science programming.
The overall response, from the 50-plus room full of mostly New York digerati, was resoundingly, "a show that was both entertaining and smart--not dumbed down." Well, if last night's Twitter response could be utilized as any sort of indicator, then in "Future Of..." Discovery and its Science Channel, along with PopSci, have stumbled upon the answer to that question.
Wow. what a great review! As I mentioned at the launch party, the extent to which I'm successful at this gig is due in large part to the intelligence of the company I keep. Yall make me look so smart!
This pic was requested by @toxicmenges on twitter. I try to be responsive :)
The above is the beginning of twistory, the first tweet in the #HowBlackAreYou meme.
On Wednesday July 29th, shortly after 7am ET, I was feeling particularly black. I felt the need to share this with fellow comedian, new yorker and smart black man, Elon James White (@elonjames or www.twib.me). Thus began, #HowBlackAreYou
Elon responded to me: "Challenge, son?" because he loves the word "son" because he's from Brooklyn and never ever fails to remind anyone of that fact. I threw it down. He picked it up. Back and forth we went, and others joined.
Twelve hours later, I counted 851 tweets tagged #HowBlackAreYou. This isn't showing up on Twitter trending topics or on hashtags.org (because they are clearly very racist like our President), but we know the truth.
I've gathered a few ways for folks to look through the archive below, but what I need is a tool to find, archive or sort all the #HowBlackAreYou tweets in chronological order. Please share if you know of some.
Twitter search: http://bit.ly/howblackareyoulive
...dies after a few days or weeks, and it shows in reverse chrono, so it's hard to walk back to the first tweet because that page is always changing. This works for the most recent, but is not good for analysis.
Hashtags.org - http://hashtags.org/tag/howblackareyou
...uses some sort of sampling method. I'm not clear on where it gets its numbers or how, but it does not reflect my manual count of tweets and barely registers on the big board
FriendFeed - http://friendfeed.com/howblackareyou
...I set up this room to capture the RSS feed of the twitter search for #howblackareyou. Unfortunately, I didn't start this until three or four hours after we kicked off the meme, so the origins are not in this archive.
FInally, here are some manual links to the first 10 original tweets (non retweets). I just like to see the origins of the snowball.
#1. baratunde http://twitter.com/baratunde/statuses/2908071691
#2. elon http://twitter.com/elonjames/statuses/2908087941
#3. elon http://twitter.com/elonjames/statuses/2908104642
#4. baratunde http://twitter.com/baratunde/statuses/2908133802
#5. elon http://twitter.com/elonjames/statuses/2908187997
#6. hbeeinc http://twitter.com/hbeeinc/statuses/2908220761
#7. baratunde http://twitter.com/baratunde/statuses/2908223841
#8. elon http://twitter.com/elonjames/statuses/2908255068
#9. realdawnsummers http://twitter.com/realdawnsummers/statuses/2908263486
#10. baratunde http://twitter.com/baratunde/statuses/2908294662
Again, if anyone knows of or is willing to build a tool that displays the history of a twitter search in chronological order, hit me up. Bonus if the tool allows folks to search that history, mark tweets as favorite and retweet or otherwise share those from the tool's interface.
Now I'm going out to dinner in Bath, Maine for some lobster because I that's how black I am.
Wonder Woman has clearly done her homework when it comes to defining a progressive urban policy. Plus, she's got diplomatic experience, an invisible plane and the much-feared Lasso Of Truth ensuring she can get things done.
Find out more about Wonder Woman's campaign at http://bit.ly/ww4dc or follow the mock candidate on Twitter: http://twitter.com/wwomanfordc
Sunday, September 13, 2009 at 16:45