TDS/TCR (The Next Zuckerberg)

Repair Texas

The WØRD

Although my eyes were open

They might just as well’ve been closed

The real news below.

This week’s guests-

The Daily Show

• Wednesday 6/18: Kevin Hart
• Thursday 6/19: Jennifer Esposito

The Colbert Report

• Wednesday 6/18: Katty Kay & Claire Shipman
• Thursday 6/19: Jay Carney

Speaking of asking for something you just don’t have in you.

It’s weird for people who still have feelings to be around depressed people. They try to help you have feelings again so things can go back to normal, and it’s frustrating for them when that doesn’t happen. From their perspective, it seems like there has got to be some untapped source of happiness within you that you’ve simply lost track of, and if you could just see how beautiful things are…

But people want to help. So they try harder to make you feel hopeful and positive about the situation. You explain it again, hoping they’ll try a less hope-centric approach, but re-explaining your total inability to experience joy inevitably sounds kind of negative; like maybe you WANT to be depressed. The positivity starts coming out in a spray – a giant, desperate happiness sprinkler pointed directly at your face. And it keeps going like that until you’re having this weird argument where you’re trying to convince the person that you are far too hopeless for hope just so they’ll give up on their optimism crusade and let you go back to feeling bored and lonely by yourself.

Are you TAUNTING me? is this some weird game where you name all the things I can’t do?

Of course some days are better than others and today wasn’t as bad, but now I have an extra private session each week as my reward for being compliant and honest.

A man goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, my brother’s crazy, he thinks he’s a chicken.” The doctor says, “Why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “We would. But we need the eggs.”

But enough about me, let’s get to the really big news- Stephen Colbert is the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Stephen Colbert’s In-House Tech Startup Wants to Fix TV Scripts

By Joshua Brustein, Business Week

June 17, 2014

There are computer developers hiding among the comedians on the Colbert Report, and over the past few years they have reworked the program used by the staff to write and produce its segments. Several people involved with the show have formed a technology startup, Scripto, to develop the software and license it to other TV shows. The New York-based project includes Rob Dubbin, a writer and developer for the Colbert Report, and in April the company posted a hiring notice for a chief technology officer.

…

Its bare-bones website describes the product as a “collaborative text editor that allows a show’s entire staff to work on the same set of scripts at the same time.” This sort of collaboration software counts as a hot topic in the particularly unsexy world of enterprise tech. Polishing the daily cable-news deadpan for the Colbert Report-a high-volume, high-pressure workplace at which talented people work on tight deadlines-might be something like the perfect laboratory to test out new approaches.

…

No one involved in the project is talking-Dubbin would say only that the startup was too nascent to discuss-nor is it certain that the production software will move with Colbert to CBS. Representatives for the Colbert Report didn’t respond to multiple requests to discuss the project, and a spokesman for the Late Show didn’t know Scripto existed.

While Scripto so far lacks a public profile, it can claim a one-show track record of success. Dubbin and company have been using an early, Web-based version of the application for three years on the Colbert Report, and the software has been in full-time use for the past year, during which time the show was nominated for six Emmys, including awards for editing, directing, and writing. Colbert Report won the 2013 Emmy for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series. Will anyone else trust a bunch of tech-savvy satirists with serious software? Scripto’s website promises that the startup is “currently expanding to other clients.”

Kevin Hart is an actor/comedian and stars in Real Husbands of Hollywood but even though it recently won an NAACP Image Award (not always a reliable indicator I’m afraid, Donald Sterling won a lifetime service award and was named for a second before his little indiscretion) that’s not what Jon will likely talk about.

Instead I expect he’ll focus on his film project Think Like a Man Too which will be released this week and will be his 3rd this year (Ride Along and About Last Night since you insist).

Stephen tonight has part one of a husband and wife team, Claire Shipman, who in case you didn’t know is married to Jay Carney, departing (as of Friday) Press Secretary of the Obama Administration.

Her independent project with Katty Kay (a BBCA News Anchor) is The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know.

If this excerpt from Politico is any guide it’s incredibly sexist in that ‘for women it’s all about appearance and making the men folk feel unthreatened, not how good you are’ kind of way-

“Professional success demands political savvy, a certain amount of scheming and jockeying, a flair for self-promotion and not letting a NO stop you. Women often aren’t very comfortable with that. Perhaps, deep down, we don’t really approve of these tactics. Whatever the reason, we haven’t been very good at mastering these skills, and that holds us back. Valerie Jarrett regularly spots this operational tension in the women she works with. … [S]he’s… an unofficial adviser to dozens of female White House employees. … We dropped in late one afternoon, and, along with some female colleagues, gathered around a conference table in her West Wing office.

“In a cream silk blouse, splashed with an edgy design of purple and yellow (she’s known as a sharp dresser), Jarrett managed to convey crisp authority and matriarchal warmth at the same time. … One thing she’s learned over the years, she told us, especially watching her friend Tina Tchen, the First Lady’s chief of staff, is that you don’t always have to dominate a conversation to have an impact. But there are times when speaking up is required, and women have got to master that distinction. ‘We’re taught to be more self-deprecating,’ she told us. ‘I think it all begins on the playground, and then society reinforces it. We believe that we should wait until we are absolutely sure that we are ready for something before we ask for it.’

What does what she’s wearing have to do with a damn thing?