All posts by Jay Pinho

About Jay Pinho

Jay is a data journalist and political junkie. He currently writes about domestic politics, foreign affairs, and journalism and continues to make painstakingly slow progress in amateur photography. He would very much like you to check out SCOTUSMap.com and SCOTUSSearch.com if you have the chance.

Too hot for this job

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Kevin Drum at Mother Jones reports on Melissa Nelson’s unsuccessful lawsuit against her employer, who fired her for being too attractive and thus inadvertently threatening his marriage. The Iowa Supreme Court (which, not coincidentally, is all-male) ruled 7-0 in the employer’s favor:

Sadly, this nonsense isn’t anything new. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals had previously upheld a business owner’s right to fire an employee because the business owner’s wife found her threatening. And a couple of years ago, a woman named Debrahlee Lorenzana sued a Citibank branch in Manhattan, alleging that her superiors canned her for looking too much like a supermodel…

This is the legal reality of fireable hotness in America today.

Did the NRA just jump the shark?

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r02rh34CXmI]

I’d like to think it did, but my instincts tell me almost nothing is strong enough to break the spell that’s been cast on gun rights advocates in this country. Transcript below:

Meanwhile, a shooting in central Pennsylvania this morning has left four dead and three injured.

Winning votes, one by one

Politics, Technology, , , , ,

The story of Barack Obama’s data-driven campaign approach is still being told. Building on their 2008 success, the Obama data junkies assembled a truly astounding, state-of-the-art framework to microtarget advertising and fundraising appeals to the individual level. The MIT Technology Review just ran an eye-opening three-part article on how the team put the data monstrosity together:

Many of those who went to Washington after the 2008 election in order to further the president’s political agenda returned to Chicago in the spring of 2011 to work on his reëlection. The chastening losses they had experienced in Washington separated them from those who had known only the ecstasies of 2008. “People who did ‘08, but didn’t do ‘10, and came back in ‘11 or ‘12—they had the hardest culture clash,” says Jeremy Bird, who became national field director on the reëlection campaign. But those who went to Washington and returned to Chicago developed a particular appreciation for Wagner’s methods of working with the electorate at an atomic level. It was a way of thinking that perfectly aligned with their ­simple theory of what it would take to win the president reëlection: get everyone who had voted for him in 2008 to do it again. At the same time, they knew they would need to succeed at registering and mobilizing new voters, especially in some of the fastest-growing demographic categories, to make up for any 2008 voters who did defect.

Obama’s campaign began the election year confident it knew the name of every one of the 69,456,897 Americans whose votes had put him in the White House. They may have cast those votes by secret ballot, but Obama’s analysts could look at the Democrats’ vote totals in each precinct and identify the people most likely to have backed him. Pundits talked in the abstract about reassembling Obama’s 2008 coalition. But within the campaign, the goal was literal. They would reassemble the coalition, one by one, through personal contacts.

Related articles

The future of journalism?

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Screen Shot 2012-12-20 at 10.21.14 PM

Am I going too far? All the cool kids on the Internet (such as Jay Rosen) are buzzing about the New York Times‘ special multimedia feature, “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek:”

I’ve never seen a better design for any story online. It sets a new standard, in my opinion. Now in saying that I am NOT saying “there’s never been anything like it.” Nor am I saying: this is the future of journalism. Nor am I saying that everyone can do this. I’m saying only what I said: in my opinion, it sets a new standard in digital storytelling.

Rarely have I personally been so excited by anything the New York Times has done. But this is truly impressive: an old-media organization standing up to be counted in the twenty-first century. Obviously this level of graphical detail and interactive content is simply too time-intensive and costly to incorporate into most stories, but it absolutely raises the bar for future feature pieces by anyone online.

The obvious Path forward

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Middling social network Path has come up with a nifty new feature that should have been included in all social media platforms for years — the ability to search through your past:

Mobile social network Path broke down social network walls in the summer of 2012 by giving new users the option to import their Facebook, Foursquare and Instagram data.

Now, Path is playing up that feature as the best way to cull all your social updates (minus those from Twitter) into one big archive. Starting Thursday, that archive is searchable, making for a very unique and handy way to recall your memories. “We want people to basically use us as their social search engine,” says Path marketing director Nate Johnson. “Our goal is simple, to help people be close to each other.”

…

With Nearby and search, you can find anything you’ve shared to Path and Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare (assuming you’ve imported that data). That gives Path a huge leg up, because you can’t search for any past activity on those social networks.

Why this isn’t already the case on Facebook is a question I’ve wondered for a long, long time. Kudos to someone else for actually making it happen.

Extremism, rejected

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The latest CNN/ORC poll highlights American disillusionment with the Republican Party:

Fifty-three percent of people, including 22 percent of Republicans, said the GOP’s views and policies have pushed them beyond the mainstream. The number is up dramatically from previous years. In 2010, fewer than 40 percent thought the party was too extreme.

Democrats were considered to be a “generally mainstream” party by 57 percent in the new poll.

“That’s due in part to the fact that the Republican brand is not doing all that well,” said Keating Holland, CNN’s polling director.