InterrroClayton

This is a very cool idea: InterroClayton. Clayton Cubitt is selling his brain. One cell will cost you $1 $2. I did it. Try it. You might learn something.

Money pool

Statue, New York City, New York

Sin stock report

I had a fun time yesterday interviewing the creator of Sin Stock Report.

Created by Aaron Hoos, a stock broker turned business and finance writer in Winnipeg, Canada, the outlet bills itself as “the only internet magazine focused exclusively on those stocks you DON’T want your mother to know about!”

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Tax that ass

My pal Bubbles let me interview her for my Forbes blog. What's it like to work with a pole tax? Bubbles explains.

Jezebel, as you pointed out, called Houston’s pole tax “genius,” adding, “Pretty smart to use money from folks who enjoy sexualized women to aid sexually assaulted women.” Are pole taxes feminist — or anti-feminist?

The pole tax is a regressive and optional tax and as such is definitely not progressive, liberal, or in line with a statewide economic policy that would further the interests of most of the working women in the state.

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The Bitcoin girl

I really loved Kashmir Hill's bitcoin survival story. Hilarious, interesting, smart. Definitely check it out.

Kenna unlocks a barred door next to the T-Mobile store on 20^th Street to a bicycle-choked staircase that leads to the second-floor “halfway hacker house.” He tells me he took over the space 14 months earlier and convinced the landlord to let him live in it for 9 months rent-free while he and his childhood friend, Jeff, cleaned the place up.

“We think it was basically a crackhouse,” says Jered. “We were sweeping hypodermic needles off the floors.”

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How much can you make?

Stripper, Las Vegas, Nevada

"3) How much can a contributor make? As I’ve written, a writer who attracts 1 million unique visitors a month for 12 consecutive months, with a solid base of repeat visitors, can earn a six-figure annual income. That’s not easy to accomplish. In 2012, only the second year of our model, two contributors topped $100,000. We had a few at $75,000 and $50,000, and 25 hit the $35,000 mark. There is a long tail at $10,000. Using their individual data dashboard, a contributor can track how they’re doing in real time. For comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the average full-time reporter or correspondent’s salary at $45,270. Remember, being a contributor (many have worked for major national and regional news brands) is a freelance job, with considerable freedom to publish content for others." -- "Inside Forbes: Amid the Finger Pointing, Journalists Need to Explore New Payment Models"

The great freelancing debate

You know what's embarrassing? Watching this debate over freelancing for free. Which started here. Had an orgy here. And reached its peak here with this interesting insight c/o Felix Salmon:

"Digital journalism isn’t really about writing, any more — not in the manner that freelance print journalists understand it, anyway. Instead, it’s more about reading, and aggregating, and working in teams; doing all the work that used to happen in old print-magazine offices, but doing it on a vastly compressed timescale."

I was in Boca Raton, Florida, when the whole thing went down. (Which, of course, is a ridiculous thing to say: "I was in Boca Raton, Florida, when [FILL IN THE BLANK].") Everyone where I was in Boca was rich. Actually, I realized, they weren't rich. They were wealthy. "What do all these people do?" someone asked me at some point. I had no answer. They drove convertible Bentleys and had young men in white shorts set up beach chairs for them and stayed out of the water when the lifeguard saw sharks. Observing the wealthy in their native habitat, it occurred to me what the wealthy want: For the time between when they want something and when that want is sated to be as short as possible. That is wealth. To buy that which cannot be bought: time.

Mostly, though, reading over the freelance debate, I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed for the freelancers who couldn't decide whether or not freelancing for free meant they were worthless. I was embarrassed for the editors publicly admitting how poorly they paid their contractors without admitting how embarrassed they were by their actions. Embarrassed by what the internet has become -- a red light district in which the whores pretend they're not whores by fucking for cheap.

You know what else is embarrassing? I wrote a piece for The Daily Beast back in October, and I still haven't been paid for it. $300. I email, I ask, I remind, and they haven't paid it yet. That's embarrassing. Embarrassing for the woman in accounts payable who has to deal with it. Embarrassing for Tina Brown, whose 2011 salary was estimated by the NYT to be $700,000. Embarrassing for freelancers for whom there are no solutions, just more humiliation.

Webinar

Here's how many times I've done a webinar: never. I don't even like the word.

But I'm very excited to have signed up for Vickie Pynchon's Negotiation Webinar Series.

I want to be a better negotiator in all facets of my life -- professional and personal -- and I'm really looking forward to this taking me to the next level. Vickie is awesome. I highly recommend.

If you sign up, we can all role play together.

[SIGN UP]

Is investing in Apple a sin?

Over on my Forbes blog, I ponder the question: "Is Apple a Sin Stock?"

This piece was really interesting to research. I particularly enjoyed talking to the Vice Fund manager and the Jesuit priest.

Suffice to say, I don't spend a lot of time hanging around portfolio managers or priests.

“If you take cigarettes from a smoker, and alcohol from a drinker, and an iPhone from what we might consider an over-user of Apple products, would the withdrawal behaviors be equal?” Sullivan wonders. “I think they could be.”

Hopefully, I'll be doing more of these types of pieces moving forward.

My next one is on Republicans, porn, and the future.

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