November, 2013 - Death Is Bad

Link Archive 11/8/13 – 11/30/13

Nov 302013

Ack, didn’t realize how long I’d let this go!

Thanksgiving is a Sci-Fi story. This post is both historically accurate and epic.
“Mr. S heads to the alien settlement […] What if he could use these aliens as a tool to unite the warring bands of survivors? Break the ex-governor’s stranglehold on the region? Start rebuilding civilization? What if he could make something completely new, a merger of American ingenuity and alien technology?”

The Body Shapes Of The World’s Best Athletes Compared Side By Side

Today I’m thankful for Death Metal. :)
Normal English: “You have to mow the lawn”
Death Metal English: “BRING DOWN THE SCYTHE OF GODS UPON THE NECKS OF THE GREEN-RIBBED LEGIONS AND SWEEP AWAY THEIR WRETCHED BODIES; THOU ART IMPLORED BY ME”

Hidden Treasure – Hard drive with $7M in BitCoins is buried in a landfill. This kinda thing makes me wonder. Obviously I’m not going to go digging in a landfill… What sort of calculation did my brain do to decide “the risk, cost, and effort is not likely to be worth it”? Was it in any way a rational decision, or just laziness/contentment?

If Harry Potter Was Made By Disney. Made me smile. :)

Y’all know I love me some Scott Anderson. His letter to the FDA.
…As a doctor, I am well aware of both the importance of genetic testing in medicine and of the difficulty in getting these tests through the normal medical system
…In contrast, 23andMe has raised awareness of genetics among the general population and given them questions and concerns, usually appropriate, which they can discuss with their doctor.
… I am distressed by the likely effects of this decision on genetic research. Many of the most promising medical advances in the pipeline are based on genetics, but one major bottleneck to genetic discovery is the absence of good genomes to work with. […] 23andMe has amassed what may be the largest database of such information anywhere in the world and is making it available to researchers (with appropriate privacy protection), an amazing public service for a for-profit company. Restricting their ability to provide this service will almost certainly delay life-saving genetic discoveries.
…In contrast to these important services provided by 23andMe, your stated worries about the company are, with all due respect, somewhat bizarre.

Cookie Monster’s I Love It parody – Me Want It (But Me Wait)

“the government is torturing my father until he dies … If you’re a politician who has ever voted against doctor-assisted suicide, or you would vote against it in the future, I hate your fucking guts and I would like you to die a long, horrible death.”
I hear very similar sentiments from people who work in the medical profession. A lot of end-of-life “care” is right out of horror novels/movies. And we’re letting it happen because we don’t care about the dying.

YouTube comments, acted out dramatically and with great gravitas. Awesome.

OK. Guess I’m going to buy a bidet. Only $36? To The Future!
“Medical Breakthrough: After 200 years of use by millions of people around the world and 20 years of widespread adoption in Japan, two medical researchers in the US finally checked to see if bidet-style toilets were more sanitary. What were their findings? handling your own feces with little tuffs of white paper turns out to be a bad long-term health strategy.
1.7 million Americans contract hospital acquired infections every year. Turns out 36% are urinary tract infections. US medical professional must have noticed that their Japanese counterparts only have a 5% rate of UTIs for their hospital acquired infections. Surely they connected these dots and started saving the extra 31,000 people / year dying in the US of these preventable infections? Nope. They aren’t even studying it. People don’t sue hospitals for the kinds of infections that they “give themselves” through “poor hygiene”.
Maybe a few generations from now, doctors will begin learning germ theory… or how to read medical literature from 2005… or how to notice when an entire other country just doesn’t have some problem that they do.
Here’s a quick thought experiment that can help. Imagine you had feces *anywhere* else on your body. Would you even briefly consider the solution of wiping it off with a piece of paper and going back to whatever you were doing?

Holy shit guys. Boba Fett killed Luke Skywalker’s Aunt and Uncle. Holy fucking shit.

WOAH! Vermont approves single-payer healthcare! Goes live in 2017. Are we finally going to join the rest of the developed world? I’m actually hopeful for once!

Since I first saw this I’ve been very amused by claims that god had to “dumb it down” for the pre-scientific peoples. It rewrites the genesis creation story so that it is 1) Scientifically Accurate, 2) Easily Comprehensible to Ancient Pre-Industrial Nomads, and 3) Very Poetic and Pretty Sounding. If we had something like THIS in the holy books, (“and I tell you this – light can become solid, and solid can become light”) then as we learned more about how reality really works we really WOULD be blown away. That would be pretty good evidence that something much more advanced than ancient humans had talked with our ancestors.

If you get antibiotics, take ALL of them. Don’t use antibiotic soap regularly. And support legislation to reform factory farming (80% of antibiotic use is in industrial food production, and those resistances spread).
The Post-Antibiotic Future.
“Before antibiotics, five women died out of every 1,000 who gave birth. One out of nine people who got a skin infection died, even from something as simple as a scrape or an insect bite. Three out of ten people who contracted pneumonia died from it. Ear infections caused deafness; sore throats were followed by heart failure. In a post-antibiotic era, would you mess around with power tools? Let your kid climb a tree? Have another child?”

State Rep. Uses Sledgehammer To Destroy Homeless People’s Possessions I was hoping he’d get a shank in the kidney soon (consequences – the only way to motivate change!), but it turns out he stopped after lots of public outrage. Which I guess is good. It’s a non-violent type of consequence, and violence is bad. Still… the less civilized part of me bemoans a lost opportunity.

I did laugh when I watched the Kimmel “Taking Candy” bit, but I also felt bad about it. Sam Harris on just how nasty this is.
“he can learn that his parents will lie to him for the purpose of making him miserable. He can also learn that they will find his suffering hilarious and that, at any moment, he might be shamed by those closest to him.”

This is the music they play on the other side of the singularity in Event Horizon. Wrecking Ball G-Major.

Trans-Pacific Partnership: It’s SOPA all over again, this time in secret. Yes – internet censorship, extreme copyright extension, imposition of insane pro-corporate doctrine on other countries… the works. Take particular note of the “Contact your congress person” links in the right side-bar. The EFF makes the process extremely painless.

Tetanus shots now come with adult whooping cough boosters, and I got mine two years ago, so I’m OK. Make sure you’re current too. Three months of extremely painful coughing fits sounds horrid. I’ve Got Whooping Cough. Thanks a Lot, Jenny McCarthy.

Nova on cryonics. It’s extremely preliminary, you really couldn’t get much less deep into the topic if you tried. It is only 4min after all. But it’s a reasonable portrayal without all the usual “OMG WTF?!?!” that pop media usually slings at it, and maybe it’ll expose some people to the concept who’d never heard of it before. So… I like it.

:) 20 Movie Stills Hilariously Replacing Guns With Thumbs-Ups

Dan Savage at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Paraphrasing: There are times when cheating is the lesser sin. I get letters: ‘We have small children. I do love my spouse. They are ill and dependant on me for health insurance.’ They haven’t had sex in years, and I am supposed to tell that person to get a divorce. According to the standard sex-advice. Sometimes staying married and staying sane means cheating. (he does clarify that many cheaters are pieces of shit, and this is not an excuse that applies often)
Of course it’d better if it didn’t have to be “cheating”, if the spouse could just say “I love you and value our relationship, and its OK to get sex elsewhere.” But since we live in a crappy world, sometimes cheating is the lesser wrong.

Young Singles, Seth Adam Smith’s Marriage Advice Isn’t for You
“Together, two happy people can create an even happier couple, but if you make someone else’s happiness your mission in life, you give them the power to make your life a failure.”
&
“See, “marriage is for others” is exactly what women have been told for centuries, and it’s done a lot of harm. “Marriage is for the family” kept women ashamed of their marriage problems and too scared to divorce their husbands. “Marriage is for children” has kept multitudes of women locked in abusive marriages “until the kids are grown.””

The paralyzing guilt of being good at math “(And then this traitorous voice in your head asks, do I not like doing math because I don’t actually like doing it, or because the patriarchy has convinced me in its horrid, insidious way that I shouldn’t, just like I’m still deep down emotionally convinced that I hate my body?) […] It feels almost like, if you can prove people wrong, then you should.”

This band is great a making a supposedly jauntly melody sound really creepy

Didn’t know 3D printing could be done with metal. *Now* we’re getting somewhere interesting… World’s First 3D Printed Metal Gun

That was unexpected

Uncategorized 1 Response »

Nov 262013

Holy crap, not 24 hours after I post my instructions on how to restore the thumbnail on Chrome’s New Tabs Page I see that this has been remedied. I assume this sort of thing takes more than a single day to implement, so obviously they had to have been working on this before I wrote anything. Still, that was a weird feeling.

Microsoft Has Doomed Our Species

Musings On Present Day No Responses »

Nov 262013

Alright I admit it – part of yesterday’s post on un-unpinning a tab in Chrome was a set up for today’s post. Because just a few days after that I started using a shiny new Android phone, and, well… I posted this Facebook rant after my first texting experience.

“WTF is with software nowadays being so fucking un-customizable? I now have an android smartphone, and the native android smilie icons are UGLY as SHIT. (it’s a smiling green pile of puke!) Turns out there’s no option to replace them, or even just plain TURN THEM OFF. I have to go download a separate messaging app. Is this non-customization a thing now? Is this how we do software? I guess everyone got so used to Facebook just forcing bullshit on us that we don’t even question this crap. I don’t even…!!! ARRR!”

Yes, I know it’s a First World Problems rant. My recent frustration with Chrome not including simple things in its Options boiled over. Normally I wouldn’t publicize something like that in a permanent, searchable format. But this is just one more example in a trend of Crass Sloppiness. Very rarely does anyone care anymore that code is sloppy. I’m nowhere close to the first person to notice this, but it’s becoming ridiculous. Yes, bugs are hard to find, applying rigorous standards takes discipline and good leadership, and crap software is cheaper to produce – especially when you outsource the beta testing to your initial customers! MicroSoft’s era of shitty software has made us callous to these problems. What’s the first solution to every software problem? Right – reboot the damn machine. Is your computer running poorly? Well what do you expect if you haven’t power-cycled it in a day? Something crashed? Eh, just reload it. Nobody cares anymore. And if the users don’t care, why should the developers?

This has led to such a shitty work ethic that now even simple things like having the option to turn off or undo an intrusive feature is not included. How lazy do you have to be to not put in that option? How much Not-Giving-A-Fuck does a boss have to have to let that slide?

And since we are all computer users, this attitude of “Well, doesn’t matter if it runs well, as long as it kinda works, now let me get back to my cat vids” seems to have permeated all of society. I took my car in to three different places because it developed a rough idle and has lost a small but non-trivial bit of gas mileage. All three times I’ve gotten a shrug and “I dunno… it seems to be running though.” Yes, I know it’s running, but it’s performing sub-optimally, and apparently it’s not actually your job to give a fuck? I wish I knew a mechanic who actually had some pride in his work and passion for his job.

Ever since the dawn of tool use, human advancement has relied on ever greater attention to precision and perfection. This reversal when it comes to software is more than just a bit worrying. As Charles Stross has pointed out, we don’t use analog machines anymore. We don’t use telephones – we talk into computers, that transmit data to other computers, which then turn that data back into sound to play for the guy on the other end of the line. We don’t drive cars – we manipulate the input devices on large, rolling computers-with-engines, which use that input to drive us where we want to go. We don’t turn keys in locks – we identify ourselves via chips to computers that control the door locks. If software keeps getting more bloated and leaky and “good enough”, and both users and developers stop caring that it works cleanly, not going to space today may be the least of our problems.

How to reverse a home page unpin in Chrome

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Nov 252013

This will only be of interest to those of you who use Chrome. I wouldn’t normally post a how-to that’s basically a replication of other stuff on the net, but it turns out this is a two-step process and no one tells you that, which can lead to much frustration.

Those most-visited sites on the new-tabs page? You probably already know you can remove them permanently by hovering over one until a little ‘X’ shows up in the upper-right corner and you click it. But what happens if you accidentally clicked it for a site you use all the damn time, like Gmail? There should be a menu item under ‘Options’ that allows you to remove/edit that sort of thing, right?

Well yes, there SHOULD be. For something so easily mis-clicked, and of such usefulness, there SHOULD be a quick and easy customization option. At the very least a way to undo mistakes (or for when you change your mind). But there isn’t.

So Step One is to edit the Preferences data file manually. Taken from the Google Product Forums:

On Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<YOUR_USERNAME_HERE>\Local Settings\Application Data\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\
On Windows Vista: C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME_HERE>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\

You will need Hidden Folders enabled to find that directory. Otherwise, you can just substitute it into your address bar in Windows Explorer, and then hit Enter.

Once you find that folder, there should be a folder called “Default”. Browse into that folder, and look for a file simply called “Preferences”. We’ll be editing that file, so feel free to back it up just in case.

Now, open that file in Notepad, and find the section called “most_visited_blacklist”. You can press ctrl+f, and enter that term to find it quickly.

For example, you should see something like this (btw, this is what mine looks like):

“most_visited_blacklist”: {
“132dcb2a30d7da81d9b002347f6ffbdc”: true,
“c81fae6de8847f57a5b6cf80f083dbae”: true,
“df76891edd41a04f8fb44114885522dc”: true
},

Change it so it looks something like this:

“most_visited_blacklist”: {
},

In the newer version of Chrome you also have to find the text that says something like

“blacklistupdate”: {
“lastpingday”: “847363674885675”
},
and clear it also to look like this
“blacklistupdate”: {
},

At this point you might be tempted to shut down Chrome and restart it, to witness your success. Don’t do this. What no one tells you is that Google “conveniently” keeps a backup of all the sites you’ve blacklisted from your new-tabs page (along with much more, of course). And they will “conveniently” update your blacklist to match their records automatically on start-up. You’ll have to go back into your Preferences file and do all of this AGAIN. It feels almost like black magic the first time you go back into your Preferences file and see that nothing has changed, even though you explicitly remember having edited and saved it just two minutes ago. Has my memory of events been hacked? WTF?

Anyway, first you have to disable Google’s Syncing. Here’s how to do that, taken from C-Net:

To clear your sync data from the Google Dashboard, scroll to the Chrome sync section and click the link to “Stop sync and delete data from Google.” You’ll then be prompted to confirm the deletion.

You can also go directly to the Chrome sync settings page. There, you’ll see a grid layout of sync items and a count of how many of those items are being synchronized. Hovering over each section brings up a description of the type of data being synchronized. To clear your data, click on the “Stop and Clear” button. Again, you’ll be asked to confirm the deletion.

That’s it. Within several hours, all your sync data will be deleted from Google’s servers. To re-enable Chrome sync, go to Settings in Chrome, and use your Google account to sign in. Then, go to Advanced sync settings to choose the items you want to sync.

So, there you go. A simple menu option turned into manual file editing and disabling “nifty” features you didn’t know you had (or wanted!). Someone at Google dropped the ball on this one.

BTW, if you have the new Chrome New Tabs page as much as I do, you can revert back to the old one (at least for now). Hey Google – once the omnibar in the New Tabs page acts the same way it does on google.com – including auto-fill drop downs – then I’ll use it.

/frustration

The best use for junk mail

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Nov 212013

Like everyone else in their right mind, I used to just toss junk mail straight into the recycle bin. No more! I have been alerted to a fun new use of this modern scourge!

Fill the business reply envelopes with crap from other junk mailers. Then drop it in the mail. Why?

The awful spamming company will have to sort through the mail your returned. You are imposing on them the same time cost they imposed on you. Furthermore, they will have to employ a human to do this. If 100% of the populace returned our trash like this, we could create quite a few jobs!

On top of that, spam companies pay the postage for business reply mail. So you are also imposing the cost of postage upon them, PLUS you are helping to fund a vital social service (the Post) and tapping giant corporate money to do it!

It’s a Win-Win-Win (ok, the spamming company Loses, but we actively dislike them, so their Loss actually counts as a Win! So Win-Win-Win-Win!)

If this became commonplace, what would the results be?

Well, the cost of spamming would go up. This might reduce spamming – a plus. And it might result in companies paying to directly target people who are actually interested in what they are offering. That would mean the no-skill envelope-opener jobs being replaced with high-skilled (and thus more highly-paid) “figuring out who actually wants our stuff” jobs.

We’d also pay more attention to our mail and read some of it if we knew we were only getting stuff that we are likely to want to get.

So – never throw away a business reply envelope again! If you have a minute, stuff it with junk (to increase the size and weight, costing more postage and sorting labor). If you don’t, shit, just send it back empty! Still counts! :)

Do not blame porn. DO thank a gay guy.

Musings On Present Day, Personal 2 Responses »

Nov 192013

I recently had a conversation with the father of a 12-year-old who was worried that his son would get a grossly distorted view of sex from porn, since there’s so much of it these days and it can get pretty extreme.

Well sure. There are some things you’ll learn from porn that are wrong if porn is your only source. Just as there are many aspects of life that you will get drastically wrong if Hollywood is your only source. I don’t consider this to be significant. Conscientious parents will inform their kids that porn is Kabuki Sex (as Dan Savage says), and will tell them that in real life people need foreplay, anal doesn’t happen until much later (if at all), and so forth. Kids who don’t have such parents (as I didn’t) will learn these lessons extremely quickly once they become sexually active. Seriously, those lessons are picked up in a flash, because they’re so vital to getting laid.

There’s also this weird concern that porn will teach boys to disrespect women.

No.

Porn is obviously ludicrous. Any boy with a female teacher learns immediately that they do not keep you after class to have sex with you. No one ever thinks those actions translate to real life. The stigma and secrecy that goes along with porn is enough of a signal on its own that it does not reflect real-life behavior. A kid will treat women with the respect or disrespect that has been demonstrated to him by his parents, peers, and society. If there are behavioral issues with your kid, look there. Porn is as responsible for his mistreatment of women as video games are responsible for his violent outbursts (ie: not at all). Again I point to the statistic that 100% of men watch porn and this doesn’t make them any more hostile to women. Every kind father, every young male feminist, every decent boyfriend – all watch porn. Hasn’t made them evil.

I’m actually more concerned about the self-image issues boys can get from porn than the female-issues. Their first girlfriend will quickly straighten out the female issues, but with no other males to compare themselves to, boys can internalize a lot of wrong ideas that will stick with them for a long time.

For example:

*The idea that all men are ready to fuck at the drop of a hat, as long as the female is willing. Sometimes, I just plain don’t want to fuck. I’m not in the mood. The shaming of being “unable to get it up” is really intense when you believe that this is the measure of your manhood. It took quite a while for me to become OK with saying No.

*The idea that the only thing men want is sex, all the time, to the exclusion of all else. Sometimes I really do just want to read, or play a game, or work on a project. Don’t feel bad that I’m not always drooling over you, it’s not a sign of anything wrong with you. And don’t imply there’s something wrong with me if I’m not lured away from my desk by the promise of titties. They’re fun, they’re not the Holy Grail

*The idea that men don’t have feelings, or at least none that matter in the face of sex. If I dislike you personally, I can’t have sex with you. Again, that doesn’t mean I fail at masculinity.

The thing is – these aren’t problems because of porn. These are problems that are part of the fabric of our society. These messages are constantly broadcast to all of us, in movies, in sitcoms, in casual banter. They’re reinforced by women as well as men. If this was not the case, and these tropes showed up only in porn, they’d have no noticeable effect on anyone. They’d be just as silly and ignorable as the old “you’re going to get sex every time you deliver a pizza to a woman” trope.

My only proposed solution right now is to read/listen to a lot of Dan Savage. I suppose that guys talking frankly with other guys about sex could also work, but that’s waaaaaaay too “gay” for most people to actually do, especially at the age that it’s needed. For lots of young straight guys, the best they can do is surreptitiously listen in on gay guys discussing sex. I think the acceptance of gay culture is one of the best things to ever happen to straight male sexuality, because gay guys actually have other guys’ sex lives to compare their own to – other penises to use as references. They brought some actual discussion of sex from the male perspective into the room. Before that, all men had to compare themselves to are the myths and legends of history’s great liars.

SF/F Review – Use of Weapons

Book Club Review No Responses »

Nov 152013

Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks

Synopsis: A series of shorts taking place during lulls in violent conflicts, examining the banality and futility of war, of redemption.

Book Review: Technically there are two storylines in this book, my synopsis only covers the important one, which is told in reverse. The normal-progressing storyline is too long, and drags in many points. The two storylines are interwoven, and thus the chapters alternate between them, but the book would have been better served if two-thirds of the forward-progressing story had been cut. I suspect he felt the same, because Banks’ prose never rose from the page in those sections. I could see the right words being used, in the right order, but somehow the descriptions never kindled my imagination, the world never drew me in. I put this criticism up front, because the meat of the novel is mind-blowingly awesome.

The reverse-order storyline is incredible. Every single story is purified, concentrated shot of isolation, disassociation, or resignation. A silent, screaming, desperate pleading for purpose, or forgiveness, or ending. The journey is slow in places, but the payoff is amazing. Banks’ use of reverse structure is phenomenal, and we all know how much I love structure-play (so much that Vellum is my favorite book ever). Even better – the story could not be told if he had used the traditional structure. His use was not only well-done and very aesthetically fulfilling, it was necessary due to the story he was telling. I know I’m decades late to the party, but – Highly Recommended.

Book Club Review: Also a stellar book for a book club. There are several themes that run deeply in this book which afford great exploration in conversation. The titular “Use of Weapons” is a rephrasing of the question “what means are justified by the ends?” What weapons are you willing to use in order to achieve a greater good? Is the horror of war justified if it leads to a better world? What atrocities can be overlooked for victory? The question is repeated over and over in dozens of forms – Should we retreat from this area, which holds a sacred temple but is indefensible, in order to win the war? Should I leave dozens of people disfigured to escape with a diplomat who can avert the next war? Banks goes from the broad strokes and focuses down to the extremely small – a single person, a single relationship – to really bring home the question and truly make it personal. Are these means justified by the ends? He even manages to make the ends abstractedly good by never telling you why the people at war are fighting. The protagonist is convincingly shown to be a deeply good and deeply caring person. His guilt and quest for redemption consumes his entire existence for decades, maybe centuries, yet he never repents his original act. This really drives home that what he was fighting for was, at least in his mind, the greatest of all causes. We are not told what it is, and so we insert our own dreams, our own most holy values, and ask… what weapons would we use to defend them?

Highly Recommended.
<br />

Last Night

Personal No Responses »

Nov 082013

She: Hi baby. I just fed the dog dinner.
He – sits down to eat
Dog – comes over to ask for his dinner
He: Don’t try to play that game, I know you just ate.
Dog – indicates he can’t remember the last time he had anything to eat, can’t he have just a tiny morsel?
He: I know you’re lying to me, and I know you just ate
Dog – finds this implausible
He: You see, these noises us humans are constantly making aren’t purely emotive – they are also a form of telepathy. I can know anything that she knows, if she so wishes.
Dog – hesitates
He: Thus I know she fed you.
Dog – continues to plead for food, undeterred by the human’s lies

Link Archive 10/18/13 – 11/7/13

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Nov 072013

Star Wars inserted into Kinkade. Awesome.

Dammit! I was tricked into rejecting Jesus by my toys! It’s all so clear now…
Glad they mentioned Smurfs. Those were a big scare in my church as a kid. My best friend’s younger brother was tormented by the smurfs that literally(!) jumped off his bedsheets and danced around the room at night, chanting and mocking him.
Sadly we can’t replicate this, they burned the bedsheet.

Maybe I just don’t have the energy for it today, but I didn’t get any schadenfreude out of this. Kinda feel bad for the bastard. Ron Paul’s Campaign Manager Died of Pneumonia, Penniless and Uninsured

I don’t…. what??

Fake pharma ad – “Vaccines. And now my kids don’t die.”

My Little Pony – “What people think I watch Vs What I actually watch”
Just 3 more weeks ’till Season 4!

Sayeth Scott Alexander: “I made fun of how religious people say “because of human dignity” when something weirds them out but they have no argument against it. Some people doubted me, or thought I was making a pattern out of noise. To these people I present -” Three parent babies ‘incompatible with human dignity’

A tribute to the dead. The google maps link.

Radioactive Fox. This is (almost) as good as Smells Like Teen Spirit & Never Gonna Give You Up mash-up.

Can a clash of multi-billion titans do something to un-fuck patent law in this country? I dunno. I can hope. “Northern Telecom went bankrupt. Now Apple, RIM, Ericsson, Sony and MSFT want to use its assets to make your Droid phone more expensive.”

I despise Daylight Savings so freakin much. Article advocates getting rid of it and going to a 2-zone system in the US. I assume based on the theory of always asking for the outrageous so what you actually want will seem more reasonable.
“Research based on time use surveys found Americans’ schedules are determined by television more than daylight. That suggests in effect, Americans already live on two time zones.”

The Logic of Stupid Poor People.
“A hiring manager at my first professional job looked me up and down in the waiting room, cataloging my outfit, and later told me that she had decided I was too classy to be on the call center floor. I was hired as a trainer instead. The difference meant no shift work, greater prestige, better pay and a baseline salary for all my future employment.”

20th Century Headlines Re-written to Get More Clicks (but you already read xkcd anyway, right?)

A pertinent warning about The Internet, from the future. I’ve been getting less done than I want recently as well.

Less than a century later, it’s the Germans who are protecting Europe’s rights from a big-brother government while the American public are looking the other way and shrugging. Oh how quickly things change.
“Europe mulls sanctions against US over spying”

Oh. My. God.
There is a Tenacious D BLUEGRASS tribute band!!

I’ve been doing sex all wrong!

A trailer for a movie that I believe is actually real! :)

GOP state official quits after ‘Daily Show’ interview. So I guess even the GOP can tolerate only so much dumb-fuckery. Seriously, wow.

Send a note to your congress-person. Help stop the patent trolls.

Damn, China’s smog seen from space. You know what we need to do? Disband the EPA. Stupid job-killing bureaucrats! Think of all the jobs we could create in gas-mask manufacturing!

Robot Sign-Spinners. I suppose these are the sorts of mind-numbing jobs we’d want to automate first. But wasn’t the sign-spinner a reaction to the prohibition on billboards? These mannequins look to just be bringing that problem back, with the added bonus of foot-traffic congestion. I imagine it won’t be too long until they’re banned.

The Rat Park experiment. Drug abuse – it’s not so much about physical addiction as it is about life sucking. (also summarized in this cool comic).

The man who brought you Neoractionism In A Giant Nutshell has produced The Anti-Reactionary FAQ. It’s written with his traditional wit and humor and very informative. It is, again, on the long side. Might want to break it up over a day or two.

No link here, as this was a comment on a friend’s post. It made me die a little inside.
“We hired a football coach one year and then built a teaching schedule for him that included a math class, a science class, two English classes and a PE class. He was a PE major. Every day he borrowed my lesson plans. I saw him sketching Xs and Os on the back of a student paper once, and I teased him for doing that instead of grading the paper. He said to me, dead serious, “I will never be fired if Grand Junction’s English students are better than ours.” [Grand Junction is our crosstown rival]. On the other hand, they hired me to teach English over many more experienced candidates because I was going to be the new swim coach. The head of secondary education’s daughter was a swimmer.”

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?
I’m going to assume this is over-blown to sell eyeballs, but damn this sort of thing is awesome! (on an intellectual level) I want to read fiction set in this world. Watts hinted at it in Blindsight, but since most of the action was off-planet it wasn’t much explored.

Denver’s Million Mask March – Nov 5th 2013

Musings On Present Day 1 Response »

Nov 062013

A friend attended the Nov 5^th Million Mask March. I did not, as the previous two marches I’d attended recently didn’t really seem have any impact. We walked around and shouted for a bit, inconvenienced some vehicle traffic around the capital building, and then dispersed and everything was forgotten. Also, it was taking place on a work day, during & directly after work hours. I could take the day off if I wanted to, but for the reason mentioned, I didn’t have any motivation to do that.

Boy do I regret that decision.

Apparently, Anonymous actually has drawn the attention of The Powers That Be. My friend returned from the event very rattled. Practically terrified, actually. The streets had been filled with police. Not just regular police either (although they were in abundance), but Riot Police in full riot gear, and brandishing rifles. Empty buses were called out to block sight to the protester’s held signs (wtf??). She witnessed several incidents of police harassment, where pigs would push people further onto the sidewalk and yell threats. Incitements to resist, basically. She did not personally witness arrests, but they did occur.

For anyone who advocates for social change, there is nothing worse than being ignored. Somehow Anonymous have made themselves a player. A relatively small protest of idealistic young kids, which was cleared with the government beforehand and which was entirely peaceful, warranted a severe police presence. The people in power were worried – they devoted thought and energy into suppressing this march, and quite a bit of resources (I’m sure that sort of deployment isn’t cheap). This is absolutely where you want to be. I will most definitely be participating in the next Nov 5^th march, and likely in other Anonymous actions between now and then.

This is what my friend posted about the event the next day:

Remember, remember the 5th of November.
Oh, I will remember. I will remember it as the day I learned that America was no longer free. I will remember it as the day I gathered peacefully with fellow citizens, only to be threatened, harassed and terrorized by the very police force that is supposed to serve and protect us. I will remember that my local government reacts to a gathering of 200 peaceful protesters with 200 officers in riot gear and riffles. I will remember who the real terrorists are. November 5th is the day I learned who is really attacking our freedoms (hint: they do not live over seas).
But what I will try to remember most is that they are scared of us. Why were those military style forces brought against unarmed civilians? Because we are right, because we are trying to demand that we once again have a government that is BY the people, FOR the people and OF the people. They have taken the power from the people. We want our country back, and that makes them so scared they call in the military against their own citizens. We will get our Republic back. Expect us.

Further reporting on this can be found at Westword

(all photos via Travis Garcia)

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