February 2012
13 posts
“My daughter is working on a school project and says “Mom I need to ask you...”
– Twitter / @tapbot_paul
My daughter is going to think that neither mommy nor daddy has a job. All we do is sit there. Our dog already thinks that.
Not funny
I pass by an elderly homeless man who "plays" the violin each day - he just scrapes the strings. He's a fixture of my daily commute. Today as I was walking by this orange tan Jersey Shore looking guy decided to make fun of him, and from his behavior he obviously thought everyone around should think he was funny too. Because, you know, picking on easy targets is so cool.
Jersey Shore to me, doing the "crazy" hand gesture: Fuckin' idiot, don't know what he's doing. Should shut the fuck up.
Me: ಠ_ಠ. I guess it's easy for assholes to make fun of homeless people.
JS: O.O [bravado fading into uncertainty, starts walking faster]
Me: Mental illness and homelessness aren't a joke.
Jon Stewart Stands With FealGood Foundation to Add... →
Saw this via Denis Leary this morning, he who never fails to do stuff for firefighters.
It’s sad this has taken 10 years to pass, when so many of the more paranoid security issues after 9/11 (many of which have devolved into a loss of civil rights) got taken care of so quickly. You wouldn’t think it would be such a difficult idea to take care of those few people who put themselves at...
“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the...”
– Court overturns Prop. 8 in California, says state can’t ban gay marriage
Good news! You still can’t get married in CA anymore, but still, good news.
The Power Of Morgan Freemans Voice
This is for my brother.
pbh3:
Facebook IPO filing has a downside, too →
Look. I can’t resist. Let us consider:
But when you get down to it, as a colleague of mine said, “[facebook is] a thin coat of paint over a massive data-mining operation.”
Probably even an unprecedented one. Never before have we collectively turned over so much for so little.
We are a generation of suckers. It’s not just Facebook. We turn over our private lives...
“If you’re in a net, something has already gone terribly wrong.”
– Jon Stewart isn’t cutting Romney any slack over poor wording | an SFGate.com blog
Well, at least Romney didn’t say that poverty is the fault of the very poor and if they weren’t so lazy they’d pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. One must be grateful for the very, very...
January 2012
42 posts
“If you are pro-religion, you would support the separation of church and state....”
– Twitter / @DCdebbie
That’s a pretty succinct way to put it.
“I find it ironic that so many Americans would so quickly come to trust...”
– The SOPA-PIPA Saga - Freedom of Speech vs. Net Neutrality | Stanford Center for Internet and Society
I find it more disturbing than ironic that people implicitly and explicitly trust these companies, especially given evidence to the contrary, but fair point.
People who care about the democratic...
Tennessee Anti-Bullying Law Change Could Allow... →
Oh dear god. These people are actually serious about doing this. How can people think that hiding hate speech behind religion is a good idea?
godofbiscuits:
(via The Huffington Post)
There’s absolutely no way that this ends well. What a shameful thing.
Wat — Destroy All Software Talks →
A video of programming humor to begin the morning. I really should have seen the end of this coming :D
How does Ravelry make money? →
OK, OK - also. Not ALL Internet companies are dicks in need of morality lessons. The very smart, nice folks at Ravelry are some of my favorite entrepreneurs/coder/people. I’m not the only person who loves them, their fan base is ginormous. I wish more internet companies were customer-oriented, ethical and innovative.
Obama's speech sets tone for Congress, campaign →
Populism, right. I’ll believe it when I see it.
/cynicism
FAQ: Google’s new privacy policy - The Washington... →
Given how anti-Facebook I am for similar “integrated” information collection and use policies, I don’t really think I can exempt Google when they do the same dumb anti-privacy things.
It was easy not to use Facebook. I don’t miss it, ever. It was a pointless waste of time.
Google, though - I use their applications for productivity. Getting myself untangled from Google is...
Rachael vs. Guy Celebrity Cook-Off: The Food... →
Guy Fieri is a man who is permanently in the process of jumping the shark (seriously, have you watched his shows? seen his hair?), and now he’s hosting a show in which the entire Food Network is jumping the shark also. Rachael Ray needs to stop monetizing herself.
This is a testament to bad reality shows (is there another kind?), unnecessary “celebrities” no one remembers, and...
Newt Gingrich: History’s Greatest Team (all by... →
Note to self: Do not be a historian like Gingrich. His Ph.D. isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
The link that talks about his inept slaughtering of the history of Cordoba is also good.
“Price, a Harvard English professor, found that most (although not all) of the...”
– New Book, Unpacking My Library, Checks Out Writers and Their Book Collections | LISNews:
This just proves his ignorance about the world in which he lives, rather than really being any kind of comment about books.
That’s like saying that I am not going to give up my wringer because washing...
“The companies behind the tool feel Google’s hasn’t focused on what’s best for...”
– “Don’t Be Evil” Tool — Backed By Facebook & Twitter — Shows Google’s “Search Plus Your World” Can Go Beyond Google
Remember when Google used to return real-time Twitter results? Remember when that quit? This fixes that, tries to return to the...
iPhone Text Ownage
pbh3:
For more, check out Hilarious iPhone Fails at Runt of the Web.
Whoops.
Internet Regulation & the Economics of Piracy |... →
I don’t always like the Cato Institute, but check it out! An article about piracy that uses facts! and reports! to substantiate its claims instead of vague suppositions and overblown rhetoric! That’s always nice.
“I realize that he brought this on himself, that it probably serves him right,...”
– Things Americans would rather think about than Newt Gingrich’s open marriage - ComPost - The Washington Post
I totally agree. The thought of this man getting busy is so disgusting that at this point I completely resent the entire news media and to some degree, the entire journalism profession, for...
“On the Senate side, Google doesn’t even have the backing of one of its own...”
– SOPA: Washington Vs. The Web
Barbara Boxer, another California senator, is also a Protect IP co-sponsor. I guess you have to choose which constituencies to serve and which to be totally clueless about.
Humanity is Disappointing
Yesterday on twitter I noted that my feed was not a ringing endorsement for humanity. To boil it all down to a few things:
- Racism. I saw a lot of racism yesterday. In person. From politicians. From the news. From juries. It’s still alive and well and in your neighborhood.
- MPAA issues statement against SOPA blackouts. Really guys? The statement is just sad. I honestly can’t...
“Via Twitter, Radar correspondent Alex Howard asked Costolo, Google’s Eric...”
– Twitter boss slams Wikipedia’s ‘silly’ Sopa protest | Technology | guardian.co.uk
#1) Twitter is internet-only. Why would this not be an important topic to speak out on, given how much damage that single issue has the power to create.
#2) Single-issue national politics has...
“The voice of the internet community has been heard. Much more education for...”
– CA congressman Darrell Issa
Sopa plans set to be shelved as Obama comes out against piracy legislation | Technology | guardian.co.uk
Well, duh. You’d think maybe Congress would want to have a decent grasp of the intricacies and liabilities of a subject before using their power to restrict it...
Simple Problem, Simple Answer
pbh3:
friggatriskaidekaphobia →
i didn’t make it up
Coors Light beats Budweiser to become America’s... →
Thus proving once again that Americans have no taste.
There’s a line at the end of the article which states “Four of the five top-selling beers in the U.S. also rank on a list of worst beers by taste and quality.”
Good on ya’, America.
blog.reddit -- stopped they must be; on this all... →
Reddit is going to be blacking out January 18 from 8am to 8pm. Impressed am I for seeing activism from an internet company. My husband and I rather doubt that Google, Facebook and Twitter (or tumblr?) will take such a strong stand, although they’ll assuredly be negatively impacted by SOPA also.
“As usual, everyone else at MSNBC politely demurred to the enthusiasm of the...”
– Myths around Santorum hard to swallow
Actually, let’s state the even more obvious - people who swallow the sob stories and tug-at-your-heartstrings stories that politicians tell are suckers.