March 2012
25 posts
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a...”
– Banksy, from Cut It Out (via zaschell)
(Banksy and I would get along well. via godofbiscuits)
To follow up on the other post I just made.
Ad Learning
I’ve been sick for the last three days, and to deal with the utter boredom have spent a lot of time watching Hulu. The advertisements are terrible, particularly so for someone who doesn’t normally see advertising (I don’t have cable or watch network TV and rarely go to movies).
So this is what I’ve learned from what advertising has tried to sell me:
Your neighbors are...
February 2012
29 posts
“The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and...”
– Grand Ayatollah or Grand Old Party? - By Reza Aslan | Foreign Policy
This is a terrifying article. Let me point out this one quote, which Santorum said. Personally, I’d like to know what radical feminists he’s talking about exactly.
Most normal, mainstream women recognize that dual...
The Illusion of Privacy?
Ran across a post by Seth Godin about the illusion of privacy. That we don’t really have privacy, and that it’s too late for anyone to even worry about it. Instead he says we don’t like surprises about what’s been done with our info.
A very blase response to the erosion of privacy. Ran across a good response to that post on another blog which argues that Seth Godin...
Daily Kos: Santorum Calls for Conservative... →
Next time someone tries to tell me Republicans are for smaller government and keeping out of people’s business, I’m going to laugh at them.
Exactly how are these “education” ideas going to keep government smaller? Exactly how is infusing politics into education even more than it already is going to help? And he sees himself as repealing regulations? What a joke.
Also,...
Texas teacher tells brat student to “Go back to... →
Freudian slip?
Stay classy, Texas.
15 Anti-Piracy Laws in 30 Years
You’d think that would be enough, eh? I’m pretty amazed at the increase in copyright attention - I’d never looked at these all at once.
1982: Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act: Increased criminal penalties for infringing records, tapes and films from $25k & 2 years in jail to $250,000 and 5 years in jail. Also… made it so that first-time offenders could get the...
Google Tracked iPhones, Bypassing Apple Browser... →
I don’t really even want to think about this a lot, because it makes my head hurt to think about people being so cavalier with others’ data, but just some highlights:
Google disabled its code after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.
But of course they’re not guilty.
The technique reaches far beyond those websites, however, because once the coding was activated, it...
Frank Zappa On Boring Suburban Lives
pbh3:
“Also you really have to pay attention to the storylines, so it’s also like...”
– Report: Watching Episode of ‘Downton Abbey’ Counts As Reading Book | The Onion
And watching reality TV makes up for actually living an interesting life.
“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...