May 2013
“It is unmistakable that our culture greatly needs well-equipped warriors for...”
– Diana Baker, Administrator at BRCA - Christian school: ‘atheist controversy’ over creationist quiz may keep academy open -
Lash, backlash, counter-backlash.
“Products like Glass are sparking a discussion about what is possible with...”
– Google Glass Is Watching—Now What? - WSJ.com
Sad that this potentially democratizing technology will be suppressed because people are embarrassed to be seen by their friends, while in the meantime being surveilled by the government and private corporations.
“Arise then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts, whether your...”
– Original Mothers Day Proclamation,
Julia Ward Howe: 1870 Original Mothers Day : Chestnut Hill Meeting
“Wolves do not have an innate sense of rank; they are not born leaders or born...”
– Why everything you know about wolf packs is wrong
Emptyage: Generation X Doesn't Want to Hear It →
Earlier generations have weathered recessions, of course; this stall we’re in has the look of something nastier. Social Security and Medicare are going to be diminished, at best. Hours worked are up even as hiring staggers along: Blood from a stone looks to be the normal order of things “going…
“In JavaScript, there is a beautiful, elegant, highly expressive language that is...”
– Javascript Basics - Code Like This
Emotions for which English has no(*) words →
(*) …for which English has no *single* words. Obviously the author uses English words to describe them. And since English is nearly larcenous in its capacity to borrow (schadenfreude! ennui!) any of these fun foreign roots and agglutinates are potential undocumented immigrants just waiting for their green card.
Also the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax is not a misnomer. It’s a...
“HTML and CSS—those are not programming languages. Those are data-entry formats....”
– Matthew Butterick: The Bomb in the Garden
“The problem, of course, is that information wasn’t actually free. It’s just that...”
– Matthew Butterick: The Bomb in the Garden
“I’ve come to realize that feedback is the most important force in the...”
– Alex Chaffee, interviewed in June 2003 by Jenny Cool
“Blakeman claimed that sexually active 15-year-olds are always engaging in...”
– Fox News Freaks Out Over Obama’s Plan B Decision: Teen Sex Is ‘Criminal Behavior’ | ThinkProgress
April 2013
“You know what they call “alternative medicine” that’s been proved to work?...”
– Tim Minchin, via The Red Flags of Quackery v2 | Sci-ence
“Planners say that having dense developments in transit-rich areas - and not...”
– SF’s building boom brings change to city - San Francisco Chronicle
are we just going to ignore the fact that the king...
scrapsofsky:
vanehwasreal:
i mean what
what the fuck
gustav no
stop it
gustav please
No, we will not ignore it, because he’s amazing. Congress would be so much more interesting if everyone had to wear funny hats…
“The Fifth Amendment asserts that no “person” shall be “deprived of life,...”
– Steve Coll: Our Drone Delusion : The New Yorker
“Policy makers abandoned the unemployed and turned to austerity because they...”
– The Excel Depression - NYTimes.com
“There is not one word in our paper which suggests that a high level of...”
– Herndon Responds To Reinhart Rogoff - Business Insider
“Oblivion presents itself as the kind of film that’s vulnerable to...”
– The Empty Thrill of ‘Oblivion’ - Spencer Kornhaber - The Atlantic
also, none of the layered plots makes sense
“Gayness, in this context, is “normal” in the sense that it is...”
– The Sci-Fi Comic Book That Portrays Gay Romance as Completely Normal - Noah Berlatsky - The Atlantic
“And by such pettiness the world is governed.”
– Paul Krugman - Very Sensitive People - NYTimes.com
“He woke up under so much drugs, asked for a paper and pen and wrote, ‘bag, saw...”
– Boston Bomb Victim in Photo Helped Identify Suspects - Bloomberg
“[T]he Constitution Project study was initiated after President Obama decided in...”
– U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes - NYTimes.com
Obama = Coward
“The best exercise you can do with a Nautilus machine is to deadlift the Nautilus...”
– Exercise Machines Are For Cripples
“Yes, there are actually twice as many murders being committed in fictional...”
– NYC Homicide: Reality vs. Television | In New York City’s War On Crime…
“[Obama’s] cuts to Social Security and Medicare combined are somewhere...”
– Reality Check: Obama Cuts Social Security and Medicare by Much More Than the GOP - Atlantic Mobile
Little Inferno: A story about the bittersweet...
This is not a review. It’s an analysis of the narrative, my interpretation of what the story is (what actually happened) and what it represents (muddy, subjective, interpretive stuff, but backed by evidence and intuition) as an allegory for childhood and what comes next.
DO NOT READ this essay until you have completed Little Inferno. It takes about 5 hours. You’ll be happy you...
“But uniquely among American cities, I completely believe that 3.2 million people...”
– San Francisco Is Great—They Should Make More of It
“So, in this weird experiment, I hired them to act as my agent for freelance...”
– Silicon Valley Goes Hollywood: Top Coders Can Now Get Agents - Businessweek
“BioShock Infinite intends to reek of quaint Americana, the innocence of cotton...”
– Sexy Videogameland: BioShock Infinite: Now Is The Best Time
Excellent review. I felt similarly unmoored in the narrative.
“The trouble, however, is that the methane in unburned natural gas is twenty to...”
– The Methane Beneath Our Feet by Bill McKibben | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books
“A world of many losers and a few lucky winners is the world Thatcher wanted.”
– L’Hôte: we’re still living in Thatcher’s world
“Narrator: “The North Cafeteria, named after Admiral William North, is...”
– Community S 3 E 14 Pillows And Blankets - Television Tropes & Idioms
“Rather than make any true comment about populist movements, racism or fascism,...”
– BioShock Infinite Review: A Gleaming City of Unrealized Potential | gamefront.com
Like this reviewer, to me BioShock∞’s peripheral narrative felt a bit rushed and empty. I wish I’d gotten to know Daisy Fitzroy better and witnessed more of her transition from idealistic revolutionary to...
“If the currency of a country ever fluctuated as much as bitcoins did, it would...”
– The Bitcoin Bubble and the Future of Currency — Money & Banking — Medium
“If Obama is serious about dealing with our deficit he would not cut Social...”
– Sanders Statement on Chained CPI - Newsroom: Bernie Sanders - U.S. Senator for Vermont
March 2013
“Nowadays slacking is a mostly untenable option anyway, since even the crap...”
– The Barbed Gift of Leisure - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education
“Google’s Usenet archive is important, but it’s not commercially valuable. And...”
– Nelson’s Weblog: culture / preparing-for-google-groups-shutdown
“Google is involved in nothing less than a blatant attempt to confute the notion...”
– “Don’t be evil, except…”—the new Google | Coding the Wheel
“Because wait, let me get this straight—this obtuse, confusing, unoriginal...”
– “Don’t be evil, except…”—the new Google | Coding the Wheel
“the cancellation of Google Reader signals the end of Google as a responsible...”
– “Don’t be evil, except…”—the new Google | Coding the Wheel
“It sounds like he’s advising teens to cover their tracks better, not to prevent...”
– Steubenville rape case: Judge advises teens to watch how they “record things” on social media.
“We were a chicken factory in the desert that no one wanted.”
– Why the invasion of Iraq was the single worst foreign policy decision in American history - Le Monde diplomatique - English edition
“If our universe was a simulation you could totally tell. There’d be things like...”
– Sean Ansorge, on Facebook (inspired by this SMBC cartoon)
“Google Reader is a symbol of a time just before the Yet-Another Rise Of The Wall...”
– Google Reader - A Product vs. A Symbol | Clay Allsopp
“Google destroyed the RSS feed reader ecosystem with a subsidized product,...”
– cortesi - Google, destroyer of ecosystems
“Obama’s recent strong words on climate (“If Congress Won’t Act Soon To Protect...”
– Guardian: ‘White House Officials … Gave Strong Indications The President Is Inclined To Approve The Keystone XL Pipeline’ | ThinkProgress
“If pervasive, ubiquitous networked cameras ultimately make public privacy...”
– Who’s Afraid Of Google Glass? - TechCrunch 