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laphamsquarterly: And now, your presidential dance break,...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:36:19 -0500

laphamsquarterly:

And now, your presidential dance break, courtesy of George Washington.

He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming…

Hey gamers, this is why we can't have nice things

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:36:00 -0500

Hey gamers, this is why we can't have nice things

jakefogelnest: Whitney Houston’s isolated vocal track on “How...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:00:23 -0500

jakefogelnest:

Whitney Houston’s isolated vocal track on “How Will I Know.”

I guess even ponies need to go grocery shopping.

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:59:25 -0500

I guess even ponies need to go grocery shopping.

One Town's War On Gay Teens

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:47:50 -0500

One Town's War On Gay Teens:

This is probably one of the most heartbreaking articles I’ve ever read.

Photo

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:01:50 -0500

who else is uncomfortable with women in tech? women.

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:10:14 -0500

Case in point: the strange, sad case of Violet Blue at Mac World, wherein a developer showcasing her work is dismissed as The Saddest Booth Babe In The World.

Violet who? She’s a sex columnist like Dan Savage, except neither funny nor relevant. So not at all like Dan Savage. Anyway, after getting called out on her shit, it just gets better:

“I put the woman in a social category based on the environment she was in. I was not the only one to do so.”

So that makes it all OK, then. Good to know.

Then again, I don’t know why her actions should surprise anyone; this is the same person whose writing standards were so bad she got kicked off of BoingBoing and who thought using a .ly domain for a “sex positive URL shortener” was a good idea.

2012 is going to be a dumb year

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:19:47 -0500

sadsquatch:

Pennsylvania names the bible as the most important book of the year.

Indiana decides creationism is just as valid as evolution.

A teen wins her lawsuit to have a prayer banner removed from her school, only to face death threats by armchair crusaders.

An Oklahoma senator is worried about fetuses being used in food.

HOLY SHIT WE ONLY JUST FINISHED JANUARY HOLD ONTO YOUR ASSES FOLKS

an excellent allegory about tech interviews

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:25:00 -0500

an excellent allegory about tech interviews:

This is why I often feel that I dislike the industry. Bogging down in minutiae versus getting shit done. Too many of Rands’ Got’cha Gregs hanging around, flaunting their superiority complexes.

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice - Yahoo! News

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:06:03 -0500

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice - Yahoo! News:

There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

I hear it also causes cancer in lab animals.

parislemon: This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:56:00 -0500

parislemon: This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things:

parislemon:

A lot of people have asked for my take on The New York Times piece yesterday about the true cost of making Apple products in China. Let me first just say that it’s an important piece full of good reporting by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza. Parts of it are very sad — sickening, really.

But…

There’s now an egregiously hyperbolic tag-along linkbait article on Mother Jones now that is so beyond the pale in hyper-focusing on Apple that I don’t even have the words.

Is what Foxconn does a labor and humanitarian nightmare? Undoubtably. But honestly, could you see a Dell or a Sony forcing them to open their doors to oversight? Probably Microsoft, but I don’t see much overlap between the demographic making the noise and the one buying Gears of War.

laphamsquarterly: Proven: history loves GIFs. Thanks...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:34:06 -0500

laphamsquarterly:

Proven: history loves GIFs. Thanks NYPL!

doree:

nypl:

The Library has just launched Stereogranimator, a site that lets users turn our historic collection of stereographs into animated images like the one above. Read all about it in the Times and then go play! It’s the latest way we’re using technology to bring our collections to the public, following our What’s on the Menu, Biblion iPad app and map warping projects.

Caturday will never be the same …

So cool! Also, per the Times: “Stereographs, produced by the millions between the 1850s and the 1930s, were a wildly popular form of entertainment, giving viewers a taste of the kind of richly rounded images now readily available on screens of all sizes.” So really, people have ALWAYS loved gifs!

Conspiracy of the day: Was Megaupload Targeted Because Of Its Upcoming Megabox Digital Jukebox Service?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:58:01 -0500

Conspiracy of the day: Was Megaupload Targeted Because Of Its Upcoming Megabox Digital Jukebox Service?:

Personally, I still think the timing was more of a big F U to the anti-SOPA/PIPA activists, but this seems a compelling argument as well. As an added bonus (for supporters of draconian control of the internet), it distracted everyone from ACTA.

Like robots? Like Jim Henson?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:04:18 -0500

You’ll probably like this, then.

discoverynews: Spectacular Aurorae Erupt Over Norway Over the...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:44:17 -0500

discoverynews:

Spectacular Aurorae Erupt Over Norway

Over the weekend, the Earth’s magnetic field was struck by a coronal mass ejection (CME). The CME — a vast bubble of solar plasma that had erupted from the sun on Jan. 19 — took longer than expected to travel through interplanetary space, but on Sunday it made contact.

keep reading

Man, is it wrong that when I saw this, my first thought was: Skyrim sure is pretty.

Richard Stallman makes some good points about social media

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:51:30 -0500

Richard Stallman makes some good points about social media

Kill Hollywood, Not Movies

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:28:56 -0500

parislemon:

The fallout from the failure of SOPA and PIPA is just as interesting as the main topics themselves. First, many on the web with loud voices are finally waking up to how corrupt the lobbying/political system is in this country. Second, directly-related, there’s a quickly growing anti-Hollywood sentiment.

The most forceful stance has to be Y Combinator putting out a new RFS (Request for Startups) will one goal: Kill Hollywood.

It’s an important statement and message given the bullshit the MPAA is up to. But it’s also important to separate film, the artform, from Hollywood, the industry.

Read More

Damn.

The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter… if it...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:21:50 -0500

The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter… if it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever. If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse. Woody Allen, in Love and Death (1975)

I’ve been thinking about Woody Allen lately. More specifically, his prose. One of the texts we had to read in high school was, if I’m remembering correctly, The Kugelmass Episode. But I’m not sure. It’s weird how time plays with the mind — you know you’ve read something, but you’re no longer sure what. Or you know you’ve read an author, but you’re no longer sure what work the words that drift into your mind were actually coming from. It’s been gnawing at the edge of my synapses lately, and I think I’m going to finally plunk down and buy the complete prose collection this week. (It also doesn’t help that I know for a fact we didn’t read Madame Bovary in my high school courses — I’m familiar with it more from reading snippets after seeing it referenced in one of my favorite comics.)

That said, original source or not, I still find the New Yorker as stultifyingly impenetrable now as I did then. Last I picked up a copy at the doctor’s office, I inevitably started skipping through the comics, re-captioning them all “Christ, what an asshole”. Which, for anyone reading the New Yorker, is about right.

socialsociety: BLACK WALL STREET is not a record label started...

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:21:04 -0500

socialsociety:

BLACK WALL STREET is not a record label started by The Game.

Black Wall Street was the most prosperous black community in America during the 1920’s located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was known as “Little Africa” or “Black Beverly Hills”, a prime example of racial nationalism. To put into perspective of how money flowed in Black Wall Street, a dollar took 365 DAYS to leave the community, now a dollar leaves an African American Community every 15 MINUTES. The community had hundreds of businesses all negro owned and their motto was “To educate every child”.

June 1, 1921 white supremacists bombed BLACK WALL STREET and killed over 300 people and destroyed over 600 businesses. 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, a hospital, bank, post office, and most schools were destroyed. The dead were buried in unmarked graves. It wasn’t till 1997 that Oklahoma decided to pass the “1921 Race Riot Reconciliation Act” which provided decedents of that area a free college education.

SMH AT AMERICAN HISTORY

Don't Be Evil*

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:19:55 -0500

Don't Be Evil*:

parislemon:

*except if evilness is good for business.

The basics: Google, by way of their Getting Kenyan Business Online initiative, stole customers (and data) from rival Mocality.

Mocality uncovered as much in a clever sting operation, not unlike the one Google itself used to catch Bing “borrowing” search results last year.

What a fucked up situation. Google has fessed up to it, but is distancing themselves — “a team of people working on a Google project” sure is a funny way of saying “Google employees”. Not good.

This really isn’t getting enough attention online. There’s a good article over at Ars, but as usual the apologist come out in the commentary. “If it was a small group that found a way to use the company to run their own scam? No, I’d blame the employees.” Right, because if there’s anything an upstanding, civic-minded company that does ‘no evil’ wants, it’s plausible deniability. Pfeh.