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the sounds of the 80s..

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[Leonard Leo] figured out twenty years ago that conservatives had lost the culture war. Abortion, gay rights, contraception -- conservatives didn't have a chance if public opinion prevailed. So they needed to stack the courts.

via

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Now more than ever Happy Holidays...

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Note to self: years ago we asked if the line in The Young Punx / Amanda Palmer's Map of Tasmania was "Becky!" or "Funky" or "F*** It!" or what. Answer: fxxkit... At the last BABAM gig (backing the nurses union strike at St. Vincents in Worcester) one member mentioned this excellent Radiolab episode about 80s and 90s protests by ACT UP - hearing of the bringing and dumping of ashes of loved ones lost to AIDS - protesting the millions who died because of the slowness and paucity of government response - was very moving, and in general learning about what kind of actions provoke response, and what kind of actions are purely expressions of rage and grief, is worthwhile.

The gig in question was shutdown by the police monitoring the picket line... a surprisingly novel occurrence for the band. What has two thumbs, solid React/Redux UI skills, and is going to be looking for a new job after COVID-related downsizing?
THIS GUY
👍 👍

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Updated my interactive resume:

A cathedral calls us to consider time beyond the boundaries of one life, enclosing us in a grand view of what humanity can do that humans cannot.

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A "billionaire" who hides his tax returns. A "genius" who hides his college grades. A"businessman" who bankrupted a casino. A "playboy" who pays for sex. A "Christian" who doesn't go to church. A "philanthropist" who defrauds charity. A "patriot" who dodged the draft.

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If you look at the sort of Internet as a whole, or the whole computational ecosystem, particularly on the commercial side, an *enormous* part of the interesting computing we're doing is back to analog computing. We're computing with continuous functions, it's pulse-frequency-coded... Something like Facebook or Youtube doesn't care -- the file that somebody clicks on -- they don't care what the code is, the meaning is in the frequency that it's connected to, very much the same way a brain or a nervous system works. So if you look at these large companies, Facebook or Google or something - actually they are large analog computers. Digital is not *replaced*, but another layer is growing on top of it, the same way that after World War 2 we had all these analog vacuum tubes...

--via Cracked.com The Best, Most Underrated Lines From Shows And Movies ("Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die. Come watch tv." The "on purpose" part I especially dig.) Weird things going on in Cleveland, attention seeking homicidal idiot on the loose, having Facebook Live'd an out and out street murder with a randomly selected victim and the killer saying it's because of some ex's fault.

(It's not the main point but reinforces my opinion that so little good really comes from livestreaming on social media. If it's worthwhile, it could just keep on youtube.)

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"To live life, you need problems. If you get everything you want the minute you want it, then what's the point of livin'?"

I guess I'm not sure I agree? I think the point of life - or at least one point of life, could be to create meaningful novelty. Which doesn't seem to require problems. Maybe.

This is the universe we come home to in the evening, when we rejoin our partner. It is a universe made of silent understandings and unspoken words, of eloquent glances and humorous shorthand signals, a universe of shared subjectivity. Everyone who has been in love more than once knows that each love relationship has its own music, its own emotional quality, its own style-- and its own world.

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Of all proverbs I have ever heard, my favorite is a Spanish one which says, "' Take what you want,' said God, 'and pay for it.'

You shouldn't get ten of anything.

She also mentioned that one thing she didn't miss was being quoted all the time on kisrael...

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Ringo is my favorite Beatle. Ooh, Uhura!
Slate: Please stop talking about how flinty and resilient Boston is. From this touching tale of adopting Banana, a once feral cat

I call it "The Life Sausage", and it's not height or width but total area that you want to maximize (or volume, if you're going the 3-axis route). You can live a hundred years if you never leave your home, never eat fatty foods, never risk love or sex for fear of failure and STDs - and your life sausage will be one long, emaciated pepperoni-stick of misery, hyperextended along one axis but barely registering on the others. You can fuck everything that moves, snort every synthetic that makes it past the blood-brain barrier, dive with sharks and wrestle 'gators and check out when your chute fails to open during the skydiving party on your sweet sixteenth. Your life sausage will be short but thick, like a hockey puck on-edge, and the sum total of the happiness contained therein will put to shame any number of miserable incontinent centenarians wasting away in the rest home. More typically the sausage will be a lumpy thing, a limbless balloon-animal lurching through time with fat parts and skinny parts and, more often than not, a sad tapering atrophy into loneliness and misery near the end. But in all these cases, the value of your life is summed up not by lifespan nor by happiness but by the product of these, the total space contained within the sausage skin.

An interesting way of looking at things! Link from Bill the Splut.

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Boingboing asks What will stop Conservative America's progeny from having so much hot, wild, bareback sex?

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At 120 calories Cracker Jack is a nice treat, but a paper "pencil topper" as the "secret toy surprise"?? Puh-leeze. At least do a sticker or something! click to play with
ringthings - source - built with processing

As is probably all too obvious I didn't have much an idea going into Klik of the Month Klub last night, so I built a toy, which arguably is more pleasant to mess with than the final game. Click to make a new whirligig.
click to play with

zoomza - source - built with processing
My entry for Klik of the Month #34. I started an hour late, my game idea just wasn't coming together, so for the last 20 minutes I just made a doodle toy. Doodle with the mouse, space resets.

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HA - good ol' Cleveland Indians broke in the new Yankee Stadium in style, beating those bums 10-2. That's another one Sox Nation owes 'em!

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TGIF - EVERYTHING RANKLES

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"You could try looking at it..."
"Empiricism... is that all you got?"
"Empiricism... that's all I NEED"

Busy busy busy.

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Article of the Moment
As reported here on Slashdot and here on BoingBoing, according to an informal poll 20% of scientists use 'cognitive enhancing' drugs. Makes me worry I've been missing out!

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Observation of the Moment

Then, having identified the nature of geometric axioms, [Poincaré] turned to the question, is Euclidean geometry true or is Riemann geometry true?

He answered, The question has no meaning.

As well ask whether the metric system is true and the avoirdupois system is false; whether Cartesian coordinates are true and polar coordinates are false. One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

For some reason the tragedy in Virginia makes me want to avoid the usual kisrael blather for a day.

I caught how the Daily Show kind of dodged it; a brief mention of the fact that they were not to going to be tackling it, and a small joke about how the plan was to repress it for now and have a breakdown 30 years down the line, and then on to the email abuse scandal.

I guess what struck me was the physicality of it, I guess specifically the use of doors; the chaining of the main building door by the gunman, then how the barricading of classroom doors (in one case students only having the time to block it with the edge of their shoes, rather than forming a blockade with furniture as happened in other rooms) frustrated the gunman and left him only able to put a few shots through the door.

Yikes. I better stop thinking along these lines before I become one of those people who never stops glancing around, investigating hiding spots and lines of sight and computing tactical strategies wherever they go.

Political Jab of the Moment

"Bush seems to be wrapped in bubbles, surrounded by sycophants. Bush was in Tampa today in front of one of those invited audiences he speaks to. The first question, this is not a joke, said the nation was blessed to have Bush as president. That was a question. The second one called Jeb 'your great brother.' You know, at least when Clinton got blown it was in private."

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News Article Not Getting It of the Moment

He said one of his main interests was the online role-playing game "Kingdom of Loathing," in which stick figures battle one another.

Apparently that terribly misleading description combined with the site's title is evidence enough to make "Kingdom of Loathing" the sub-headline for what a depressed and loser-ish guy he is. KoL is a very goofy, friendly parody of traditional RPGs. "Ooh look the game encourages people to become 'Seal Clubbers'... oh the humanity!... And the currency is meat, and this guy was trying to become a cannibal! Eegads!"

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More Politics of the Moment

It unfortunately appears that two of the retired generals do not understand the true nature of this radical ideology, Islamic extremism, and why we fight in Iraq. We suggest they listen to the tapes of United 93.

OK, I have to admit that the number of generals who have spoken up is pretty small. But some of these arguments! "We suggest they listen to the tapes of United 93"...right, as if that's the issue. Those tapes possibly indicate the urgency of the situation, that we're facing some really awful people, and is not a validation that our current path is correct, especially in regards to Iraq.

If these generals are correct in pinning some of the anti-Rumsfeld sentiment as stodgey, anti-"joint expeditionary force" thinking, well.... so what. It's clear Rumsfeld hoped stuff like Iraq could be done on the cheap, and he was largely wrong, and they fired guys who tried to speak up and say that it was going to be more expensive than the Administration wanted to hear.

Finally, the whole "shut up because this is a time of War!" thing is Orwellian to a scary degree. Even if we weren't actively engaged in Iraq, we're still in a "War Against Terror" that HAS NO FORESEEABLE CONCLUSION. Assuming a retired general is a civillian, I don't see how there comments go against our nation's sacred tradition of civilian-bossed military forces.

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News of the Moment
I know it's foolish to think it would be otherwise but I actively enjoy how the wheelchair Marathoners are much faster than the people doing it on foot.

It feels like nearly all my close friends are thinking about leaving this 'burg, and it's bothering me a lot.

Dylan went to San Diego years ago.

Sarah went back to California, wound up in Florida.

My freshman roommate Rob, I was in touch with him for a while, forget where he headed off to.

ErinMaru is in filmschool in one of them Carolina states.

Lupschada went home to Baltimore, though that friendship is a casualty of the divorce.

And now...Sawers is heading to Florida in a few months, my umm-cousin Llara just got a job in DC, Evil B and wife are thinking Seattle might be a more reasonable place to settle down and setup home base, and Andy has even more immediate plans to go back to his college gang who have hung around Atlanta.

There's all kind of reasons. Moving for a romance, heading home to refortify during a terrible job market, heading away to a new job opportunity, getting out of the rent and career pressure cooker of Boston...Andy thinks that people from here who go down south and say "I can't believe how friendly people are!" have it backwards; the disbelief should be for what self-centered jerks people are around here.

And there is that weather...perhaps Andy's observation is explained by self-described "Swamp Yankee" buddy Gowen's thought that "People in New England will generally scowl when you walk through the door because you probably also let in a gush of freezing air."

But today is absolutely insanely gorgeous. But maybe Boston is like a redneck wifebeater, all gentleness and warmth after such a beating of a winter.

Still, after a decent decade run, maybe people are finally escaping the post-college Boston gravity well.

And Andy...heh, he was supposed to be one of the...well, not the replacements, but at least a refutation of the idea that you it's so difficult to make good friends after college.

But he says when he visits Georgia he feels like it's going home. Me, for the longest time I felt pretty hometownless. I do feel ties to Cleveland still, but 6 years of adolescence there isn't the same as really coming from someplace. And now I'm worried that someday I'll move somewhere only to find Boston has managed to take that role. But I dunno. Just like I see a home as a place to keep your stuff, maybe a hometown is just a place to keep your home.

Maybe making new friends isn't that hard. Maybe it's just getting out there, doing stuff, joining interest groups like darts teams or looking for gaming buddies on Craig's List, then really making the effort, asking someone to dinner or to hang out even when it feels a little awkward. A friend of mine, then officemate Habib did that, and in retrospect I really appreciate it, though of course now he's back in Morocco.

And just like I've been questioning "what do I want out of romance?" after the divorce, this wave of friends heading off makes me ask the same thing for friendship. I think there are two sides of that: you want friends who will take your side, will watch out for you, generally offer support and companionship and concern. That's probably harder to generate than the other side, which is shared activities. My friendship with Andy had its roots in bad movies (we were introduced at our mutual friend Jim's "bad movie nights") and video games. And you know, it's not the bad movies and the video games that matter; it's the snarky comments and the trash talking.

Thought it would be unfair to think of it as only an activity-based kind of friendship; I really appreciate how when I need to recruit some volunteers to help with the Salvation Army coat drive, Andy, Jim, and his wife Sam answered the call, and together we joined with a force to move and sort 20,000 coats for the needy.

Ah well. I don't know. I think about moving someplace warm. And I need someplace with a good tech industry. Andy thinks I should give Atlanta a try. Heh, and I could get an insta-social-group made of his buddies...and San Diego is tempting. But it's impossible for me to grok how many people I do know in this damn neck of the woods, how alone I might be even with a small group of people I know, how far away I'd be from my family. You know, that's one plus marriage has: you can bring the person you most care about with you. (On the other hand, a marriage might also make you more stuck to your hometown with two sets of extend families and friendgroups to consider, or maybe even drawn to someplace that's their hometown, not yours.)

Sigh. I dunno, but the prospect of all these people moving is really painful. Not sharp and cutting like a divorce, but a great big dull ache.

Passage and Article of the Moment

'People start out in life pretty certain that they're going to end up like David Beckham or win the Nobel Prize,' says Oswald. 'Then, after a few years, they discover it's quite tough out there - not just in their careers, but in life. Unsurprisingly, their happiness drops.' The good news is that the downer doesn't last. According to Oswald, if you trace the trajectory of most peoples' happiness over time it resembles a J-curve. People typically record high satisfaction levels in their early twenties. These then fall steadily towards middle age, before troughing at around 42. Most of us then grow steadily happier as we get older, with those in their sixties expressing the highest satisfaction levels of all - as long, that is, as they stay healthy.

I'm trying to judge my own level of happiness right now. Irina, a co-worker (we're not really close but once or twice a year maintenance of this one project has us working intensely together for a few days, and she seems very tuned into people's moods caught me coming in from the parking garage bopping along, doing this human beatbox thing I sometimes do (I like the echo in the garage) and she said I seemed SO much happier than when I was working with her around a month ago; there was a day or two when I was working with her when I had seemed really distracted and out of it and kind of miserable; she had a lot more trouble following my train of thought that day, actually. So I guess there's a possibility I've turned the corner. I think Peterman might've said something similar.

On the other hand, there's still this weird undercurrent of sadness I inadvertently run into from time to time, like a stream still moving under a layer of ice. Sometimes a sad song or scene of someone crying in a movie will break through, and I'll find myself weepy. Usually it passes pretty quickly, but still, it bothers me, I think the only time I went through a period like that was when my dad died and I don't remember if it lasted this long or not.

I don't know what percentage of the sadness is over Mo specifically, or just the kind of fears of loneliness in a more general sense.

(But how can I be anything BUT happy, Red Sox romped over the bum Yankees last night...)

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Games of the Moment
Yeti Sports is building its way to a full Yeti/Pingu decathlon; it's not just Penguin Baseball any longer!

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Disney of the Moment
The troubles with the Mickey Mouse brand. When I saw one of those "Mickey through the decades" shirts, I noticed how much more human looking he's become--the article mentions this progression (actually, retrogression into an infant's proportions) but misses the obvious one...at some point he became caucasian-flesh-colored. But the mouse has no back story, and is kind of suffering because of it.

My girlfriend Marnie had a box from a Disney Mug up in her locker in high school, a stylized Mickey arm and glove...I always thought it was weird how it looked just like he had a stigmata. I envisioned the church of Mickey Christ, with Saint Goofy and what not.

Incidentally, I saw "Lilo and Stitch" last night for the first time. It's probably my favorite Disney film ever, except for maybe Fantasia, just because of the cool cartoony Sci-Fi elements.

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Article of the Moment
What Google Is Up To. An interesting idea: more than anything else, Google may be a forming the hardware and supporting system for building "web sized" applications. Essentially, they already have a high availabity mirror of the entire Web, and the infrastructure (technology- and personnel-wise) that keeps that up and running 24/7. That gives them a huge advantage over almost anyone. Link for Erin of the Moment
Erin (who's in filmschool even as we speak) might like this link if she hasn't seen it already, FilmFour.com's "masterclass", brief but informative overviews of some the most important film directors. (It's where yesterday's Hitchcock quote came from.) I like the Q+A format, "Why should we care?" "What do they tell you at film school?" "Who did he sleep with?"

Quote of the Moment

Here's to Pure Mathematics! May it never be of any use to anybody.

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Playing Cards of the Moment
CNN has a few of those Iraqi leadership playing cards. Kind of cool to see, but I wonder about the usefulness of it...is it going to make it that much easier to recognize these guys?

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Technology of the Moment
Just what I've always said we needed: minefields that think! (A Flash presentation, no less.) With individual mines that can hop! What fun!
I guess there might, perversely, be a humanitarian benefit to this; the text claims this lets them "defend" a minefield with resorting to Anti-personnel mines, which I guess is nice of them. A little.

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Small Irony of the Moment
After glancing at a Wired article on the Supreme Court's Tasini decision (that said publishers owed new royalties to freelancers when those works are made available online, thus causing tons of publishers to make those works unavailable rather than shell out) I decided to use that recently kisrael'd Surpreme Court website to look up the case...ironically enough, that page is missing and not available online. Mmm, self-referential court rulings presentations. Image of the Moment

This was the image from a (now terribly beaten up) Mead "portfolio" folder I had (signed by "Gieseke") but want to get rid of. This helicopter/hornet hybrid was a big influence in some of my drawings back then.

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Quote of the Moment

The relative importance of files depends on their cost in terms of the human effort needed to regenerate them.

Such a true statement! Also a good principle as I try to declutter my life, except I need to learn that "irreplaceable" (in a literal sense) does not equal "worth keeping". It is those cases where I can make a digital record of the item and then discard it.

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Link of the Moment
Speaking of Clutter Wired.com had an article about some neat websites of found objects.

'I studied philosophy in university and I always found it rather impotent. This is different. This is principle driven. It's practical. You can do something with it' [...] being definite, principle centered, and practical are not always good things. The Nazis were all of those things, more so than most people.

Speaking of Nazis, my cousins and I were enjoying Conker's Bad Fur Day multiplayer. Especially the two levels that involve evil Nazi (well "Tediz") Teddy Bears vs. the French Resistance Squirrels. Shoot a Teddy enough and you blow his head off, with fluff coming out of his neck in spurts... the game has a lot of nice touches like that.