❮❮prevnext❯❯

---

---

Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. [...] I love you Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote.

Some thoughts about excuses and also disability porn

---

---

Cool tale about the fall of Rome (which kind of didn't happen, or at least not in the "slowly at first then all at once" sense most people think of) and what's going on with Twitter/"X"

---

The best way to spot an idiot? Look for the person who is cruel. When we see someone who doesn't look like us, or sound like us, or act like us, or love like us, or live like us -- the first thought that crosses almost everyone's brain is rooted in either fear or judgment or both. That's evolution. We survived as a species by being suspicious of things we aren't familiar with.

In order to be kind, we have to shut down that animal instinct and force our brain to travel a different pathway. Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being. They require the mental capacity to step past our most primal urges. I'm here to tell you that when someone's path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty, they have failed the first test of an advanced society. They never forced their animal brain to evolve past its first instinct. They never forged new mental pathways to overcome their own instinctual fears. And so, their thinking and problem-solving will lack the imagination and creativity that the kindest people have in spades.

Over my many years in politics and business, I have found one thing to be universally true: the kindest person in the room is often the smartest.

via, who links to a tweet with the full video

🙃 If sales @Boston-area Bertucci's rise they have the wildfires out west to thank - it all smells like their oven restaurants 🙃

---

I kind of like this self-portrait (at a BLM Whole Foods boycott small rally) I made, even thought it was just a side note to a joke text to a friend yesterday.

---

Playing hooky at Nahant beach. Low tide in 45 minutes. Thinking about the tides... is there any other way we practically notice the gravitational effect of the moon? Seems weirdly prevalent with tides and weirdly absent in other contexts. I often speak of the metaphor of "the elephant and the rider"; how we pretend it's our inner-voice, our narrator-self, that is running the show, but actually that part of us is just justifying the gallumping about the emotional elephant has done as the rider clings on. (With time and patience the rider can train the elephant somewhat and coax better behaviors - that's what growing up is all about - but a beastliness remains.)

These riders get so good at telling the stories of why we do what we do, but fudging the timestamps so the explanation sounds like a reasoned decision and not a post-facto justification. Thus an illusion of rationality and thoughtfulness is preserved, and a our trustworthiness is advertised to our fellow humans, and to our selves.

I worry that people in the social media age seem to go out of their way to work up the elephant, as if they WANT to feel, not think. It's not enough to just identify and categorize things as desirable / undesirable, we are compelled to JUDGE - to say this makes my elephant happy and so I am FOR it! Or -- this is terrible and me and my elephant are on TEAM AGAINST IT.

It might be true that getting the elephant charged up is probably critical to taking action (in fact a friend corrected me that his depression isn't a manifestation of irrationality - it's his fully rational rider unable to prod his comatose elephant into action - there's just no feeling and energy to DO anything, even something as seemingly necessary as to get out of bed) but when problems are too big for individual or even group action to change, helpless rage - the elephant ramming itself into the side of the enclosure the rider has constructed for it - results.

I've quipped that one consolation of death is that, finally, my awareness of the big problems of the world will shrink to match my capacities to fix the big problems of the world. That's pretty morbid! The balance of that whole serenity prayer thing - acceptance of what we can not change, courage to change what we can, the wisdom to know the difference - seems wiser and wiser the more I think on it.

So, we persist. Firing up the elephant is a good way to show ourselves to be good members of our tribe, and acceptance in our tribe is important. (From a social evolution standpoint, being well-aligned with the wisdom embodied in the practices of your literal tribe was more important than being correct about any one issue! Lone humans didn't have great survival or mating prospects.) The cynical right labels the public elephanting "virtue signaling", but I can't for the life of me figure out what's so bad about honest signals that reflect a life valuing justice, fairness, and the prevention of harm.

And sometimes I use this story to explain my special snowflake status to myself: The hellfire elements of my religious childhood burnt themselves out in my adolescence, but left a scorchmark of compulsive need to prove my value - my worthiness as judged by objective criteria. (In this view, one's alignment with objective truth can never be proven or fully certain, but rationality - a rationality aware of the limits of its methods - seems like a critical component in avoiding absurdities.)

So it's as if MY emotional elephant, a love- and validation-seeking beasts in most everyone, is more willing than most to elevate my rider - giving rationality a boost up with its mighty trunk, and letting that rider guide the elephant to trample over proto-emotions before they grow into something that might distract the elephant. As far as I can tell, love and lust and loyalty are all more inspected and less intuitively and spontaneously enjoyed in me than with many folks. But I seem less prone to addictive or risk-taking behaviors. (I'm taking pains to avoid sounding a facile "why am I the ONLY RATIONAL ONE around here" argument here - I suspect being this flavor of mild pseudo-intellectual neurotic isn't the best way to live. Also, if I'm honest, my elephant's intense pomposity too often drives me to self-limiting avoidance behaviors, where it's so much easier to not try and not succeed than to try and fail and have my limitations shown off to me and the world.)

---

From my devblog: developers and hot hands... The tattoos, from a woman who was possibly a high ranking person of the Pazyryk nomadic people, were quite striking and surprisingly similar to some modern stuff.


More in the Siberian Times.

---

Inspired by this tumblr gets deep:

---

Not going to lie I feel a little judged.

In tech, the concept of culture fit is presented as a good thing. Unfortunately what culture fit often means is that young white guys like to hire other young white guys, and what you end up with is an astonishing lack of diversity.

---

Even turkeys can fly in a high wind.

---

Mexican illustrator Mona Robles Reinvents Pokemons as 'Pokemayans':

---

Trump: Release the Tax Returns or Get Out of the Race A Poem by Brenda Shaughnessy:

---

A Mix Tape: "Don't You (Forget About Me)"

"Think of the tender things that we were working on." – Simple Minds

Such a delicious pain in the ass to make,
on a double deck if you were lucky,

otherwise you had to drop the needle
onto the precise groove as your left

index hit PLAY/RECORD, taking all
afternoon or many. Mistakes, thinking

too hard about what you wanted
to tell the person but couldn't say

any other way. It was always
"I love you," didn't you know?

Mix tape: private language, lost art,
first book, cri de coeur, x-ray, diary.

An exquisitely direct and sweet
misunderstanding. We weren't

fluent yet but we lived in its nation,
tense and sweaty for an anthem.

Receiving a mixtape could be major,
depending on from who; giving one

to someone in public was a dilemma.
You had to practice. Would you say,

nonchalantly, "Oh, here, I made you
a mixtape?" By the lockers? In class?

Ugh! But giving it over in private
could be worse, especially arranging it.

You never picked the best song off
the album, definitely not the hit single.

The deeper the cut the deeper buried
your feelings for that person. You didn't

know? Not all lovesongs, though--
that would make you seem obsessed,

boring. They should know you're fun
and also funny and dark-hearted

and, importantly, unpredictable.
A "Blasphemous Rumours" for every

"Only You." And sexy! Though not
Prince's moaners--not "Erotic City,"

not "Darling Nikki"! But what?
Not top 40, stylish, with a sly angle,

70s funk, some Stevie Wonder, like you've
got background you don't really have.

As it records, you have to listen to each
song in its entirety, and in this way

you hear your favorite song with the ears
of your intended, as they hear it, new.

This was the best feeling of your young
life. Then the cold chill of suddenly hearing

in your 3rd favorite INXS song a lyric
you'd break out in hives over if you thought

they thought you thought that about them
when they heard it: (there's something

about you, girl, that makes me sweat).
The only thing worse was the tape

running out a full minute before the end
of "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out."

You never got it right, not even once.
That was part of the mixtape's charm,

to your dismay. Did it ever win you
love? You never fell for anyone

else's mix either. Sometimes cool,
mostly was just someone else's

music in a case dense with tiny
handwriting to get all those titles in.

So much desire in those squeezed-in
letters. Not "love me!" so much as

"listen to me! Listen to me always!"
So that's really it, right? Maybe

you thought someday you'd make
a mixtape that your splendid friend,

your lucky star, your seventh stranger,
would take a pen to, punching in

the little plastic tabs which meant,
as you well know, it could never be

taped over again. They'd never use
your mixtape to make another mixtape,

to give away or to copy a friend's album
they didn't like enough to buy, joining all

the ok tapes in caddies stacked up a wall
or thrown in the backseat of the Datsun,

then in moving boxes, stored in parents'
garages, 5 for a buck at a yard sale,

buried in landfill, or, saddest of all,
discarded on the street, purple script

still aswirl on the white label FOR YOU--
JUST BECUZ. Shiny brown ribbon

tangled, strangled, never again to play
out what had to be said just that way.

---

Boston's tech problem is the same as its Olympics problem I'm bummed the Olympic Bid is dead, mostly because of the way this article has stuck in my head. We're too smart and neurotic to achieve greatness. PROTIP: If you have an expired PC laptop and want its harddrive (either for retrieving files or for cheap disk space) you can get a USB enclosure for small money. This one runs about $7 and comes with everything you need, even the USB cable and tiny screwdriver.

If you'd gone to a publisher in 1981 with a proposal for a science-fiction novel that consisted of a really clear and simple description of the world today, they'd have read your proposal and said, Well, it's impossible. This is ridiculous. This doesn't even make any sense. [...] Fossil fuels have been discovered to be destabilizing the planet's climate, with possibly drastic consequences. There's an epidemic, highly contagious, lethal sexual disease that destroys the human immune system, raging virtually uncontrolled throughout much of Africa. New York has been attacked by Islamist fundamentalists, who have destroyed the two tallest buildings in the city, and the United States in response has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

---

Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance that he himself has spun.

---

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

---

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'

--MELAS passed on a kind of intriguing bit of email-lore -- artist Scott Wade's Dirty Car Art -- this piece is less technically impressive than some of his stuff, but I like how it integrated the wiper as part of the work. He's got a sense of light and darks I've never developed, great stuff.

---

Yatima's name ideas for a crossdressing strip-poker variant, at crummy.com:

• Knockdown Dragout
  
• Genderbender
• Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits
• Transamerica
• Victor Victoria
• Orlando
• Twelfth Night
• Priscilla

---

Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's killer, is up for parole. Alarmed at how much his old mugshot looks like my Middle School school photo.



--The punchline of the parody is a bit harsh, but still.

I need to learn how to stretch stuff around in Photoshop Elements (assuming it supports it.)

---

ODBC and Hibernate -- now you can put your tabular-ish records on the filesystem, and your properties file in your database, and confuse other developers for hours! Never underestimate the "what the hell??" power of such a configuration! Today's title was the best Spam headline I've noticed in a while.

---

Quote of the Moment

There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters.

---

Article of the Moment

I guess I've always had a thing for mascots in general. Here is a slate piece on hatin' on the Beijing Fuwa mascots, which had a link to this page on all the old Olympic mascots.

---

Don't get the urge for pillows with covers more decorative than comfortable. Then again I may never understand the urge to make a bed... So there's a "Souper Salad" in the building where I work. Unlike where I last worked the salad bar is fixed price and not by weight, so the incentive is to load up the plate, if you're paying six or seven bucks for a salad, you kind of want it to be a meal. They have lots of that pseudo-salad stuff like pasta salad and potato salad and sesame noodles. Overall the effect is like leftovers the day after a potluck; cold stuff that's alright, but nothing that anyone really likes.

Oh, yeesh, I realize I'm on the verge of becoming my own stereotype of how not to blog, "this is what I had for lunch today..."

---

Science of the Moment
That obesity is contagious meme that has been going around is, no pun intended, food for thought. I remember previous ideas that some obesity could be virus-related, and I'm not sure if this latest study absolutely pins down the cause and effect relationship. (Though it points out that the same effect happens for weight loss, but since that happens less often overall the effect is less pronounced.

Hate to think it could lead to some kind of shunning of heavy people.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the casual image of "obese" is probably closer to the strict definition of "morbidly obese". Meaning more people are technically obese than you might think, but that's because the standard is stricter.

---

Ingenuity of the Moment

No day passed when the fireplace was unused. As a result, soot accumulated quickly in the chimney. This could be hazardous when firs were the principal source for fuel, for they left behind a thick, tarry, highly flammable coating. Brooms were used to clean short chimneys. For taller ones it was not uncommon to drop a chicken or two down the chimney; their frantic wing-beating did a good job cleaning quickly.

This site's been a little light lately. Kind of a summer lull I guess.

Not to get overly Meta and navel-gazing, but do people think my recent policy of having fairly non-linky commentary at the top of every day's entry is a net plus, neutral, or kind of a minus? I know some people like my "rambles" more than I give the rambles credit for.

I guess I'm digging doing it, and, as self-important as it sounds, that's the important thing.

---

Link of the Moment
Via Bill the Splut, it's the Internet Circa 1996, right when I was graduating from college. Funny. I had forgotten how big the 101 Dalmations remake was. I also remember a Wired piece from a few years before, where a guy grabbed the McDonalds.com domain after repeatedly confirming the company's disinterest in their own webspace.

---

Advice of the Moment

Avoid surprising bears.

---

Article of the Moment
How Bush and the rest of us are totally getting outplayed by Iran.

Yay Neocons.

Quote of the Moment

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, you know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.

---

Art of the Moment

--Julian Beever makes some really cool pavement drawings...the most interesting ones are the "3D illusion" ones like this shown here...check out the ones in the final full row, it's really amazing to see what looks 3D at one angle is all stretched out when seen from the top or side. (My Aunt forwarded a Word doc with most of the ones on that webpage)

Work in Progress of the Moment
Can anyone (besides Ranjit and Peterman) tell me what these guys are from? First person to post the right answer on the message board gets a cookie.

---

Geek Amusement of the Moment
Some guy (a video game music by writer) has written a program that has passed a rough form of the Turing Test by making jenny18, a floozy of an Eliza-based bot...it seems like many horny guys on IRC were fooled. A college professor did something similar with a very abusive bot, its webpage has the full conversation as well as a lot of background and supporting information.

---

Local Interest of the Moment
Slate has Timothy Noah talking about the changes in Boston, from the Big Dig to cultural attitude adjustments in general.

---

News Quote of the Moment

He pants hard, emitting low 'hrrr, hrrr, hrrr' grunts with each stroke of the pedals, his shoulders bobbing up and down.

Another good quote: "I'm gonna show you a hill that would choke a mule." That's our leader of the free world! Design of the Moment
A while back Ross invited people to send in logos for his website and this is what I came up with. To the side is the animated part, shown here at twice normal size. I tried to get the comic timing right, so that it was obvious that this little Ross wasn't all sure what he should be doing, though I'm not sure if that came out.

---

Link of the Moment
This Is Broken is a rogue's gallery signs and website and other things that are just plain broken and otherwise dumb, all in the name of looking at "Customer Experience".

I'll tell you, sometimes I surprise myself with how much rage I get with stuff like this, when I encounter it in real life.. I really have expectations that at least a modicum of intelligence be applied in systems of all types. Bad design is a misdemeanor against humanity.

---

Quote of the Moment

Bad design is a misdemeanor against humanity.

Movie of the Moment
From the Brunching Shuttlecocks: Leia and Vader: The Untold Story. It's weird how evocative that fade cut can be, even with stupid little action figures (I had forgotten how muscle-y the new action figures are, they make my old ones look pretty skinny and anemic.) Made me go out and get that Alanis cd...I feel it's a little brave to admit liking Alanis, but she has some really interesting lyrics. Of course, if you think too much about the relationships between the characters portrayed in the video, it's pretty icky.

---

Quote of the Moment

You know what my favorite TV show is? Xena, Warrior Princess. They should just call it the Patton Oswalt Masturbation Hour. Big moon-faced amazon with a stick, beating people up--what god did I please?

Weird. Feeling very vaguely short of breath. Not desperately so, but in a way that makes me want to breathe deeply every 10 minutes ot so. Hmmm, should I be worried?

---

As Hosed As You Think You Are
Interesting page on PsyOps, the art of psychological warfare, or rather psychology during warfare. Dropping pamphlets, radio broadcasts, etc. I especially like the material about the Gulf War, especially the sample pamphlets. (This kind of thing probably had a big effect on the huge number of bloodless surrenders.)

---

Yet Another Geek Quote

My latest idea is for a beat-em-up game in the Mortal Wombat vein called Friedrich Nietzsche's Art Of Fighting. The player basically has two kinds of attacks: the first attack will actually increase your opponent's health bar, while the second will kill the opponent instantly no matter how strong he or she is. Thus, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, in every possible sense. I'm sure there's a market for it.

---

from the T-shirt Archive: #10 of a Series

Ratty and faded but beloved blue tanktop. Odd discoloration from too many washings. I think it had some kind of design on the front, like a kayaker, but that went away. Not up to my usual "interesting shirt" standards, but I liked it a lot, and prevented my mom from chucking it many times during high school.