I'm probably only about the millionth person to make that joke today, on the Internet.
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Monday, February 06, 2012
Thought this was a fake ...
(pic. source: The Frisky)
"... the malignant narcissim of malicious politicians ..."
Why, yes. That does pretty well sum up Newt Gingrich, doesn't it?
Here is a nice old southern gentleman taking Newt to school, courtesy of a nice young western gentleman.
P.S. Far be it from me to tell you I told you so, but told ya.
Subvertising
Here's a five-minute talk (because that's all Ignite allows!) by Tae Phoenix, aka Teresa Valdez Klein. It's about spending surprisingly tiny amounts of money to get your message out there, for example, on Facebook.
(h/t: Baratunde Thurston on TWiT #339, via Don McArthur in G+ comments)
Wingnut Watch: Shadrack McGill
Above: Mr. Soon To Be Posterized
on Tea Party Jesus. One hopes.It's a great thing about the Internet that assclowns like Shadrack McGill can be named and shamed.
Start with kez's tweet.
And then see Cal Alabaster, Jr., for stops two and three.
(smug mug swiped from Out of Steppers)
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Line of the Day: 2012-02-05
So now the Hairpiece has endorsed the Haircut, and not the Harebrained. Sweetheart, get me rewrite!
-- Charles P. Pierce
Bonus at the link: outstanding caricatures by Donkey Hotey. Lots more on Flickr.
Another look at the cocoon
Remember that part I highlighted from the recent "New Rules" bit I posted last week?
Say it again:
But people in the mainstream don’t know a lot about that world. The worst thing that most people hear is a few seconds of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh when they’re in a taxicab. But if you spend time at Media Matters or the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Watch” blog, and so on, or, if, God help you, you go to a white nationalist conference as I did in Washington in September, you know that these ideas have real currency.
My worry isn’t that Newsweek would approach some right-wing guy and get a quote from him, but that they would do it without knowing just how right-wing he is.
[Links added].
The above is from Katie Ryder's interview of Arthur Goldwag, on the question of the New Hate and whether it's different from or worse than what wingnuts of old wallowed in.
Another statement from Goldwag that's well worth repeating:
... Ryan Lizza, the other week in the New Yorker, wrote about a study showing that in recent years the mainstream right has moved much farther to the right than the left has moved to the left.
And from that article:
Polarization also has affected the two parties differently. The Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than the Democratic Party has drifted to the left. Jacob Hacker, a professor at Yale, whose 2006 book, “Off Center,” documented this trend, told me, citing Poole and Rosenthal’s data on congressional voting records, that, since 1975, “Senate Republicans moved roughly twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left” and “House Republicans moved roughly six times as far to the right as House Democrats moved to the left.” In other words, the story of the past few decades is asymmetric polarization.
(h/t: KK, via email)
The One True
From Brian McFadden's "How to Have a Highbrow Halftime:"
And don't fail to click on the arrow at the side of the page when you've finished reading that one. Five more pages of goodness, featuring Newt, SOPA, and other reprehensibilities.
Saturday, February 04, 2012
I would like to file a report: Truth in Advertising violation
Oh, wait. My bad. It doesn't actually say "Rational," does it?
Line of the Day: 2012-02-04
Fond memories:
I discovered the pleasures of YouTube around this time. Someone sent me a link to a music video, and I followed it to the site. The whimsical D.I.Y.-ness of the home page, with its clutter of clickable offerings, many sophomoric in nature, made the place feel like a college dorm. Adorable babies, angry cats, embarrassing falls, and child prodigies mingled with the music videos and great concert footage of bands I loved performing at their peak. I e-mailed links to my friends. One of them wrote back, “This is like public television was supposed to be!”
That's from Ryan John Seabrook's New Yorker piece in the Annals of Technology, "Streaming Dreams: YouTube turns pro." Haven't finished it yet (511: I'm reading the print edition in chunks, when nature calls, the way Harold Ross would have wanted it), but so far, so very good.
Seabrook also has a related blog post featuring videos from the dawn of (YouTube) time.
[Added] In Comments, nice guy Steve M. points to another article about YouTube for your reading pleasure.
Actually, my biggest fear is running out of coffee
But this thing that I swiped from Rexi44's sidebar is still appealing.
Don't they already have about 365 of those every year?
Arizona GOP Lawmaker Wants A State Holiday To Celebrate White People
(Think Progress, via Rexi44)
Not sure how I feel about this, but ...
... it certainly bears further contemplation, and I definitely sympathize with the underlying motivations.
Ban The Box
Our “Ban the Box” campaign calls for the elimination of the questions about past convictions on initialpublic employment applications. Our aim is to win policy change through grassroots mobilizations, and to build a political movement of formerly-incarcerated activists. This campaign will allow us to target and challenge the many “boxes” on a variety of applications (i.e. employment, housing, social services, etc.) we are required to check that supports structural discrimination against formerly-incarcerated people.
Banning the box on public employment applications will contribute to public safety because it will promote stable employment in our communities. Communities of color and poor communities already are targeted by mass imprisonment, racial profiling, school closures, and low employment rates. People coming out of prison or county jails need to be able to feed their families, pay rent, and reunite with their families, and return their lives as productive members of the community. People with jobs and stable community lives are much less likely to return committing crimes in order to survive.
Ban The Box is a campaign being conducted by All Of Us Or None.
(h/t: Rexi44)
Friday, February 03, 2012
Shocking news
In case you hadn't heard, this happened, again:
See Jay Bookman for details.
(pic. source: Paul Boylan)
If you're feeling down on what we call our political process, don't watch this ...
... thing I randomly hopped to on the YouTube. But it is quite well done, I think.
What do you think? Seems dated? Or (discouragingly) current?
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Each?
Sounds like either way too many or not nearly enough, don't you think?
A Thousand Dildos For The Military Wives
In other sexytime news from PCMag (??? (well, both stories refer to robots, kind of, I guess)), iPhone users don't put out on the first date as frequently as Android users. But they do put out more frequently than Blackberry users.
I feel like Spock in real life
Not to keep being that guy on this, but I gotta say, what's shown at right indicates to me that after half a decade, at least, of being logged into Google and letting it examine what's rather hysterically called my personal data, the most powerful computer network on the planet still can't do any better than throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks.
The lesson? Spend a part of your day, every day, on Gmail, talking nonsense with your friends. That's how you defeat Skynet.
Oh, and have some more π. Mmmm, pi.
[Update 2012-03-16] Change image link from Imageshack (bad!) to Photobucket (good!)
Okay, yeah, they probably wouldn't prevent tranmission of STDs
"Now, now, dear, this won't hurt a bit."
(h/t: Rufus Polk)
P.S. Because Uncle Eb will be mad if that's the only picture I use, let's have equal time, and present an ad for … uh, sneakers, yeah, that's it … that just happened to appear on the same page. (Thanks, Google!)
Appreciation for a valediction
Very nice, Twitter. What an elegant way to remind people that the blast of flame that they're about to send is actually going to be read by a human being on the other end.
Do your billing and cooing here!
"Some say Romney's comments being taken out of context"
The lazy journalist's two favorite words.
Not that I'm accusing FoxNews of being journalists, you understand.
(Backstory.)
"Baratunde Thurston teaches you 'How To Be Black'”
Here's the first couple of slides to get you started:
See the rest.
Baratunde, if you didn't already know, is digital director of The Onion. The slides are part of the pimping celebration of the release of his autobiography. Of course there is an affiliated website filled with fanciness, because, come on, digital director. [Insert joke about bossing around white people here. But keep it tasteful so as not to upset Charles Murray fans.]
Want to participate in a video chat? Friday 3 Feb 11am EST, on the WaPo's site. See his blog and Twitter feed, also.
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Your worst nightmare come true
Check out the salutation. (Click it to see the whole thing.)
Sweeeeeeeht. Now, let me go get my buckets and head on down to K Street.
Kinsley gaffe of the day
Lucky for him you can't see his hands.
What, context? You want context? What goes around comes around, Willard. Ask anybody. Including the Salt Lake Tribune.
(h/t: KK | title: cf.)
[Added] Pareene rushes to his defense!
I suppose there must be something worse ...
... than re-posting a video which ran as a pre-roll ad and calling it "blogging," but I can't think of what it would be. But who cares, I love these.
I haven't ever seen the cougar one. Have you?
Good. Because there's nothing more tedious than a self-loathing Ruby script.
The process doesn’t daemonise itself ...
Wait. Wait wait wait. That's not the weird part.*
I happened across the above while looking to see if a semi-spammy-seeming email had anything behind it.
On a thoroughly unrelated note (except chronologically), and my weakness for nerd jokes aside, I did next find what I was looking for, and did the first thing you always do with a new search engine: type in your own name. Which didn't return much, but did lead me to discover that a phrase of mine apparently went sorta viral about a year ago.
I guess I have an OpenSalon post from The Majority Report to thank for that. So, thanks, Sam! (Or whoever actually runs that blog.) And let us hope a seed or two got lodged in Matt Bai's ear.
* (The part to which I refer starts at 0:24).
(alt. audio link | transcript)
I think I only ever saw that once, when it originally aired, but I've never forgotten it. (Although admittedly it did blur a bit -- if you know me AFK, you might have heard me say that the weird part is "a different golden retriever.")
Sometimes, realizing you've gotten too old for today's pop music is actually not that bad
This week's Amazon "MP3 newsletter" (which, really, can have its good points way down at the bottom) featured a name that was completely new to me. Okay, we all know the drill. Tinker to Evers to Google, and … by Chance, look. at. that.
Elizabeth Grant (born June 21, 1986), better known by her stage name Lana Del Rey, is an American singer/songwriter. She has been described as a "self-styled gangsta Nancy Sinatra",[5] and cites Britney Spears,[6] Elvis Presley and Kurt Cobain amongst her musical influences.[6][7]
Uh ... I was gonna say I, too, liked Kurt, but after typing those three dots, I've decided it's probably more honest just to say, Okay! Spectrum covered! Why SHOULDN'T everyone like you?
Gah.
I did also listen to the title track of what I am told is her monster new album, and made it nearly two-thirds of the way through before giving it a considered "meh." Or "neh." Not sure. Already fading from memory.
It's going to be a long time before I'm able to floss my brain clean of "self-styled gangsta Nancy Sinatra," though.
Hey, wait! I've got a new complaint!
So there's that.
FTFY
Molly once said, "We have to have fun while trying to stave off the forces of darkness because we hardly ever win, so it's the only fun we get to have."
In that spirit and not at all because I obsessively test links, I typed my name into The Trustworthy Search Engine mentioned last post. On one of many pages featuring the burblings of Long Beach City College's finest,* I was presented with this advertising image:
Which is now linked as it should be. You're welcome, rightwingers!
(title: cf.)
* Never forget: SASQUATCH ISRAEL.
Alinksy!!!1! Exposed!!!eleventy!
I was going back and forth with C about the latest kowtowing to the American Taliban and that made me think of a clip emailed a couple of days ago by Special Agent Z200a.
Χιούμορ είναι αλήθεια:
I was and am grateful that FINALLY someone with a platform bigger than mine is talking about this. Not to claim superiority over Mr. Maher, of course, but I've been asking this since late '07, early '08 at the latest. Really. I'm no master of literature or anything, but I've got enough breadth to do a Sunday crossword puzzle, if you see what I'm saying, and the name Alinksy didn't even ring a bell when it first got trotted out, round about the time the Wright and Ayers cards finally went flaccid.
But the thing I really liked about this clip was that twenty-five second bit starting at 1:02 about totebaggers some liberals not realizing (or worse, refusing to believe) that there really, really is a disturbingly large chunk of the population whose world view begins and ends with such craziness. Like Alinksy is Teh Left's secret playbook. Or Obama hates America, because he's like Mao. No, Pol Pot. No, Castro. No, Stalin. No, Hitler. One of them. Or the answer to all of our fiscal woes is to go back on the gold standard and invest the rest in personal generators and automatic weaponry (which Obama stealthily plans to take away, doncha know), strictly intended for hunting defending Teh Constitooshin, of course. And God help you if you let Obama's seekrit FEMA police give your child a vaccine or make him eat green vegetables!!!1! Because Michelle is uppity angry!!!1! Also!!!1!
Believe it. Or don't, and see for yourself: go to The Trustworthy Search Engine and type in any of the above. Or any phrase from current events, or American history (1776-1789, 1860-1861, 1941-1945, and 9/11/2001-5/1 /2003 will work best), that comes to mind. And then wallow for a while. Or just browse around Summa Wingnuttia.
No need to panic. They're still a decided minority,* albeit noisy and redolent. But please, just be aware. They're not amenable to compromise, much less reason, and you'd do well to bear that in mind. Not saying it's time for a purge or anything like that. Just saying that you might be amazed what's in our midst.
--bjk +7. Ἐν οἴνῳ ἀλήθεια.
(Pic. source: The Triadvocate | All Greek to you? Okay, here: 1, 2)
__________
[Added] Oh crap. Googling around for one of the above links teaches me that once again, I am behind: that consarned Edroso has already been all over this one, too. Days ago!
Welp, if you, too, are just learning about this recent work from Roy, sorry for wasting your time, but glad I'm only the opening act, at least! Intro here, full column here. Go.
* The Republican primaries have not been considered in making this statistical assertion.
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