![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptGreetings! Up top, some helpful things about us humans that might help us avoid chaos in our lives - identify those small things that, if gone undone, result in chaos spilling outward...and then make sure all the little things get done. Avoid Keystone Demise. (Which I am not very good at at all.) If, however, you're easily distractable (like we are), there may be some tools to help keep someone focused on their computer. Very useful for writers or others who really need to get tasks done and avoid the siren song of other places.
Wonkette provides us with pictures of someone claiming the Tea Party Label selling shirts that proudly declare the wearer a racist. The intent, I'm sure, is to skewer the idea that Tea Partiers are predominantly white and like to do things like hand effigies of the President, but I'm not sure that "racist" is a term that can be reclaimed like that.
Out in the world today, After revelations of their illegal actions in hacking a telephone and deleting voice mail messages, along with a laundry list of other illegal activities, the owner of the News of the World has announced it will be closing. This does not necessarily mean he will escape charges for his role in the malfeasance and deeds of his subordinates.
Domestically, after a court puts its foot down on the matter of immediate repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the Pentagon says they'll suspend its enforcement. Considering that, theoretically, there's still the repeal coming down the pike, why doesn't the Pentagon say "Convenient excuse, we're not challenging it, and everyone who complains, we'll blame the courts"?
The state of Texas executed a citizen of Mexico charged and convicted of a capital offense without allowing the Mexican citizen consular access, a violation of treaties the United States is a signatory to. This being Texas, where the governor has given voice to the idea of secession from the Union and is a frequent Tenther and is polling quite well for the Republicans in 2012, despite not running for the office, this is not, perhaps, unexpected, but the potential damage done to United States citizens in other countries is significant. Furthermore, the Supreme Court split 5-4 along ideological grounds on staying the execution, with the five conservatives allowing it to proceed despite the lack of consular access. Now, there is an excuse to deny consular access to U.S. citizens in countries that would appreciate having the excuse. The conservative movement seems more than ready to assert American exceptionalism in all the wrong ways, including the conservatives on the court.
The dangers of allowing the police to raid first and then justify their arrests later - a religious practitioner gets raided on suspicion of drugs, is arrested for possessing things that are legal to possess. If they can't get you on what they came for, they'll try to get you on something else and justify it later.
A study from Cornell University indicates that about half of the people who are using government programs to better their lives (or at least stave off the drowning for a bit) will deny to a researcher's face that they're using government programs. Some of them are tax credits (which count, if you stop and think about it for a bit, because they're financial incentives to get people to do certain socially-beneficial things), but even those on programs where there are clear payouts deny they use government assistance. "Keep your government hands off my Medicare", indeed.
The state of Minnesota is entering its second week of a government shutdown. Budget differences bring it about, and continue to stop either side from coming to a deal. The longer things go along, the more likely the problems are going to get worse. Perhaps to avoid a similar situation, the President indicates his sacred cows are not sacred at all and probably haven't been since he was elected.
Last out, a cult leader and his followers are alleged to have killed a four year old child because they feared he was gay.
In technology, Mr. Scalzi points out the benefits of having your own domain - permanence and persistence in the age of fads is a nice happy thing. Which probably suggests if/when LJ/DW platforms finally go up and/or under, I should have a back-up plan to migrate over to a domain and hosting to continue with the posting.
Dot. Dot. Dot.
Staying in there, however, an interesting post about various ways of "banning" a user non-publically to try and induce them to go somewhere else and stop trolling. In the discussion, opinions about whether those forms are effective and whether or not they give too much power to moderators and other appointed/elected representatives to control the user population.
And then, research indicating that increased on-line social networking is not contributing to a dearth of off-line social networking, and may in fact, be increasing certain types of off-line activism.
The last mission of the Space Shuttle lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which will retire the program until the completion of a new rocket and orbiter device, with mission time on the ISS to be done by lifting off with Russian space vessels.
Finally, the Internet knows more about you than you are probably comfortable with, and someone with the right tools and persistence can probably figure out where you are just from what you send for the Internet to work. If you really have to be sure nobody knows where you are, use an anonymizing proxy on every device you have that connects to the Internet, always. And stay off of Facebook - it will introduce privacy-damaging features to you without notifying you and requiring you to opt-out, rather than opt-in.
In opinions, a revisiting - if the government were really serious about putting people back to work and growing the economy, it would reinstate the WPA as FDR did - government employment for people to do jobs that nobody in the private sector wants to do, building things that will last, documenting generations for researchers, and otherwise teaching people trades and skills they can then use when the economy recovers to get employed in the private sector.
Elsewhere, LZ Granderson tells parents to control their children, because all the people around brats and their permissive parents are not amused or enjoying them. A favored method in the United States, spanking, carries several problems around the use of force and children, but is also a method for sending a strong message about life choices.
Mr. Solway puts together many sentences about how much everyone knows the current administrator is an incompetent and that the country is far off the track of greatness...but provides no evidence to support his position. This is the kind of piece that would be red-penned to hell and back for going about it the wrong way in primary school. Similarly, Mr. Prelutsky makes what could be an attack about large expenditures in a down economy into sounding like a petty political and partisan attack because someone else is living better than they are, obscuring his point with large amounts of bitter.
Mr. Sowell makes a small point - reality often has no bearing on talking points and politics - but misses the implications that indicate that point cuts not just against his opponents, but his allies, because the entrenched positions that his allies have are likely as devoid of reality (or are also supported by Statistics in addition to Lies and Damned Lies) and evidence.
Last for tonight, an engaging read about a Christian attempt at a role-playing game that still has the role-playing, but takes all of the good bits and lessons that could be learned from RPGs out in favor of didacticism. To the point where there are no positive effects to doing bad...and really, no way to make a bad choice at all.
Oh, and who owns the copyright on a picture a monkey takes?
Wonkette provides us with pictures of someone claiming the Tea Party Label selling shirts that proudly declare the wearer a racist. The intent, I'm sure, is to skewer the idea that Tea Partiers are predominantly white and like to do things like hand effigies of the President, but I'm not sure that "racist" is a term that can be reclaimed like that.
Out in the world today, After revelations of their illegal actions in hacking a telephone and deleting voice mail messages, along with a laundry list of other illegal activities, the owner of the News of the World has announced it will be closing. This does not necessarily mean he will escape charges for his role in the malfeasance and deeds of his subordinates.
Domestically, after a court puts its foot down on the matter of immediate repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the Pentagon says they'll suspend its enforcement. Considering that, theoretically, there's still the repeal coming down the pike, why doesn't the Pentagon say "Convenient excuse, we're not challenging it, and everyone who complains, we'll blame the courts"?
The state of Texas executed a citizen of Mexico charged and convicted of a capital offense without allowing the Mexican citizen consular access, a violation of treaties the United States is a signatory to. This being Texas, where the governor has given voice to the idea of secession from the Union and is a frequent Tenther and is polling quite well for the Republicans in 2012, despite not running for the office, this is not, perhaps, unexpected, but the potential damage done to United States citizens in other countries is significant. Furthermore, the Supreme Court split 5-4 along ideological grounds on staying the execution, with the five conservatives allowing it to proceed despite the lack of consular access. Now, there is an excuse to deny consular access to U.S. citizens in countries that would appreciate having the excuse. The conservative movement seems more than ready to assert American exceptionalism in all the wrong ways, including the conservatives on the court.
The dangers of allowing the police to raid first and then justify their arrests later - a religious practitioner gets raided on suspicion of drugs, is arrested for possessing things that are legal to possess. If they can't get you on what they came for, they'll try to get you on something else and justify it later.
A study from Cornell University indicates that about half of the people who are using government programs to better their lives (or at least stave off the drowning for a bit) will deny to a researcher's face that they're using government programs. Some of them are tax credits (which count, if you stop and think about it for a bit, because they're financial incentives to get people to do certain socially-beneficial things), but even those on programs where there are clear payouts deny they use government assistance. "Keep your government hands off my Medicare", indeed.
The state of Minnesota is entering its second week of a government shutdown. Budget differences bring it about, and continue to stop either side from coming to a deal. The longer things go along, the more likely the problems are going to get worse. Perhaps to avoid a similar situation, the President indicates his sacred cows are not sacred at all and probably haven't been since he was elected.
Last out, a cult leader and his followers are alleged to have killed a four year old child because they feared he was gay.
In technology, Mr. Scalzi points out the benefits of having your own domain - permanence and persistence in the age of fads is a nice happy thing. Which probably suggests if/when LJ/DW platforms finally go up and/or under, I should have a back-up plan to migrate over to a domain and hosting to continue with the posting.
Dot. Dot. Dot.
Staying in there, however, an interesting post about various ways of "banning" a user non-publically to try and induce them to go somewhere else and stop trolling. In the discussion, opinions about whether those forms are effective and whether or not they give too much power to moderators and other appointed/elected representatives to control the user population.
And then, research indicating that increased on-line social networking is not contributing to a dearth of off-line social networking, and may in fact, be increasing certain types of off-line activism.
The last mission of the Space Shuttle lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which will retire the program until the completion of a new rocket and orbiter device, with mission time on the ISS to be done by lifting off with Russian space vessels.
Finally, the Internet knows more about you than you are probably comfortable with, and someone with the right tools and persistence can probably figure out where you are just from what you send for the Internet to work. If you really have to be sure nobody knows where you are, use an anonymizing proxy on every device you have that connects to the Internet, always. And stay off of Facebook - it will introduce privacy-damaging features to you without notifying you and requiring you to opt-out, rather than opt-in.
In opinions, a revisiting - if the government were really serious about putting people back to work and growing the economy, it would reinstate the WPA as FDR did - government employment for people to do jobs that nobody in the private sector wants to do, building things that will last, documenting generations for researchers, and otherwise teaching people trades and skills they can then use when the economy recovers to get employed in the private sector.
Elsewhere, LZ Granderson tells parents to control their children, because all the people around brats and their permissive parents are not amused or enjoying them. A favored method in the United States, spanking, carries several problems around the use of force and children, but is also a method for sending a strong message about life choices.
Mr. Solway puts together many sentences about how much everyone knows the current administrator is an incompetent and that the country is far off the track of greatness...but provides no evidence to support his position. This is the kind of piece that would be red-penned to hell and back for going about it the wrong way in primary school. Similarly, Mr. Prelutsky makes what could be an attack about large expenditures in a down economy into sounding like a petty political and partisan attack because someone else is living better than they are, obscuring his point with large amounts of bitter.
Mr. Sowell makes a small point - reality often has no bearing on talking points and politics - but misses the implications that indicate that point cuts not just against his opponents, but his allies, because the entrenched positions that his allies have are likely as devoid of reality (or are also supported by Statistics in addition to Lies and Damned Lies) and evidence.
Last for tonight, an engaging read about a Christian attempt at a role-playing game that still has the role-playing, but takes all of the good bits and lessons that could be learned from RPGs out in favor of didacticism. To the point where there are no positive effects to doing bad...and really, no way to make a bad choice at all.
Oh, and who owns the copyright on a picture a monkey takes?
no subject
Date: 2011-07-10 02:57 pm (UTC)