April 26, 2013

I'm really glad I upgraded my operating system, because I just love having caps lock turned on by keys that aren't the caps lock key and having keyboard input disabled at random intervals when I'm trying to type something. It is a real joy discovering these unexpected surprises and I hope it continues.

April 25, 2013
obama romney

lurker

April 21, 2013

Washington Post:

In an investigative forum of Reddit.com, since removed from the site, users compiled thousands of photos, studied them for suspicious backpacks and sent their favorite theories spinning out into the wider Internet.

"Find people carrying black bags," wrote the Reddit forum's unnamed moderator. "If they look suspicious, then post them. Then people will try and follow their movements using all the images."

The moderator defended this strategy by arguing that "it's been proven that a crowd of thousands can do things like this much quicker and better. ... I'd take thousands of people over a select few very smart investigators any day."

In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials. Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.


Don't forget to vote in Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian as President of the Internet!

April 19, 2013

RIP Yahoo! Kids, formerly Yahooligans!, which was probably the first website I ever visited during computer lab. That or AOL Keyword: Nick, I'm not really sure. Who cares.

It really fell into disrepair over the years, so no big loss

April 18, 2013

I'm reading this book about the history of health care reform in the 20th century and there's a couple fascinating quotes in there:

As a result of the Republican gains in 1946, [Ohio senator Robert] Taft now chaired the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, which he used as a forum to convince the public of the dangers of national health insurance and to promote his alternative plan for federal aid to the states for medical care for the poor. During committee hearings, Taft called 29 friendly witnesses but only a single opposition witness, a representative of the International Workers Order, a well-known communist organization. The hearings became an inquisition into "socialized medicine."
Sick trolling skills
Although Eisenhower made a nationally televised plea for the reinsurance proposal and appeared personally before the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to assure them that he had no desire to regulate their products, his efforts were to no avail. The AMA, ever watchful of government intervention, immediately denounced reinsurance as socialism and lobbied against it in Congress.
Even a big-time Republican war hero like Dwight D. Eisenhower got called a socialist
Then the elderly took to the streets, an attention-getting move since people 65 and older are the least likely of all age groups to protest or take part in a demonstration. In a scene replayed over and over on the nightly news, several dozen angry seniors accosted Representative Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, as he attempted to drive away from a meeting. [...] The demonstrators surrounded Rostenkowski's car, beating it with picket signs, pounding on the windows, and shouting "Coward!" "Recall!" and "Impeach!" A shaken Rostenkowski abandoned his car and fled the scene on foot.
Here's a video of it, but it's not quite as awesomely dramatic as the quote makes it:

April 10, 2013

I wrote a small piece for Something Awful about the Republican version of BuzzFeed. Consider it the latest salvo in the horrifying meme-fication of elections, a theme I've been sorta harping about over the past year.

On a related note, check out my e-migo vrunt's newest project, FeedBuzz

buzzfeed
April 4, 2013