politics

Randomness for 8/23

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1) Medieval copy protection: Sometimes people come to me and ask, “How did medieval filmmakers protect their DVDs from piracy?”

2) Choose (or create) wake up music for NASA astronauts on the last space shuttle mission. via @seattlegeekly

3) Reading, all around the world.

4) The Freedom of the Road wasn’t free for everyone.

5) Small countertop machine turns plastic back into oil Video. Put some solar panels on the top of that bad boy and I’m happy.

6) Why SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD bombed at the box office. “People say it’s become cool to be a geek. That’s not true. People have just started applying the word geek to cool people. Hipsters aren’t geeks and geeks aren’t rock musicians and rock musicians aren’t old school gamers”

7) Brandon Sanderson’s long-awaited WAY OF KINGS available at a charity auction. The charity benefits Doctors Without Borders. Spread the word!

Randomness for 8/16

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1) Wikipedia’s lamest edit wars.

2) Redesigned book covers.

3) A Star Wars Kid for the new age: HALO KID! Video.

4) Our Daughter Isn’t a Selfish Brat; Your Son Just Hasn’t Read
Atlas Shrugged. “When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, “Have a ball, peas [sic]?” And I’m sure you were very proud of him for using his manners. To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, “No! Looter!” right in his looter face, and then only marginally less proud when she sort of shoved him.”

5) How to recognize a card skimmer at your ATM. via Mary Catelli

6) How good do you have to be to win the World Yo-Yo Championships? Watch and find out. Video.

7) The history of Aquaman, explained.

Randomness for 8/8

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1) The alphabet, carved on the tips of pencils.

2) Kanye West Tweets combined with New Yorker cartoons. It’s not exactly Nietzsche Family Circus, but, um…

3) I don’t even know what to say about this news story. My initial shock at reading it has lessened as I realize this sort of thing isn’t unusual. It wouldn’t be newsworthy at all if not for the Facebook connection.

4) What a bestseller’s marketing push looks like. Someday, this will be me.

5) Amazing Lego Animation. Not for some technical razzle dazzle, but because it is so simply shot and effective. Video

6) It’s hard to believe this isn’t partly cgi in post, but this is a 3D projection onto a building, and it’s mindblowing. Video.

7) “But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave.” A New York high school valedictorian delivers a controversial speech against the public school system in which she excelled.

Bullet points make a post

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* ‘Sfunny, when I’m writing a first draft, I sit down for a specific time to write, and when I’m done for the day I’m done. When I’m doing a polish, it’s like an all-day thing. I keep dropping back into the file, reading a few lines, tweaking sentences. It’s kinda annoying, especially since it makes me feel as though I’m not accomplishing anything.

* Yesterday I got word that my Russian language rights money was on its way. Hooray! I’m really looking forward to posting scans of the foreign language translations of my books.

* I’ve decided to wait 3 days (or 24+ hours of inactivity) before announcing the winners of the book giveaways. I’ll roll a die for the first one tonight, maybe the second, depending. Also, I’ll announce it when someone has won.

* I have a couple Sekrit Projects to work on. Those are nicer than my public projects, because I enjoy them just as much but you, blog reader, don’t have to listen to my complaints.

* I have a bunch of interviews and essays to write. If I owe you one, don’t worry I haven’t forgotten. I have an SP to breeze through and then I’ll be all over it.

* Thank you, Judge Walker. The ruling still needs to go through the 9th District and Supreme Court, but this is the right step.

* I’ve been contemplating a post about all the ways the Obama administration has disappointed me, but honestly, I have better things to do. I knew the administration would disappoint me when I voted for him, but I didn’t anticipate the manner.

And just how busy do I have to get before I accept that I’m honestly busy? My LJ friends list is currently at skip=120, and that’s only after a day of dedicated downtime-at-day-job reading. Really, Obama can wait.

* It’s now less than 4 weeks until the publication of Game of Cages, and I feel sick. There’s so much to do and (seemingly) so much at stake and the economy is still in the crapper and I may be laid off from my day job and I may have to stay at this day job and I’m not sure which is worse and I just want to stand up, go home, take a shower and go to sleep for a very, very long time.

But other than that everything’s great.

I try not to duplicate content on my blog and twitter feed

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But I’m making an exception for this:

Tucker Carlson’s conservative news site, The Daily Caller, has been trying to make hay with the Journolist story (refresher for folks who don’t know the story: For a few years there was a private email list for left and center left professors, journalists, policy people, etc to discuss ideas in an informal, off-the-record manner. Recently, many of those emails have been made public, and conservatives have been Breitbarting quotes from them and trying to play it off as a conspiracy of the liberal media. At the forefront of the conspiracy-mongering have been Sarah Palin and The Daily Caller).

It’s driving traffic to TDC, so I guess they’re doing well with it. However, there’s nothing in the world worth the self-humiliation of posting this hilariously stupid editorial about the attractiveness of the Journolist members.

Nevermind the usual juvenile obsession with liberals as filled with resentment and rage. The amount of time the editorialist spends talking about high school cliques is enough to get him laughed off staff of any decent news site. I don’t expect it from The Daily Caller, though.

Here’s a quick tip: Andrew Sullivan doesn’t live in San Francisco. Yes, he’s a gay man, and yes, he’s gotten older over the years, just like all of us. I’m sorry you don’t think he’s sexy any more–I suggest checking out Rentboy.com. I understand you can find some sexy young men on that site. Thanks, though, for mentioning the San Francisco waterfront, though. I wonder where that reference comes from.

Here’s another: being left or center left does not make a person an atheist. Thought you should know.

Last tip, because I don’t know how many more you can absorb: You’re a grown man. For fuck’s sake, get over the high school thing already.

God, it’s a whole new level of “pathetic.”

Randomness for 7/28

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1) Mom creates tableaus to illustrate what she imagines her sleeping baby is dreaming.

2) Via Sherwood Smith: Jane Austen’s Fight Club. (added later: Yeah, this has been going around for the past couple of days, but I’m not going to yank it just in case someone here still hasn’t had a chance to check it out.)

3) Introverts unite! (quietly).

4) Poppy Z. Brite, Tim Wildmon, and The Home Depot. I’m so tempted to send (anonymously) a copy of CoF to the AFA so they can boycott me, too. I could use the publicity.

5) Random House and Andrew Wylie clash over ebook publication.

6) How self-absorbed people behave: political columnist writes open letter to his ex on her wedding day and reacts badly when he’s criticized for it.

7) And we mourn the end of an era: No more blowing up Michael Jackson zombies with your cornapult.

The stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we live.

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One of the most distressing things about my country and my culture is the contradiction between the way we view power in our entertainments and the way we view it in our real lives. We cheer movie heroes who take on the wealthy and the powerful to stand up for what’s right, but what happens if someone in the real world tries that?

Well, they don’t get treated like a hero. Sycophants to power pour out of the woodwork to declare them liars, scammers, whatever. Scarily, many many poor and powerless people have a knee-jerk sympathy for the wealthy and powerful.

So, I wondered what comments people would leave on a news site like CNN.com if these movies had actually happened in the real world, and were covered by the media. So:

Bedford falls

Mr. Smith Goes to WA

ET

Duck Soup

Quote of the day

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I feel like the last week has radicalized me in the worst possible way.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Context. Context continued.

This is important, folks.

Tea Party Express spokesman Mark Williams advised to polish his resume

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He needed to respond to the NAACP’s request that Tea Partiers “to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.” Hey, the guy is the national spokesman, right? I’m sure he handled this with dignity and tact.

Quote:

“You’re dealing with people who are professional race-baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It’s time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history.”

Emphasis added by me.

I wonder how much longer people in the mainstream media will criticize the NAACP?

Randomness for 7/15

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1) Every _____ Comic in three panels, by Marvel editor Nathan Crosby.
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2) Mainstream journalism throws more pop-science against the shoals of cultural prejudice.
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3) “Have you read all these books? When do you watch TV?” A husband works in his wife’s bookstore while she’s sick, and records the conversations he has with customers.
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4) How “non-lethal” weapons are too often used by police.
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5) The history of the term “slush pile.”
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6) The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design. Twelve of the Worst Book Titles Ever (NSFW) according to some dude at Huffpo.
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7) Bookscan: how accurate is it?