if your itunes library craps out you can just use the latest version from your backup in time machine. I decided not to do that so that I could start over because there were like 300 gigs of missing and deleted files that iTunes constantly wanted to “find.” Also, if you’re a fan of my playlists that’s why it’s been so long. I have a couple done I’m just suppppper busy right now.
It’s no secret that the CIA and FBI can read your emails for any old reason they choose without having to clear it with anyone first (because you’re a terrorist). That was on track to change with an amendment attached to an upcoming bill… before said amendment was quietly dropped from said bill.
The bill in question is the smoothy titled Video Privacy Protection Act Amendments Act of 2012, which requires video service providers like Netflix to allow you to opt out of having your information posted on places like your Facebook page. According to AllGov, an amendment that was attached to the bill that would’ve required the federal government to obtain a warrant before snooping around your inbox disappeared as the bill was passed.
:: Via Gawker ::
Definitely worth watching if you’re into travel and/or the military industrial complex
INDIANAPOLIS — A federal judge has upheld an Indiana law banning registered sex offenders from accessing Facebook and other social-networking sites used by children. Judge Tanya Walton Pratt said in an 18-page order Friday that the state has a strong interest in protecting children and that the rest of the Internet remains open to those who have been convicted.
“Social networking, chat rooms, and instant messaging programs have effectively created a ‘virtual playground’ for sexual predators to lurk,” Pratt wrote in the ruling, citing a 2006 report by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that found that one in seven youths had received online sexual solicitations and that one in three had been exposed to unwanted sexual material online.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed the class-action suit on behalf of a man who served three years for child exploitation, along with other sex offenders who are restricted by the ban even though they are no longer on probation. Federal judges have barred similar laws in Nebraska and Louisiana.
Courts have long allowed states to place restrictions on convicted sex offenders who have completed their sentences, controlling where many live and work and requiring them to register with police. The ACLU claimed that Indiana’s social-networking ban was far broader, restricting a wide swath of constitutionally protected activities. The ACLU contended that even though the 2008 law is only intended to protect children from online sexual predators, social media are virtually indispensable and the ban prevents sex offenders from using the Web sites for political, business and religious activities.
:: Federal Judge Bans Sex Offender from Social-Networking ::
This is serious misinterpretation of the point of restricted use. It might make sense to prohibit a sex offender from visiting a playground because that’s a place explicitly designed for children but it’s entirely different to ban someone from anyplace that children could potentially be. It’s comparable to banning a sex offender from airports, restaurants, or movie theatres because like Facebook they “don’t prohibit children.” It’s a fucking ridiculous ruling and I suspect that both the lawyers and the judge have no clear understanding of what’s going on. I suppose a judge could ban a sex offender from seeing G rated films or going to restaurants specifically for children (McDonalds for example) but that’s too fine grained. Furthermore, if a person is still such a threat to society that being on facebook constitutes a danger they should still be in prison. Or we should send these people to places that actually help with rehabilitation.
NEXT
A Tampa rape victim can sue the Hillsborough County Sheriff for allowing a jail guard to refuse to give her a prescribed emergency contraception pill because it was against the guard’s religious beliefs, a federal judge ruled. R.W., whose full name is not disclosed in court records, says she was raped on Jan. 27, 2007. After an examination at Tampa’s Rape Crisis Center, a doctor gave R.W. gave two anti-contraception pills, according to the complaint. R.W. says she took one pill immediately and held the other to ingest 12 hours later, as directed. While taking R.W.’s report of the crime, however, a Tampa police officer learned that there was an arrest warrant for R.W. for failure to pay restitution and failure to appear. At the Hillsborough County Jail, staff confiscated her second pill. R.W. says she requested her second pill the next morning, but jail employee Michele Spinelli refused. “Spinelli told the Plaintiff that she would not give R.W. the pill because it was against Spinelli’s religious beliefs,” the first amended complaint states.
:: Rape Victim Can Sue for Denied Contraception ::
raped, held in jail, denied contraceptives. wtf. Note this article only reports that the guard CAN be sued not that WERE sued.
This is a TED length minidocumentary on the people who live in the sewer systems of Bogota, Colombia.
Aside from literally sleeping in feces, these people are dodging rats, flash floods and drug addicts. What’s worse, the sewer dwellers are constantly under attack by local “death squads,” who fire open rounds and pour gasoline into their underground homes, then set them ablaze.
Kinda heavy and horrifically disgusting but interesting. Nubs down to killing homeless people.
Unlimited economic progress in a world of finite resources is bound to collapse. - Jane Goodall @1:17
When you hear someone say something like this it should be a key indication that they have not the slightest idea what they are talking about. Frustratingly it is an oft repeated sentiment among environmentalists and amateur economists. It’s in the same category as ”Capitalism is invalid because it relies on unlimited economic growth.” Both of these are spectacularly wrong for several reasons. My friend Eric put it most succinctly:
…economic progress isn’t bound by natural resources. If someone figures out a way to do something more efficiently, that’s economic progress that may in fact reduce the natural resources required.
Eric hit the nail on the head, I tend to break this down in a longer form.
Obviously resources are finite, that’s a truism and kind of meaningless :-/ The question is how limited are they? What is our resource ceiling? Are we talking all the titanium in the milky way galaxy or all the different ways we can create polymers that replace metals? What about using LEDs to vastly improve the amount of food we can grow? Are trees a finite natural resource? Maybe not if you can replant them forever. It’s debatable and hence my point.
Even if the resource ceiling is low (unlikely), there might be a near infinite way to combine, use, and reuse those resources. In that case, unlimited economic progress is certainly possible. Does that mean that we actually do have infinite resources? Further complicating this is that economic progress (defined in a broad variety of ways) is based almost entirely on ideas, which are as near to infinite as anything. Zynga is a multibillion dollar company because people buy virtual carrots.
There is no evidence to suggest a social collapse, short of a catastrophic meteor strike. It’s a common goal that everyone wants to prevent and there are no indications that it will occur. In fact, the trend is in the opposite direction. The makers of Surviving Progress offer an exploding building as evidence/support for their assertion but fail to explain why. I even think that serious pre-industrial regression is so unlikely that’s it’s not worth considering. As a species we’re doing fairly well on the millenium development goals
(lots of room for improvement though!). scope the graphs at the bottom of this wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
When I look at the statement “unlimited economic progress in a world of finite natural resources is bound to collapse” I see a super messy, poorly defined equation with an unlikely outcome. I hang out with a lot of environmentalist hippy types and people say some variant of this to me all time. It’s a sign that someone hasn’t really thought about what they are saying. But it is a highly manipulative statement and I bet it’s followed by someone, especially these filmmakers, trying to get me to do something.
HAPPY EARTH DAY!!!
>>>> See Also >>>>
The Policy Economics of Getting Punched Right in The Goddamned Face
Also, if you haven’t seen it already James Cameron and Google are trying to bring an asteroid into orbit around earth by 2025. It’s blowing by mind.
Google announced a new plan this week to help news publishers make money: Readers will be presented with a short marketing survey they have to complete before reading an article. Google consumer surveys is a clever enough way for a publisher to get more revenue without putting up more ads — or a dreaded paywall — and Google says replies will be anonymous.
As the poet Rumi once wrote, “I heard that lie.”
In fact, you should never again believe any privacy promise Google makes, since it’s now decided that its old promises don’t count and its future depends on it building the most comprehensive profile of you that it can.
‘I climbed into the bath and I could feel the eels nibbling my body. But then suddenly I felt a severe pain and realised a small eel had gone into the end of my penis,’ the 56-year-old from Honghu, Hubei province said. ’I tried to hold it and take it out, but the eel was too slippery to be held and it disappeared up my penis. Rushing himself to hospital, the man underwent a three-hour operation to remove the six-inch eel which was dead by the time doctors found it.
:: via the Chronicle via Email(thx drewmin!) ::
I don’t really believe it but if you ever find yourself in this situation pinch at the base of the penis rather than clawing pointlessly at the tail of the eel. NOT THAT I HAVE EVER HAD AN EEL IN MY DICK, that’s just my theory.
And speaking of slippery eels trying to crawl up your dick
I was at this party last night and there was a woman from Obama 2012 trying to recruit programmers. When I asked her what she thought about the Obama administration increasing warrantless wiretaps over the Bush administration she said, “I don’t care, it’s irrelevant and I just don’t care.” I’ve long felt politically isolated because I’m against things like the Obama administration backing a military coup against a democratically elected government in honduras. Obviously, most people don’t give a shit about stuff like that, it’s too complicated and breaks too many internal narratives about freedom and peace and justice and crap like that. I’m used to that and it doesn’t really bother me that much anymore. When I hear someone who works for the campaign say that they think warrantless wiretaps are irrelevant…I get very dispirited. I guess I’m just going to double down on my donations to the EFF.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
No. This is just wrong and actually wrong on a lot of levels. Let’s start with the easy part first. Specialization is, in fact, for very smart people who want to develop specific, useful skills. Like computers and the internet? Specialization. Like delicious food from all over the world? Specialization. Cars, Airplanes, or any form of transit? Specialization. Awesome Hollywood movies with amazing special effects? Specialization. Basically, any non minimum wage job? Specialization. Heinlein lists 21 things a human should be good at, many of which are examples of specialized skills! Gah!! How are you people not noticing this!?!?
About 1/3 of these skills are functionally useless. I will never, ever need to know how to plan an invasion. I’ve never built a wall because I’m not a stone mason. Nor will I ever be. I’ve been a vegetarian for 16 years, even in the unlikely event that I ate meat I would never need to butcher a hog. Designing a good building takes about 10 years of serious and intense study to even begin to get it right. Why would I ever need to pitch manure? Etc, etc, etc. Another 1/3 of these skills would be useful if they involved a hobby of your choice. If they are optional though, there is no reason that you should be able to do them. Conning a ship is good if you’re into sailing but the vast majority of people aren’t. Ditto on sonnets, equations, and programming. If Heinlein is insisting that I need to be able to write a sonnet to be a complete human being, that’s just kind of weird and nonsensical.
The remaining 1/3 of these are so broad that they are kind of gimmes. Cooperation, comforting the dying, cooking. Great, I’m all for those things. However, if you think that conning a ship is comparable in importance to being able to analyze new problems, well, you’re probably not very good at analyzing new problems.
I’ve read about half of Robert Heinlein’s books and he was kind of a kook (as any great science fiction writer should be). For instance, he seriously believed that the only people who should be allowed to vote were people who had done military service…which is insane. Aside from being fascist, undermining the core principles of democracy, and presupposing a military industrial complex that could accomodate 300 million workers at some point, it’s a notion based on the idea that only someone who has worked in the military is competent enough to comprehend outcomes from complex democratic procedures. Rifuckingdiculous.
SPOILER ALERT: massive fails all around
Do prisoners have a constitutional right to pornography? I dunno that’s kind of a weird thing to think about.
fwiw, i find that language objectionable, as does Hef.
BUT WAIT, back to dick jokes:
The deprivation does not end with porn, though. While you might think of masturbation as a sort of last refuge for the incarcerated—a truly inalienable freedom, given the happy proximity of the sex organs—that is not the case. In fact, a number of state prisons regard jerking off as a rule infraction. American University law professor Brenda Smith, who conducted a 50-state survey of prison masturbation policies in 2006, says restrictions are “well-entrenched” in the correctional environment. In North Carolina, for example, it is a violation to “touch the sexual or other intimate parts of oneself or another person for the purpose of sexual gratification.” Violations can lead to disciplinary segregation or the loss of “good time” credits. Tennessee forbids “[a]ny behavior intended for the sexual gratification of the subject.” Ohio prohibits “[s]eductive or obscene acts, including indecent exposure or masturbation.” Kentucky regards inmate masturbation as “[i]nappropriate sexual behavior.” In California, where some 170,000 men and women live behind bars, masturbation is permissible provided it is stopped immediately if noticed by staff, blue balls be damned. If the masturbator perseveres, even if concealed by bed sheets, he can be cited for “Intentionally Sustained Masturbation without Exposure.” These policies are part of a long correctional tradition to forbid all forms of sexual activity. Prison officials say they need the rules to keep order and deter exhibitionism.
In practice, inmates are seldom sanctioned, so long as they touch themselves discreetly. In Connecticut, masturbation is against the rules only when performed “in a lewd and public manner.”
Anyway, FOR YOUR (too much) INFORMATION, I’m just going to be slightly more smug about california’s general superiority vis a vis the prison industrial complex next time I’m touching myself.
ALSO interesting:
Let me offer two statements, and ask what is the morally relevant difference between them.
1. I don’t socialise with Asians. I just don’t find them that appealing.
2. I don’t date Asians. I just don’t find them that appealing.
(1) is clearly objectionable. It looks like straight-up racism. If someone sitting next to us at a bar made a statement like that, we’d probably quietly slide over a few stools. I think we are more tolerant of (2) — yet it looks exactly the same. And is it any different than:
3. I prefer to date Asians. I really find them specially appealing.
No one can stop you for from feeling more, or less, attracted to a particular type. But we might think you have a moral obligation to try to overcome that preference. You could examine where this particular preference comes from, and you could make a special effort to date other types.
Someone might object here that the harm of prejudice comes not from the attitude itself, but the way the attitude affects society, and our dating choices don’t affect society. People who are racists, for instance, pass qualified people over for jobs, or allow their attitudes to affect their voting behaviour, and that makes us all worse off. There is, on this view, no measurable harm of this kind when it comes to dating.
I think the harm exists, but is more subtle. It is the harm of living in a society that is less tolerant than it might be. Other things being equal, we are better off in a society where people are as free from prejudice as they possibly can be, and where everyone can succeed on their merits in all spheres, including the sexual. In such a society, everyone can feel that they’ll be given a fair chance, and they can be confident that the rest of us will have no patience for anyone who refuses to judge them as individuals. Also, a society where people have strong sexual type-preferences, and these preferences are tolerated, is very likely going to be less efficient at matching up sexual partners, because people miss opportunities. There is therefore less sex being had in aggregate – and I believe that, other things being equal again, a society that contains a greater aggregate quantity of sex is better than one that contains less. For these reasons, our personal preferences decrease the total welfare of the society, and this creates an obligation to work to overcome them.
::: via Moral Lust :::
As you surely remember from The Dustin Boyer Easy Peasy Guide to Productivity:
3. Exercise makes my blood pump and there is blood in my brain. That’s a weak argument but running up flights of stairs makes me happy.
Turns out, when I was making stuff up, I got something right. Here’s a sweet excerpt from a recent NYTimes article:
Meanwhile, blood samples taken throughout the experiment offered a biological explanation for the boost in memory among the exercisers. Immediately after the strenuous activity, the cyclists had significantly higher levels of a protein known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which is known to promote the health of nerve cells. The men who had sat quietly showed no comparable change in BDNF levels.
For some time, scientists have believed that BDNF helps explain why mental functioning appears to improve with exercise. However, they haven’t fully understood which parts of the brain are affected or how those effects influence thinking. The Irish study suggests that the increases in BDNF prompted by exercise may play a particular role in improving memory and recall.
:: Exercise via The NYTimes ::
The FBI has received substantial criticism over the past decade — much of it valid — but nobody can deny its record of excellence in thwarting its own Terrorist plots. Time and again, the FBI concocts a Terrorist attack, infiltrates Muslim communities in order to find recruits, persuades them to perpetrate the attack, supplies them with the money, weapons and know-how they need to carry it out — only to heroically jump in at the last moment, arrest the would-be perpetrators whom the FBI converted, and save a grateful nation from the plot manufactured by the FBI.
Last year, the FBI subjected 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to months of encouragement, support and money and convinced him to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon, only to arrest him at the last moment and then issue a Press Release boasting of its success. In late 2009, the FBI persuaded and enabled Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, to place a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper and separately convinced Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, to bomb the Washington Metro. And now, the FBI has yet again saved us all from its own Terrorist plot by arresting 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus after having spent months providing him with the plans and materials to attack the Pentagon, American troops in Iraq, and possibly the Capitol Building using “remote-controlled” model airplanes carrying explosives.
None of these cases entail the FBI’s learning of an actual plot and then infiltrating it to stop it. They all involve the FBI’s purposely seeking out Muslims (typically young and impressionable ones) whom they think harbor animosity toward the U.S. and who therefore can be induced to launch an attack despite having never taken even a single step toward doing so before the FBI targeted them. Each time the FBI announces it has disrupted its own plot, press coverage is predictably hysterical (new Homegrown Terrorist caught!), fear levels predictably rise, and new security measures are often implemented in response (the FBI’s Terror plot aimed at the D.C. Metro, for instance, led to the Metro Police announcing a new policy of random searches of passengers’ bags).
…..
(6) As usual, most media coverage of the FBI’s plots is as uncritical as it is sensationalistic. The first paragraph of The New York Times article on this story described the plot as one “to blow up the Pentagon and the United States Capitol.” But the FBI’s charging Affidavit (reproduced below) makes clear that Ferdaus’ plan was to send a single model airplane (at most 1/10 the size of an actual U.S. jet) to the Capitol and two of them to the Pentagon, each packed with “5 pounds” of explosives (para. 70); the Capitol was to be attacked at its dome for “psychological effect” (para 34). The U.S. routinely drops 500-pound or 1,000-pound bombs from actual fighter jets; this plot — even if it were carried out by someone other than a hapless loner with no experience and it worked perfectly — could not remotely “blow up” the Pentagon or the Capitol.
This is the keeper quote from the entire article
:: full article w links via Glenn Greewald ::
Today, I was doing a quick reddit browse and saw this link
Interesting, but when I click through, I see this
This bullshit has got to end. The world needs a video site where governments, industry and people who just don’t like what they see can’t remove videos. This video was about to go viral, it was about embarrass Saudi Arabia. It was about to embarrass the United States for having such a close relationship with Saudi Arabia. Decent people were going to be horrified by barbarism and do something about it.
Instead, injustice was perpetuated by a terms of service clause.