Ort.

“The people did beseech the warrior to aid them. They were a simple people, capable only of rewarding him with gratitude and a larger-than-normal serving of Jell-O salad. The warrior considered the possible battles before him. While others may have shirked the duties, forcing the good people of Ferndale Street to prostrate themselves before the tyrants of Comcast, Linksys, and Geek Squad, the warrior could not chill his heart to these depths. He accepted the quest and strode bravely across the beige shag carpet of the living room.”

- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.

And lo, I too, have fought this battle and triumphed.

"It is the opinion of this court that the Constitution was crafted in such a manner as to uphold and..."

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:30:06 -0500

““It is the opinion of this court that the Constitution was crafted in such a manner as to uphold and encourage practices that are not right and, ideally, are very wrong,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority, which also included Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, and John Roberts. “Despite the compelling case for goodness, truth, and justice made by our predecessors in the case of Right v. Wrong, we firmly believe that malice, dishonesty, and injustice were the framers’ original intent.””

- Supreme Court Overturns ‘Right v. Wrong’ | The Onion

Computer Games - Look Around You

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:40:01 -0500

Computer Games - Look Around You:

90wpm:

Wait for it.

(via Gruber)

‘Zoe Strauss - Ten Years’ at Philadelphia Museum of Art - Review - NYTimes.com

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:09:51 -0500

‘Zoe Strauss - Ten Years’ at Philadelphia Museum of Art - Review - NYTimes.com:

The Best Team in the NBA is… the Sixers??? | The Wages of Wins Journal

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:29:09 -0500

The Best Team in the NBA is… the Sixers??? | The Wages of Wins Journal

Tattoo by Vince Villalvazo at Mystic Owl Tattoo in Marietta,...

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:36:33 -0500

Tattoo by Vince Villalvazo at Mystic Owl Tattoo in Marietta, Georgia (via R2-D2, it is you, it is you! : TattooSnob.com)

Wilco, Nick Lowe & Mavis Staples rehearse “The...

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:29:26 -0500

Wilco, Nick Lowe & Mavis Staples rehearse “The Weight” (by wilco)

I will always listen to this song.

Mogees - Gesture recognition with contact-microphones (by...

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:13:17 -0500

Mogees - Gesture recognition with contact-microphones (by brunozamborlin)

"It seems to me that if you’re broke enough that you’re not paying any income tax, you’ve got nothing..."

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:37:00 -0500

“

It seems to me that if you’re broke enough that you’re not paying any income tax, you’ve got nothing but skin in the game. You’ve got it all riding on how well America works.

You can’t afford private security: you need to depend on the police. You can’t afford private health care: Medicare is all you have. You get arrested, you’re not hiring Davis, Polk to get you out of jail: you rely on a public defender to negotiate a court system you’d better pray deals with everyone from the same deck. And you can’t hire landscapers to manicure your lawn and trim your trees: you need the garbage man to come on time and you need the city to patch the potholes in your street.

And in the bigger picture, of course, you need the state and the private sector both to be functioning well enough to provide you with regular work, and a safe place to raise your children, and clean water and clean air.

The entire ethos of modern Wall Street, on the other hand, is complete indifference to all of these matters. The very rich on today’s Wall Street are now so rich that they buy their own social infrastructure. They hire private security, they live on gated mansions on islands and other tax havens, and most notably, they buy their own justice and their own government.

An ordinary person who has a problem that needs fixing puts a letter in the mail to his congressman and sends it to stand in a line in some DC mailroom with thousands of others, waiting for a response.

”

- A Christmas Message From America’s Rich | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

"Look, economic policy matters. It matters for real people who suffer real consequences when we get..."

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:03:03 -0500

“Look, economic policy matters. It matters for real people who suffer real consequences when we get it wrong. If I believe that the doctrine of expansionary austerity is all wrong, or that the Ryan plan for Medicare would have disastrous effects, or whatever, then my duty, as I see it, is to make my case as best I honestly can — not put on a decorous show of civilized discussion that pretends that there aren’t hired guns posing as analysts, and spares the feelings of people who are not in danger of losing their jobs or their health care. This is not a game.”

- Paul Krugman - The Mendacity of Dopes - NYTimes.com

"To walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier is to see how much change a trillion dollars can..."

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:39:26 -0500

“To walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier is to see how much change a trillion dollars can wreak. So much inconvenience for so little benefit at such a staggering cost. And directed against a threat that, by any objective standard, is quite modest. Since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have killed just 17 people on American soil, all but four of them victims of an army major turned fanatic who shot fellow soldiers in a rampage at Fort Hood. (The other four were killed by lone-wolf assassins.) During that same period, 200 times as many Americans drowned in their bathtubs. Still more were killed by driving their cars into deer. The best memorial to the victims of 9/11, in Schneier’s view, would be to forget most of the “lessons” of 9/11. “It’s infuriating,” he said, waving my fraudulent boarding pass to indicate the mass of waiting passengers, the humming X-ray machines, the piles of unloaded computers and cell phones on the conveyor belts, the uniformed T.S.A. officers instructing people to remove their shoes and take loose change from their pockets. “We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars doing this—and it is almost entirely pointless. Not only is it not done right, but even if it was done right it would be the wrong thing to do.””

- Does Airport Security Really Make Us Safer? | Culture | Vanity Fair

The Hobbit. Yes.

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:06:25 -0500

The Hobbit. Yes.

The Mills Brothers - I Heard (by SyberkaPL)

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:08:13 -0500

The Mills Brothers - I Heard (by SyberkaPL)

Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:38:24 -0500

Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater:

Go buy it. $5 for the funniest man in showbiz. Meanwhile he’s over at reddit answering questions.