Power was out at work all morning, so no fresh links. But for day old, I can give you a discount.
When Apple refreshed its laptop lineup last month, I initially looked at the 15" MacBook Pro with Retina Display as kind of an outlier. Apple has from time to time made products for the top end of the market, people who want more flash than they really need. So I placed it in that category. There's also been some smack-talk about it's usefulness as a laptop because (insert well-worn criticisms of Apple's marketing strategies). But Michelle Sagara West gives us a new take on it. I have to admit that getting to a certain age, I'm also having problems reading a laptop screen, and downsampling an LCD screen typically makes it look like garbage (whereas on the CRT's I grew up on, it wasn't that much of a problem - insert joke of programming wearing bear skins and using flint knives here). It's still too expensive for my blood (unless I get an agent and sell this book - like soon), but I now find myself wanting one.
Composite bog mummies. Many prehistory societies created mummies (or more accurately, desiccated corpses) as forms of magic. But why would they intentionally combine parts of different people into one object? There's a story bone in there. (Grokked from Neil Gaiman)
The tuberculosis outbreak in Florida you haven't heard about. Mostly because it affects the homeless and mentally ill. In case you don't know, a disease doesn't know the economic or mental status (or sexual orientation) of its host. In this case, TB just knows you have warm, wet lung tissues. Also note, this comes at the time Gov. Rick Scott, of former Columbia/HCA fame, has cut health spending for the poor and closed the one hospital in Florida that handled the toughest TB cases. Fucking fabulous. Say, have I mentioned how Russia is a hotbed of multiple drug resistant TB because of their shoddy health care in their prisons? I'm seeing a correlation to Florida. (Grokked form ChiaLynn)
You know that lifeguard who got fired for saving a persons life? Well, did you know that the reason was that he worked for a private company contracted to provide lifeguard services, but not to the beach/water area he saved the swimmer? Ah, privatization, the savior of our government. (Grokked from the Slactivist)
Remember the conservative media's hysteria about President Obama using a tele-prompter? Yeah, I still don't know what the big deal was (beyond the, "he's not smart, look, he needs help" or "he's just a puppet/Manchurian candidate" tracks of prejudice). Well, that's just one of the weird attacks they can't use any longer now that their own candidate relies on them.
Sometimes I talk about how our modern love of all thing "pure capitalism" is leading back to some of the darker chapters of America History. Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks this is happening. You may remember the link I had last week about the steel workers fighting Pinkertons. Do we really want to relive those days? (Grokked from the Slactivist)
Alligator Quotient: Gators don't care about power. They've got mifi hotspots and personal solar cell chargers.
2 comments:
I've become utterly spoiled by the Retina display on my iPad, to the point that I hate reading text on any other electronic device. Including my work computer, which is a bit annoying. The formerly-beloved netbook is gathering dust except when I need to do something that involves software not available on the iPad.
I didn't think it would make such a difference, but in fact it's huge.
Phiala, I do believe it's where the tech is eventually going, and I love it on my Touch. It's still damn expensive at the top end (although I do lust after upgrading my iPad2).
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