I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Linkee-poo is a bad banana, with a greasy, black peel

Britain, not satisfied with putting images of illustrated manuscripts online, has now put all the paintings held by the public online. That's over 211,000 images. (Grokked from Phiala)

Programming computers to see like painters. Pretty interesting. There's still a lot of skills a trained artist brings to the table that I don't feel threatened by this, but just the ability to recognize and prioritize information in photographs is a major leap forward. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

If you ever realy want to know why I love Apple products so much (you know, after the whole, "they just work, damn it" part), here's some early Apple prototypes. While they don't look like much now, you have to remember that these were cutting edge concepts in the mid 80s (with some functionality we've only achieved in the past 10 years). (Grokked from Dan)

On liberal bullying. Yeah, that. Many moons ago I often commented on John Scalzi's Whatever and the Nielsen Hayden's Making Light on their political posts and took a lot of conservatives to task for their world ignorant comments (at least that's what I wanted to believe). There have been times that I've been at conventions and people have recognized my name because of those comments. At first I loved that. And then I started thinking about what I was actually doing. This happened just at the time that my day job became much more complex and I no longer had the time or energy to keep up with comment threads (absolutely necessary if you're going to wade into battle, especially if you're going to call people on sock-puppetry). So I stopped doing that. It doesn't mean that I didn't follow some of their political posts, and I often read most of the comment threads, but I couldn't keep up with all of it and I was suspect of my own motives to post.

In an example of synchronicity, Jim Hines also does a post on the idea of just walking away from the argument. There's plenty of times I should have done that.

Here I will make the comment that I've seen what the opposite side of the political spectrum does with online arguments. I've seen comments that make Jim's example of watching a conversation devolve into those "throw the liberals into wood-chipper" statement seem tame. And sometimes that's why I have the fire in my belly. I've seen the other side take a no-holds-bared attitude and I won't let them get away with it because they think my side won't go the whole distance. But then, like Jim saw, you see whole evenings and days be taken away by an argument with someone who will never see the point.

"The tape of Petraeus and McFarland's conversation is an amazing document, a testament to the willingness of Murdoch and the wily genius he hired to create Fox News to run roughshod over the American civic and political landscape without regard to even the traditional niceties or pretenses of journalistic independence and honesty." An article on the burying of Bob Woodward's amazing story about how Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch tried to subvert American Democracy. Add in the rise of the SuperPAC and the various corporate shell games and you begin to see a whole different picture of the previous election and just how close we came to giving over our freedoms to corporate domination. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

And this is why the GOP is in the shape it's in. This is also why after three proposals from the White House to avoid the Fiscal Cliff you heard GOP leaders talk about how they were waiting for th eWhite House to propose something, like they don't have people who read the news and could tell them what has been proposed. Hey, GOP, you're the ones that want to cut spending, make your own gorram proposals. But then, they're much too much the cowards to actually put forward what they want to cut. (Grokked from Will Wheaton)

Tweet of my heart: @GerryDuggan: I'm sad it's only a metaphorical cliff, because throwing our Congress into a deep chasm is actually a fine idea.

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