There's battle lines being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds
getting so much resistance from behind

Monday, March 9, 2015

Linkee-poo is your one-way ticket to midnight

So, what did we learn from the Apple event today? We all need to buy new cables and adapters. Again.

I missed the book launch, but Fred Clark has made a book of his research and dissection of the Left Behind series.

Neil Gaiman on Douglas Adams. This is, for me, like listening to Steven Spielberg talk about Alfred Hitchcock.

Cat Rambo on grabbing the reader. I'm not sure I agree with the angle of the quote she uses (digesting a number of writing epiphanies from today so that may change), but it may help you.

Why do you need a designer for your ebook? This is why. The tumblr for Kindle Cover Disasters. (Grokked from John)

Looking for new music? Can't get to SXSW? Okay, how about a selection of 100 songs, as curated by NPR, from bands that will be there? Not exactly keeping Austin weird, but definitely much cheaper.

A short film about a boy and his kite, rendered in real time using the released Unreal Engine 4. Everybody can talk about Moores' Law, kilobytes to terabytes and Hz to GHz or even how with new chips, because of the light used to etch the silicon has to be of such high energy (high frequency), the lenses used are opaque in "white light" mean just how far we've come in computing power, but this is just frackin' amazing to me. When I learned computer animation, even if we could have gotten the fractal trees and motion study (not to mention sub-engines to run realistic fabric, water, sky, wind, and hair), when you did something like this you needed a thing called a "render farm" (picture 30-80 computers locked in a room with some heavy duty air-conditioning) and it would crank for a week generating comparative years of processing time to get that bit of video. That's a little too long to substitute, "we had to walk, uphill, both ways", but yea, that's the gist. "Back in the day, we computed using bear skins and flint knives." (Grokked from Dan)

"The Olympics are coming to London, so our civil liberties are going out the window… Police will have powers to enter private homes and seize posters, and will be able to stop people carrying non-sponsor items to sporting events." Smile for the TV, Winston. THAT is just freaking creepy, okay. (Grokked from Tobias Buckell, I think)

So, just in case you still think you can trust the police. Most police officers don't act this way, faking evidence and testimony (that is, seven officers all agreeing to testify a certain way and making legal statements about what their testimony will be), but as the article ends, that thin, blue line protects the bad ones as well as the good ones. This shouldn't be the case, because you all, the good and the bad, are going to get painted with the same broad brush. Because just like the conservatives need to realize, there is always someone taking video. And any attempt to stop civilians from photographing or taking video all appear as attempts to cover up bad behavior not matter what you may say. (Grokked from Diana Rowland)

So, Block Island will get the first offshore wind farm in the US. And it will cut resident's electrical bills by 40%. Suck it, Cape Cod (and related islands). (Grokked from Dan)

Rand Paul will be able to run for President and for his Senate Seat. Because, for the top conservatives, the rules don't apply. In this case, Kentucky has a prohibition against a candidate appearing twice on the same ballot. But only the schlubs have to follow the law.

"Officials at Florida’s (Department of Environmental Protection) have banned the words “climate change” and “global warming” from all official communications, including reports and emails, according to an investigation published Sunday by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting (FCIR)." Because if we don't talk about it, it isn't real. Until it swamps Florida. Oh conservatives, tell me again about the evils of being Politically Correct, 'cause that never gets old. (Grokked from Morgan J Locke)

The limits of conservative compassion. Or, another example (actually "examples") of "got mine, fuck you." (Grokked from Teresa Nielsen Hayden)

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