New website design, mostly for the sake of categorizing better. It might be tomorrow before flickr catches up with my image galleries and organizes everything the way its supposed to be, but I wanted to go ahead and put it up for you guys.
When he’s not jacking off to steampunk bullshit, Cory Doctorow can write some pretty compelling sentences. This particular essay neatly lays out the reasons I value Science Fiction. (Please no wedgies.)
Mary Shelley wasn’t worried about reanimated corpses stalking Europe, but by casting a technological innovation in the starring role of Frankenstein, she was able to tap into present-day fears about technology overpowering its masters and the hubris of the inventor. Orwell didn’t worry about a future dominated by the view-screens from 1984, he worried about a present in which technology was changing the balance of power, creating opportunities for the state to enforce its power over individuals at ever-more-granular levels.
[Since that site has a layout best described as buttshit, I recommend you use Readability.]
it’s sad that gay marriage took a big loss in maine. it’s always sad when your team loses or things don’t go how you want.
the thing that really saddens me, the more i think about it, is that it was a completely valid loss. no one cheated, no one stole the election, there were no hanging chads. it was completely by the books (from what i understand) and the masses spoke out and said “no”.
losses are always easier to take when you can blame a person or small group of people, especially a politician, than when you realize that it’s a majority of people who just don’t agree with your stance. that’s when it’s a bigger problem, and frankly, more depressing.
“Some have argued that because the universe is like a clock, there must be a Clockmaker. As the eighteenth-century British empiricist David Hume pointed out, this is a slippery argument, because there is nothing that is really perfectly analogous to the universe as a whole, unless it’s another universe, so we shouldn’t try to pass off anything that is just a part of this universe. Why a clock anyhow? Hume asks. Why not say the universe is analogous to a kangaroo? After all, both are organically interconnected systems. But the kangaroo analogy would lead to a very different conclusion about the origin of the universe: namely, that it was born of another universe after that universe had sex with a third universe. ” — Thomas Cathcart (Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes)
This is the most perfect real life Princess Jasmine photo ever!
And the internet succeeds again in getting me totally interested in some photography and giving me no way to find a source without getting really lucky on google image search. Win.
“I went up to this guy and asked him if he painted that Nelly. I said “Wow, this is cool, did you paint this?” He said “Yes, I paint this.” I then said “Really, wow, you’re really good, what did you use to paint this”. He replied, “Yes, I paint this.” So I then confronted him and told him that is my painting, that I used acrylics to paint it, and that it was one of my first acrylic paintings. He soon realized that I was serious and then just like that, I no longer existed. He ignored me, it was as if I wasn’t even there. Quite interesting. Another guy came over to me and said that he painted it by looking at my painting, that it was a “study” of my painting? I just smiled at him and said … “I tell you what, how about I pay you $5, and you let me draw you?” He didn’t like that idea. Would have been fun” - Jason Seiler