Indignant Desert Birds

I looked up “sublime” in the dictionary, and got this.

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for figuring out how to become better at the position you were just promoted into. Sundays are for waking up and smelling the Christmas tree. Sundays are for sleeping in. Sundays are for godliness and brunch. Or perhaps, just perhaps, Sundays are for waking up early and going to work.

This week: Proving that the world learned something in 1929, Europe, America, and other large economies finally got their acts together for a European bailout deal. Egypt held it’s first round of parliamentary elections- results were announced after this post was written. This week AT&T whined that the FCC realized that if AT&T bought one of AT&T’s competitors, there would be less competition. Also this week: The Syrian uprising has turned into a full scale civil war. Good luck to the good guys.

In this space, I often criticize cops for doing bad, bad things. I honestly do think that it’s better to point out when power is abused than to note when it is used responsibly. And yet, I’m going to point out this story, where the police officers had the chance to trump up charges against a citizen protester– and declined to do so. Their small act was as utterly in line with the best traditions of the First Amendment as it was utterly out of line with expectations of unionizing workers throughout American history.

Beards ‘n Maps.

Interesting study about nakedness and perception of agency. I’d love to know the extent to which these findings are cross-cultural. For instance, many cultures have a culture of shared bathing among strangers. In those cultures, nudity and desire must (presumably) have some greater measure of divorce than they do in less public cultures. At any rate, one more thing to be wary of before making snap judgments about strangers.

Greatest prank ever.

I have just barely dipped my toes into the world of Frozen Synapse. It looks awesome and feels huge. What’s perhaps most interesting is the way the company has turned conventional wisdom on it’s head with regard to it’s business model. They declined to make a “free to play” game, and they declined to appeal to a huge audience. They declined to make an iPad game. And they appealed to a traditional gamer crowd- by declining to make a traditional game. The key, I think, was to fulfill a desire their audience didn’t know they had.

This is a great stick.

The greatest freedom is freedom from “arbitrary”. Clear rules, set up in advance, with understanding of the expectations due from all sides. This need is a deep part of the human psyche. Look at the Book of Job in the Torah- one person is tormented for reasons that seem utterly arbitrary. Every reader of that story walks away understanding that there has been a deep injustice. Labor agreements cannot simply be about compensation. At least, not as long as employers hold ultimate control over a worker’s schedule. It is simply too easy for an employer to abuse their unlimited power over a worker’s ability to afford food. Frankly, actual compensation is the least important part of Labor’s demand.

“Oh poor bastard.”

I’m not sure why Cracked turned into a great online magazine, and Mad limps along in a weird timewarp of nothingness. When I was a kid, both magazines tried to woo the same maladjusted-child demographic. Cracked wasn’t nearly as successful. And yet here we are in 2011, and Cracked is turning out funny social commentary aimed at adults. Also: can it really be the case that America is still terrified of black men and white women getting it on? If so, how much less terrified would we be if Hollywood showed such relationships as utterly normal?

An Ode to UC Davis.

When reading a survey of Alabama newspapers from the 1963 civil rights struggle, it is easy to conclude that the media was unsympathetic to the plight of African Americans. Looking at it from this perspective, contemporary newspapers are considerably better than their progenitors. I’m not sure that this is the best lesson. Instead, we see a group that challenged the existing power structure, and a media that was on the side of the powerful. Viewed in this light, modern media fares considerably less well. Very few newspapers in history actually wanted to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”.

Newsflash: Lobbyists are getting their money’s worth from Congress.

The framers of the American Constitution were terrified of arbitrary use of power. So they set up a system where everyone who had power would be answerable to a whole lot of people. The President would only have the power to do what Congress told him (so far, always a him). The judicial branch would make sure the States and Congress didn’t get out of line. Congress had the power to decide what kinds of cases the courts could preside over. The president got to appoint judges- and congress got to say “no” if those judges were horrible. And Congress was answerable to voters and states. Congress has declined to check the presidency, and the whole system stands imperiled.

Apple is pushing abortion-seeking women towards anti-abortion organizations.

Petroleum demand is climbing. Petroleum is hovering at $100 per barrel. Saudi Arabia can extract oil for roughly $2 per barrel. If Saudi Arabia is claiming they don’t need to drill for more oil, it’s because they either love Canada (cost: $50 per barrel to acquire), or don’t have any oil fields left to tap. Since the Saudi family maintains it’s hold over the Arabian people by controlling the oil wealth, my guess is that they don’t love the Canadians more than they love power.

If McDonalds sells “Angus burgers”, then “Angus” can’t mean “premium”.

This is a great and nuanced look at illegal immigration. I do think the author missed an important angle. He asserts that “I know already that many here will argue that this isn’t racism; and that if it were white Canadians working illegally we would be having the exact same conversations. But I remain dubious of this argument; for me it just doesn’t pass the sniff test.” I’d say that we’d be having equally racist arguments, but that “white Canadians” would be found to be of a different “race” from “white” Americans. Those poor English/French mongrels.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure is a precondition for it.

A Hyatt hotel decided to hold a “Housekeeping Appreciation Week”, and decided not to give those housekeepers money. Nor extra breaks. Nor so much as a free lunch. Nope. The management team at Hyatt Regency Santa Clara decided that to appreciate housekeepers, they would paste housekeeper’s faces onto supermodel’s bodies. This is the way that management tells labor that they don’t consider themselves coequally human.

86 year old man reflects on his life.

Within the last few weeks, a major game’s company made the claim that it wasn’t worthwhile to develop for the PC market- 95% of the people who would end up playing the game wouldn’t actually give the developer money. Another developer disagrees, claiming that it’s only 83%. I’m not sure if that 12% difference is why the later publisher is so willing to make games for the PC, but they have been fantastically profitable in doing so.

Despite the fact that I’ve been complaining about arbitrary practices all post long, don’t confuse that with “random”. Here’s a great post on randomness being important to storytelling.

I become more convinced daily that the key skill of the 21st century will be the clear translation of information into graphical formats. That’s right: the graphic designer will be the highly paid specialist of the next job boom. Artists with philosophy degrees will have the last laugh.

If you click just one link:

Leonard Cohen asserted that “Everyone knows the dice are loaded. The Occupy [City] movement has been demonstrating that not everyone is aware of this. Far too many of us saw our inability to find a job and felt alone. Far too many of us saw that we were unable to afford the lifestyle of our parents and believed it was a personal failing on our part. We’re not alone. We didn’t fail. The system changed. America became a third world nation so rich that none have noticed. Occupy [City] has been about fighting back. Here’s hoping for effective action in the next phase.

This week’s theme has been about power. Well. Isn’t is always? In the comments, leave a message about a time you abused power.

What do you mean you haven’t seen the Muppets yet?

Tags: Uncategorized // 1 Comment »

The key to a free market is competition. Without several- or at least two- firms trying to get dollars from customers, there is no incentive for a business to innovate in terms of goods or services. Nor is there pressure to lower prices. There is no reason (other than boredom) to change what is profitable. With competition, consumers have the ability to spend money elsewhere. In order to create competition, firms must have the ability to easily enter a new market (if they think they have a good idea), and leave the market (if they think they’re failing miserably). America makes it rather difficult for individuals to enter and exit the market, creating a dearth of entrepreneurship.

One of the major barriers is healthcare. An individual with a large, ongoing medical condition (say: diabetes, or a history of cancer) would find it nearly prohibitive to leave a company which provides healthcare benefits and form their own firm- they would have to buy healthcare on the (much more expensive) individual market. Some of this pressure has been alleviated by the recently-passed Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, but much of this problem still remains. A potential solution would allow for individuals to purchase healthcare through Medicare- a significantly less expensive alternative than most private healthcare plans.

Another obstacle is simple lack of money. No matter how great the idea an individual has, without access to cash, it’s going to remain just an idea. Compounding this problem is that between 50 and 90 percent of new businesses fail in the first 2 years. In order to encourage people to start new companies, we need to lower the cost of failure. Here’s a potential solution: Every American will be allowed an interest free loan from the US government. If the company fails in the first 2 years repayment will not be expected. If the company succeeds, then the loan must be repaid in full. Obviously a lot of details will need to be worked out- including issues of fraud detection.

Even in the absence of fraud, this program will be costly. I’d propose that 5 years after the program goes into effect, we enact a tax increase on individuals earning more than $500,000 a year. Simple fairness dictates the deal: America supported high earners when they were getting started, and now it’s their turn to pay back that support for future generations.

Perhaps the largest barrier to new businesses is the mountains of red tape enacted by state and local governments. Frankly, a lot of this bureaucratic busywork seems designed specifically to prevent existing companies the indignity of having to continue to justify their existence to their current customers. But some- perhaps most- of those laws are legitimate public interest regulations that lead to a better society. Other than a general statement that rules need to be streamlined and clarified, I’m not entirely sure what a solution might be. Weak? Yes. But the problem needs mentioning, even in absence of a solution.

No real conclusion here. Move along. Move along…

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Sunday Morning Police Brutality!

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for watching whales. Sundays are for celebrating the birthdays of your children. Sundays might be for observing religious observances. Just possibly, Sundays might be for snuggling, breaking fast, and going to work.

This week: Egyptian protesters were militantly shown that they didn’t win quite as much as they thought they had when they ousted their dictator. This week Americans celebrated a victory against the forces of slavery and disunion by giving thanks to a deity- and eating Turkey. This week a US attack in Pakistan has lead to reports of a score of deaths among the Pakistani military– and the near destruction of diplomatic ties between those nations. This week NASA launched a probe to Mars to search for carbon.

The economy sucks. The world economy is sort of swirling along the rim of the abyss, and there isn’t a developed-world region that is unaffected. So it’s no surprise that San Francisco restaurants are doing poorly. Nothing mobile restaurants are doing seems to rise to the level of “unfair”, save that a low-capital investment would be a better fit for these times than a traditional-restaurant model. Should the City step in and hinder mobile restaurants’ ability to serve their clientele? That seems like the opposite of a free market to me.

One of the big sports stories this week involved the end of the NBA labor action. Whenever people who play games for a living try and get a bigger paycheck, popular opinion says that they’re overpaid. Which, you know? Maybe. To my way of thinking, that’s the wrong way to look at the problem. America (and the world market for NBA stuff) seems to want to spend a certain number of dollars every year on various NBA stuff. It used to be that 57% of that money went to the very tall, very athletic people who put their bodies at risk of permanent injury to create the enjoyment that causes people to want to spend that money. As of this agreement, the money will be split evenly: 50% to the people who risk their bodies, and 50% to people who risk only their money. The fact that the people risking their money had more power in this situation than the people risking their bodies is unsurprising. It is not, however, a good thing.

This is why people don’t take online petitions seriously. I mean: they got the publisher wrong! And the Punctuation!

Tax rates ought to be set to collect enough revenue to pay for the things society wants to pay for, while doing the smallest disruption possible to society. Duh. How much money is that? More than America is collecting. This means, if I’m reading the data correctly, that if society cares about it’s current budget deficits, it can easily afford to raise tax rates on the very wealthiest people. That way, we won’t have to cut budget for economicly stimulating things like food stamps and unemployment insurance.

I can’t be the only person wondering how antibiotics are administered to bees.

It looks like 2K Games is going to do an adaptation of Heart of Darkness. Rather than simply add background information to a simple shooter or platformer, though, they’ve decided to delve into the material and bring forward what makes the game great. There is no reason at all that a video game cannot or should not strive to comment on the human condition. What’s shocking is that it’s so rarely done as a prime driver of gameplay. Here’s hoping they pull it off.

Apparently there’s a new dude porn star who makes the ladies swoon. What’s interesting to me is that this is apparently a fairly rare thing. Given that half the sex-having population of the world is female, half the world’s pornography should be aimed at that market. If the female-pleasing porn market is thus far unpenetrated, it can be traced to deep insecurity on the part of male viewers.

Bank of America (and other banks) have changed their policies regarding checking accounts. From now on, they’re granting themselves the right to deduct money from customer’s accounts every month. In exchange, customers are getting the right to have those accounts. This does seem like it might almost be a fair deal. The problem, as I see it, is that Bank of America had the legal right to unilaterally change the terms of the deal without the consent of their customers. Not only do they have this right, but- near as I can tell- every other corporation in America also has this right. Facebook exercises this right all the time, to expose even more personal information to it’s advertisers. Obviously consumers can’t unilaterally change the terms of the deal to benefit themselves– they lack the power.

The American economy powered by the energy produced when small businesses grow into large businesses. What we need, if we want a healthy economy is the ability for individuals to find out if they can become entrepreneurs. If Americans could fail at opening a business- but do it in a way that wouldn’t leave them bankrupt- we’d find more people trying. Many of those who tried would probably succeed. So that’s one reason for a universal healthcare plan. Something else potential entrepreneurs need is access to capital. They’re not getting it.

I have not yet started playing Skyrim. I hear it’s an incredible game.

In a weird linguistic twist, people calling themselves “Nice Guys” are actually telling the world “I am a giant douche, but I don’t know it”. I wholeheartedly agree with Ms. Crigger’s post. Including the bit about the silly hat. Especially that bit.

The National Labor Relations Board is a government entity that helps keep Unions of money honest when dealing with corporations of Labor. Obviously Republicans hate the idea that tax money might be spent ensuring that workers have a level playing field with their bosses. After all, if they wanted democracy, they’d be Democrats.

Classic Muppets bit originated in Porn?

It is a well understood phenomenon that language evolves over time. Latin becomes Italian (and French, and Spanish and Romanian and…). Similarly, but less often remarked on, is that food also evolves over time. Try finding Thai wontons in a middle class eatery in the 1950s. Today, it’s utterly unremarkable.

Reminder: the US government is one of the world’s largest employer of mercenaries.

Sunday Morning Listening Material.

This article, I think, goes too far in conspiracy mongering. And yet. When Pennsylvania State students rioted in favor of a child molester, those students were left unharmed by police. When University of California students sat down and shut up in protest of higher tuition, cops brutalized them. There is an obvious statement about which values are protected, and which values are antagonized. It takes monumental people to refuse to use force when power is threatened. In the later half of this year, we’ve learned that America lacks such monumental people.

I was on vacation last week, and so was unable to comment on the events at my Alma Mater: University of California at Davis. It will probably not come as a surprise to learn that in my time there, I was a rabble rouser. I’m not sure if I would have had the courage to sit on the Quad that day and simply _take_ what those cops were doing. It isn’t in my nature to sit by and let bullies be bullies. Nor, I am afraid, would my fellow Orwellians have been part of the organizing force for the protests. But hell. Maybe I’m not giving myself enough credit. Also: Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi must resign.

There is a very vicious part of me who is glad that the Chancellor felt threatened by the student body she had previously given orders to attack. It shows she had some small measure that the crowd had reason to be angry at her actions. Also: I am very proud that my fellow Aggies were in no way about to begin another round of violence.

What happened at UC Davis happens every day. All the time. Bay Area Transit police have accidentally murdered people. We have allowed our police to convince themselves that they are the “thin blue line”. Naturally they will react with force when confronted by even passive resistance. I want this one cop fired. I want the whole of policing reformed. I want cops who think their highest duty is to give directions to people lost on the roads. I want cops who are part of, and not apart from, society. We don’t have that.

This week’s theme was the Empire striking back. So in the comments section, let me know your favorite muppet.

Pallet cleanser.

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It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for being with your loved one on trip to the countryside for her birthday. Sundays are for… Why don’t you tell me?

This week: The cities of San Francisco and New York called out their police departments to brutally crush peaceful protests against the rapidly worsening US political and economic system. Also this week: the newly-installed Italian government faced it’s second vote of confidence. Also also: The Yahoo! billboard that graces the San Francisco skyline will be coming down as soon as someone can afford to rent the current space.

One of the weird conceits of modern journalism is that truth, as such, cannot be objective. Rather, in an attempt to describe reality, opposing views must be quoted by a reporter. The Washington Post can’t simply say that a racist politician has written a book which contains factual errors which tend to be pro-confederacy. Rather, the Post has to be “objective”– which means finding someone willing to make those claims, and then giving equal time to the racist to defend the indefensible. And readers of modern American newspapers need to scrutinize their papers the way readers of Pravada had to read theirs.

One of the weird things about the state of the modern feminist movement: it’s still necessary. The US very plausibly could have elected a female President in 2008 (and instead got a black man), and so the temptation is to think that the barriers are down, job’s done. Time to go home. At the same time, powerful women are profiled in the style section of newspapers– and men are not. Women are taken seriously in a way that womanhood is not. It’s a tricky thing to combat. I’m not sure our language is capable of describing the struggle, let alone conceptualizing the next steps.

One of the weird things about racism- at least in the black/white manifestations thereof- is the way African Americans are allowed to be so much cooler then White Americans. I would much rather go into the “black” Burger King. I’m not sure I even want to know the person who would prefer the “white” Burger King. Alas, being the creators of the culture that America actually wants to show the world doesn’t seem to translate into actually better living standards.

One of the weird things about Electronic Arts is that they started out as a scrappy upstart, dedicated to fair play. Today… today they’re a huge corporate entity that can’t quite understand why keeping customers from using purchased products might be bad PR. I suppose it’s sort of the apotheosis of modern capitalism, right? Collect money, fail to deliver product, hide behind laws which prevent effective legal recourse to what might otherwise be termed “fraud”.

One of the weird things about video games is how revalatory they can be of the real you. given infinite possibilities, and no real-life consequences, we learn exactly how strong the small voice of conscience might be. Having said that, I loved Fallout New Vegas, and I learned that I am a society builder. So there’s that.

One of the weird things about transparency is the way that illuminates power relationships. Our government has been demanding more and greater access to our lives. Skirting the edges of the 4th Amendment, insisting that our every public moment be broadcast. And yet, when presented with “Freedom of Information” requests, they lie, cheat and act unaccountable.

One of the weird things about having made the point above is that I’m going to show you video proof. watch as armed members of the State target journalists. The first Amendment is, in large part, answer to the old Latin question “Who watches the Watchmen”. By attacking members of the press, the police keep their actions from being held to account. Under the cover of undocumented actions, they allow themselves to commit enormities on the body politic. Disgusting.

One of the weird things about working in the video game industry is that it’s often a pretty shitty industry.

The weird thing about binary is how open ended it can be.

The weird thing about the Republican party is the disconnect between their rhetoric about believing in the American dream, and them being caught standing over the corpse of the American dream with a bloody knife. Not everyone has parents who can afford to send them to college, and the alternative to grants seems to be indentured servitude.

One of the weird things about getting into Ivy League schools is that it creates the impression that you really are better than everyone else. After all: those kids had to legitimately work hard in high school to avoid embarrassing their parents when they were allowed into Princeton as a legacy student. It is very easy to simply not realize that nearly every other student on the planet was literally born needing to work harder- and be smarter- than you to get into not-quite as prestigious a school. Is he an entitled asshole? Yes. But it’s not really his fault. American society is built to create his sense of entitlement. Part of the Occupy [city] movement has been an attempt to tear down that preconception.

One of the weird things about having a weird brain is that everyone thinks they know what it means. Very few people do. Earlier today, I forgot a guy’s name a minute after asking for it. Forgot that I’d even had that part of the conversation with him. Ironically, the biggest problem with ADD medication (for people who need it) is that we often forget to take it.

The weird thing about Moore’s Law is that no one is working on AI. That’s not, strictly speaking, true. For instance, spam detection uses some rather sophisticated artificial intelligence. But the large percentage of raw processing power seems to be dumped into either graphical output or in less heat-intensive computers. Somewhere along the line, we seem to have decided that a dual 1.1 ghz processor was “good enough”, and now we’re just shoving that much power into smaller and smaller things. In 2030, we may be able to design a computer that would be able to run a program that was as smart as a human. But right now, the software wouldn’t be there. And the people who would write that software aren’t doing it. Not to mention that we seem to prefer better phones to smarter desktops. And thus we defeat Skynet.

One of the weird things abut science is the way it doesn’t. A couple months back, CERN released preliminary findings to the scientific community stating that they’d seen particles traveling faster than light. Those scientists at CERN were fairly sure they couldn’t possibly have actually disproved most of modern physics, and so were looking for people to tell them what they’d done wrong. It seems they may not be. I want my starships and I want them yesterday.

The weird thing about writing this post on a Thursday? I get to do whatever the hell I want on Sunday Morning– and Saturday night. Since I’m going to be gone, I’ll ask that you share this post with your friends, family members, and frenemies. I’d really appreciate it if you use (http://goo.gl/IdOfs) that link, so that I can track how many visitors I’m getting. In the comments section, let me know how you would spend a birthday weekend with your significant other.

Science can’t be wrong, it’s a process. It allows for corrections. Occasionally, it allows for awesome songs.

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It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for prying yourself out of a snuggly bed to go to work. Sundays are for Sunday mornings are for reading finely worded prose- or dying of hate rays. Sunday mornings might be for Saturday hangovers. Sunday mornings might be for body pump and pancakes with your favorite girls. Or Sundays might be for early birthday celebrations.

Maybe, just maybe, Sundays might be for bad ass ta-tas.

This week, Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry killed his aspirations by failing to remember the names of 3 Federal agencies he wanted to gut. This week, Italian strongman Silvio Berlusconi resigned- it seems that after only a decade of misrule, Europe can no longer tolerate his bad economic policies. The Greek Government also saw a major turnover this week– it’s new Prime Minister might be the first ever to have been installed by the EU leadership.

The holiday that we celebrate annually on 11 November is known around the world as “Armistice day”. The First World War was so intrinsically awful that most countries in Europe and North America decided to set aside one day a year to explain that war is bad, and we shouldn’t do it ever again. I recommend opening this link in a new tab and listening to the songs as a playlist.

America is one of the most productive agricultural nations on Earth. We’re so good at growing food that our farmers have always had a very hard time avoiding debt peonage. The fact that Americans can go hungry is a shocking failure on the part of the American political system. Reading the methodology of the polling, I realized that I was a hunger statistic at the beginning of 2011. I wonder if anyone I know still is?

I’ve said it. Plato has said it. Every teenager in the world proves the truth of it. Humanity is a social species.

Speaking of speaking, I love maps. Wait. That’s a non sequitur. Let me back up. There’s an old saying that “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy”. One of the more interesting results I’m seeing is the _lack_ of Catalan. Granted, that might well be a limitation of the software.

A couple of weeks ago, the Oakland PD sent out a passive-aggressive open letter to the Oakland mayor asking her to “clarify” of their mission. It’s more than a bit shocking that the OPD doesn’t understand that their mission is to protect and serve the population of Oakland. Indeed, it seems that the Oakland Police Department has trouble understand that they are public servants. I’m not sure they realize that the Oakland protests are in large part sparked about this very lack of self-awareness on their part.

I do try and make this blog a font of useful knowledge. Not all of it has to be weighty, but I do like it to have a point. And, as we all know, this blog would be nothing if it were sans comic.

Sunday Morning comics.

In the United States of America, trials must come before verdicts. Even if “everyone knows” someone is guilty, a prosecutor cannot simply hand wave at a bunch of evidence and hand down a sentence. We have a procedure, and that procedure must be followed. When that procedure is not followed, power is abused and the innocent are inevitably harmed. Protip: if a prosecutor fears procedure, they probably have a terrible case.

Rouges with Rakes.

“Hard work” might be one of the major dividing lines in America. We liberals tend to valorize the backbreaking labor of cleaning crews, line cooks, and retail workers. Conservatives think of “hard work” as that done by people who stay up for days and shuffle digital dollars. I won’t deny that America’s loan sharks exercise their trade with great skill, but I do deny that they provide socially useful output.

This post is so gay.

We straight guys really are hemmed in. Even after I’ve demonstrated a sense of style, it is still assumed that I can’t actually be interested (or good at!) clothes shopping. Why? Because I’m not interested in men.

Ta-Nehisi Coates final column.

America seems to go through cycles of drugs. In the 1980s, we had crack. The 1990s saw a rise in meth use. We went after cocaine a lot harder than we went after methamphetamines. I can’t help but recall that crack cocaine tends to be a drug associated mainly with the African American population.

I’m not sure why anyone would be shocked by this. Assuming that it’s legal- or if they can earn more than the fines would be if it’s not- Zynga has an obligation to act in this ruthless manner. Labor is not valued. It’s called “Capitalism”. That’s not a descriptor, that’s a warning label.

For decades, space-interested people have understood that the biggest impediment to space exploration wasn’t technological, but social. Small groups of people cooped up in close quarters for months on end will tend to drive one another batty. It looks like video games have come to the rescue. I’m not sure if they simply let players blow off steam in a non-destructive way, or if it was the unbinding of the player from their immediate environment. But video games did seem to keep this crew sane. That’s a small step for [hu]mankind.

There is no question that piracy is a huge moral problem. When people simply take work of others without permission or recompense, it’s a sign of major disrespect. It would seem, however, that it’s not actually damaging in a business sense. Treating it as though it is damaging a company’s bottom line seems, ironically, to be doing far more damage.

One of the defter moves in business history has been VALVe’s Steam project. They’ve found a form of DRM that consumers are so attracted to that they will pay for it. Considering how many company’s DRM is so off putting that users will not buy a product at all, this should cause a major re-think in the games industry. And the music industry. And the book industry…

Arbitrage, the other white meat.

If you click just one link:

The nature of identity in constructed worlds. This is the sort of writing that everyone should strive to be able to accomplish.

This week’s theme was comedy and farce. Also: I’m between books. What ought I be reading?

Tags: Sunday // Add Comment »

George… Washington?

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for getting ready for work. Sundays are for feeling sore after a night of birthday revelry. Sundays might be for hungover sex. Or, perhaps Sunday mornings are for squandering the year’s only extra-sleep hour to attend your son’s insanely early chimes performance.

This week, the US announced that it’s employment rate nudged up .10%. Also this week, Humanity took another halting step starward as China docked a pair of uncrewed spacecraft with one another. Also also this week: much of the East Coast of the US was without power as a result of weather. Oddly, they aren’t considering moving somewhere nicer. Also also also: The City of Oakland was shut down by it’s local Occupy movement on Wednesday. And finally: news searches for Oakland barely mention the Occupy movement, and all coverage is being done from the government POV.

No mater the media, sequels to huge properties sell. Big. If Shooty-Shooty Bang Bang made a billion dollars, 18-24 months later, there will be a Shooty-shooty Bang Bang 2: The encoloning. If “money” is the answer to “why should we make another version of this thing?”, it doesn’t answer the question of what the characters are going to be doing. That’s why it’s refreshing to read that there won’t be another Incredibles movie until someone has a good idea for a story.

Moral dilemma indeed

“Chivalry” seems to be a polite way of saying that someone else is less capable than you are. Sometimes, that’s a manifest truth. For instance, if a bus is crowded, it would be the height of rudeness to not offer my seat to an old person.
Or a parent and child. “Offer” is the key word here. When “chivalry” is enforced, it’s often used as a cover for something a lot more sinister.

Video game marketing is ridiculous.

As we all know, the US Post office’s insolvency is entirely the fault of a congressional order to fund it’s retirement account for workers who haven’t yet been born. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see that Europe’s post offices seem to be working along entirely different lines. Perhaps bizarrely, those Euro-style post offices seem reminiscent of how US post offices operated before the days of Teddy Roosevelt.

Warning: tear jerking story. My cat would totally do this.

I literally cannot conceptualize 7 billion human beings. Nonetheless, we seem to have celebrated the birth of our 7 billionth human co-habitant of planet Earth this week. The industrial revolution did amazing things for the human population, including freeing us from a cycle of misery and poverty.

Edge of the America West is back. This is the best news ever.

When I was a kid, we went door to door trick or treating. And then came the wave of stories about how random psychos were poisoning candy. Today, many many many children get dressed up and beg for candy from stores in malls, rather than their neighbor’s houses. It does seem interesting that America in the 1980s and 1990s seems to have scared itself silly about mostly-fake stories. Just as the nation was getting to be safer than it ever had, we were telling ourselves that we were in more danger than ever. And now we cocoon ourselves inside “secure communities”.

I always knew that the Washington Redskins team name was flamingly racist. I had no idea that was on purpose. The real question, as always, is: what biases do I have which will look absurd and petty in 50 years?

As this post goes live on Sunday, it will be the 3 year anniversary of when I returned home- triumphant- from Ohio. One of the big hurdles I faced when trying to get voters to the polls, was making them believe that they would be allowed to vote. Our target voters were poor black folks who had faced decades worth of intimidation. 2008 was the first year when the State of Ohio stopped doing everything they could to hinder their voting, and instead did everything it could to help them vote. That is the legacy I am most proud of. That is what the GOP is busy trying to undo.

Want more adorable? Puppy with a seeing eye dog.

Class Warfare. Class Warfare never changes. I don’t mind when people have more money than I do. I don’t even mind when they have more money than I do and don’t work as hard. But the absolute sense that having more money makes someone a better human being? That’s the part I mind. That’s a lot of what the Occupy [city] protests are about. The only way to fix the problem is to create in America a genuine sense of Democracy.

I’m not sure why Steven Brust is asking about massacres of US citizens by the US government. The answers people are giving are frightening; most of the history they’re talking about is forgotten. Also? Most of the deadliest uses of US power against it’s citizens has been in the service of capital against labor. Remember: it’s only class warfare when the poor fight back.

The girl responds, “Oh I’m not nearly drunk enough.”

Walking is one of most powerful tools humans have developed for health. All things being equal, 30 minutes a day of walking- regular, boring, walking- can give an “obese” person most of the health benefits they’d gain by dropping weight until they were merely “fat”. American living spaces are created in such a way that we actively discourage walking. As someone who dropped 100lbs, I am speaking from personal experience.

These old white men plotting a terrorist attack will probably not trigger calls for race/age profiling. I am, however, sort of impressed that they connected the dots between Fox’s paranoid mutterings and an actual necessity for action. If only they’d applied that energy towards solving a real problem.

Whenever I hear about one of my coworkers behaving badly towards a guest they’re supposed to be serving, I mentally cringe. It’s shameful to know that someone in my organization is their job badly. Me? I’m just a server in a restaurant. If, say, I were an armed member of a police force, I’d like to think that I’d do everything in my power to encourage others to behave with the utmost professionalism. But I’m just a server in a restaurant. I’m sure there’s a very good, perfectly professional reason that cops are outraged that they’ve been caught abusing their power. I’m sure they’re simply unaware that their fellow police officers are making less safe the city they’ve sworn to protect and serve.

Here there ARE rules: MY motherfucking rules, and I govern with an iron fist. No, wait, fuck that, it’s a PLATINUM FIST with lightning bolts shooting out of it and diamonds and spikes and other badass adornments.

Elizabeth the Second– by the consent of the people, Queen of United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis– has overseen the slow transformation of England. When she was crowned, England held a global Empire with a semi-strong monarchy. Today England is slowly becoming an (important!) appendage of the European Union. It does seem that her grandson is trying to revive the monarchy’s power. Let’s see if it sticks.

a slice of San Francisco

Firstly, does it seem weird anyone else that potatoes have electric current? Always seems weird to me. Secondly, I cannot begin to overstate how important it is to have computer chips which require very little energy. Humanity has been using computers to help with brute-force calculations for decades. The problem is that we’re sucking up a lot of irreplaceable fossil fuels to do so. Now, imagine a computer powerful enough to calculate the fuel pump-rate on your car to give the best gas mileage– that is powered by the vibration of tires on the road. That’s not “energy creation” in the thermodynamic sense, but it is “free energy” in the sense that it’s using energy which would otherwise be wasted doing nothing.

Superheros for Truth, Justice, and the reformation of the American Way.

The other day I learned that “the land of the rising sun” is how the Japanese themselves refer to their nation. In order for that to be the case, they need a perspective from which the sun might not rise over their heads. The Japanese self perception, then, is formed (at least in part) as a definition of what they are not. They are manifestly not alone. All human culture is relative. We humans seem to create insider groups specifically by finding an Other against which to contrast ourselves. It’s one of the reasons I think “peace on Earth” can only be achieved when we band together against an extra-terrestrial threat. And that is why I favor the colonization of Mars.

Sunday Morning Listening Material.

If you click just one link:

I have never had to defend all men- or talk about all men- because I am “the dude on Twitter”. As a straight, white, cis, dude, it never seems to occur to anyone that I might need to be a spokesperson for all straight, white, cis dudes. So why don’t we grant that same privilege to all slices of humanity?

This week’s theme? Being unsettled. So if you made it this far, why don’t you reshare it on your social network of choice?

Reality hits you hard, bro.

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It’s Sunday morning. Sundays are for reading in bed. Killing orcs, because Orcs Must Die!™ Sundays are for grading papers. Sundays are for prepping character sheets. Sundays are for playing games, visiting friends in the hospital, and being Occupied. Sundays are for having a chocolate hangover. Sundays are for having a day of(f from the) rest.

This week, police got violent against various Occupy movements- most notably across a small bridge from where I live. This week European leaders saved the world economy by decreeing that bankers who made bad loans to Greece would take a loss on the deal- rather than a profit. Also this week, global warming was disproved when snow hit the East Coast of the US. Also also: Saint Louis became the best Baseball team in the world.

Speaking of Baseball: the penultimate game of the World Series was possibly the best of all time. The eventually winner… here’s a graph.

When I stopped owning a car, I relaxed in places my wallet didn’t know I had. No more car insurance. No more stockpiling cash for inevitable breakdowns. No more exorbitant and ever-rising gas prices. I know that not everyone is able to live somewhere where a car is optional. I fully understand that- in most of North America- people live in places designed for cars. I want people to understand that this is a problem to be solved, rather than a public good which must be embraced.

Please, no one explain this to me.

I am a huge classical music fan, but I’ve never been to the symphony. Now that I think about it, this is bizarre. The article I’ve just linked to is an ad for a book that is an ad for the author’s company. Nevertheless, I am intrigued that parking is the single biggest factor keeping potential symphony-goers from enjoying a nice evening. That’s right. Available parking is a bigger factor than quality of music. Given that very few of us live in places where symphonies have to compete with one another, this makes a great deal of sense. It does, however, tend to support my belief that Americans need the freedom that comes with good mass transit.

The world economy sucks because Europeans seem to have gotten here most recently. All things considered, they’re probably going to be the ones to have had the most lasting impact on these continents. I’d love to believe that the Chinese hit San Francisco at some point before Columbus got to the Bahamas, but it doesn’t seem to be true. Were it true, it doesn’t seem to have mattered.

I will sell your children.

Occupy [city name] has struck a major chord. Or maybe 3 major chords- that’s all you need for punk rock. What they’ve been extremely good at is opening the Overton Window enough to begin a discussion about wealth inequality. When your uncle someone or other explains that the rich are just like you and me, you can explain why they’re not.

One of the most depressing studies I read in college was an examination of ethnic and sectarian conflict. The short version: those sorts of conflicts almost invariably end with either mass displacement or genocide. The idea that an American might have been involved with perpetuating such a conflict is sad. The idea that such a person could find themselves gainfully employed by a major US politician is terrible.

Sunday Morning Comics!

Back in the days before digital, companies had to guess at the impact of prices and promotions on their bottom line. A company might have no idea if a temporary discount on a durable good would lead to lower overall revenue. VALVe is very good at running market tests and understanding the data they gather. It actually seems to spring from their strengths as game programmers.

What we are afraid of– by state!

Earlier today (I am writing this on Saturday), a potential customer called my restaurant and asked for something I was pretty sure we couldn’t do. I asked them if I could place them on hold, (which is the way my company demands I treat potential customers) and got a manager. The manager said “can’t be done”, and looked at me expectantly. I shook my head at him and he sighed and grabbed the phone. They don’t payme enough to say “no” to customers. Turning down money is something that you only ever want to entrust to the very top levels of your organization. I’ve never been sure why companies don’t understand that every interaction with a customer- or potential customer- will have monetary repercussions. Of course, good customer service is something Americans seem unwilling to send a market signal in favor of.

The myth is that if they work hard and play by the rules, anyone can get ahead in America. this is false. For as long as I’ve been alive, only the top 10% of income earners have been getting ahead. The American dream died a long time ago. We simply cannot call fair a system in which only 10% of people see their hard work rewarded. And we must call out the implied lie which calls 90% of the country lazy.

One of the reasons that I like Google is that they’re upfront about this kind of data. Also: I’m scared to live in a world where police think they have the right to hide their bad behavior.

If you click just one link:

A recurring theme on this blog over the past year and a half has been the need for more labor solidarity. Those longshore workers are fighting for us all. I hope they win.

DUCK!

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I’m not the sort of gamer who cares overly about graphics. I do like the shiny, don’t get me wrong. But when I hear people talk about PC vs console as if it were purely a matter of graphical horsepower, I want to tear my hair out. the power of the PC isn’t the video card. Graphics alone cannot add much to gameplay.

A game like Crysis, for instance, is incredibly pretty. The game is lush with foliage to hide behind, and has rich vistas full of areas to explore. Those are the key points: the foliage isn’t merely decorative- it serves a gameplay function. A player is allowed to scan the ground and find their own cover. A game like Gears of War compensates for the lack of console power by hand-crafting pop-in, pop-out cover. The PC’s allows designers to create an organic play experience for gamers.

Or take a game like Arkham City. I’m glad that when the game is released next month I’ll have more awesome textures than if I buy it for my girlfriend’s PS3. But had it been built ground-up as a PC game, some of the design decisions might have been very different.

The PC is a less controlled, more anarchic platform. Rocksteady might have decided to take a traditionally PC-centric approach and allow for- encourage!- modding. For instance, when I saw the trailer at the above link, all I could about was a MOBA set in the Batman universe built on the Arkham City engine. Remember that MOBAs exist because Blizzard is a developer who thinks about the PC first, and only occasionally nods towards consoles.

I understand why most (large) developers create games primarily aimed at console players. Developing for a pair of fixed platforms must be orders of magnitudes easier than trying to support all the various hardware configurations that a PC can come with. Let us not, however, pretend that graphics are the only thing being compromised away.

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So adorable you’ll forget they’re deadly.

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for frantically looking for razors and panties before a date. Or Sundays might be for working and hiding hickeys from your boss. Sundays might be for recovering from a very 1$ wedding. Then again, if you’ve been running from Earthquakes all week, Sunday mornings might be for getting as much sleep as you possibly can. Further north, Sundays might also for sleeping- because you’ve been working 40 hours in a row. Maybe, just maybe, Sundays are for LoLing about while your girlfriend reads Mother Jones.

This week: The US managed to check another monster off the hit list. Also: the Heir apparent to the Saudi throne died. Also also? A major flood hit Bangkok. And, of course, this week the Occupy Wall Street movement continued.

Occupy Wall Street is, frankly, inchoate. I’m not sure what they can accomplish other than their own existence. And yet. What they’re offering is not really a solution, but a lens through which to see that America has a problem. With so many people being so spectacularly unable to get by, it can’t be all the individual fault of each individual American. Occupy Wall Street is making it polite to say the thing which has been whispering in the back of the American psyche for years: the game is rigged. How are we going to fix it?

In countries where unions have power, different unions will often times strike together. Factory workers might be treated so badly that truck drivers will refuse to move product created under those conditions. Being called out on their bad behavior hurts the precious fe-fes of the American capitalist , and so Congress banned the sympathy strike. By shear coincidence, this took away the most portent weapon in Labor’s arsenal.

Police are a State’s way of enforcing it’s laws and displaying that it has a monopoly on the use of force within its territory. When a State’s use of force is auctioned off, it becomes delegitimizatized. Mercenaries are now prowling American streets, answerable to no one but their own paymasters. I’m sure I didn’t vote for this.

This week’s installment of “Vaccines: they work!”: it seems we’re one step closer to a malaria vaccine. Malaria affects roughly 1/4 Africans every year. With luck, that will soon become a distant memory.

Another thing that works? Science. It turns out that when every climate scientist in the world says something, they’re probably not wrong.

Put the fucking phone down and drive.

When I say that the game was rigged by Wall Street, people often think that I’m somehow saying something obviously wrong, or obviously radical. I’m not. It’s cold, documented, fact. The difference between myself and a Libertarian is that “Cavet Emptor”- to them- is the greatest freedom. To me, the greatest freedom is to destroy the noxious malady of constant wariness.

It is, of course, a logical fallacy to say that you must be correct because Ahmed Maher agrees with you. Even if it is not an argument, it is certainly a signpost on the road to righteousness. Protip: don’t be the group that this guy thinks is worth protesting.

Republicans have some very bad ideas about the economy. For instance: they are convinced that the reason people aren’t buying things today is that they’re scared tax rates will go up tomorrow. Republicans have released economic plans that economic experts have laughed at. We are not being told that the experts are laughing at those plans. Instead, we’re being told that the Republicans have a plan, and that Democrats oppose it. Well gosh. I feel all informed and stuff.

I went all of 2009 and most of 2010 without working. It was so taxing on my psyche that I have been seeing a shrink to get past many of the effects. When I did find a job, it was at literally 1/3 what my pay had been. I am not alone. 10 million people not earning money. 10 million people not making things. And millions upon millions more making less than ever. Want to know why companies are sitting on huge piles of cash instead of building things? No one can afford to buy.

“Anything to declare?” Yeah, I just got back from the freaking moon!

If you click just one link:

Check out this Atlantic piece on College sports.

Mr Pink!

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No, 1% do please go Gault.

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for retracing the steps of the Beatles career, from the comfort of your couch. Sundays are for installing games on your new windows partition. Sundays are for walking with vigorous strides– or at least remembering to send out a copy. Sundays might be for rediscovering your love of music festivals. Or Sundays might just be for furiously tapping out a post so that people can snuggle in bed and read.

This week, protesters continued to Occupy [a park near] Wall Street. Scientists are still vigorously trying to prove that faster than light travel is still impossible. Also this week: Slovenia’s government fell when it failed a confidence vote. Also also: The Italian government failed to fall. Depressingly this week: debt-easing inflation failed to occur.

One of the more interesting reactions to the death of Steve Jobs has been high lighting the deaths of other people. I will not play the a game where I try and explain who’s life was more worthy of celebration. I will point out that humanity has been blessed with some truly fine specimens.

I pay very little attention to the media. It has much less to do with my own ideological biases (which, granted, are far to the left of what the media is comfortable talking about), and more to do with the fact that the media is incompetent. I honestly do believe that many of the problems the US finds itself in would be solvable if we had a media capable of reporting a fact in the most relevant way possible. Since they cannot, American democracy is asked to exist within an information vacuum. Lacking information with which to make good decisions, we make very bad ones indeed.

Despite bizarre insistence to the contrary, vaccines are a useful tool for making humanity better off. As an interesting side note to the story: Windows users can know that their money was reinvested in helping eliminate polio from India. Win/Win? Indeed.

Apparently the US government has decided to arbitrarily shut down certain websites. I say “apparently” because this is the first I’ve heard of it. And I say “arbitrarily” because the accused are not allowed to defend themselves.

Imagine if you had a phone. And imagine if that phone could be used to track your physical location and every place you visit on the internet. Now imagine if someone wanted to collect and sell that information without so much as giving you any of the money. It is this sort of thing, I think- more than the banking system itself- which so inflames the Occupy Wall Street folk. It’s the basic sense that corporate life has seeped into every corner of America, and left democracy a pale, sickly, shadow of what it had been.

I remember the way the press hounded President Clinton over the Lewinsky affair. The press was literally jumping out of bushes in hopes of startling Gary Condit into admitting that he murdered his lover. Imagine for a moment that the media treated the presidential assassination scandal with the same level of intensity. What if President Obama were unable to do walk his dog without being asked the circumstances under which he were able to murder Americans at will? The press does not care. And so America slumbers on.

The government does good and useful work. Anyone who says otherwise is objectively pro-domestic abuse.

Let’s fix the tax code. Let’s restore the inflation rate to the historic average. Let’s never again bail out a company and keep its management team afloat. Let’s stop pretending that everything in America is just fine. It isn’t fine. It hasn’t been fine for 10 years.

Matthew 6 is one of the most interesting chapters of the Christian Bible. In it, the Christian Messiah attacks the very foundations of his society by telling his followers not to be douchebags. Seriously. I’m going to quote a bit: “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Oh, he goes on for a while. He also tells people-his followers- not to pray in public. In this middle of this epic anti-douchebag PSA, the Christian Messiah delivers what has come to be called “the lord’s prayer”.

Sunday Comics!!

When someone buys stock in a company, they’re buying a small piece of that company. People do this because they expect to make money from owing a piece of that company. That company is legally required to provide an accurate accounting of its activities. It seems that there is some interesting and strange evidence that they aren’t. Who the fuck do Wall Street tycoons think they are? They lie to the American public, they lie to the American government, and they seem to be lying to the people who own their companies.

Two of the most pretentious things in the world: cheese and fonts.

One of the best things that Occupy Wall street has done is point out the contradictions at the heart of American society. One one side, you have a dream of democracy. On the other side, you’ve got the simple fact that the parasitic 1% of America looks down on the rest of us, knowing they can buy and sell us at their whim. This is what the revolution was fought against. Never let it be said, however, that it’s no laughing matter.

Victor: You bought two dead animals – killing each other – because renting them is a bad investment?

The American political system is deeply, deeply flawed. Of the two major parties, one has a variety of solutions to America’s various ills. Some of these are right, and some wrong. The other party’s most credible attempt at fixing the economy is to fire more people.

If you read just one link:

The failure of Digital Rights Management.

This week’s theme has been the death of the American dream. In the comments section, let me know whether you prefer cheesy pretense, or pretentious cheese.

D’oh!

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