Poll_Blind
Poll_Blind's JournalLOL. OK, one of my DU secrets is that if I KNOW I'm going to get shit for a post and I see that...
...someone's responded to a post of mine, even before I click on the "My Posts" to find out where the response is, my left hand is already flipping the bird at the monitor as my right hand moves the mouse to click on the response. Most of the time I don't even raise my left hand, it's almost entirely a subconscious response. I'm pretty sure I've been doing this (mostly) without thinking about it for at least five years, now.
I started to wonder recently if I've ever done this IRL without knowing it.
PB
ps - A friend was watching me use DU and she got to sniggering. When I finally asked her what it was about (I didn't realize she was watching me), she did an impression of me moving the mouse around with one hand while the other, at my side or in my lap, was reflexively flipping the bird on and off, like flashing spots on an angry cuttlefish.
Guys, what the fuck is the pushback against tangling with Syria? The line. They crossed THE LINE.
The President said there was a line and then today the Whitehouse said the line had been crossed.
You can't argue with The Line!
The President? Hands are tied. Blame The Line.
The Line exists so we know when somebody crosses it.
For fuck's sake: If somebody crosses the line and you don't have A Line, then it's like you...shit...it's like the old times when everyone was running around like chickens with their heads cut off and chopping down wheat with sickles and playing giant harmonicas to pass the time.
If you don't have a line, what do you have? You have a bunch of people discussing and arguing about shit, that's what.
Do we want to return to those dark days?
Discussing the merits of military action while some grizzled asshole plays "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain" on a harmonica the size of your goddamned leg?
Really?
I didn't think so. So it's settled. End of discussion.
If you feel compelled to discuss something with your filthy bored mouths, discuss who we're going to toss the no-bid school building contracts to. We need to get those ducks lined up in a row because if we don't have those plans down, something might fuck up after we win and ruin it.
No, your Summer War this year is with Syria. Did you have some better war in mind? No? Oh color me surprised! If you don't have a better country to attack maybe you should just sit down, clam up and go back to browsing Pinterest, howsaboutthat?
PB
Peter DeFazio (D-OR) uses grocery trip to warn against food stamp cuts
U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., flips through coupons on Monday as he goes on a shopping trip designed to draw attention to a Republican plan to slash the federal food stamp program. DeFazio tried to stay within the average weekly food stamp budget of $31.50 at the Springfield WinCo grocery store. He was joined by FOOD for Lane County Executive Director Beverlee Hughes (right). (Brian Davies/The Register-Guard)
From The Register-Guard:
Joined at the Olympic Street store by FOOD for Lane County Executive Director Beverlee Hughes, and swarmed by camera-toting media professionals, the Oregon Democrat loaded up his cart with Raisin Bran cereal, instant coffee, corn tortillas, green peppers, cheese and other food to last him through the week.
Using the average per-person weekly allocation from the federal food stamp program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, DeFazio planned to spend $31.50 at Winco. But he failed to pull it off, ending up spending $1.07 more than that amount when he got to the checkout stand.
DeFazio staged his offbeat shopping trip as a protest against both of the nearly trillion-dollar 10-year farm bills Congress is working on. DeFazio’s point: $31.50 — never mind $32.57 — doesn’t buy very much, and it makes no sense to cut that meager amount, as Congress is proposing.
More at the link!
PB
Ellsberg: Snowden’s NSA leak more important than my Pentagon Papers
Ellsberg: Snowden's NSA leak more important than my Pentagon Papers:"In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material, and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago," Ellsberg wrote in an op-ed published by the Guardian on Monday. "Snowden's whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an 'executive coup' against the U.S. constitution."
--snip--
In 2011, Ellsberg was among a group of noted whistle-blowers that penned an open letter asking that a "transparency award" given to Obama earlier that year be rescinded. They called the Obama administration's record on secrecy and surveillance "a disgrace."
In 1971, Ellsberg became the first person to be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act for releasing classified information to the public. The case was later dismissed when it was revealed during trial that the government had engaged in illegal wiretapping to gather evidence against him.
More at the link!
PB
Mr. President, a little less Yin and a little more Yang if you don't mind?
That's some Change a lot of us would appreciate right about now...
PB
More interesting, IMO, and buried in the sixth paragraph...
Oh, Israel!
How can the sunrises seem full of hope and the sunsets full of accomplishment if there isn't someone cowering in chains at your feet?
Coiled up with the bodies of your nobler sons, slaughtered.
A fair tree, pruned into villainy.
PB
Best argument I've seen for warrentless wiretaps, extrajudicial assassinations, etc...
Yep. That's about it.
PB
Did someone say...Benson, Arizona? "Let's have some music in here, Boiler." "Sure thing!"
PB
I agree. When I think of a really dangerous job, I think of something like deep-sea welding.
When I think of storm chasing...I dunno. Like fighting a herd of elephants all at once and being able to continually sneak out through their trampling legs each time before getting a paycheck. There are a lot of things in life you arguably "roll the dice" when you do. Hell, crossing the street is rolling them dice. But with storm chasing...I mean...Damn.
It's like storming Omaha Beach for a living.
PB
Never had one. Nor MySpace. Nor LiveJournal or any of those. (Pumps both fists in the air) "I WIN!"
From the moment I heard about something they described as "Web 2.0", I made a promise to myself that I'd never register on those sites. At the time the biggest thing was something called "Friendster". Anyway, amazingly, I was able to keep my promise. I've only had one Facebook account, under an assumed name, with which I communicate with my son- which is rarely because we live in the same town.
If you type my name into a search engine you get nothing or inaccurate information. Amusingly (and a stroke of luck) my name is actually the name of a semi-famous person in a certain field and so, if anything, it brings up them. If you know my name and type it into Intellius and pay the $50 (or whatever it is, now) I come back clean.
If you're the government, you can find me in a heartbeat. As it should be, of course.
If not...even with my name...good luck!
I fucking can't express how much I love that. Many years ago I got into computational linguistics, mostly for authorship attribution purposes. You think companies have The Snoop on ya? You have no idea.
Burn your Facebook accounts, get rid of all that social media shit. I've had to listen to otherwise intelligent, educated, articulate people complain like sophomores in highschool over endless Facebook/Twitter/Social Media kerfuffles.
"I hate that! And then they unfriended me. And so I unfriended them back. You know?" they ask.
"No, sorry. I don't." and a smile. I used to practically jack off to cyberpunk when I was a kid. It was a kind of unimaginable freedom. This cyberpunk learned a long time ago that meatspace has many, many more places to hide.
The promises of omniscience of the cyber world. Slinking among the cathedrals of data, flitting like an angel through a satellite with a list of protocols like a riverboat gambler's deck of cards... All of that is nothing to the useful information you can learn from a bored city employee, a coffee shop barrista in the old section of town, a cashier who's fighting with the underwire in her failing brassiere in a Mexican bakery.
Meatspace. It's what's for dinner.
PB
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Member since: 2003 before July 6thNumber of posts: 23,864
