November 2010
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Max Headroom: Examples of amplifying everything &...
We hear nothing Jon Stewart had this killer line during his twelve-minute rant: “If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.” It’s so relevant to this video that you know that the second this moron starts yelling that you can ignore basically anything he says. He obviously heard nothing in the speech.
Missing the point And here’s someone who missed the whole point of...
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Why did super-developer Lars Rasmussen leave...
what Lars Rasmussen, a key Google staffer who famously crated Google Maps (and Google Wave) decided to leave the company recently. Understandable, because they killed his Google Wave baby.
why He’s going to Facebook! He revealed the news to the Sydney Morning Herald, saying: “It feels to me that Facebook may be a sort of once-in-a-decade type of company.” We can see...
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“It’s rank demagoguery. We should call it for what it is. If these people...”
– Reagan budget director David Stockman • Ripping his own freaking party for emphasizing a tax-cut strategy despite the fact that there’s a huge deficit. “It’s become in a sense an absolute,” he explains. “Something that can’t be questioned, something that’s...
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DC Metro numbers suggest huge "Rally to Restore...
350,000 number of trips the DC Metro has on an average Saturday
825,437 number of trips the DC Metro had yesterday source
» To put it in perspective: The rally had the highest Saturday ridership ever – passing the record set in June 1991, when a rally was held for Operation Desert Storm. That rally gave Metro around 786,358 trips that day. And assuming the riders went round-trip yesterday, that...
October 2010
The Only Plfrmat: Jon Stewart and Partisanship →
jeffmiller:
squashed:
There are a lot of people saying something, “I’m glad that Jon Stewart is telling the Right to simmer down. Because the Right is crazy. But he shouldn’t tell the Left to simmer down because we’re not crazy. We consider ourselves awfully reasonable.”
I’m pretty sure…
If anything, Obama’s kind of a third party to this whole thing. The biggest jab that...
NY TIMES: U.S., British officials believe... →
inothernews:
Yes, there really is a war on terror, and it’s these assholes who we are trying to - and must - stop.
John O. Brennan, the president’s chief counter-terrorism advisor, said Sunday that American authorities believe now that the two bombs found inside cargo packages were designed to blow up the airplanes carrying them, even though they were addressed to locations “associated...
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“The thing I’ve learned that’s much different than any other time in my life is I...”
– Twitter co-founder Evan Williams • Explaining why he decided to step down from his CEO position last month. To put it simply, he’s a big idea guy, but a terrible boss. And in case you need any proof of that, consider three things: First, when Blogger’s business model weakened during the...
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"Front groups" push negative ads on BOTH sides –...
lame Republican-leaning “front groups” have been pushing negative ads into campaigns across the country with little oversight. Democrats have loudly complained.
lamer Problem is, Democratic “front groups” also exist, and have been pushing negative ads into campaigns, too – most notably against Sharron Angle. source
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Tribune Corp. investors suing mad over insanely...
$3.7 billion in loans offered prior to Tribune Corp.’s sale source
» … and here comes the lawsuit: A bunch of investors in Tribune Corp. have sued JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Citicorp and Bank of America for making those loans possible for the leveraged buyout that Sam Zell did, knowing that it’d be nearly impossible to get those funds back. In the process, the companies received $120...
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Dozens hurt after suicide bombing in busy Turkish...
32+ people injured in the attack in a busy Istanbul tourist district
17+ of those hurt were police officers, the targets of the attack source
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Apple and Motorola lawsuits more annoying than...
All these lawsuits between Apple and Motorola are silly. In the latest suit (a counter-suit, even), the iPhone maker sued Motorola for using multitouch technology (among other things which Apple owns patents for) in nine of its phones, including each of the popular Droid models. These suits are excuses for each company to get in the other’s hair, and basically do nothing useful. Honestly, if...
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“It is a slight moment in ‘The Dilemma’ meant to demonstrate an...”
– Director Ron Howard • Explaining why the gay joke made in “The Dilemma” stays in, despite the uproar against gay jokes in general at the moment. Howard feels the joke is important to understanding Vince Vaughn’s character, and that his film is getting lots of negative attention at...
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Cargo plane bomb plot: Lots of packages under...
24 more suspect packages currently getting analyzed in Yemen source
» About the suspects: Two Yemeni women, 22-year old Hanan al-Samawi and her 45-year-old mother, have reportedly been arrested for the incident. Also, bombmaker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, whose handiwork first came to everyone’s attention thanks to the Underwear Bomber, is also considered a suspect in the latest incident. Oh,...
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Missy Smith, campaign ads, and reaching the bottom...
So, recently, this lady has been clogging DC airwaves with the worst ads. We saw them a few times over the weekend. Missy Smith’s been paying money to show aborted fetuses in as disgusting a light as possible, during daytime hours. (Click here if you’re curious.) And because she’s in cahoots with Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, she knew that she legally could...
199 followers, dudes … who's gonna be No. 200?... →
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“If the right people are elected, we will be able to continue with raises and...”
– A message distributed with paychecks at a Canton, Ohio McDonald’s • Telling employees to vote for the GOP – or else. The dude who sent out the note with the paychecks was called out for it, for good reason, but he gave one of those non-apology apologies which are in vogue...
Robert Reich: The Real Center of American... →
robertreich:
The true center of American politics isn’t found where most of us agree. We fiercely disagree. That’s not a problem. Democracy assumes disagreement.
The true center is about how we resolve those disagreements. Most of us believe we should work them out respectfully.
We don’t believe in winning…
While we agree with Robbie Reich here, we feel like he should’ve named...
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Cablevision, Fox finally settle whiny baby dispute...
14 number of days the cable network stalemate went on
3M number of customers affected by the cable stalemate
eight MLB playoff games (and two weeks of football) went off the air source
» Why did the stalemate last so long? Well, Cablevision wanted regulatory intervention from the government, who wanted the two companies to decide things for themselves. Usually, these things last two days,...
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Stewart/Colbert rally: The highlights of the...
There were many great moments in today’s Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear. But above is probably the best. The way Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert raided their record collections to pull three well-known artists that have nothing in common (other than really famous songs with word “train” in the title) was brilliant. Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam hasn’t exactly been in the...
“And now I thought we might have a moment, however brief, for some sincerity. If...”
– JON STEWART, in a dig at the mainstream media seemingly obsessed with whatever the fuck it is that he does, during the Rally To Restore Sanity.
Yep.
(via inothernews)
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Afghan war: Military base clash doesn't end well...
80+ number of insurgent forces who died in last night’s fighting in Afghanistan
zero number of coalition forces (or civilians) who died in fighting source
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Does the U.S. think companies should patent genes?
NO they think that genes are part of nature and shouldn’t be source
» Why this is a big deal: Well, among other things, this is a change of policy for them, one that could make it harder for the biotechnology and medicine industries to keep innovations unique. We wish that the government would make this distinction on software patents over trivial things. See, that’s where a change in...
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“The target may have been an aircraft and had it detonated the aircraft could...”
– UK emergency planning committee Theresa May • Explaining the situation with the device found on a plane intercepted at a London airport yesterday. So yeah, the expected the thing to blow up. It didn’t. In other news, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano states the obvious. source (via)
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Finally, some good (OK, better) news from the...
135 missing people were found alive so far; whew source
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“No, we don’t think there’s anything wrong with what Christine...”
– A post from “The Staff of Gawker.com” • Explaining their rationale for the Christine O’Donnnell one-night stand piece. While one might consider this a fair rationale (and there’s a lot of explanation here backing up their point), we’re not so sure. Who does it benefit...
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Third party candidacy at seventy-five year high
443 third party candidates running for the House of Representatives this year
1935 last time this many third party candidates ran for the House source
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Charlie Crist officially burns bridges with GOP
YES Crist will caucus with Democrats if elected source
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The U.S. spends LOTS of money on intelligence,...
$80.1 billion the amount the U.S. spent on intelligence in 2010
$664 billion the amount the U.S. spends on its total defense budget source
» Why this is a big deal: Two reasons. First of all, the intelligence spending numbers were never reported during the most recent Bush Administration – this is the first time we’ve gotten new numbers here in nearly a decade. Secondly, the intelligence...
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Freakout Friday: YES. THERE WERE EXPLOSIVE...
yes The packages involved on two flights from Yemen to the U.S. contained explosives.
yes The packages in question were addressed to religious locations – including a synagogue.
no The device shown here – intercepted in London – was in fact not an explosive device. source
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“Halliburton does not believe that the foam cement design used on the Macondo...”
– A statement from Halliburton • Responding to the Senate committee report that suggested that their handiwork was a cause of the Gulf Oil Spill. Their take? While Halliburton admits that they didn’t do a key stability test, BP was to blame for a poor design process (an angle they’ve held...
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Can you wear WWE garb to support Linda McMahon at...
YES you can dress up like Hulk Hogan at the polls in CT source
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Classy guy reportedly waterboarded his girlfriend...
rationalBeing upset that your girlfriend is possibly cheating on you with another guy. Understandable.
irrational Allegedly tying her to a couch and waterboarding her. Can we just say, domestic abuse? source
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“The idea that you can continue to keep human beings in detention offshore is an...”
– Former U.S. diplomat (and husband of Valerie Plame) Joe Wilson • Ripping on the Obama administration for not doing enough to stop Bush-era methods of security, including closing the base at Guantanamo Bay. Some of this is, of course, personal: Wilson’s wife was outed as a spy by members of the...
“Hey, you know what, why do people even care? Why are they wasting their lives on...”
– Glenn Danzig, in response to a photo of him lugging around a box of cat litter becoming an Internet meme.
[stereogum.]
(via thedailywhat)
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Freakout Friday: Planes contain "suspicious items"...
ChicagoA plane headed from Yemen to Chicago – a common trip, of course – had a strange device on it that raised suspicions.
NewarkA UPS plane from Yemen reportedly contained suspicious items, as did a UPS truck that made it to NYC. Scary.
PhillyAnother UPS plane in Philly also contained suspicious items, and workers were checked just in case. source
