With a bit of Mustard..

I wonder if it'd be possible to revoke the corporate charters of the RIAA and MPAA. Meaning: possible in the "could people make it happen", not "is this legally possible in theory given our system".

It would be nice for copyright abolitionists (such as myself) and copyright moderates to assemble a list of companies we'd like to see unplugged and take action to either revoke their charters or their license to do business in as many states as we can. From our perspective, they are always working on ways to harm the public interest, and it would be nice for us to try to always be working on unplugging them and spreading our views in ways more effective than theirs. I wonder if the EFF would be an appropriate vehicle for this, or if that would be too divisive for them.

What is instinct, and what is done about romantic/sexual relations:( Read more... )

I have been moderately obsessed with the traditional Russian song, Катюша. At home, because my apartment has numerous flaws in terms of keeping the cold air from outside from entering, I have also been dependent on the warmth of cats to keep my legs warm. (blah blah band name 「Dependent on the Warmth of Cats」 blah blah - it is interesting how the -ent version describes the state and the -ant version describes one in that state, while they are pronounced practically the same in all but the most careful levels of enunciation).

Finally: For those of us who (sigh) follow PZ Meyers, I think he's almost completely wrong on his opinionating over the Sunsara Taylor/Ethical Humanist Society mess.( Read more... )

It is awesome when people can joke around through music.

It would be interesting to try to write a comedy skit done entirely this way - no physical humour, no words.

As someone whose style in philosophical thought has wandered from logician to value-driven, ( Read more... )

Tonight I finally had some pumpkin pie (from allegro). Still tired from last night's migraine like I ran a 10k.

Challenge to random people who like challenges: name 8 songs you like that you don't think most people on your friends list have heard (you may be excused slightly if you're the kind sort who shares your mp3/ogg collection with your friends)

Also pondering: blog seems a near-total substitute for socialisation, and an unsatisfactory one at that - mostly one-sided conversations, interpersonal needs unmet. What to do given mental resources?

Code refactoring..( Read more... )

Last night gave me my worst migraine in over a year. ( Read more... )

Celestial Seasonings tea reminds me of many years ago living in Brecksville. The remaining boxes of tea bags I have may in fact be that old - given how seldom I make tea from them and that I've never to my recollection bought them, they may have survived the move from Brecksville, through the various dorms at OSU in Columbus, then the various apartments there, then the various apartments and offices here. It would be interesting to have a survey of what things have the most move-survivability - probably not gadgets (my One True Keyboards being an exception), usually not consumables (my tea being an exception). Pillows? Lamps? Teacups?

The weather is now terribly cold here.

Another election, this time I was too busy with work to really study for this test. Fortunately, Squirrel Hill's Town Hall (the JCC, really) reminded me to vote as I passed by it. I voted against Ravenstahl (who got both the Republican and Democratic nomination, the latter in a run-off, wtf) because I very strongly disagree with his handling of the G20, supporting Franco Harris instead - I haven't had time to do a lot of research about him but he seems like a moderate liberal with a decent (albeit not very political) resume. The rest of those running were the regular uninspiring options, some for offices that are not particularly political.

In the judiciary, I largely want judges who understand the Common Law system we have and how the public interest and rule of law work in such a system ( Read more... )

The shifting weather is proving terribly apt at summoning migraines. Recent flavour of depression has added strong flavours of jealousy and anger. I seem to be angry with a lot of people in ways that when I trace that anger, I can see that it's not for things I should expect them to (treat me better/give me a shot/whatever) but rather need and lack. The realising that their behaviour is reasonable doesn't make the feelings go away.
(section not shown)
Feeling that I deserve this lonely life.

At the Te Café, but about to head home because there's terrible music playing (Avett Brothers's "Love Like the Movies") and a terribly irritating guy talking like a motivational speaker to woo some girl nearby.

The programmer side of me is seriously rebelling over this damned stupid code at work. It'd be too simple to say it ruined my weekend (as my weekends are not usually anything more than sleeping 15 hours plus 1-3 repeats of lonely staring at the wall, philosophising, or sketching at some random coffeeshop combined with travel time), but I've been stressed out over it and working on it whenever I can make myself for the whole time. I have decided that I will not leave work today until it is done-ish (which I might chicken out on if it gets to be 11pm). On the upside, it provides more impetus to think about what code and coding should be like - the simple challenge of deriving what exactly is wrong about something that's lousy without becoming crazy-polarised and picking something else because it's an opposite that's probably even worse (in this case, formal software engineering).

Instead, let's talk about canons - not the misspelt kinds that fire nor Pachelbel's work, but in terms of stories. ( Read more... )

Jonathan Coulton's 「Re: Your Brains」 is in L4D2 as one of the bits of music that can be played on a jukebox! I wonder if I'm the first person to notice this! Other songs on the jukebox:

• A nice jazz rendition of 「When the Saints Come Marching In」
• Some lightly grungy song about being a homeless but well-armed 「bad bad dog」
• Another lightly grungy song about a guy with money and guns

Favourite weapon: Either the Frying Pan or the machete. The last time I did roleplaying I played a perverted old man who used a glue gun and a frying pan - there's something hilarious about attacking people with cooking implements.

Also, it's great to hear about musicians like Molly Lewis or Jonathan Coulton being successful and getting more exposure.

Inappropriate and offensive humour:( Read more... )

About race, identity, and politics, using Sri Lanka primarily as stage:( Read more... )

Earlier today (or maybe it was yesterday? With the sun being mostly gone, my not seeing other humans very regularly, and erratic sleep and food schedules, it's hard to say), I found this, a wonderful Japanese sketch of a Tetris game breaking the rules to frustrate its player. ( Read more... )

I've had a migraine ( Read more... )I've come to the conclusion that the best way to do portable backups of their (maybe I can say "our" again honestly?) terabytes of data would be to get two very small form factor computers running Linux and drop multiple 2T disks in each (surprisingly affordable). This would allow for offsite backup (move the system), selective recovery, and be at quite a low cost. Finding/building an appropriate configuration might take some thinking (power supply and cooling, mainly), but the problem has become much easier, provided we can keep the primary storage from growing beyond that means (a 2T disk can be had for less than $200 right now). Semi-related: I would love to be geeking out over SSDs, but I presently lack the hardware and my geeking out energy is in scarce supply - there are all sorts of projects I'm theoretically interested in but I haven't been in at all the right state of mind to do them.
(section not shown)

(political philosophy that's kind of half-baked switched to private)
(section not shown)

Scrapping my information gathering software - too many sources I used to use require passwords, have become broken, block bots, or have just changed too much to be worth rewriting. Interesting relation model differences:( Read more... )

I'm not sure why social software is so interesting.

Unrelated, not for the first time in my life, I am livid about Joe Lieberman. It seems like the health care reform is to be so watered down as to provide little significant change, in order to please people who will likely vote against it anyhow. I also have been working my way through some feminist theory works ( Read more... )

I wonder what the rate of new music listenitude is for different people - do we prefer a small set of favourite songs with rapid churning of new candidates, or some other permutation of those attributes? Tiers of songs?

I am thinking it would be nice to write an Ubiquity script to make it easier to post to my little bloglets.