I was face to face with this disturbing looking doll this past Saturday. It was not amusing and had these weird abrasions on it’s cheeks, like it had seen combat.
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Talky Tina
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What 2015 looks like on the Internet
That is, unless we fight back continually against SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, OPEN, and all their children.
Click for a full size view of the future lobby of the Internet.
Via this guy.
Update about two minutes later:
I see a pure gem in the news–literally two minutes after I posted this: all European Union nations to sign ACTA treaty today.
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This doesn’t sound like the record industry at all
Publishers like to pretend that we make our money from discovering unknown talents for small advances and selling millions of their books. That’s a very small part of our business. The bestselling books are all written by celebs, by people with huge platforms, by fiction writers with a long history of bestselling books, or by people who do a proposal that’s on its surface brilliant. In short, there’s a bidding war among the publishers over the big books. We all know what the good books are–it all comes down to how much of an advance we’re willing to pay for them. The hotly fought-for books are the ones that sell. And while we might not make huge profit % on these, we make big profit $ on these. They keep the lights on by covering overhead. Better to cover our fixed costs by going all in on a few big books than trying to buy dozens of mid-list books.
…oh wait, it does. More here. I love this comment as well, from the article:
Publishers need to recognize that they are no longer the gatekeepers of the printing press.
There’s a lot of poor content out on the e-book sales areas–I’ve seen some real crap since I got a Kindle last year. But there is also a lot of really good content, and just like the iTunes store as an example, it makes access to new good content trivial. I just discovered a new band–Cloud Control. We were driving somewhere, I heard them on KEXP, and loved their sound. Twenty minutes later I was listening to their full album at home. What were the odds I’d even be able to find a Cloud Control CD at the drop of a hat, locally? I’ve found other bands as well through recommendations from iTunes. Does Apple take a cut? Sure. But you know what?
Of the $8.00 American I paid for that Cloud Control album, a significantly bigger cut likely went back to Cloud Control than if I had bought a physical CD. If they were on their own label, or an indie label? Probably a good chunk more again. If I can buy an “independent” author’s work directly, and cut out the publishing house middle man, why would I choose to not put more money into the hands of an artist whose work I enjoyed? I love this quote from Trent Reznor:
“One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, ‘Wait – you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it?’”
Why wouldn’t we want to support artists moving away from this model? This is the force pushing laws like SOPA.
Remember as well that whenever you see someone try to say that the changes to the printing industry will somehow “ruin” books that many people said that the changes to the music industry would “ruin” music. It’s all bullshit. I’ve found more diverse music and musical genres to get into in the past 5-10 years than I did in the 10+ years before that. Will it suck for some people? Of course it will. Will some people get rich? Yeah, but you knew that was going to happen anyway. Are books going to go away, or are bookstores? No, and maybe somewhat. The height of huge bookstores everywhere, when you might have a couple independent bookshops, a Waldenbooks, a Borders, and a Barnes and Noble all within a city are gone for good.
But we used to have record shops all over like that. Gateway stores–a store dedicated to just a specific brand of computer. Classic barbershops are a rare treat now. Drive-ins and drive-in movie theaters. Independent electronics stores, like you’d see people go to for buying a hi-fi or television in the old days. Models change, culture changes, society changes. That’s the point. Something new will always come up to knock something down, and unfortunately there’s no way to stop it. If your business’s survival is based upon controlling a given business model and being able to drive out competition, you’re probably not going to be around more than a generation or two. At most.
I wonder if anyone I know is going to accuse me of being in favor of capitalism now. I just see it as being progressive, and letting stuff evolve.
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Gay marriage in Washington
Is coming. It’s going to pass the state Senate, Legislature, and Governor quite soon now. There will be a challenge referendum filed by anti-gay folks (it’s inevitable). In Washington, that means we’ll see something like “Referendum 72″, or some other number, or R-72 for short. If that referendum passes, then the people will throw out the same sex marriage law just passed. If R-72 fails, the law stands. That’s it.
But consider all of the following:
1. This is a Presidential election with Obama. You’re getting huge turnout again right off the bat–and that favors gay marriage staying and the anti-gay referendum losing.
2. The gay marriage vote itself will get out a ton more people. Let’s probably call this a split, on the surface. 50-50 on either side, right? Except that’s not the case in Washington, probably. Western Washington–west of the mountains–is by far the more populous side of the state. I think to the tune of a 60-40 split. Western Washington is also way more likely overall to support gay marriage. I’ll go out on a limb and say 52-48 here to 55-45 in favor of gay marriage based on this, not a 50-50 split, in truth. But in actuality, it might be even worse than that for conservatives, and you know why? Marijuana.
3. Washington state will also at the same time be voting to end any and all state-level prohibition of marijuana. This will net a huge bonus to youth voter turnout. Seriously. People under 30 will turn out in droves just for this alone. Oh, and which age demographic is more likely to vote in favor of same sex and gay marriage?
These are numbers from 2009 and earlier. It's even more pronounced now.4. This election will be happening in one of the most screwed up and tumultuous eras of American politics since Vietnam. Even more turnout. Mathematically, liberals and conservatives are roughly even, nationally. Democrats, the times I’ve looked, outnumber Republicans anywhere from 15% to 30%. Independents and moderates outnumber us all. Guess who will be deciding this? Hint: it’s not Republicans and conservatives. It’s going to happen, unless the Democrats, moderates, and liberals just don’t show up to vote. Does anyone really think that won’t happen when you add Obama and marijuana to the mix?
Hopefully, congratulations ahead of time to all my gay and lesbian friends and family.
And here, something for you to read. Twenty-five votes were needed in the Washington state Senate for this to happen. A handful of Republicans turned over and signed aboard. A handful of Democrats held out. One of them–who I thought ultimately would NOT be the one to support–was an older very Christian lady named Mary Margaret Haugen, one of our state senators. Everything I’ve ever heard or read of her–which admittedly wasn’t that much–was that she was exceptionally conservative for a Democrat and lived in the deepest of purple areas for voters. In other words, the last person you would expect to support gay marriage.
Like a lot of people in Washington, I mailed her, but I didn’t expect anything. Then I watched a YouTube video of her doing a Town Hall on this subject–and the crowd from her area was literally 100% in favor of same sex marriage, but she wouldn’t budge and honestly didn’t seem to just get it. I figured she would not come aboard. Then I heard there was an omitted scene from after the town hall, where a voter told her of a young gay family member that killed themselves from stress and bullying. I heard Mary Margaret broke down into tears in front of her voters. I still didn’t expect this.
“For several weeks now, I have heard from the people of my district. They’ve shared what’s in their hearts and minds.
“I have received many letters, emails, phone calls, very heartfelt, from both sides of the issue. I’ve also received a number of very negative comments from both sides.
“For some people, this is a simple issue. I envy them. It has not been simple or easy for me.
“To some degree, this is generational. Years ago I took exception to my parents’ beliefs on certain social issues, and today my children take exception to some of mine. Times change, even if it makes us uncomfortable. I think we should all be uncomfortable sometime. None of us knows everything, and it’s important to have our beliefs questioned. Only one being in this world is omniscient, and it’s not me.
“I have very strong Christian beliefs, and personally I have always said when I accepted the Lord, I became more tolerant of others. I stopped judging people and try to live by the Golden Rule. This is part of my decision. I do not believe it is my role to judge others, regardless of my personal beliefs. It’s not always easy to do that. For me personally, I have always believed in traditional marriage between a man and a woman. That is what I believe, to this day.
“But this issue isn’t about just what I believe. It’s about respecting others, including people who may believe differently than I. It’s about whether everyone has the same opportunities for love and companionship and family and security that I have enjoyed.
“For as long as I have been alive, living in my country has been about having the freedom to live according to our own personal and religious beliefs, and having people respect that freedom.
“Not everyone will agree with my position. I understand and respect that. I also trust that people will remember that we need to respect each other’s beliefs. All of us enjoy the benefits of being Americans, but none of us holds a monopoly on what it means to be an American. Ours is truly a big tent, and while the tent may grow and shrink according to the political winds of the day, it should never shrink when it comes to our rights as individuals.
“Do I respect people who feel differently? Do I not feel they should have the right to do as they want? My beliefs dictate who I am and how I live, but I don’t see where my believing marriage is between a man and a woman gives me the right to decide that for everyone else.
“I’ve weighed many factors in arriving at this decision, and one of them was erased when the legislation heard today included an amendment to clearly provide for the rights of a church to choose not to marry a couple if that marriage contradicts the church’s view of its teachings. That’s important, and it helped shape my decision.
“My preference would be to put this issue on the ballot and give all Washingtonians the opportunity to wrestle with this issue, to search their hearts as I have, and to make the choice for themselves. But I do not know that there are the votes to put it to a ballot measure. So, forced to make a choice, my choice is to allow all men and women in our state to enjoy the same privileges that are so important in my life. I will vote in favor of marriage equality.
“I know this announcement makes me the so-called 25th vote, the vote that ensures passage. That’s neither here nor there. If I were the first or the seventh or the 28th vote, my position would not be any different. I happen to be the 25th because I insisted on taking this much time to hear from my constituents and to sort it out for myself, to reconcile my religious beliefs with my beliefs as an American, as a legislator, and as a wife and mother who cannot deny to others the joys and benefits I enjoy.
“This is the right vote and it is the vote I will cast when this measure comes to the floor.”
It’s things like this that makes me always hold out hope for humanity. Thank you, Mary Margaret.
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XLVI
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View from the Space Needle
I was up on the Space Needle on January 15, 2012. After you’ve done it once, you don’t go up there that often living here… but the view never stops being awesome.
From the Space Needle, at sunset.
From the Space Needle, at night.
Scary side note: those photos, and this video of it all? iPhone 4S native camera. Isn’t that quality ridiculous?
I love living here.
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Snow in Seattle, January 2012
The snow in our neighborhood this week, that I recorded at sunrise on Wednesday:
I used to make fun of everyone freaking out over snow when we first moved here. But once you’ve driven these hills with snow? Screw that. Example from this year:
And like is typical with the stupid weather here, it’s gone as soon as it began. 72 hours later it’s pushing 40 degrees, and we’ll have fine roads today like nothing happened, after them being impassable. Except now everything will flood from all the melting snow (the mountains got over four feet in some areas, all in a couple of days).
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Hey, wait a minute…
Apparently this is an example of the Euthyphro dilemma.
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Before everyone acts like SOPA is dead
It’s not, and the protest doesn’t matter… yet. Even though the Republican candidates in the South Carolina debate last night slammed SOPA… but it’s still not dead. Congress will push a bill like SOPA again tomorrow or next year, and the bills this year remain alive, technically, as of today. Lamar Smith, Republican head buffoon in this matter from Texas, and the MPAA keep keep doubling down on rhetoric, with statements like this:
Hates the US Constitution.
It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.
Remember the DMCA? Law. A whole bunch of similar legislation between then and now came up that failed. But that’s the point: they kept trying, because so many people have a financial stake in this game. Currently: ACTA treaty? Still moving toward law. SOPA? Still moving toward markup and committee. PIPA? Maybe stalled. OPEN? Still moving toward committee. Next session there will be more. This will continue, because money is on the line. SOPA and their ilk are just the latest for-profit power grab by middleman business models to stay relevant in a world that is moving past them.
And if it sounds like I’m veering into tinfoil hat territory, remember when the RIAA flipped shit over internet radio?
It turns out that of that 56% of music and 70% of unique songs played on streaming internet broadcasts back in 2006 were from independent artists and labels (as cited in the link above).
It won’t stop until the lobbying and money is stopped, or politicians are so terrified of the destruction of their careers that no one is willing to push all. That won’t happen until there are material or personal consequences for this sort of behavior. It sucks, but there you go. You won’t end this until politicians actually feel honest, real fear at the prospect of pushing such legislation. Fear of repercussions, fear of loss of campaign monies, fear of active direct harm to their personal lives from dirt being pulled out by opponents and spilled to the front pages of newspapers, fear of losing your Federal elected career, fear of being scorned and made a direct, personal pariah.
These sorts of laws are potential attacks directly against the First Amendment, in the scope of their execution. Is piracy bad? Duh. Is locking down any aspect of the First Amendment–note the “First”–worse? Yes. Always yes. Dick around with the First Amendment, and you should be made to pay the price. If it ruins your life? You made that choice. This is how advocates need to pursue the matter. End careers. Cost an elected official his mortgage or his kid’s college tuition, or minimize his future earnings potential? You’ll stop them soon enough.
Chris Dodd, ex-Senator from CT, current MPAA dictator. I'm so sorry, everyone, that I ever voted for this ass.
Laws like SOPA are also a blatant form of business subsidy, patronage, and favoritism by government. How much money per year does the MPAA claim it’s members lose, because of the Internet? How much money per year and jobs do the MPAA members generate in the US economy? Now: how much money per year and jobs may be at risk that Internet companies and businesses currently pump into the US economy? Why are the businesses that favor these bills more important than the businesses that oppose it? Why is the business impact to the entertainment industry so much more valuable than the impact to the various Internet industries? It’s not the money they spend on Washington…
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the movie, television and music industries spent a combined $91.7 million on lobbying efforts in 2011, compared with the computer and Internet industry’s $93 million. In the 2012 election cycle, the movie, television and music industry offered up $7.7 million in direct campaign contributions to congressional candidates. The computer and Internet industry contributed $6.6 million.
What is it, then? I have a theory: politicians, especially older ones (which is most of them) fundamentally dislike the Internet because of it’s fundamentally by design uncontrollable nature. It can be used against them, so they naturally turn against the Internet. Watching clips of various older politicians on relevant committees discuss how the Internet works was absurd. We need less geriatric lawyers as politicians and more scientists and engineers.
Last, and don’t forget: speech is money and is now extraordinarily difficult to restrain on the Federal level. Every single idiot that supported Citizens United and George W. Bush, take a bow. Then again, there is–thanks to Citizens United–nothing that could technically stop Google or Mark Zuckerberg from dropping $50,000,000 in vicious attack advertisements on Lamar Smith’s head, to terminate his career and livelihood. Someone should tell the Google and Facebook executives and corporate boards that ending Lamar Smith on a personal and professional level would be a good financial investment, because it is.
It probably wasn’t their intention, but with SOPA, politicians that took sides have painted business-related bulls eyes on their backs. Politics was always unfortunately an investment. Now they’ve made it a bidding war and fight between two different sorts of businesses, both of whom have have money to burn, and that have been picking at each other since the RIAA first whined about tape recorders and the MPAA first complained about VHS tapes.
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Twelve iron atoms in an atomically precise antiferromagnet
IBM announced Thursday that after five years of work, its researchers have been able to reduce from about one million to 12 the number of atoms required to create a bit of data.
Short version: you know how hard drives on machines and phones and stuff get bigger faster all the time? Like how today’s laptop can hold 100,000 mp3s or more? Imagine if a phone–not a laptop–can hold 100,000 or more songs in 10 or 20 years, and a laptop can hold 10,000,000 or more songs. Possibly a huge jump, huh?
Bonus thought: some RIAA or MPAA lawyer, upon learning about this, will actively spend at least 60 seconds on the mental question, “Is there any viable way we can litigate against IBM to stop this?”
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What this election cycle already feels like
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Doing it wrong.
If we don’t have millions of humans building new self-sustaining societies on at least one other planet by the year 3000 and preparing to expand to other planets, we’re doing it completely wrong. If by 4000 we’re not a species of 30,000,000,000-plus lives across at least three settled and self-sustaining worlds, we’re doing it completely wrong.
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What am I looking at?
The notion of, for our Better Leaders, that events gone by are not something we should hold them accountable for is nonsense, as we learn nothing in the flow of time then of why a thing was the way it was to change what’s coming next.
I’m tired of looking at my leaders and saying, “What happened then?” or “What am I looking at?” when all they can say in response is, “We passed it, it’s in the past.” And you ask, “How did we let this happen?” and all they can say is, “Soon.” Do they mean that things will change soon? Or “Soon,” because they know our attention spans are short and we’ll soon forget whatever their transgression was? When we go with that sort of “soon”, all we get is confused.
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Required climate to sustain intellegient, human-like life
The accepted scientific consensus as of 2011 is that the following climate conditions are required to sustain carbon-based life, similar to our own, on any planet which exists in the “habitable zone” of it’s solar system. All temperatures are in Farenheit.
60 degrees in the morning with a gentle, soothing breeze; 70-72 at midday with a warm, enticing and teasing sun that rolls behind clouds that remind you of childhood days gone by gazing up at what they may be; and a pleasant, cooling evening of 65 with a stronger, vibrant breeze of 10-12 miles per hour from the water, carrying scents of quiet, life, and a day well spent.
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In this amazing and expanding universe
I was looking at this website, which is a panorama of our local skies, with the constellations charted out. I’m a big nerd, but I admit I hadn’t really thought lately about this sort of thing, before my friend Allen had a bunch of us over a few weekends ago for grilling and beers. It was a clear night, so he pulled out his telescope for us to see Saturn up close.
That got me thinking again–which stars are nearest? Which galaxies are nearest? How many galaxies are out there? Just how big IS the universe? In case you didn’t know…
The Milky Way galaxy has 100 to 400 billion stars, 50 billion planets and is estimated to have as many as 500 million “Earth-type” planets. There are estimated to be as many as 100 to 500 billion GALAXIES in the universe. At a low end then there may be at least 50 billion Earth-type planets in the universe, in the habitable zone of their local system. There could be five times that number!
Does anyone beyond the most insane seriously believe we’re really alone in the universe?
By the way, it’s May the Fourth. And on the very same day, look at what NASA and DARPA announced:
What started out as an idea about how to further explore the outer reaches of space is now beginning to take more serious shape as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) today issued a call for industry information on how to form such as cosmic entity.
Specifically DARPA said it issued a Request For Information intended to solicit ideas and information on structure and approach, and identify parties qualified and interested in furthering what’s known as the 100 Year Starship project. DARPA says the 100 Year Starship Study is a project to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible. The Department of Defense and NASA are also involved in the Starship project.
Helpful stalking
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