Category: Uncategorized

computers are hard and the government spies on me from the air vent

flata points out that some people lost their heads because the all-knowing government spy agency, the NSA, put cookies on people’s computers.

A “privacy advocate” named Daniel Brandt is upset about this, and has previously been upset about the CIA using persistent cookies on their public website.

I feel sorry for the web monkey who put those in for whatever boring typical reason people use persistent cookies, because that person is in big trouble. I also think that a “no persistent cookies” policy for websites of this kind is a fine idea, almost entirely because it reduces this kind of pointless paranoia. But let’s get real, here. You can turn off cookies, and anyone who’s serious about privacy does. There’s no way the NSA is using persistent cookies to track individual website visitors; that’s inane.

Danny boy, the NSA has shit you don’t even know about, probably archiving the entire Internet way better than Alexa and analyzing it and putting it in databases and crunching it up to find Al-Qaeda and screw the Chinese. They don’t need “cookies”, okay? Oh, and by the way, you keep mispelling “rendez-vous” in your emails to your mistress, the one in Dayton. Get that shit straight, okay?

This was almost as “good” as the podjacking idiot.

california fog from space

tule

A thick bank of fog blankets California’s Central Valley. The fog is bracketed by the Cascades to the North, the Coastal Range to the West and the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the East. These high elevation areas are a vibrant green in this image, as they are home to the largest tree species on the planet. Coastal redwoods (Sequoia semperviren) are the world’s tallest trees, reaching over 112 meters (367 feet). They are mostly found in valley bottoms, where fog in the summer occurs on a regular basis and contributes to soil moisture. This particular type of winter fog, or Tule fog, occurs at night when the surface cools quickly; it happens during the rainy season and can persist for weeks. Essentially, all types of fog are clouds that are in contact with ground and can reduce visibility to as little as 3 meters (10 feet) or even to zero in extreme cases. Therefore it is not surprising that Tule fog is a major hazard to navigation and is the leading cause of weather-related accidents in California.

From Modis, which has bigger hi-res versions of that picture.

LIFE IN THESE HERE NOW UNITED STATES

Suspicious lamp prompts evacuation
A Huntington Beach homeowner saw the object in a garage.

By RYAN HAMMILL
The Orange County Register

HUNTINGTON BEACH — A report of a suspicious lamp in a garage led to a neighborhood evacaution today before the Orange County sheriff’s bomb squad determined that the object was harmless.

A Mangrum Drive homeowner called Huntinton Beach police about 3 p.m. after seeing wires protruding from the base and an unfamiliar light bulb, Sgt. Dave Bunetta said.

Police officers visually inspected the lamp before calling the bomb squad and the Huntington Beach Fire Department’s hazardous material unit, Bunetta said.

Residents within 300 feet of the house were evacuated for about 3½ hours during the investigation.

The house is next door to a home day care, which also was evacuated, and two blocks from Marina High School.

Kéan Coffee. Verdict: yum.

I’ve had their espresso two days running and it’s really good. Not just dark and bitter like Charbucks or the Diedrich chain. It’s strong and dark and a little bit sweet and really, really, really good.

I bought some beans and I just drank a whole effing pot of the decaf. I haven’t had just-roasted coffee this good in years.

Congratulations, Martin. This is some seriously good coffee. Now don’t screw it up this time!

I got second place in the spelling bee due to failing “colloquialism”

  1. And so Hummer Nation comes full circle as the limos are called upon to serve.
  2. Someone went and open sourced The Order of the Golden Dawn. Aleister Crowley would have made a great dot-com CEO. That combination of brilliance, brazen dishonesty, and charisma is good for “magick” and IPOs.
  3. I think that odradak among others will like the art of Kevin Hauff. Somewhere between Terry Gilliam and Futurism.
  4. Highland Park is the latest place where youngish middle-class people are bumping into the underclass. It’s no Silverlake, and it has defeated a lot of them. So far, Neal Pollack is no exception. The neighborhood does have its charms, but the gang members are hardcore and it’s one of the most racially divided neighborhoods in Los Angeles by my experience. It’s a place to tread lightly if you’re not a local.
  5. There’s big money to be made in posttraumatic stress disorder, especially if you get a government contract to counsel soldiers and claim an insane success rate publicly.
  6. Bad days: BOY SCOUT GETS KNIFE LODGED IN BRAIN.
  7. Today’s “I can’t believe anyone said this” quote is from the Google Video Blog: “In the course of popular music, there are few bands who came from more humble beginnings than Nirvana.” LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE FORGOT ABOUT THE “NEGROES” AGAIN!!1!!
  8. wearescott was kind enough to point out the only government-hosted furry web page I’ve seen yet. It’s easy to say that we are all Proud to be at Furry.
  9. I was once again reminded today that moschus is the Marie Antoinette and Michelle Phillips of crappy horror fiction.
  10. The Orange County version of Mr. Joyboy from The Loved One: Retired PR Guy Helps Retirees Write Their Obits. May require bugmenot to see, stupid registration thing.
  11. Girls are so hot when they’re slowly licking and sucking an abstinence lollipop. I wonder if you can get abstinence thongs at Cafe Press too? Via Feministing.

nice things I got for which I am grateful

The aforementioned Alan Watts CDs which are all ripped to mp3 now!

The aforementioned Buddhist art books.

A 7 CD set of Jelly Roll Morton’s 1938 Library of Congress recordings. WOW.

A handheld food mill that purees small quantities of fruit or vegetables, etc.

A package each of concentrated chicken and beef stock.

An out-of-the-blue gift from Jeff, who is one of the numerous good friends I’ve never met.

Stumptown coffee and a beautifully handmade cup from vegemitelover, also totally unexpected.

A t-shirt my parents bought literally 15 years ago in Vancouver which has Haida native art on it, causing synchronicity wtf since I now host haidalanguage.org on my DSL box for torgo_x.

Dog; fritter; FRITTERSCAPE

Catherine has a new dog, Boca. Boca’s lower jaw protrudes to a degree that suggests she is a reptile rather than a dog. She is a very sweet animal.

boca

I made a fritter tonight out of leftover mashed potatoes and egg. I ate it, but first I took pictures of it. I have thought about this fritter all day and it was just as good as I had imagined it would be.

fritter

Because of my love for the fritter I also made a desktop image that is a cropped fritterscape.

fritterscape

If you want a fritterscape, click on it and you can get larger versions of it from flickr.

I sent a message to the LJ about how cool I think Martin Diedrich’s new coffee place, Kéan, is. But post by email blew today so you didn’t see that.

I really liked that fritter.