Category Archives: Rage

Microsoft

Leave a reply

PAD 5/10/2013 – Morphing

Language evolves. The meaning of a word can shift over time as we use it differently — think of “cool,” “heavy,” or even “literally.”

Today, give a word an evolutionary push: give a common word a new meaning, explain it to us, and use it in the title of your post.

The word I am going to redefine is Microsoft. I am going to add the new definitions to this word. Failure. Insensitivity. Suffering. Despair. Agony. Loathing.

Anyone who has done the death slog through Microsoftland knows exactly what I’m talking about. It’s self-evident!

I Love You More Than Salt

1 Reply

Nestlé CEO Says Water Is Food That Should Be Privatized – Not A Human Right

I read the article and I watched the video and I even caught some of the german the CEO of Nestlé was using. In the video he makes lots of arguments, including that drinking water as a human right isn't something he thinks is right – because water should be considered a foodstuff, so it can have value, and that value shows how important and valuable it is. He also declares that genetically modified foodstuffs have been in use in America for 15 years with no ill effects and then kvetches about how Europe refuses to allow this kind of food out of safety sake.

I think his arguments come from a place that I would characterize as obnoxious capitalism. This is what happens when money clouds your thinking so you don't see individual people anymore, you just see the bottom line and big numbers you can crow about. Like supporting 4 million people with your company and so forth. Each of his arguments is something I would expect a capitalist to make, one who has lost his inherent humanity. So, lets unpack them one at a time.

Drinking Water

I was born and grew up in the Great Lakes region. For me, potable drinking water was never a concern – the city I grew up in had such excellent drinking water that you could make ice from it, and then pour it into a glass and drink as much as you wanted without having to worry about any ill effects from that water. Water here is common, so common as to be beyond thought. Potable water is free, available to everyone who wants it, and as much as they care to drink. Anyone can walk up to any business or restaurant or house and ask for a glass of water and get that very thing without paying one cent for it. This is something that is very important to understand about America versus the rest of the world. It is only in America where the water is free and clean and healthy. Everywhere else, you could drink the water that's available and reap the consequences of that action – or you could pay for bottled water. This CEO of Nestlé comes from a culture where water is Evian or Perrier. It's bottled, it costs money, so obviously his instinct is that water isn't a human right – because it would mean that the companies that sell good water would be forced to give it away for free. This is something that Americans take for granted and it was something, as a child of the Great Lakes, had no operating concept of when I went to France. In Europe, if you wanted to quench your thirst you had only a few options – wine or beer, bottled water, or your own urine. The last is unpalatable, but it is sterile and in a way, minimally potable. I think that the outrage over this video about water should be tempered by the light of cultural sensitivity. Poor Europeans have no operating knowledge of water so clean you can stick your head in Lake Superior and drink until you burst and you have absolutely nothing to fear about what comes next. No parasites, no bacteria, no cross-contaminated sewage-laden water supply to fear, just pure clean crystal clear water and a nearly inexhaustible supply of it to boot! So I for one write a pass for this poor swiss, or german, or whatever he is – ultimately European person and his weak understanding of just how vital and important water truly is. This is why we call it the New World here, we don't suffer from water scarcity or doubts about water quality, and it's free. It's something that I remind myself regularly when the political winds smell of shit here in the United States, yes, life can be difficult, challenging even, but. BUT. BUT WE HAVE FREE CLEAN WATER. How much is that worth? More than gold, more than money, more than anything. Humans can go without food for weeks and not die. We can't do that kind of survival when it comes to water, we need water too much, it's too dear. So temper your wild exhortations about leaving the New World, and think about water. For us, as Americans, the idea that water is a human right is so obvious as to be a complete surprise that not many consider it to be as we do. The Great Lakes are our blessing, worth more than any treasure on the planet. More than Gold, more than Copper, more than Platinum. Sweet cold perfectly clean water.

Genetically Modified Food

Another point this CEO of Nestlé makes is a very wrong-headed argument that Nature is somehow out of balance and not good for us. He states that quite clearly, that he considers “Organic” food to be inferior to his processed food. He even goes so far as to claim that GMO food has had no ill health effects here in America where we consume it with abandon. I call bullshit. GMO food may not kill us after we eat it, but processed food, food with GMO ingredients, things that aren't wild produce and certified non-GMO protein sources are in fact killing us. This crap food is killing us slowly. Very slowly. Imperceptibly slowly. Look at what happened in the United States over the past 15 years. We have become sick! We're ill! We are obese, we're riddled with cancer, diabetes, if you open any random cupboard I bet you'll find pill bottles with medications designed to address our maladies like cholesterol, acid reflux, or diabetes. These maladies may or may not have a causal link to GMO foods, but one thing I can say is that I believe that they are linked, they certainly aren't doing us any good! I've screamed at people that a good healthy long life can be had if you avoid processed “cheap” foods like the plague! Yes, McDonalds is cheap, but is it really? Like GMO foods (yes, I link McDonalds and GMO together, not directly, but in the way that neither are good for you) and the cost of that food is cheap to acquire but devastatingly expensive when you consider the long-term effects of eating that food. Cheap to buy, expensive to overcome obesity, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, high triglycerides… on and on and on. So, when the CEO of Nestlé claims that nature is not good and his GMO processed foods are, my response can be only this, Sir, you are so full of bullshit that you can't walk properly!

So what is to be done? Teach children to cook! For the love of all that is good, learn to make your own food! Use wholesome ingredients, avoid processed food-shit, and if you can't afford to stuff yourself full, at least get a little something to get by! If we were serious about bettering our health and our happiness we would outlaw these processed food-shit items outright. They are not good for us and as a country, they could bankrupt us! Sure, McDonalds is cheap to buy and fills you up, but years later when you are riddled with cancers, obese, diabetic, and hypertensive the cost to keep your sorry body alive will be immense! What's the best thing that public policy can do to better our health? Ban GMO foods, ban processed foods, ban “fast food”. Ban this food-shit outright. If you did that, Americans would weigh less, we'd have less cancer, we'd live longer, we'd be regular, we wouldn't need insulin, and I bet we wouldn't need the handful of pills a day once we get to a ripe old age of 60!

But there is so much we can't risk, and that's really at the center of everything. We can't risk Big Agro and Big Pharma. If we did what we know we should we would have to tell all the drug companies and all the fast food joints to divest themselves in America and go elsewhere for their business. That's the trap at the center of all of this, we know that's the right way for us to go but we know we can't ever do it because it would upset the status quo. Ultimately my arguments can't be expected to survive in this harsh light when it comes to public policy matters, but I can make an argument to individuals and perhaps my arguments can make an impact there. If it's processed by a company, it's food-shit. Do you really want to eat food-shit? How much of your day do you spend eating food-shit? Minimally processed foods, produce, proteins, dairy – the things our grandparents and their grandparents considered as food is where we came from and where we should go back to! Learn to cook your own food! Can't cook? That's a bullshit argument and you know it. People who can't cook their own food are lazy and stupid and deserve their dark fate. If you hand the responsibility for eating well to some company, I wish you all the luck in the world. That company cares for your health about as much as a sea sponge does. Only those people who learn to cook care about their lives, the rest are just throwing it all away. Essentially if you eat this food-shit, and you are what you eat, then you are not made of anything good, you're made of shit.

So, what is best? Ignore this Eurotrash CEO and the wrong bullshit that he spouts. Take responsibility for your health and wellbeing. Take responsibility for your food! For the love of God, LEARN TO COOK.

Voting

1 Reply

Guns, guns, gunsWatching gun nuts trying to use logic, even their own warped logic and watching their points being used against them is both highly entertaining and deeply upsetting. I saw the clip on the Daily Show where John Oliver talks to that gun nut and demonstrates this very point. The way he looked, the way he dismissed everything single-mindedly reminds me of my gun-loving family members. Nothing matters so much as keeping the Second Amendment from being violated. I don’t think they have basic human empathy and I think it works much like how conservatives change their minds when their children come out as gay, when it comes to gay marriage. Perhaps, and I don’t actively wish this on anyone, but there is a part of me that wonders if these gun nuts would be so intensely resistant to gun control if someone they loved died in a massacre where a background check would have revealed that a mentally ill shooter bought one gun online and the other at a gun show. Their dead child would still be alive if they had learned to compromise on at least background checks. Alas, it’s too late for their dead imaginary child.

Unless of course those people happen to be any of the thousands who have lost loved ones to gun violence and gun massacres.

The shame comes when a change of heart that comes after such an imaginary event that might come to pass comes too late for everyone else. That’s why America is upset with the Senate. That’s why our government has let us down. We don’t have the time for them to lose their loved ones for them to wake up in time to keep our loved ones from dying. The people are suffering, and Congress would rather ignore the will of the people. That’s a clear case of a government that has ceased representing the people and are, to borrow a word from the gun nuts, a tyranny.

photo by: paljoakim

IP Filter Plugin – Blacklist Page

Leave a reply

Barricade SignsI came across two great plugins – WP-Blacklister and IP Filter for WordPress. The first lists all the IP addresses for all the spam comments that a blog gets. The spam is identified by Akismet, I grab the IP addresses and then put them into TextWrangler. I sort the lines, find the really obnoxious networks, the ones with the same three octets over and over again, so something like 5.5.5.1 and 5.5.5.2, and 5.5.5.3, these, depending on how they resolve in an IP lookup get a block, either 5.5.5.* or 5.5.*.* or 5.*.*.*. From the left to the right there you block off more and more of the network. The more *’s in the block, the more stations are simply thrown off.

And then there is IP Filter plugin, I assemble a list of naughty IP’s and then fill in the details for this plugin. If an incoming IP address matches any of my blocks, they get no content and a short blurb stating that their network was either a source of spam, malware, or otherwise is unwanted traffic. I applied this list to all my blogs and I had spam comment rates which were about 30 per hour go to zero.

I will be creating a new page on my blog that lists these bad networks and IP addresses. Feel free to get this plugin and enter these blocks for yourself if you wish. I’ll be updating it as I find more spam or Limit Logon Attempt Plugin lockouts.

There is a wee part of me that is toying around with blocking the 141.218 subnet. We’ll see. :)

photo by: The Tire Zoo

Louisiana, USA: GOP Rep Wants to Legalize Employment Discrimination Against Gays

Leave a reply

Louisiana, USA: GOP Rep Wants to Legalize Employment Discrimination Against Gays.

I’ve been to Louisiana. What value does it have? There is some economic concern there, as the Mississippi River empties there, it’s where a lot of gasoline is refined and shipped across the country. I doubt that would attract many people to that state, let alone gay people. What else does Louisiana have?

  • Deep South – Conservative Christian charm right up to their collective necks. What a delight!
  • Fire Ants – Their bites tickle.
  • Killer Bees – Their stings are simply nuzzles of love, with venom.
  • Hurricanes, oppressively hot weather, intense rain – Oh lordy! Hold me back! I gotta get me some of that action!
  • Delightful Inequality – I’m not really a person in that state, so hey, what does anything matter to a nobody like me?
  • Overwhelming Obesity in local population – Loving men is easier when they can’t leave the house because they can’t fit through the doorways. Need flour and a while to find wet spots.

All in all, I can see why everyone is beating a path to Louisiana to bask in their delightful wonderfulness.

Revelations

1 Reply

I’ve attended a few church services in my days, I go mostly at others requests or because it’s important to go to be kind to others – like funerals and such. Every time I go, it always appears to be a catholic service that I end up attending. As a pagan in a candy-flavored protestant shell the catholic services are hilarious. Mostly I equate catholics with aerobics. Get up, sit down, back up, back down, now kneel! kneel! kneel! Back up! Back down! Quick quick! It’s good for my joints.

I do pay attention to the sermons and to a lot of the crufty stuffings that surround these rituals. The church has a kind of fantastic structure – it’s like ossification. What at one point was very flexible has over time accumulated the calcium of dogma and habit and hardened into an almost mindless progression. It’s structured so durably to argue that if you go frequently, you probably have a church-going reflex established in your nervous system. You hear a certain turn of phrasing and bam, you’re standing upright. That sort of thing.

The sermons however still give a hint of that old flexibility. But even still, much of the sermons I hear orbit the same dull white dwarf star. They seem stuck, constantly beating on a dead horse – the dead horse of sin. It’s something that’s remarkable and fills me with uncomfortable awkward feelings. It’s a preoccupation that has been hashed so much that it’s way beyond cliché. What if the sermon wasn’t about sin but about everything else. Everything but being evil and bad and worthy of only gods punishment. How about a sermon on grace. On tolerance. On feeding a starving person because being a good person feels good. How about if we give satan, hell, sin, and judgement a vacation?

I’ve noticed this and it concerns me, but I keep my mouth shut because the last thing anyone wants when soaking in their dogma is some chatterbox asking awkward questions. There is a problem here though, and it touches on such bombastically goofy concepts like original sin. We are born corrupt and evil, sinful, right from the get-go. Infant sinners. How can anyone win? There is no win condition! There is just this dreadful plodding through life. There is no chance to lose anything because you’re doomed from the start. The catholics and the christians in general would now reflexively vomit up Jesus Christ as their big-red-mystery-button. He died to deliver us all from evil and sin and blah blah blah. I doubt the entire crucifixion story as a inaccurate batch of hokum. Yeah, he got nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be if we all just got along, but then he died – then they put him away and then he was resurrected and went off in a blaze of glory. That seems too convenient and tidy to me. It’s too neat, too tied up and packaged with the delightful brown-paper wrapper of hope. Dead as a doornail, laid out, prayed over by a handful of believers and then poof! Back to life!

Even medically that seems silly. What’s more accurate? How about if he was in shock from blood loss, maybe in a coma? To someone 2000 years ago, with the medical skills of a sea sponge someone who didn’t move and looked all pale and tragic was obviously dead. He popped back to life, it was his miracle. His last miracle in fact. So, worship this fellow who utterly failed to stay dead. Or, he recovered from shock, recovered from his coma, got up in the middle of the night, and wandered off. I bet he wandered off, claimed he was someone else, and led an entire full life and died of old age with someone he loved, and here’s something that really will freak out christians – he might just as well have had kids. Daddy Christ. Why not? What’s more plausible? That a man dies and then pops back to life and is God on Earth or rather recovers from shock and a coma, wakes up, wanders off, has more of his life story play out and dies of old age?

Now now, don’t upset the christians. They don’t like this sort of talk. What do they like? They like pain. They like doom. They like agony. Talk talk talk all about sin and death and doom and hate and God being disgusted with us and how we should be ashamed for our sentience. What a head trip. And yes, Adam eating the Apple from the Tree of Knowledge and being cast out of the Garden of Eden. If that isn’t a thinly veiled allegory for developing enough awareness to become sentient I don’t know what is. So what’s the point? Stay stupid. Stay asleep. Be ashamed of your sentience. Really, do your level best to bury the fact that you are a vital thinking knowing being and remain in your half-asleep permanent walking slumber. Eat, breed, worship, die. In the end, feel like a wretch for living your life and being told that you won’t ever be worthy – except that if you accept some stranger (yay for Jesus!) into your life, you’ve got that Golden Ticket to Willy Wonkas great chocolate factory in the sky. Talk about endless constant reinforcement. Your only hope is the fellow selling hope by the seashore, he’s Jesus, and he’s everywhere. Except you know, when you are living your life, you act like a beast because that’s what is expected of you. Be mean, brutish, hateful and spiteful. You might as well since you’re a sinner. If there is no talk about being good, no talk about maybe being honestly worthy of God’s love, no freedom from the endless oppression of original sin which is dumped on you at Chruch every Sunday, and the really warped part? You feel guilty for not going! What a knotted pair of knickers this is. You go to be reminded just how awful you truly are, and if you don’t go, you feel guilty for not going – to hear what an awful person you were born as!

Imagine what Church could be like without all this heavy baggage. No hocus pocus, no fairy tales, just a weekly reminder that we are born good, born pure, born innocent. That we should celebrate our sentience and that we should champion enlightenment and seek ascension. That we have an innate ability to transcend wretchedness and awfulness – we can be good people, we can be good to each other, we. can. be. good.

Then before you know it, if you aren’t paying too close attention to how things are unfolding you look up and see that you’ve become a buddhist, or even worse, a jain.

I think the world could use less christianity, less Jesus, less of this oppressive spiritual baggage and more of what comes naturally from within each of us. We don’t have to be awful.

We can be good.

Nook HD: Built for Sluggish Annoyance

Leave a reply

47:366(Y2) - HungeringI really would like Apple to come out with a iPad Mini with Retina display. I’m quite tired of this Nook HD. It’s not very user-friendly and definitely not me-friendly. I don’t want to take a hammer to the device but when I use it, I sort of do.

So I was online to a site that lets you browse various fan-written fiction stories and they have a feature where you can download epub files, so I did so and saved it to my Dropbox. Then I went into Dropbox app on my Nook HD and went to go look for it. The Wifi on the Nook HD is a flaky pile of junk so that took way longer than it should have. Once I found the file I wanted I downloaded it to my Nook because the only other way to get it in there is to pop the MicroSD card, root around for a universal adapter and then put it in that way. That’s annoying, I’d much rather just be able to tap and download, like I would with an iPad Mini.

I downloaded it from my Dropbox and it ended up somewhere in my Nook’s own storage, which I hate to use, I much prefer my MicroSD plugged into the Nook instead, but there is no way to tell it where you want it to store the files. So I had to find another app called OpenExplorer which has an awful interface but lets you move files around the Nook.

Then the Nook library was confused about where I put that file. Every time I went to go look for it and tap on what it found, I’d be sent to the Wifi activation screen, where I would turn it on (why?) and then nothing. Nothing more than that. When I went back to the search and tapped on my file, it told me “File is not present.” and that was that.

I’ve never been happy with the Nook HD user interface. I bought it because it was cheap and supported Barnes & Nobles but really I think I would have been better off getting an iPad Mini. I regret this Nook HD. It could be so much better if only the B&N User Interface wasn’t so fascist. That’s what it really is. B&N doesn’t trust anyone with anything so they make it impossible to use beyond the B&N Book Experience. I don’t want all my ebooks at B&N, I’ve got thousands of ePub files all on my own – could I upload them and locker them at B&N? Of course not. That’s what the MicroSD card is for. So what value does the B&N store have for me? Little.

So is there any way I could get ePubs from Project Guternberg? Nope. I have to find some other way to get them, like on my iPad and then use Dropbox and OpenExplorer to… it’s way too much work. I’m tired even thinking about it.

So, if and when Apple decides to sell a iPad Mini Retina I’ll put all my Nook stuff on eBay and save up for the iPad Mini Retina. At least iOS respects me and I don’t feel like a criminal trying to cajole Android to give an inch.

I still don’t know why people think Android is any good. Wretched system.

photo by: Nomadic Lass

Connecticut Gun Control Bill

Leave a reply

213. Only slow kids need play here.

I noticed in the endless stream of AP news items that Connecticut has passed a wide-ranging gun control bill that places important controls on gun ownership. I was looking for links to news stories and I refuse to link to Fox News, any New York City toilet rag, or the New York Times only because their links aren’t durable and so there is no point to link to them in a blog, historically the links just bellyflop years later. CNN articles from 2006? Good luck with that. So, Connecticut has new gun safety laws. This makes Connecticut more attractive option to migration for me. The law makes the state safer than the other states, and that opens up a new line of pressure for the states to decide on their gun laws. It’ll be less about personal liberties and the overworked 2nd Amendment and more about population dynamics and taxpayers. If all your taxpayers decide to move to a state where their children won’t be shot randomly, then they will be paying taxes to that state and not the more dangerous ones. These bills could become new tools for state tourism authorities to promote their states when it comes to safety. “Come and visit Connecticut, we are safer.” If it becomes an actual population pressure, then I bet more states will start adopting gun control laws in order to retain their populations. The only thing that a state really fears is negative migration. Perhaps it’s time to stop talking about guns, ammunition and magazines and start talking about public safety issues. It’s subterfuge of course, but really it’s not. It’s got more to do with living children than dead ones.

The image of a dead toddler is the one thing that the NRA cannot blot out. That image sears itself into anyone who looks on it. All your arguments mean nothing when launched over a 3 foot long coffin! It’s a wretched commentary on American life that it takes dead children to force adults to cut the shit and take things like guns seriously.

These aren’t fun little toys, they are tools of death.

Facebook War: Blue Crosses Fight Red Equal Signs

1 Reply

Facebook War: Blue Crosses Fight Red Equal Signs

3D Cross. Image shot 2013. Exact date unknown.red-equal-symbol

I discovered this today and it’s hilarious. Apparently people think that a blue cross can serve as a competent opposite of the red HRC equals sign for Facebook profile pictures. All in all I don’t care about the social implications of either image, not really, as people count in the secret-ballot voting booth and online it’s merely anecdotal.

What is compelling about this is what the two symbols are being cast as. The HRC has always featured the equals sign as their symbol. Equality. It’s bigger than just the gay/straight thing, it encompasses everything – or at least it should. Everyone is equal, that’s something that is a fundamental part of all of this since the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Hell, even the French put it as part of their rallying cries - Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Many times in America our leaders have written about how we are all equal, from Abraham Lincoln to Lyndon Johnson. Really what it comes down to is tolerance, understanding, acceptance all wound up with the idea of equality. Equal before the law, which is what should have been the case all along, but isn’t.

So if the red and pink equals symbol stands for that, then the blue cross stands for its opposite. So that is to say, that the blue cross stands for inequality. So, we could arguably say that the blue cross stands for inequality. That some of us are better, more deserving of benefits than others are and that it’s right and good. The cross is wedged up in there too, so this symbol play has the Church in play as well. We are invited to start expanding the symbols meaning from the probably lighthearted irritation that gave it birth. Through symbols we could establish that for the people who use the blue cross, that they are religious bigots bent on intolerance, hate, and fostering a corrupt system built on pervasive inequality. I mean, if you are going to hang your symbol out there, someone, a lot like me maybe, will come along and start adding extra ornamentation to your symbol. Before you know it you’ve equated religion with hate and, well, logically that would end up as “Fuck Religion ” Would it not?

Well, not that being religious makes any one of us a bad person, it just clouds our thinking and encourages us to be hateful intolerant and unequal. Religion has always been super-compelling for me. It gives otherwise normal people excuses to do horrible things to their fellow man and it’s clothed in a candy-sweet message. It’s the best whammy that humanity has ever played on itself. Instead of encouraging rational thought and discourse we allow a circularly defended book of fairy tales to overwhelm the entire narrative. It doesn’t matter what anyone says, their words are just noises. The response is utterly unbeatable. “The Bible tells me so and that book is correct because it is correct.” So, there you go. No chance at an actual dialogue, and I think that’s what all this is getting around to. There is no dialogue possible with those who are besotted with religion. A book is doing all the thinking. I think that people have been told that the Bible is authoritative for everything for so long that for some the ability to form rational thoughts or engage in critical reasoning is irrevocably lost.

So what is the answer? If a dialogue is impossible then it’s just two monologues and that’s fine. Where those two monologues collide will be a bright spot of conflict. I don’t think we’ll ever be done with conflict, not really. I think it’s a part of being human. Hilarious that we get around to 1984, again. War is Peace. I laugh heartily.

Something else occurs to me now as well, that Christians who supposedly follow the New Testament are the ones so bent out of shape about homosexuality when their book has nothing at all to say about it whatsoever. Christians messiah, Jesus Christ never said word one about homosexuals. The Christians instead are reading from the Jews book, the Torah. Shouldn’t it be that the Jews are the ones that throw the anti-gay fits? I mean, it’s their book after all! Alas, no, Christians see a chance and take it even if it’s irrational. For people who every Sunday carry on about loving and forgiving and all that tripe, when it comes right down to it, even their Pope doesn’t even walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk! It’s fine. Fine mostly because it’s hilariously bad and if you can’t laugh at the absurdity then what do you have? Just hopelessness and tears. It’s gotta be hilarious, it’s gotta be a laugh: A group that has no reason to hate another does because their book is smushed up against another one where the issues are in-context there, to have nothing at all to do with regular people at all but really the jewish priestly class. Yeah, that’s right. Christians have not a single leg to stand on,  and really neither do the Jews. Even if the Jews did decide to throw a fit, the historical landmark of the Holocaust is right there waving back at us all from history. Who was right next to the Jews in the Holocaust? Gee, I wonder. So no, we won’t be hearing anything from the Jews on homosexuality.

So what’s the practical take-away from all this insanity? It’s best to insulate yourself against dogma as best you can. If you are already lost to religious fervor, well, you won’t be reading this blog for sure, so for the rest there is only patience and defending oneself against the tyranny of Christianity.

Jesus Christ! Save me from your followers! Please!