A really interesting story about how Facebook has reached into places where you would least expect it.
(I sometimes feel like I need to add this to any story I post that I find on MetaFilter but seriously, the MetaFilter comments make the original story 1000x better!)
I’m dressed as “guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing!” 😉
(I was also going to make a joke about my coveralls being the most orange I saw in Weyburn this weekend but that’s a bit off-side. I’m sure the NDP have a candidate down here…somewhere!)
Evolution even has an explanation for why your old man dances the way he does!
(h/t to SM on Twitter)
Depending on where you live (and where you get your news), the Occupy Wall Street movement, may or may not be on your radar. These protests, which started in New York but have since spread to other cities around the world, are “mainly protesting against social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government, among other concerns.”
One main slogan coming out of these protests is “We are the 99%” which is a reference to the fact that the vast majority of people today are being screwed by the multi-millionaires and billionaires who make up the top 1% of income earners in our society.
Worried about the possible impact of this growing protest movement, right-wing mouthpieces, some of whom are part of the 1% and some of whom just think they are, have responded that the protests are “muddled”, “nutbars” and worse.
Right wing operatives have even set-up a counter site called “We are the 53%” which is a reference to the fact that only 53% of Americans apparently pay federal income tax (conveniently ignoring that a) many still pay a variety of payroll and other taxes and b) that still doesn’t explain why Warren Buffet pays a smaller percentage of his income in federal income tax than his secretary!)
The irony is that many of the contributors to “We are the 53%” don’t seem to get that they are still part of the 99% and working 2 jobs or for 80 hours a week, all with no health insurance, doesn’t mean you’ve achieved the American Dream!
In fact, the most important message that the Occupy Wall Street folks need to take forward is that, for all intents and purposes, we are all part of the 99%, no matter our politics or personal financial situation and when we battle each other in terms of right vs. left or hard-working vs. unemployed or old vs. young or whatever, we are falling into the trap of exactly what those 1% want us to do. (Er, Mr. Buffet excepted of course! 😉 )
An article on how Amazon’s use of their Kindles as loss-leaders for the digital content within their own “walled garden” ecosphere is a winning strategy that makes them a strong contender against Apple.
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the site, Reddit. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s currently my favourite site on the Internet.
One of the reasons I like the site so much (and one of the site’s greatest advantages) is the fact that it literally has an unlimited number of “sub-Reddits”. These are sub-communities that anyone can start on any topic from atheism to Saskatchewan to the TV show Breaking Bad (just to name three I check regularly.) That doesn’t even do justice to the full scope of Reddit’s sub-sites – if there’s a topic you’re interested in, I bet there’s a related sub-reddit.
I even created my own sub-Reddit the other week just to see what the moderator interface was like. (I made a sub-Reddit called “LibraryLandProblems“, modeled on Reddit’s very popular “FirstWorldProblems” sub-reddit.)
As enjoyable and popular as Reddit is, one of the disadvantages challenges of a system which allows anyone to create a sub-Reddit on any topic is that inevitably there will be some sub-Reddits with subject matter which is disturbing or troubling for all manner of reasons.
Recently, Reddit hit the news on CNN’s “360 with Anderson Cooper” program for one of these particularly challenging sub-Reddits – one called /r/jailbait (link safe to click). This was a sub-Reddit that contained pictures of teenage women, likely between the ages of 15-18, who were scantily clad although not naked or engaged in any sexual activity. Instead, it was bikini shots, pictures of teen girls in their underwear and the like.
Now, there are numerous sub-Reddits that feature NSFW (not safe for work) images including one called (quite obviously) /r/nsfw. Another called /r/gonewild features nude photos submitted by Reddit members which can occasionally move beyond titillation to be quite empowering.
Most of the NSFW sub-Reddits are labeled as such due to nudity but there are also others which also have other types of provocative content – on subjects from right-wing extremism to illegal substances to blatant racism and worse.
Originally, after the Anderson Cooper piece aired, the Reddit administrators came out with a strong pro-free speech argument:
Reddit.com general manager Eric Martin responded in a written statement: “We’re a free speech site and the cost of that is there’s stuff that’s offensive on there. Once we start taking down some things we find offensive, then we’re no longer a free speech site and no longer a platform for everyone.”
But even as debate raged back and forth across the wider Reddit community on how to proceed, /r/jailbait was shut down a few days ago (sparking new debates). This coincided with a new post to the official Reddit blog on “How Reddit works“.  (This also wasn’t the first time /r/jailbait caught the attention of the wider Reddit community. The knowledge that a Google search for “Reddit” brought up /r/jailbait as one of the site’s main sub-pages caused considerable embarrassment for many.)
The shutdown provoked an outraged response from user, ViolentAcrez, who had created and moderated /r/jailbait as well as another infamous sub-reddit, /r/PicsOfDeadKids. In his response, ViolentAcrez said that jailbait-esque content was scattered throughout various sub-Reddits and the site administrators were just caving to media pressure.
There are all sorts of inter-connected ideas around this issue:
Ultimately, if you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you’ll probably know which side of the fence I come down on whenever a topic like this arises no matter how hard it is to defend the much more offensive side of the ledger. That’s why I find Reddit’s decision to remove the sub-reddit, whether I agree with it or not (I don’t) so disappointing.
Love those A/V Club covers…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqw_XxkTRLk
…although in this case, Peter Bjorn and John don’t hold a candle to the original…
…or even to my own personal favourite version, originally featured in one of the greatest music movies of all-time and now in a clip from The Commitments’ live tour:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNfHURlAff0
My mom’s taking a genealogy class so we spent quite a bit of time this weekend looking through her class notes, different web sites and reviewing the information she’d already gathered about her family.
I’d taken a genealogy class in library school and had done quite a bit of research as well but mostly on my dad’s side. Â I’d even entered it in some program I’d bought but when my PC died, I somehow managed to lose the original database file (no big loss – most of the info was stuff I had elsewhere – more just a pain in the butt to re-enter it all.)
So we spent time this weekend re-building the stuff I had before on my dad’s side of the family and entering the stuff my mom had entered on her side of the family into an online genealogy site called MyHeritage which allows you to enter up to 250 individual records for free before you have to start paying for the service.
If you’re not logged in, I think you can only see the deceased people in our family tree – not sure what happens if you’re logged in but not as an administrator – I suspect you can see a bit more but not everything.
There are a couple advantages to doing your genealogy online in a cloud-based site like this – besides being able to log-in and work on this from anywhere, I can invite others (eg. my mom or other relatives) to become administrators and help with building the history. Â Also, the site has a feature to try to find where people you enter are also part of someone else’s family tree – perhaps your great-great-grandpa is also part of someone else’s family tree and that can open up all sorts of connections and possibilites.
No luck with that feature yet but as we go back further in our timeline, hopefully we’ll find some of those wider connections.
And in terms of Thanksgiving, you really come to appreciate your own life of relative luxury when you contemplate the life that some of your ancestors had – working seven days a week on a farm, no access to schooling, etc.
Premier Wall will be officially dropping the writ for Saskatchewan’s next provincial election this weekend but due to legislation his party brought in, we already know the date.
Many bemoan the coverage of politics that treats it more like sports than something with real-world purpose and implications. Â The good folks at Slate magazine have gone one step further, creating a very cool web page that shows the current Republican nomination battle as an actual horse race!
They should open source this code and let other political races use it – having the “news ticker” at the bottom really does help you understand the ebb & flow of campaigns.
