All Your Links Are Belong To Us
Dec. 11th, 2009 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
agentotterI will warn you, this blog post will enrage you. I mean, you won't be enraged at the blogger, you'll be enraged at the people she's enraged at. I hadn't even heard about this story previously, but to sum up: a 13-year-old girl suffered horrible bullying, discipline from her school, censure and punishment from her parents, and eventually killed herself. Her crime? She "sexted" a topless photo to a boy she liked. Naturally, kids and their "sexting" are at fault, not the legion of people who shamed, ostracized and punished this child for having boobs.
Here's something fucking awesome: Researchers at UCLA have created a genetically modified bacteria that turns CO2 into fuel. This kind of stuff is absolutely fascinating to me... this and the algae-powered fuels seem really promising. I have to admit to being a total cynic, though... I know that many of these technologies just don't work out for real-world applications, but for those that do (or would, if they were continued), I just can't imagine the US really making wide-spread use of them. It's too easy for big oil to kill anything they don't like. Possibly I've seen Who Killed the Electric Car? too many times and it's made me weep like a little girl, but whatever.
For those among us who have still chained themselves to the demon of bottled water (REPENT! REPENT!), here's a nice infographic about how fucked that is. Though I knew most of this already, what I found most striking were the stats about the production of the bottles... 17 million barrels of oil annually, plus it takes three times as much water as you're going to put into the bottle to actually make the bottle. Jesus Christ.
On a more cheerful note, I've probably linked to this before, but in case I haven't, you should have a look at the Hobbit House. It makes me happy just looking at it. I want to build one of my very own one day.
Here's Noam Chomsky on labor, and why dismissing the right is the wrong move:
I love that man and his tasty, tasty brains.
Less tasty is Democracy Now! I know this is a kind of petty beef, but they've been on the air for a long time now. Amy Goodman's been reporting since the 1980s. So how is it that they still can't put a single show together without editing glitches, anchors talking over sound bytes, sound bytes running too long, anchors flubbing their lines, and a host of other problems? I mean, I'm not talking the occasional hilarious-typo-in-the-newspaper sort of thing. They can't get through five minutes of air time without fucking something up. And don't even get me started on how Amy Goodman was incapable of talking about the killing of Doctor Tiller without calling him Doctor Killer. I don't really feel like I'm asking for much... just a radio broadcast that doesn't sound like it's been put together by the high school A/V club.
That is all.
Here's something fucking awesome: Researchers at UCLA have created a genetically modified bacteria that turns CO2 into fuel. This kind of stuff is absolutely fascinating to me... this and the algae-powered fuels seem really promising. I have to admit to being a total cynic, though... I know that many of these technologies just don't work out for real-world applications, but for those that do (or would, if they were continued), I just can't imagine the US really making wide-spread use of them. It's too easy for big oil to kill anything they don't like. Possibly I've seen Who Killed the Electric Car? too many times and it's made me weep like a little girl, but whatever.
For those among us who have still chained themselves to the demon of bottled water (REPENT! REPENT!), here's a nice infographic about how fucked that is. Though I knew most of this already, what I found most striking were the stats about the production of the bottles... 17 million barrels of oil annually, plus it takes three times as much water as you're going to put into the bottle to actually make the bottle. Jesus Christ.
On a more cheerful note, I've probably linked to this before, but in case I haven't, you should have a look at the Hobbit House. It makes me happy just looking at it. I want to build one of my very own one day.
Here's Noam Chomsky on labor, and why dismissing the right is the wrong move:
So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It's very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that's not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it's kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I've never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, "I've done everything right all my life, I'm a god-fearing Christian, I'm white, I'm male, I've worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I'm supposed to do. And I'm getting shafted." And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there's nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered - it's the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don't care about you—they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.
Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren't we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh.
I love that man and his tasty, tasty brains.
Less tasty is Democracy Now! I know this is a kind of petty beef, but they've been on the air for a long time now. Amy Goodman's been reporting since the 1980s. So how is it that they still can't put a single show together without editing glitches, anchors talking over sound bytes, sound bytes running too long, anchors flubbing their lines, and a host of other problems? I mean, I'm not talking the occasional hilarious-typo-in-the-newspaper sort of thing. They can't get through five minutes of air time without fucking something up. And don't even get me started on how Amy Goodman was incapable of talking about the killing of Doctor Tiller without calling him Doctor Killer. I don't really feel like I'm asking for much... just a radio broadcast that doesn't sound like it's been put together by the high school A/V club.
That is all.