http://penny-arcade.com/2013/05/23/new-gabeart

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dorktower/comic/~3/tXbvdxyrRiM/

http://dorktower.kovalic.com/?p=8354

theferrett

There were spiders dropping down from the ceiling and into my wife’s cleavage.  The wall behind her was a huge, stretched expanse of hairy green flesh, breathing slowly in and out.  Phantom janitors stole in and out at the edges of my vision, sweeping in places they could not possibly stand and then vanishing when I tried to talk to them.

And my response was, “Oh.  That’s interesting, what my brain is doing.”

These ridiculous hallucinations happened during my extremely traumatic 52-hour post-surgery recovery phase, when I was in tremendous pain and could not sleep.  And yet, I think about the only other time I hallucinated, having dropped acid on a very hot summer’s night… and I found it disappointing.  Yes, my vision was flexing and distorting, and I witnessed all sorts of curious artifacts as my brain’s visual processing center went into overload – but I quietly dissected each illusion, breaking it down into its interesting components, and in such a way I reduced what could have been a wild trip down into a series of interesting quirks.

I don’t really hallucinate, I don’t think.  I know what my brain is up to.  And today, I realized why:

It’s because I’m a depressive.  I don’t trust my brain.

My brain has been a chronic liar for years, telling me how everyone hates me (when they don’t), how I’ve never accomplished anything of any note (I have), and how the world would be better off if I just killed myself (unproven, but I use the other two false conclusions to keep that one in the “bad idea” zone).  I live a very strict life of having to double-check every input my brain gives me, for it routinely distorts a mundane “Oh!” into an encoded “You suck, Steinmetz, everything you ever liked was a fraud.”  If I don’t, well, I ruin my life.

So when my brain starts providing false visual information, I do the same thing: I question it.  I compare it to reality.  And if it doesn’t make sense, I ignore it.

This makes me a little sad.  I mean, it did protect me from a full-fledged freakout when I was in the hospital… but it means that while others experience an exultant joy with acid and peyote and other crazy drugs, seeing the face of God, I’ll never be able to flow with that illusion.  They can trust what their brains give them, accepting most inputs safely and without harm, and so when some external source causes the brain to deliver crazy input, they can just run amuck with it like a kid whirling on a playground.

I’m off to the side.  Analyzing.  Breaking it down.  Questioning relentlessly.  Because that’s my survival.  That’s what I do.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sluggy_freelance/~3/pyAHLnaDoB8/COMIC130523

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http://www.omlettesoft.com/newjournal.php3?who=Lord+Omlette&id=1369271502

For the last two months, Chris Hadfield has been the first and only Canadian to ever command a spaceship. He took command of International Space Station Expedition 35 on March 13, 2013, after having been a part of Expedition 34 since launching from Kazakhstan on December 19, 2012. Hadfield and two of his astronaut companions, Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko, will be leaving the International Space Station on Monday and are scheduled to land in Kazakhstan at 10:31pm EDT.

Hadfield himself is a veteran astronaut. In 1995, he was part of a space shuttle expedition to dock with the Russian Mir, and was the first Canadian to enter the Russian space station. While there, he was also the first to operate Canadarm, a robotic arm built by Canada for use on Space Shuttle missions. In 2001, he was part of the space shuttle crew that installed Canadarm2, another robotic arm, onto the International Space Station. His last week as station commander also had a moment of tension when a leak in the station's ammonia coolant system required a hurried spacewalk to replace a faulty pump. However, at this point it appears unlikely that Mr. Hadfield will fly again. At least, as a member of the Canadian Space Agency. Budget cuts by the Canadian government have forced the space agency to cut back its manned program, meaning that no Canadian astronauts are likely to spend anytime in space soon. I'm willing to bet that it was with the knowledge that his current space mission is likely his last that led Hadfield to produce this poignant cover version of David Bowie's Space Oddity. He recorded the vocals and guitar while on board the International Space Station. Piano and other musical accompaniment were provided by folks down on Earth.

Alex Knapp

Thomas Jefferson had been trying to send explorers to the American West for years. Back in 1785, when he was the Ambassador to France, Jefferson met a man named Ledyard who had been born in Connecticut, wandered all over the East Coast, sailed with Captain Cook in the South Pacific, and ended up in Paris. Jefferson wanted to send Ledyard to explore out West, and they worked out an intricate plan for him to get to the West Coast via Russia. But the trip was a disaster -- Ledyard walked 1,200 miles through Scandinavia and the Artic Circle, and managed to travel through most of Russia before an angry Catherine the Great had him captured and deported, so he took off for Africa, where he soon died. A few years later, in 1793, Jefferson was secretary of state, and he decided to try again. He organized an expedition under the charge of a French botanist and explorer named André Michaux, who wanted to travel from the Missouri River all the way to the Pacific. Eighteen-year-old Meriwether Lewis asked Thomas Jefferson to let him join Michaux's expedition, but Jefferson said no. Unfortunately, the new French Minister to America, Edmond-Charles Genet, was scheming to increase hostilities between America and Spain, and Michaux ended up involved in the plot, and the expedition fell apart.

The third time around, Jefferson planned even more carefully. He had now known Meriwether Lewis for years, and Lewis was his trusted private secretary, so Jefferson suggested that Lewis lead the trip. In January of 1803, Jefferson sent a secret letter to Congress to ask if they would fund an expedition -- at a cost of $2,500. They agreed, and Jefferson sent Lewis to learn the skills he would need from the best teachers -- he studied surveying and mapmaking, botany, mathematics, anatomy, fossils, and medicine, each with an esteemed scholar. For his co-leader, Lewis chose William Clark, his former commanding officer in the army.

Garrison Keillor

On the weekend before Sandy thundered into New Jersey, transit officials studied a map showing bright green and orange blocks. On the map, the area where most New Jersey Transit trains were being stored showed up as orange - or dry. So keeping the trains in its centrally-located Meadows Maintenance Complex and the nearby Hoboken yards seemed prudent. And it might have been a good plan. Except the numbers New Jersey Transit used to create the map were wrong. If officials had entered the right numbers, they would have predicted what actually happened: a storm surge that engulfed hundreds of rail cars, some of them brand new, costing over $120 million in damage and thrusting the system's passengers into months of frustrating delays.

But the fate of NJ Transit's trains - over a quarter of the agency's fleet - didn't just hang on one set of wrong inputs. It followed years of missed warnings, failures to plan, and lack of coordination under Governor Chris Christie, who has expressed ambivalence about preparing for climate change while repeatedly warning New Jerseyans not to underestimate the dangers of severe storms. …

Weinstein has declined requests for interviews. WNYC emailed NJ Transit a list of 14 questions, including a request for any assessments by the agency of its mistakes and what plans NJ Transit had for avoiding similar losses in the future.

"Recent events including the uncovering of an Al Qaeda-led terrorist plot targeting rail service reinforces why NJ TRANSIT will not disclose sensitive information that could potentially undermine the security of our transit infrastructure, our customers or our employees," replied John Durso Jr., the spokesman for NJ Transit. "NJ Transit's focus is the safe, comfortable and efficient transport of the nearly 900,000 customers between three states every single day. That is our priority and our focus - and it will not change."

Six months after Sandy, NJ Transit's actions leading up to the storm remain unclear. The agency has contracted with the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service to conduct an after-action review of its performance, but has not said when - and if - the results will be made public. No one at NJ Transit would provide an explanation for why the weather data was input incorrectly.

Kate Hinds / Andrea Bernstein

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy just called the election for challenger Steven Fulop. … When he called the race the screen in the front of the room read, "Fulop 52.1 percent of the vote (14,675 votes), while Healy tallied 38.6 percent (10,860 votes.) After he conceded, Healy walked outside and hugged supporters and apologized for not having won.

Michaelangelo Conte

The Pentagon is ordering furloughs of 680,000 civilian workers in an effort to save $1.8 billion of the $37 billion in spending cuts it must make this year. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced yesterday that most of the Defense Department's civilian employees will face 11 days of unpaid leave, one day a week starting on July 8 and continuing through September.

The Defense Department "did everything we could" to avert furloughs, Hagel told workers at a Pentagon facility in Alexandria, Virginia. That includes "sharp cuts in the training and maintenance of our operating forces -- cutbacks that are seriously harming military readiness," Hagel said in a 10-page memo released as he spoke. While Hagel said he will try to reduce the number of unpaid days later in the year, he made no promises and said more furloughs may be required next year if the budget cuts, called sequestration, continue.

Tony Capaccio & Gopal Ratnam

Consider this: … The Pentagon has (at least) 650,000 civilian employees.

Atrios

1. The question was whether, when it came to the 501(c)4 groups, the only kind of political activity being rigorously screened was conservative political activity. Was tea party language the only red flag? Or did other kinds of politicized language set off alarm bells, too? If so, what was that language?
2. Was the Cincinnati office the only one that used the tea-party test or was it more widely applied?
3. Did the IRS higher-ups act appropriately
4. Do we think the tea party groups really are primarily non-political social welfare organizations and they should've received 501(c)4 designation more smoothly?
5. Do we want a personnel outcome, a political outcome, or a policy outcome? Is the right endgame simply that some IRS employees get fired? That the Obama administration gets embarrassed? Or is that Congress tightens the language governing who does and doesn't qualify for 501(c)4 status so that the IRS doesn't have so much discretion -- and career employees don't resort to these confused tactics -- when reviewing applications?

Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas

Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference on Tuesday that he had ordered an investigation into the IRS scandal, in which the agency has admitted to unfairly targeting conservative groups' applications for non-profit status. "The FBI is coordinating with the Justice Department to see if any laws were broken in connection with those matters related to the IRS," Holder said. "We are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations."

Eric Lach

New Orleans police and federal authorities were searching early Tuesday for a young man who is suspected of opening fire at a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans, wounding 19. Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas identified the suspect late Monday as Akein Scott, 19, of New Orleans. Referring to blurry surveillance camera images of the mass shooting, Serpas said police have "multiple identifications of Akein Scott as the shooter" seen in the film. Serpas said officers would be searching all night and into Tuesday for Scott, whom he called "no stranger to the criminal justice system." He urged the teen, who has previous arrests on firearms and drug charges, to give himself up. "We would like to remind the community and Akein Scott that the time has come for him to turn himself in," Serpas said at a news conference outside police headquarters.

Chevel Johnson

"If Tenafly doesn't want it, that's OK. We'll take it!"

That was New Jersey Assemblyman Gordon Johnson's reaction when the New Jersey Transit (NJT) Board of Directors voted to approve the study of a modified alternative to the Hudson Bergen Light Rail (HBLR) extension on May 8.

NJT will enter into a $3 million contract with Jacobs Engineering of Morristown to advance a plan to extend the HBLR line to Englewood Hospital instead of extending it to Tenafly. The new proposed route would travel from North Bergen to Ridgefield, Palisades Park, Leonia and then terminate at Englewood Hospital. …

Although an alternative has been selected, funding remains an obstacle for this project. Transportation funding in New Jersey is currently on life support, and future financing is uncertain.

Janna Chernetz

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/ftr/20130523

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/ftr/20130523#86615

http://sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4643

http://penny-arcade.com/2013/05/22/monaco-prints1

http://penny-arcade.com/2013/05/22/childs-play-tournament-results

http://penny-arcade.com/2013/05/22/ms-stuff

http://penny-arcade.com/2013/05/22/interloper

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/05/22

/report/article/microsoft-will-change-the-definition-of-used-and-new-games-and-i-doubt-youl

theferrett

Once again, we come to a rushed day where I cannot churn out a full blog entry.  And yet I feel like interacting!  And so I return to the gift that keeps on giving:

Ask me one question, on any topic. I shall answer truthfully.

(Please. No woodchuck questions. Someone always asks, and it’s never gotten a good response.)

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

http://www.progressiveruin.com/2013/05/22/accidentally-demolishing-a-250-spider-man-statue-is-no-way-to-start-off-your-workday/

http://www.progressiveruin.com/?p=10319

So basically, if someone out there is trying to complete your set of all 5,000 copies of the Marvel Milestones Spider-Man statue from Art Asylum, you’d better cross production number 1213 off the list, because alas, it’s shuffled off this mortal coil. And it didn’t jump…it was pushed. By me. With a bulky ol’ Diamond shipping box I was hauling into the store and, not seeing where I was going, I accidentally knocked the poor statue off the counter upon which it sat and sent it to its doom.

The only somewhat good part of this is the fact that we acquired the statue as part of a collection, and we actually didn’t have that much money into it. But let me tell you, I’d much rather have sold that statue than swept it up.

The worst part: I can’t yell at an employee about it. The only person to yell at is me, and I can’t yell at me, I’m too wonderful.

Anyway, here are a couple of comics that came out this week:

As for the comic itself…it’s a nice send-off to the Geoff Johns era of the franchise, so if you didn’t like any of the GL comics that came before, you’re certainly not going to like this one. I’ve generally enjoyed the GL run over the last few years, myself, and I thought the different colored Lantern Corps was a fun concept. It would be nice to have just a plain ‘ol “Hal versus Goldface” story now, but I don’t know if we can go home again after years of GL Cosmicness.

One interesting bit of business in this comic is an interspersing of full pages of pull-quotes from various comic creators, filmmakers, pals and family members, all congratulating Johns on his GL run. Don’t know if I’ve seen that ever done in a comic before, particularly for someone who’s still alive, but, well, there it is. Looking forward to DC doing the same thing for Grant Morrison when he leaves Batman.

They certainly crammed a whole lot of stuff into this issue, along with a couple of nice surprises, so if you are a fan of the GL books, this actually is a satisfying ending to the last few years’ worth of storylines. But here’s hoping things are a little more…accessible in the GL books that follow.

I do read the rest of the comic, too, though like most anthologies, not everything is going to be to everyone’s taste. The other ongoing adventure serials don’t really do anything for me, but the more oddball stuff, like Shannon Wheeler’s “Villain House” and “Hunter Quaid: Armageddon Out of Here,” are a lot of fun. I do wish there was more Geof Darrow in these books aside from the spot drawings, however.

This is kind of what I wanted when I clamored all these years for Swamp Thing’s release from Vertigo’s mighty grip…more “Swampy Versus The DC Universe.” I suppose I should have specified which DC Universe (“not one hastily rebooted with an indeterminate history, please!”) but beggars can’t be choosers. Justice League Dark has, to the surprise of most everyone, turned out to be the best of the new comics with the words “Justice League” in the title, even though most people hate that title while realizing this is probably the only reason it hasn’t been cancelled yet. Well, that, and the fact the series itself is very enjoyable, nicely utilizing DC’s supernatural characters in a more superheroic context.

Believe it or not, I haven’t read this yet, because I’m spending my free time writing this post about it instead. There’s something somewhat self-defeating about that.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sluggy_freelance/~3/HwFL5u3Sc9U/COMIC130522

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http://www.omlettesoft.com/newjournal.php3?who=Lord+Omlette&id=1369194889

In a stunning announcement, the National Research Council--the Canadian scientific research and development agency--has now said that they will only perform research that has "social or economic gain". This is not a joke. I wish it were.

John MacDougal, President of the NRC, literally said, "Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value". Gary Goodyear, the Canadian Minister of State for Science and Technology, also stated "There is [sic] only two reasons why we do science and technology. First is to create knowledge ... second is to use that knowledge for social and economic benefit. Unfortunately, all too often the knowledge gained is opportunity lost."

I had to read the article two or three times to make sure I wasn't missing something, because I was thinking that no one could possibly utter such colossally ignorant statements. But no, I was reading it correctly. These two men--leaders in the Canadian scientific research community--were saying, out loud and clearly, that the only science worth doing is what lines the pocket of business.

This is monumentally backwards thinking. That is not the reason we do science. Economic benefits are results of doing research, but should not be the reason we do it. Basic scientific research is a vast endeavor, and some of it will pay off economically, and some won't. In almost every case, you cannot know in advance which will do which.

Phil Plait

The Supreme Court on Monday for the first time backed patents for a self-replicating technology -- Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" soybeans -- along with its licensing agreement that allows farmers to use them only once. Regardless of how unnatural the conditions may seem, the licensing agreement with farmers also forbids the seeds to be resold for commercial planting, and they cannot be used for research, crop breeding or seed production. Welcome to farming in the age of patented, genetically modified organisms, which in this case concerned soybean crops that withstand herbicide. In the end, a unanimous Supreme Court found that intellectual property rights took precedent over nature. The high court ruled against an Indiana soybean farmer whom a lower court had ordered to pay $84,456 in damages and costs to Monsanto in 2009 for infringing its soy bean patents.

David Kravets

A former Bloomberg employee told CNBC that he accessed information on the terminals of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The employee didn't say specifically what he was looking at, but that it concerned usage of specific functions.

News of the scandal broke on Friday when it was revealed that Goldman Sachs had complained that employees usage of their terminals were spied on by Bloomberg reporters. Further reports indicated that the spying was more widespread, affecting other companies such as JPMorgan.

Bloomberg News confirmed a breach of ethics and privacy on Friday afternoon. To the financial industry's alarm, Bloomberg journalists have for years been monitoring the company's data terminals -- found in nearly every banking and trading company -- for user activity. They monitored what functions of the service subscribers were using, including corporate bond trades and equities indexes. The dustup came to light after a reporter pointed out to a Goldman Sachs partner that he had not logged into his Bloomberg terminal lately. Oops.

Bloomberg terminals are considered a staple of information in the financial world with over 300,000 customers.

Diane Sweet

I wonder what our friends on the right would make of the fact that, unlike the current case of extra scrutiny of Tea Party organizations for non-political tax-exempt status that resulted in zero actual investigations, when a liberal Episcopal church in Pasadena said some critical anti-war things about Dubya before the 2004 election, well that resulted in the church being targeted by the IRS in a two-year long probe that eventually resulted in the church being cleared but the IRS saying the church was guilty anyway.

Somehow, this failed to rise to the level of anyone giving a damn about impeachment at the time, nor did it raise the question by the administrations supporters about the tax-exempt status of organizations of all political stripes engaging in political business. Somehow we're supposed to ignore this, and the whole US Attorney scandal where political enemies of the Bush administration really were being targeted by the executive branch.

Instead we're supposed to believe that the Tea Party groups were being unfairly singled out as political groups dedicated to the end of the Democrats. Sure. …

Remember the outrage over IRS targeting of Emerge America, seeking nonprofit status to train women Dem candidates?

Remember the outrage over Bush-era IRS auditing of the NAACP?

Remember the outrage over Bush-era IRS audits of Greenpeace?

KagroX

But Obama did it, so Worse Than Space Hitler.

Zandar

Oh, and for the folks on both sides screaming that the IRS Commissioner responsible for this step down? He did. In November. Douglas Shulman was a Dubya appointee whose five-year term ended and he stepped down after the election. Congress has yet to confirm his replacement, Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller. Little chance of that now, so expect the IRS to not have a commissioner for pretty much the rest of the President's term.

Zandar

If this is an unfamiliar topic for you, I strongly recommend Ezra Klein's lucid piece at Wonkblog today on how (c)(4)'s, which do not have to disclose donors, have almost overnight become the preferred vehicle for electioneering activity (especially, though not exclusively, among conservatives), precisely the activity they are supposed to avoid to retain that status. I have a bit of a personal perspective here, having worked for the Democratic Leadership Council during a long period when it was under semi-constant attack by the IRS as an organization that was "too political" to retain (c)(4) status, mainly because of its name. The DLC never gave a dime to (or endorsed) a candidate for office; never ran a political ad; and devoted most of its resources to activities clearly within the law. The thinly disguised campaign PACs now flooding the (c)(4) ranks are routinely doing things that would have brought down the wrath of the IRS very publicly and emphatically not that long ago. Today, however, there are just too many of them, and too little guidance from Congress and the courts. So IRS field personnel (perhaps with guidance from the higher-ups, perhaps not), as they often do, got selective, and that's where the stupid "targeting" of conservative groups almost certainly began.

This needs to stop, instantly, and it's legitimate to question how the practice started and how extensive it became. But let's remember who the "victims" are here: not regular conservative folk who are suddenly going to see IRS auditors on their doorsteps, but political operatives trying to move large sums of money across a political chessboard to influence elections. If anything, as Ezra says, the "scandal" here is that the IRS didn't go after the really big targets …

So it would be nice if we could have a serious discussion of the abuse of tax exemptions to make it easier to pour obscene amounts of anonymous money into vicious and stupid campaign ads aimed at boosting the profits of the anonymous sources paying for them. But in part because this is a hopelessly technical subject, we are instead going to have a "debate" (and endless down-in-the-weeds "investigations") of IRS abuses. And again, it's the one topic that might distract Republicans from Benghazi!

Ed Kilgore

Marco Rubio just called on President Obama to fire the Commissioner of the IRS. Small problem: the Commissioner in place when all this happened was Bush appointee Douglas H. Shulman. He left just after the November election and there's an acting Commissioner currently in place.

Josh Marshall

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters. In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies. …

The government would not say why it sought the records. Officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States. In testimony in February, CIA Director John Brennan noted that the FBI had questioned him about whether he was AP's source, which he denied. He called the release of the information to the media about the terror plot an "unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of classified information." Prosecutors have sought phone records from reporters before, but the seizure of records from such a wide array of AP offices, including general AP switchboards numbers and an office-wide shared fax line, is unusual. …

The White House on Monday said that other than press reports it had no knowledge of Justice Department attempts to seek AP phone records.

AP

Yes, the Bush people wiretapped without warrants. Yes, they trod upon the rule of law. Yes, they set all manner of horrible precedents for future presidents to follow. Yes, the phone companies rolled over, the way they all rolled over, and doesn't the president's reversal on telecom immunity back during the 2008 campaign look even more interesting now? And, no, none of that matters. …

At the least, this was a counter-terrorism operation. (Why else would Brennan have been questioned already?). Which puts the whole business inside the White House. And you'd have to be a toddler or a fool to believe that Eric Holder could go off on his own and take as politically volatile a step as this. But, let us take the White House at its word. Eric Holder did this by himself. He should be gone. This moment. Not only is this constitutionally abhorrent, it is politically moronic. Nobody likes the press, I will grant you that, but the administration is soft if it thinks the public distrusts the press that much. And to have this genuinely chilling revelation emerge simultaneously with the Benghazi, Benghazi!, BENGHAZI! mummery and the IRS dumbassery is pretty much a full broadside below the water line of this administration's credibility. Good god, this is going to be one long-ass summer.

Charles P. Pierce

With deafening cheers and overwhelming emotion, the Minnesota Senate voted 37-30 to legalize same-sex marriage. "Today, love wins," said Sen. Tony Lourey, DFL-Kerrick. The vote, on the heels of a vote last week in the House, brings to a close a decade of debate over marriage that has echoed through the Capitol, bringing thousands of friends and foes of gay marriage to its marbled dome to express their deeply held feelings. The measure next moves to Gov. Mark Dayton, who will welcome it with his signature in a celebratory ceremony at 5 p.m. Tuesday on the south steps of the Capitol. Once it is signed, Minnesota will become the twelfth state to legalize same sex-marriage. "It's historic and I can never be so proud of this body and of Minnesotans," said Sen. Jeff Hayden, DFL-Minneapolis. On the Senate floor, Hayden said that his wife is white and noted that just 50 years ago, his loving relationship would have been barred.

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dreye/20130522

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dreye/20130522#86606

http://sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4642

/report/article/call-of-duty-will-play-the-same-on-next-generation-consoles-but-will-be-muc

http://penny-arcade.com/2013/05/21/srip-search

theferrett

“Cammy is the perfect woman,” says Dennis Hof, owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch.  “Cammy has a value system that comes from the fifties.  We were on an airplane, and a pilot – a lady pilot – introduced herself to me.  When she went back into the cockpit, Cammy said, ‘I’d rather she be serving Cokes and peanuts, and let a man be the pilot.’

“She designed her life around, ‘How can I please a man?’ She went to massage school, cooking school – she bought a book on blowjobs. I wish more girls would do that. If more girls did what Cammy’s doing… my business would go down.”

And good Lord, I am filled to brimming with revulsion.

The thing is, I’m not revulsed by Cammy’s choice.  If Cammy is content living subserviently, and that makes her happy, then I say “Go, Cammy.”  (Even if I suspect Cammy is perpetuating an elaborate ruse to extract cash from gullible men’s pockets.  They say the best salesman never appears to be a salesman.  Cammy’s probably getting exactly what she wants, from men who probably deserve it.)

But I’d never want a woman whose whole job was dedicated to pleasing me.  That has nothing to do with feminism; it has everything to do with the fact that ultimately, I think humans turn into monsters when they have all of their needs met without cost.

Maybe that’s because I worked in retail – where if you’re smart, the attitude has to be, “The customer is always right.”  Because you don’t want the customer to feel dumb; nothing closes a customer’s wallet quicker than, “Gee, your concerns are stupid.”  And they’ll tell people how they were insulted, spreading bad tales about you wherever they go.

So when they cram your mouth full of shit, you swallow it and smile.

Working retail, eventually you come to realize that “reasonable” is determined by past history.  You think it’s reasonable that a cup of good coffee is $3.95 because you grew up in a Starbucks culture… but talk to a guy who grew up in the 1950s, when coffee was an inflation-adjusted dollar at best.  You think it’s reasonable that drivers will give you the finger and honk at you in traffic, because you grew up in Manhattan.  You think it’s reasonable that people smoke in restaurants, because you live in Europe.

The important point: that “reasonable” creeps up, depending on what people do.

As humans, we’re bounded by other people’s reactions.  And if everyone acts like you’re completely normal and wonderful, you internalize that.. even if you’re completely awful.  On some level, we all think, “Well, if we get out of hand, someone will tell me I’m too much trouble.”

Remove those blocks – and sure enough, you start becoming too much trouble.

Wanna know why celebrities implode?  Because they’re swaddled in a culture that caters to their every whim because they’re a non-replaceable entity, and when normal people see them it’s usually in a gawking fawningness of “Oh my God, it’s you!  I’m so pleased to meet you!”  So their waiters go to extra miles that no normal person would get, and when they casually ask for a Diet Coke at precisely 45 degrees with a titanium straw in it, everyone just brings it to them.  Nobody notes this is actually really a pain in the ass to do for them, or if they do, they agree that oh, you absolutely need a perfectly-chilled drink.

Eventually, you come to think that this is reality.  That the 45-degree Diet Coke with the titanium straw is not just you, but universal and easy to do, it’s happened a thousand times before.  And then a waiter forgets and you get the wrong drink – and for the celebrity, it’s like they got brought a cup of transparent coffee with broken glass at the bottom.  It’s such a stupidly-done thing that it feels like an insult.  How could they not know?

So: embarrassing shitfit in a public place.  And to some extent, it’s not the celebrity’s fault – it’s the fault of all these people around them, nodding and agreeing and convincing them that yes, this is the way the world is.  Sure, the celebrity went off the fucking rails, but all of their PR agents and fans and entourage quietly removed the rails months ago.  In some ways, it’s astounding that they kept on the right path for as long as they did.

And you see that in retail, where people think, “Oh, I’m always right!  So I’ll sit in the coffee shop and slop coffee all over this magazine I have no intention of paying for, then leave it sprawled on the counter in a pile of sugar and drool.”  They think, “I’m always right, so when I bring back a tattered book with no receipt and want cash for it, the clerk who’s refusing me needs a good, solid yelling.”  They think, “I’m always right, so why aren’t these clerks catering to my every whim?”

And yes: you get more money from these nitwits.  But you do so by catering to their dysfunction.  Which means you get richer off of exploiting people’s psychological weak points.  (A point I make, in a somewhat more hammer-handed way, in my story Dead Merchandise.)  You actually make them a little insane – and some of them a lot insane – to harvest their cash.

So for me, having someone eager to cater to my every need makes them, in a low-grade way, the enemy of my sanity.  I want people who question, who remind me of the work this took, who tell me when I’m inconveniencing them.  A woman like Cammy (or at least how Cammy presents herself) would undermine the integrity of the person I’m trying to be, give me an inflated sense of self-esteem I might not deserve, slowly push me towards the land o’crazy expectations.

She’s not the perfect woman, Denis.  She’s a perfect servant, perhaps.  But perfect servants come with hidden costs, and I for one would be very reticent to pay them.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

theferrett

Long-time readers will know: May is the time my Seasonal Affective Disorder usually creeps in.  For a few weeks out of the year I’ll become a sniffling pile of self-hatred, sometimes skidding as far as self-harm, weeping and curling into a ball.  This misery lasts for about three to six weeks, during which in lesser moments all of my suicide attempts have arrived, and when I emerge it’s a slow crawl.

This is where the sadness usually starts to tickle.  And… it hasn’t yet.  Which concerns me.

The thing is, if there’s any year when I might not have my usual SAD, this would be it.  I’ve had major surgery in January, which my body is still recuperating from in some minor ways.  I’ve changed my diet and exercise habits.  And I’m on new medications, specifically a heavy dosage of Vitamin D in order to get my cholesterol and body chemistry back to proper levels.

So is it going to arrive?  Maybe.  I felt very sad on Saturday but then I ate a sandwich and realized my blood sugar was low, and everything went better.  I’m feeling a little low now, but is that SAD or just a reluctance to charge ahead with a tedious work day?

No clue.  Until then, I’m sort of waiting for the axe to fall – maybe it’ll show up late.  (It used to arrive in June.)  I’m on alert, trying to be careful about how I react, so I don’t take anything too much to heart.

But once a year, I usually have to endure a time of knives and anguish.  That may or may not show up this year.  In some ways, waiting for it to hit is nearly as bad as the depression itself, being tensed for a blow that may never arrive.  On the other hand, I’m relatively content, and finishing up my novel.

A strange place to be.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

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/report/article/shadow-warrior-reboot-keeps-setting-and-katana-ditches-sexism-racism-and-mp

http://penny-arcade.com/2013/05/20/the-shame-hole

http://www.peterdavid.net/2013/05/20/peter-apologizes-for-everything/

http://www.peterdavid.net/?p=9073

Originally published October 2, 1998, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1298

It is a time of national contrition.

Bill Clinton, whose inability to take responsibility for any gaffes or apologize for anything, has launched his Atonement Tour ’98. It’s pretty impressive as he embraces the newfound ability to publicly say he’s sorry with the sort of eagerness and enthusiasm that is usually reserved for Born-Agains or recovering alcoholics who have made it to the atonement step.

I find a couple of things mildly riotous about this. First, there are those who compare Kenneth Starr’s investigation (which, for simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to as Starrgate—and for television, Starrgate SX 1) to our last scandal which threatened a presidency, namely Watergate. But there are major differences:

In Watergate, a sitting president used the power and influence of his office to try and destroy a host of enemies and obscure his activities to that end.

In Starrgate, a sitting president used the power and influence of his office for consensual sex and getting people jobs or asking them to keep private matters private.

It’s like the difference between Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

With original Star Trek, when they battle a cosmic threat, it’s the Doomsday Machine, which, if it swallows you, consumes you in searing fire.

In ST:TNG, they battled the Ribbon which, if it swallows you, sends you to a happy place where you have no problems forever and ever.

Watergate was about destruction, Starrgate about distraction.

Second, the birds are now coming home to roost on hypocritical politicians who were demanding Bill Clinton’s head (so to speak) or wanted to give him the shaft (so to speak) because they found fault with his morality. There’s Rep. Helen Chenoweth of Boise, Idaho, who demanded Clinton’s resignation and proclaimed in a TV ad, “I believe that personal conduct and integrity does matter,” only to confess to the fact that she had an adulterous affair with some guy fourteen years ago. As if being from Boise, Idaho wasn’t stigma enough.

Then there’s GOP hard-liner Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, who fathered a child out of wedlock in the early 1980s—although not with Chenoweth, although it was around the same time as her affair. Maybe there was something in the water.

The thing is, we look to our president to set an example for us. In this case, he’s being publicly contrite, confessing to his screw-ups, and openly taking responsibility for them.

And here I’ve been, writing this column for eight years and one month, taking potshots at everyone and everything, holding them up to scrutiny—and yet, I’ve never truly copped to my own screw-ups, my own misjudgments. Well, you know what? I’m going to. Right here, right now. And I’m going to apologize for all of it.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I got Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton ripped out of his body.

Yes, it was me. I did it. We were having a big meeting of all the X-writers, back when I was writing X-Factor. We were discussing the upcoming return of Magneto, and we were searching for some sort of major event beyond the fact that Magneto was going to be really torqued upon his reappearance and slug it out with the X-Men.

And, thinking out loud, I said, “Y’know… I don’t know why Magneto even bothers fighting Wolverine. If I were Magneto, I’d just yank his adamantium skeleton right out of his body and be done with him.”

Eyes lit up all around the table. It was like suddenly being surrounded by a half dozen or so Cyclopses. “What a great idea!” declared Bob Harras. “That’s so visual! That’s so great!”

“I… was kidding,” I said quickly. “It was just a passing thought. You don’t really want to do that. Not unless the intent is to kill the character once and for all. He can’t recover from something like that. It’s too much.”

“He has a healing factor,” was the reply.

“Healing factor?! You’re talking about ripping out his entire skeleton! It’s too catastrophic an injury! If he can survive that, he can survive anything! It’s preposterous! It’s a bad idea! Do not, under any circumstance, do it!”

They did it anyway. And it’s my fault.

I’m sorry. I killed Jason Todd.

It’s true. I hated the character so much that I made three thousand phone calls. I wanted to kill him, just to watch him die. It was me. All me.

The collapse of the direct market? Mea culpa.

There are three major elements that various folks have fingered as the cause of the direct market’s disintegration: (1) Image Comics promising tons of product that shipped late or not at all, tying up retailer dollars; (2) speculators withdrawing from the market all in one shot; (3) Marvel Comics attempting to become its own distributor.

All attributable directly to me.

(1) The fact, which can now be revealed, is that the Image creators were so devastated by my early columns criticizing their press release, that they were rendered unable to get their work done. It was rather pathetic to watch, really.

They would just sit around their studios, staring numbly at the drawing board for periods of unproductive time, before picking up the columns of February 21 or April 17, 1992 again, reading them for the thousandth time, and bursting into tears once more. “Why doesn’t he like us?” they would say mournfully. “We…we just want to write and draw our own superhero books. What’s his problem?”

Rob Liefeld, looking haunted, would move through the offices like a ghost, not even able to make direct eye contact with anyone, that’s how mortified he was. By the time they came out of their stupor, books were already months late. My fault. All mine. Sorry.

(2) I was at a comics show, looking at the high priced comics, while collectors and speculators ran right and left in a constant feeding frenzy. “We could keep buying these things for years! They’ll be worth millions!” one of them told me.

Then one of my daughters came to me with a small, bean-baggish teddy bear that had a red heart with the letters “TY” on it. I held it up, studied it carefully, and said, “This is cute. You know…this’ll probably be the next big collectable.”

There was dead silence. It was like an E.F. Hutton commercial. The fans had heard me say it. The dealers quaked in fear. It was just a passing comment, but it was too late to snatch it back from the air. It was out there, and the effects were catastrophic. As with one great gestalt mind, the speculators stampeded from the room, heading for card stores and dinky gift shops. The dark fury which radiated from all the dealers was palpable. Word spread throughout the internet in no time, and just like that—the comics frenzy came to an end.

Whoops. My bad.

(3) So there I was in a steam room, taking a shvitz with Ron Perelman, Marvel’s head honcho, who was whining about the poor treatment that Marvel was receiving at the hands of the distributors. As I shrugged with the sweat cascading off my face, I said, “So, nu, Ron—if you don’t like it, do it yourself.”

I didn’t know he’d take me seriously! It was like the Wolverine comment, only worse!

God, it’s great to be getting this off my chest. What else…what else…

Spider-Clone. Spider-Clone was mine. That was a typo in a proposed storyline of mine. I meant to say, “Don’t you wish sometimes we could just leave Spider-Man alone?” But I typed “leave Spider-Man a clone,” and my spellchecker didn’t pick it up.

Foil covers. That was me, too. It was at a party, and I said something—I don’t remember exactly what, I was kind of drunk at the time—about getting people to take a shine to comics, and it just kind of blossomed from there. I’m sorry.

Disco Dazzler: My fault. Sorry.

DC Implosion: I caused it. I wrote a really cranky fan letter, next thing I knew, blammo. Sorry.

The screenplays for The Punisher, Fantastic Four, Captain America, Howard the Duck—all mine under various pseudonyms. Sorry. Sorry. My fault. Sorry.

I also cancelled Star Trek, I personally green-lighted both Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate, I was on the grassy knoll, and my grandfather misplaced the binoculars on the Titanic.

And I was really, really, really upset about it for a good long time.

But I’m feeling much better now.

(If you are feeling likewise burdened and want to make a clean breast of matters, send your confessions to Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Don’t you get nostalgic for the days when a presidential sex scandal consisted of Jimmy Carter admitting he had “lusted in his heart”?)

theferrett

If you were to log into StarCityGames about two years back, you’d have logged in with your username.  And once you’d chosen your username, you could never ever change it.  If you had, in a fit of pique, chosen “SirPoopyhead” as your user name, that was what you’d have to use forever.

The reason you couldn’t change it was because of a silly choice that had been made back in the year 2000, when we’d first purchased our shopping cart software.  The people who had designed that shopping cart decided to use the login name as the unique way of determining who you were – and when we’d created our own customized shopping cart, we hadn’t changed that.  So for all intents and purposes, that arbitrary string of characters – “SirPoopyhead” – was the single factor that made you you.

Problem is, that’s actually terrible design.

See, on the back end of an application, we have literally hundreds of places where we store the answer to the question, “What customer did this?”  What customer placed this order? What customer tried to log in at 4:56:15 am?  What customer ordered a Premium subscription?  What customer has $14.15 in store credit?  And the answer to each of those questions, each answer stored in a separate location, was “SirPoopyhead.”

The problem is that if we changed that string of characters to, say, “SirGalahad,” then we’d have to manually change that string in every one of the hundreds of tables that referenced it.  If we forgot to update just one table (or something went wrong in the middle of all these updates), then somewhere lurking in our database there would be a bunch of records that referenced the now-no-longer existing “SirPoopyhead,” which means that we’d have lost data.  This could be very troubling if we were asking the question, “What customer had paid us money?” when we needed to give you a refund.

And with every new feature we added, this problem got worse.  We added gift certificates, so here’s yet another place we need to store “SirPoopyhead.”  We added wishlists, each of which was duly recorded under “SirPoopyhead.”  Hundreds, thousands, of locations each keyed to this arbitrary string of letters.

Worse, turns out logins are a terrible idea.  Customers forget their logins all the time, having made them up to check out.  If their login was associated with an old email address, they might not even be able to get access to their old login without manual intervention.  We literally had, in some cases, customers who’d created twelve separate accounts because they kept forgetting what their login was supposed to be.

No, what we needed was a nice clean email login like Facebook.  Everybody remembers their emails.  But people change their email addresses a lot – and as noted, having to constantly change “SirPoopyhead@hotmail.com” to something else had a nonzero risk of something going wrong.

What you need, as it turns out, is a unique ID to reference each customer that never changes!  You!  SirPoopyhead!   You’re now customer #123456, and every question we’ll ever ask about you now returns the answer, “Customer #123456.”   Then you can change your email, you can change your login, you can change anything you want – all we’ll be doing is looking up the information for Customer #123456.

But.

But.

Come this point in our shopping cart’s development, we had literally thousands of places in the code that used the login name instead of the customer ID to answer questions.  And it wasn’t as simple as a “search-and-replace”; some of these were complex queries that we’d completely have to rewrite from scratch.  And then, because we’re responsible website owners, we’d want to test all of these changes thoroughly to make sure nothing got broken.

Yet if we wanted to do this, we’d have to do it soon.  Because we were hiring more and more programmers, and adding new features daily, each of which referenced “SirPoopyhead.”  The longer we put this change off, the more places we’d have to change the code.

That’s what’s called technological debt.  Thanks to a bad decision made literally twelve years ago, we had a ton of code that caused us to have to jump through a lot of hoops for what seemed like it should be a simple thing.  And every month that went by without changing this sprawling, underlying code was another month’s worth of updates that would also, eventually, have to be changed.

What followed next was a tedious and gruellng five-week project where I looked through each of the hundreds of thousands of lines of code that touched literally every page on StarCityGames.com, changing instances of “login name” to “customer ID.”  You cannot understand how magnificently boring this was.  There are fun things a programmer can do, usually learning new techniques or doing something flashy – this was basically me, being a smart search-and-replace, doing something a computer wasn’t quite equipped to do.

When it was done, we ran some conversion scripts, and then rolled it out.  Zingo!  To you, the customer, the only change was that there was now a notification saying, “Please log in using your email.”  But to the back end, there was literally a whole new day.

That’s why it’s sometimes hard to change software.  How difficult could it be to change your user name?  Well, as it turns out, thanks to factors that are hard to explain to your average customer, it can be incredibly hard – an unpleasant task requiring weeks to fix, one that adds almost no new features whatsoever, one that can introduce bugs into stable sections of code that haven’t had problems in years…. yet one that ultimately needs to get done in order to make way for bigger changes later on.

That’s why programming is weird.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/05/20

http://www.progressiveruin.com/2013/05/20/minor-spoilers-for-star-trek-and-doctor-who-in-this-post-this-is-your-only-warning/

http://www.progressiveruin.com/?p=10314

I did manage to see both the new Star Trek movie and the Doctor Who season ender this past weekend, and…well, I hope the Trek folks got their “callbacks to the original series” thing out of their system, because in the two or three films that are likely left in this particular iteration of the reboot, I’d like to see a story that’s, you know, its own animal. I mean, okay, I’ll give them one film where we see what happens in the new timeline when they encounter a familiar-to-us face (well, kinda sorta, work with me here) from the past, with The Ol’ Twisteroos on familiar-to-us situations, and all-too-familiar-to-us bits of dialogue. I did enjoy the film, but I hope I don’t wait three to four years for the next film, and it turns out to be Star Trekkin’ Around Looking for Whales in the Past, But with The New Guys.

Also, a dumb Trek joke I made on Twitter, inspired by the Trek rebootings, got retweeted by Rob Liefeld, so it was all worth it.

The Doctor Who season-ender, on the other hand, benefited by a backwards glance or two, with cameos by previous Doctors via repurposed footage and stand-ins rushing by cameras in the various Doctors’ outfits. I always like seeing references to the previous Doctors in the current series, and since we’re leading up to the 50th anniversary, it’s certainly fitting that they’re popping up about now. And it’s all tied into an explanation for a season-long mystery, in the middle of what I thought was a fun and relatively clever story, which has me anticipating November’s actual anniversary special even more.

Plus, I know this is a bad thing to say, I know they’re overdoing it with these characters, I know getting what I want in this case will ruin the very thing I’m wanting…but I do so enjoy Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax when they appear, and hope for more appearances. Particularly Strax.

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• TvP - He destroyed my drop, then destroyed me.
• TvP - Drops didn't do as much as hoped, he wrecked me shortly afterwards.
• TvT - Banshee harass failed spectacularly.
• TvZ - battle.net gave me a pity opponent.
• TvT - Not a pity win. Guy claimed he didn't know how to play Terran, but if not for my impeccable timing, he would've creamed me.
• TvP - Possibly my best widow mine drop to date. I killed everything. He didn't have a single probe alive at the end. He may not have understood what was happening.
• TvP - Drops worked reasonably well... For some reason, I didn't follow up and try to kill him.
• TvT - I can't count. He is correct, I only had 2 bases. It was still a ton of fun destroying him, especially since he killed his own marines for supply right before the banshees hit.

• TvZ - This guy didn't know you're supposed to use banelings against marines.
• TvP - This guy was relentless, but I had 1 drop turn into 2 and they were pretty damn effective. As usual, it took forever to followup, but I did! He even hit me w/ an offensive gg before he realized we were in a base race!
• TvZ - My marine/scv push failed, and he switched to talking shit. I countered by playing competently.

• TvZ - Not as exciting as yesterday, unfortunately. Couldn't stop his natural, couldn't stop his 3rd, didn't realize he had a 4th, got steamrolled.
• TvT - Fell asleep, woke up with him in my base.
• TvP - It occured to me that I should bunker rush someone who's going nexus-first... It doesn't always work, but this time I put some effort into it!
• TvZ - Something I've been having lots of trouble with is using my SCVs to screen my marines. Sure, it should be the other way around, but I'm really, really bad at it. Didn't matter for this guy.
• TvZ - Guy outclassed me so hideously it confuses me why I stuck it out.
• TvZ - He had me dead to rights, but then he disconnected.
• TvT - I am the master of stupid early drops. (Drops that are early, and stupid. Not drops that are earlier than physically possible.) Do not try to pull a fast one on me!
• TvT - Stopped his powerful push with a defense so sick they called the CDC.

Gunmen opened fire as dozens of people marched in a Mother's Day second-line parade in New Orleans on Sunday, wounding at least 12 people, police said. Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas told reporters that a 10-year-old girl grazed by a bullet was among those wounded in the shooting around 2 p.m. She was in good condition. He said three or four people were in surgery but their conditions weren't known. No deaths were reported.

AP

Depressingly, this might not be that noteworthy, as far as stories about gun violence in America are concerned. Americans are shot all the time in otherwise peaceful settings. But people, it seems, are acutely sensitive to such stories again in the wake of the Senate's failure to pass Newtown-inspired gun control.

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake is from a state that hosted a high profile shooting incident, and he took a tumble in the polls after voting against the Manchin-Toomey amendment on expanded background checks (John McCain voted for the amendment).

If the same happens to David Vitter - he voted against Toomey-Manchin, too; Mary Landrieu voted in the affirmative - it could suggest that the gun control lobby is starting to turn the tide.

Samuel Knight

Everybody's saying this is just another day in New Orleans. I'm New Orleans born and raised and that's absolutely true. But I really don't mind if people try to make this out to be the next American massacre because I'd wager the FBI will do a better job with this than our do-nothing police.

MOONGOONER

Five days after an explosion at a fertilizer plant leveled a wide swath of this town, Gov. Rick Perry tried to woo Illinois business officials by trumpeting his state's low taxes and limited regulations. Asked about the disaster, Mr. Perry responded that more government intervention and increased spending on safety inspections would not have prevented what has become one of the nation's worst industrial accidents in decades. …

Even in West, last month's devastating blast did little to shake local skepticism of government regulations. Tommy Muska, the mayor, echoed Governor Perry in the view that tougher zoning or fire safety rules would not have saved his town. "Monday morning quarterbacking," he said. Raymond J. Snokhous, a retired lawyer in West who lost two cousins -- brothers who were volunteer firefighters -- in the explosion, said, "There has been nobody saying anything about more regulations." Texas has always prided itself on its free-market posture. It is the only state that does not require companies to contribute to workers' compensation coverage. It boasts the largest city in the country, Houston, with no zoning laws. It does not have a state fire code, and it prohibits smaller counties from having such codes. Some Texas counties even cite the lack of local fire codes as a reason for companies to move there.

But Texas has also had the nation's highest number of workplace fatalities -- more than 400 annually -- for much of the past decade. Fires and explosions at Texas' more than 1,300 chemical and industrial plants have cost as much in property damage as those in all the other states combined for the five years ending in May 2012. Compared with Illinois, which has the nation's second-largest number of high-risk sites, more than 950, but tighter fire and safety rules, Texas had more than three times the number of accidents, four times the number of injuries and deaths, and 300 times the property damage costs.

Ian Urbina, Manny Fernandez, and John Schwartz

The fertilizer plant in West, Texas, that exploded two weeks ago was a frequent target of theft and sabotage. Not from farmers looking for free soil supplements, apparently, but from people looking to acquire one of the key ingredients for making methamphetamine.

Anhydrous ammonia, a key element in fertilizer production, is also used to make the highly popular drug, as any fan of Breaking Bad is likely aware. … Drug manufacturers, often looking to save on production costs, apparently learned that West Fertilizer was an easy source of cheap raw material. … After a series of break-ins a few years ago, the company installed a security system, but that wasn't enough of a deterrent.

"The last record of tampering was in October 2012, when a 911 caller reported an odor "so strong it can burn your eyes." The firm dispatched Cody Dragoo, an employee often sent after hours to shut leaking valves and look into break-ins. That night, he shut off the valve but reported it had been tampered with."

Dragoo was killed in the explosion.

Philip Bump

Let me bring you up to date on the fast-moving new developments in that horrific fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas. Overnight, police arrested one of the first paramedics on the scene, Bryce Reed, on charges of possessing a 'destructive device', which in this case turned out to be the materials to make a pipe bomb. A short time after, Texas officials announced they were opening a criminal investigation into the explosion itself.

Josh Marshall

There's no question that the people who owned the plant have their own problems with liability -- criminal and otherwise -- but the choice now seems to be whether a) this guy allegedly set something off, or b) that, even as the plant was blowing up, there also allegedly was a paramedic running around a city of 2800 people making bom...er...destructive devices. That's an awful lot of weird in a very small place.

Charles P. Pierce

Hundreds of Detroit fast food workers plan to walk off the job beginning at 6 am today, making the motor city the fourth in five weeks to see such strikes. Organizers expect participants from at least sixty stores, including McDonald's, Wendy's, Subway, Little Caesar's, and Popeye's locations. Like this week's strike in St. Louis, and last month's in New York and Chicago, today's work stoppage is backed by a local coalition including the Service Employees International Union, and the participants are demanding a raise to $15 an hour and the chance to form a union without intimidation.

Organizers say that over a hundred workers joined the St. Louis strike between Wednesday and Thursday. That included a group of Jimmy John's workers who alleged that management humiliated them by requiring them to hold up signs in public with messages including "I made 3 wrong sandwiches today" and "I was more than 13 seconds in the drive thru." "Sometimes I walk for more than an hour just to save my train fare so I can spend it on Ramen noodles," St. Louis Chipotle worker Patrick Leeper said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. "I can't even think about groceries." …

Along with a shared significant supporter--SEIU--the campaigns in New York, Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit have apparent strategies in common. Rather than waiting until they've built support from a majority of a store's or company's workers, they stage actions by a minority of the workforce designed to inspire their co-workers. Rather than publicly identifying the campaign and its organizers with a single international union, these union-funded efforts turn to allied community groups to spearhead organizing. Rather than training all their resources on a single company, they organize against all of the industry's players at once. And--faced with legal and economic assaults that have weakened the strike weapon--these campaigns mount one-day work stoppages that are carefully tailored to maximize attention and minimize, but not eliminate, the risk that workers will lose their jobs.

Whether these strategies can ever compel a fast food giant to negotiate with its employees remains to be seen.

Josh Eidelson

I've never liked jokes about how humiliating it is to "flip burgers." If you work, you deserve respect. And also too, healthcare and retirement. And burger flippers at least can't totally fuck up and ruin the national economy, like derivatives flippers.

Thers

"The class which has the power to rob upon a large scale also has the power to control the government to legalize their robbery," - Eugene V Debs, American socialist, 1918. Full speech here. As Weintraub notes, "Some details of how this works have changed between then and now, but the basic insight remains all too timely."

How corrupt has capitalism become that I'm quoting a fucking socialist and not entirely rolling my eyes?

Andrew Sullivan

theferrett

My poly bureaucracy creeps slow. Very slow. This is for my wife and girlfriend’s protection, because I am a dumbass.

See, I have a tendency of assuming that emotional intimacy == compatibility. Yes, it feels wonderfully cozy that we share all of these fears and concerns and relationship patterns, and finding your most sensitive feelings reflected in someone else is a beautiful thing.

The problem is that I’m fucking crazy. So finding someone I really resonate with immediately? It usually means they’re as bad as I am, and that we’re actually going to exacerbate each others’ issues.

I’ve been known to dive head-first into relationships without checking for compatibility first, just sort of assuming that because we have A Connection it’s going to work out. Then, after months of daily fights, me wringing my hands 24/7 about WHY WON’T SHE UNDERSTAND, and an eventual slow death by slices, I’ve learned that I need to spend more time getting to know people before I start getting committed…. if only so my wife isn’t obligated to play psychotherapist for me when things turn sideways.

So there’s a six-month cooldown time in place, where we can make out but not have Teh Sexx0r… and usually that cooldown time stretches to nine months, or even a year, as we just take it slow and not rush getting permissions.

The big question is, why don’t I find this limitation confining?

Part of it is, of course, is that I chose this lifestyle. This isn’t an externally-produced ruleset, created in a process tantamount to blackmail; it’s one I helped shape, because after a series of four disastrous relationships that imploded messily across my poly web, I took an honest look and said, “Okay, that’s a bad pattern, what’s a potential fix?”

But more importantly, sex is the least important bit for me.

Don’t get me wrong; anyone who’s ever made out with me will tell you that I’m passionate as hell. But sex is something that’s common; particularly in the kink communities, it’s not particularly difficult to get. If you’re open about your desires, reasonably personable, and are sapiosexual as I am, you’ll have a lot of options.

What I can’t get elsewhere is you.

Sure, maybe I’ll spend nine months hanging out with you on our once-a-month dates, getting to know each other… but that’s the best part. For me, “getting to know people” is an activity I find desirable in and of itself. Chatting, snuggling, dining out… that’s all stuff I like. And the level of flirtation/innuendo is a beautiful spice for that.

If and when we eventually hook up, that’s gonna be a wondrous new layer to what we share, and not the entirety of it. So I’m perfectly okay waiting for that to happen, since that is far from the whole reason I’m here.

I’m in no rush.

So yeah, it’s a long time. It’s not a process I’d recommend as standard for most poly groups. But that’s the glory of poly relationships: there’s no objective set of rules. What would be insanely restrictive for one set of people is actually a wise and stabilizing force in ours, just as what would be joyous freedom for some couples would actually cause harm if I tried it at this time in my life.

But does it matter if my rules would work for you? Lemme repeat: if it’s working for you and the people you’re dating, then it’s great.

This glacial proceeding helps me to choose better partners, and keeps my wife and girlfriend happier (even as neither of them are bound by this six-month rule), and hopefully the people I’m dating in this slow process are still happy to see me even if I’m not whipping out Little Elvis yet.

It’s an approach. Because there’s no the approach. And there never will be a the approach as long as humans are varied creatures with differing needs.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

http://sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4639

http://www.omlettesoft.com/newjournal.php3?who=Lord+Omlette&id=1368930164

• TvT - Bad defense, bad counter.
• TvP - Widow mine drop didn't do any real damage.
• TvT - Superfucking cool drop from him, it was only blind luck that I foiled it.
• TvT - He played like a little bitch, and no one knows better the ins and outs of being a little bitch.
• TIEBREAKER! TvZ - Swarm hosts, man. They creep me out.

Hydraulic fracturing, which you likely know better as "fracking," is a process of natural gas and oil extraction which involves forcing water solutions into shale rock deposits at high pressure. The pressure shatters the rock, allowing the gas and oil to seep back to the surface, where it is collected. Fracking has resulted in a massive increase in natural gas production -- but also earthquakes and some apparent episodes of water pollution. Those two poles -- job creation and economic growth versus pollution and environmental risk -- have driven frequently partisan reaction to attempts to increase production. The state of New York, which in 2008 passed a moratorium on any new fracking wells, has been considering whether or not to lift that ban ever since. Likewise, the federal government, under the aegis of the Department of the Interior and the EPA, have been considering increased restrictions or disclosures on the fluids that are injected into the wells. One Republican Congressman today argued against those plans, saying that, "the regulatory needs of North Dakota versus Ohio and New Mexico are vastly different." As it turns out, the regulatory needs and desires of municipalities are vastly different, too. When the governor of New York was considering lifting the state's ban on the practice last June, outlining rules that would have allowed it in some regions of the state, The New York Times put together a map of counties and towns that had separately approved or rejected fracking. Dryden was one of them. Towns and cities are given wide latitude to manage zoning and property matters within their boundaries. … The distinction between the two is somewhat artificial -- changes in fracking procedures, for example, could reduce risks. But it's the choice that municipalities are being asked to make, and which, depending on the city and its residents and its needs, they're making.

Philip Bump

When I visited the detention camps in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, I was shown a television room with shackles welded into the concrete floor. It was a stomach-turning sight, yet even then, a friendly guard said, "The detainees like coming in here because they are shackled by their ankles only. No handcuffs in here. This room is a reward for good behavior." I was startled by the guard's seeming ability to transform shackles into a positive.

Throughout my visit to Guantánamo, I heard repeated explanations of our humane treatment of the detainees. Like a school principal proud of a new building or a mayor happy with a new recreation center, each staff member pointed out all the good features of the detention camps. Tour guides at national monuments are seldom more upbeat and optimistic.

The staff is not sadistic. They are not Nurse Ratched. Rather they fiercely believe in the American ideals of justice and fairness and decent treatment of those in our custody. They want to change the public view of the camps, a view the staff believes is distorted.

Nowhere was this belief more apparent than outside the medical bay when a medical staffer explained force-feedings. With professional calm and compassion, she explained that when we force-feed the detainees, we are taking care of them. We cannot let them starve. The tacit subtext was clear: we are, after all, the United States of America, founded on a Judeo-Christian culture. Inmates are not being mistreated during the procedure, for we are not a country that mistreats others.

Further, she argued, the detainees have turned the feedings into an advantage. A respite from the isolation of their cells, the communal feeding sessions provide time for detainees to socialize and network. The detainees like to make sure that at least 20 of them are on a hunger strike at any given time. Thus, when brought to the medical bay for force-feeding, they have greater potential to communicate. Moreover, the force-feedings are labor intensive. Each detainee must be accompanied by at least one guard. The detainees relish confounding the normal rhythms of the detention camps by pulling the guards from other duties.

Only those detainees who fight the feedings are severely restrained, she said. Not once did she mention the misery of the procedure.

Anne-Marie Drew

My guess is that the Gitmo hunger strike has reached such a crisis point that the military felt it couldn't show it but couldn't not show it. The effect of that conflict appears to have led to these very clinical photos, the antiseptic quality inviting the mind to run wild.

Although photos from Gitmo have typically excluded the prisoners themselves, not seeing them and knowing they are wasting away makes their absence here that much more palpable. (I think the CYA-minded Pentagon really believes these pictures are informational when they're not, they're documentary.) Scenes of olives being delivered that will never be eaten, or full Styrofoam containers getting chucked in the trash, or bottles of Ensure on patient trays next to surgical tubes (to make sure you don't die on us while the world is watching) can't help but prompt us to see the prisoners in our own minds (or even imagine we're getting the treatment).

While the government and the military pretend these photos maintain an adequate level of abstraction, however, to me they do the opposite. In waging a war of wills at the most primitive level, these photos, if highly institutional, somehow take me back to Abu Ghraib. Torturing a man for information, or out of sadism or to keep him alive, is still torture. And as for breaking the will, well, martyrdom is martyrdom, whether it's by jetliner or by leaving us with rotting containers full of bananas.

Michael Shaw

It's the same mindset that believes that when Americans torture prisoners, it somehow isn't torture. Because we have internalized our moral superiority - indeed all but turned it into a national religion - we can do no wrong. What would be torture if authorized by Khamenei is somehow not torture if authorized by Cheney. As Rudy Giuliani - perhaps the most unreflective of all American exceptionalists - put it, waterboarding isn't always torture, even though it has been designated such by every legal ruling ever made on it. Why? Because "It depends on who does it." As a Catholic, Giuliani should know that it doesn't. Evil knows no geographic boundaries. And Americans are not somehow super-humans. So where are the bishops?

Andrew Sullivan

A judge on Friday refused to delay enforcement of his decision giving women of all ages broad access to morning-after birth control, calling the government's appeal frivolous, a "silly argument" and an insult to the intelligence of women.

Associated Press

Whatever you want to happen, teens are going to have sex, sometimes earlier than you think is appropriate. They should have access to contraception.

Atrios

http://www.progressiveruin.com/2013/05/18/its-life-jim-but-not-as-we-know-it/

http://www.progressiveruin.com/?p=10311

theferrett

Eventually, if you’re trying to make it as a writer, you’re going to despair.  You can’t write well enough. This story will never sell.  If you do sell it, it’ll never be popular.

This terrible feeling like you’re just wasting your time and nobody cares happens, absurdly enough, to very popular writers.  It happens to nobodys.  It happens to writers, period.  If you’re putting words down and trying to get people to read them, there will be times you’ll want to take everything you wrote, set it on fire, and then fling yourself in to burn with it.

Here is what you do when those down days come: you write more.

Took a nasty rejection straight to the sternum?  Write more.

Had a confidence-shredding bad review?  Write more.

This grand story in your head is completely beyond your ability to commit it to the page?  Write more.

This terrible book you’re reading made millions, and your better work can’t find a home?  Write more.

Feel like you’re a fraud who’s somehow lucked out when better writers languish behind you?  Write more.

Your favorite author just told you he abhorred what you wrote? Write more.

The thing about writing is that so much of it comes down to tenacity.  The most popular writers in the world can all tell you about this fellow they knew when they were starting out, a colleague who could write stories that would charm the petals from a rose… and yet these natural geniuses didn’t stick with it.  They either let life swamp them, or couldn’t stand the rejections, or didn’t feel like it.  And these magnificently talented people never became Writers, because for whatever reason they never pushed through.

It’s not that they weren’t very good.  It’s just that they stopped knocking on doors.  While the writer you’ve heard of kept ringing doorbells until she got an answer.

So pushing through is what you need to do.  Write when you’re sad.  Write when you’re busy.  Write when you’re uninspired.  Write when you’re utterly consumed with the idea that you cannot do this.  Learn to take all of that despondence and to transform it into beauty, for writing in the throes of despair will do two things: when you are writing sad scenes, you will have so many more emotions to cram into it, and when you are writing happy scenes, you will be forced to emulate joy. One will make for better writing, the other will elevate your mood.

The truth is, though I’ve written in both despair and elation, I can’t really tell which mood I was in when I go back to revise.  You must learn to write without hope.  Keep creating through those dry spells, keep sending out stories during the rejections; decouple your personal contentment from your creative muse and make that bitch dance for you.  She’ll be clumsy at first, foolish… but with time, you can make her do the most elaborate pirouettes when you’re barely able to move off the couch.

In fiction, there’s often a plot sequence: Try/fail, try/fail, try/succeed.  In real life, there may be a hundred try/fails before you get to that succeed.  But you’ll never know unless you stay in that execution loop.

Write.

Write more.

And then write more still.

(Inspired by Catherine Schaff-Stump’s Writers and Despair.)

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.