July 1, 2015

True story...

Last week I was in the supermarket when a woman recognized me and started chatting me up... Turns out she's one of my very first high school girlfriends, and we hadn't seen nor heard from each other since 1994(!)

I'm wondering if that's some kind of unofficial lounge record....

June 30, 2015

Assange was unavailable for comment...

The Internet, a Staging Post for Protests in Ecuador, Is Under Threat

Earlier this month in Ecuador, protests broke out in various cities across the country. The protests stemmed from the government's proposal to implement new taxes on inheritance and capital gains, as well as a series of other economic measures to deal with low oil prices and the appreciation of the dollar.

These protests, featuring high levels of civic participation, were assembled though the use of social networks, as 46 percent of Ecuador's 16 million residents have Internet access.

Twitter, with one million users in the country, is the network which sees the greatest amount of critical hashtag activity against President Rafael Correa.

During the demonstrations, at least during those in Quito and Guayaquil, problems were evident with mobile Internet services supplied by private service providers. People noticed the problem and came up with explanations ranging from network saturation due to the massive volume of users, to the use of signal jammers, which are illegal under Ecuadorian law.

Arcotel, the government agency responsible for overseeing telecommunications, has not commented on the communication breakdown.

https://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/06/28/the-internet-a-staging-post-for-protests-in-ecuador-is-under-threat/

June 28, 2015

ISIS and the Lonely Young American

Alex, a 23-year-old Sunday school teacher and babysitter, was trembling with excitement the day she told her Twitter followers that she had converted to Islam.

For months, she had been growing closer to a new group of friends online — the most attentive she had ever had — who were teaching her what it meant to be a Muslim. Increasingly, they were telling her about the Islamic State and how the group was building a homeland in Syria and Iraq where the holy could live according to God’s law.

One in particular, Faisal, had become her nearly constant companion, spending hours each day with her on Twitter, Skype and email, painstakingly guiding her through the fundamentals of the faith. But when she excitedly told him that she had found a mosque just five miles from the home she shared with her grandparents in rural Washington State, he suddenly became cold.

The only Muslims she knew were those she had met online, and he encouraged her to keep it that way, arguing that Muslims are persecuted in the United States. She could be labeled a terrorist, he warned, and for now it was best for her to keep her conversion secret, even from her family.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/world/americas/isis-online-recruiting-american.html

Probably the best insight to the ISIS recruiting "playbook" so far...

June 27, 2015

Hustlers Convention: Documentary unveils a lost classic

Hustlers Convention, released in 1973, is regarded as one of rap music's great forgotten classics, influencing hip-hop artists from Chuck D, Ice T and the Beastie Boys right up to Nas and Lupe Fiasco.
But few people have heard it and most don't even know it exists. A new documentary is hoping to rectify that.

It was a full moon / In the middle of June / In the summer of fifty-nine / I was young and cool / And shot a bad game of pool / And hustled all the chumps I could find...

A tale in rhyme of two street hustlers named Sport and Spoon, a catalogue of criminality told in the first person to a funky soundtrack supplied by Kool and The Gang.

The Hustlers Convention by Lightnin' Rod was released to very little fanfare more than 40 years ago. Lightnin' Rod was a pseudonym of black activist and founding member of The Last Poets, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin.

"The idea was to consolidate all the hustles and put them in one place at one time but have a moral of the story at the end," explains the now 71-year-old Nuriddin.

The album took the form of a toast, a form of rhythmic spoken poetry traditionally performed by prison inmates. The urban first-person narratives often portrayed heroic events in the teller's life.

"Toasts were part of the African-American subculture," explains Nuriddin. "It's a descendant of the old tradition of storytelling.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33132365?post_id=100000433606031_996176007073510#_=_

June 27, 2015

Glenn Greenwald spews the Kremlin party line, episode #350,432

Greenwald: Putin's 'Trolls' Are No Match for UK's Internet Manipulation Program

http://russia-insider.com/en/media-criticism/remember-putins-troll-factory-greewald-proves-uk-does-it-much-more/ri8248

The fact that a Kremlin-controlled news site is running with it makes it all the more sweet...

June 27, 2015

Julian Assange is a fuckin' asshole

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/614536051986567168

If your hatred of Obama is so overwhelming that you can't even concede *one* success to him, then you are a classic dudebro...

I'm certain some DUers will recognize themselves in that tweet...

June 26, 2015

More unspeakable filth from the Women's World Cup:

http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2015/6/24/8840759/come-on-our-girls-soccer-banner-england-bend-it-like-beckham

June 24, 2015

It’s not about mental illness: The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males

I get really really tired of hearing the phrase “mental illness” thrown around as a way to avoid saying other terms like “toxic masculinity,” “white supremacy,” “misogyny” or “racism.”

We barely know anything about the suspect in the Charleston, South Carolina, atrocity. We certainly don’t have testimony from a mental health professional responsible for his care that he suffered from any specific mental illness, or that he suffered from a mental illness at all.

We do have statistics showing that the vast majority of people who commit acts of violence do not have a diagnosis of mental illness and, conversely, people who have mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.

We know that the stigma of people who suffer from mental illness as scary, dangerous potential murderers hurts people every single day — it costs people relationships and jobs, it scares people away from seeking help who need it, it brings shame and fear down on the heads of people who already have it bad enough.

But the media insists on trotting out “mental illness” and blaring out that phrase nonstop in the wake of any mass killing. I had to grit my teeth every time I personally debated someone defaulting to the mindless mantra of “The real issue is mental illness” over the Isla Vista shootings.

“The real issue is mental illness” is a goddamn cop-out. I almost never hear it from actual mental health professionals, or advocates working in the mental health sphere, or anyone who actually has any kind of informed opinion on mental health or serious policy proposals for how to improve our treatment of the mentally ill in this country.

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/its_not_about_mental_illness_the_big_lie_that_always_follows_mass_shootings_by_white_males/

June 23, 2015

Keith Olbermann on Rachel Dolezal and Effa Manley

June 23, 2015

How exactly do the physics of this operate?

John Coffey Frontman Did The Most Rock Star Thing Ever At PinkPop Festival Yesterday

Every once in a while, every element of the universe combines together in just the right way for one brief, magical moment, putting all other moments to shame and leading grown men and women to openly weep with joy in the streets. One such moment occurred at Dutch punk band John Coffey’s set at the Netherlands’ PinkPop Festival yesterday. While crowd-walking during his performance, lead singer David Achter de Molen — aka the biggest rock star on the planet — casually caught and downed a cup of beer perfectly thrown to him from what looks to be a pretty solid distance. Everything about it, including the incredible athleticism of the throw and the utter nonchalance of the catch, is beautiful. Watch it below in both video and gif form, and you can read an interview (in Dutch) with the guy who threw the beer here.

http://www.stereogum.com/1808446/john-coffey-frontman-did-the-most-rock-star-thing-ever-at-pinkpop-festival-yesterday/video/