As someone who occasionally veers into holding a barely-secret delusion that artists (particularly musicians) truly must exist on a higher/superior plane of existence than I do, I really wanted to be sympathetic to this article. I read about it before I actually read it, and it sounded a lot like something that could make me and my she’s an indie rocker, and nothing’s gonna stop her, obsessive record collector-type brethren shake our fists at the uncaring sky as we righteously seethed along with the author. I have championed more than a few terminal underdogs with financial and social support, and generally empathize with all unpopular bands, because I know it hurts when you put something you love out into the world and no one gives a fuck.
And then I RTFA.
And I thought, Goddamnit, this is the absolute least sympathetic account of an independent band’s existence I have ever seen. WHY? Some of my all-time favorite bands spent their entire careers, excitable forward-looking start to exhausted and/or jaded finish, languishing in utter obscurity. When those beloved-but-broke bands ultimately parted ways, the attitude was nearly a sigh — weary, “hey, at least we made some friends and had a lot of fun” resignation mixed with relief and disappointment. I’d roadtrip out to all of their last shows along with the usual group of die-hards, and we’d have a hell of a time — it never mattered that there were only 25 people there because we were there. Sometimes the newly solo musicians would start other bands, sometimes they’d go back into retail or food service or insurance or whatever, but we had that last night, and it was always awesome. The end-of-the-world parties you can have at an unpopular band’s last show are a massive breath of fresh air compared to this whole inexplicably entitled-sounding cruel and impenetrable music listeners, why hath thou forsaken me? ploy.
“The world is a vampire and you are a bucket of blood sitting in the corner, unattended yet still strangely ignored, until you go bad and somebody inadvertently kicks you over and the floor is incredibly sticky and still the vampiric world fails to pay you a morsel of mind.”
Still the vampiric world fails? Because people didn’t like your band? I don’t want to be dismissive of the starving artist struggle, which I have seen and experienced, and I’m way into the whole ‘referring to yourself as a bucket of blood’ thing, but: Dude, for real? The kicker is at the end, where he finally admits “… it would be churlish to complain.” Indeed — and on preview, what Devils Rancher said.
Addendum: Looked the author up online to see just how omg so srsly un-famous he truly is and this was one of the first results, a purportedly nonfiction letter entailing his resignation from The Strand: “The reasons for my self-termination are plenty fold. Firstly, I do not enjoy going to work. On time or at all.”
It is, of course, an excerpt from his latest book. And suddenly, the article makes a lot more sense…
With warm weather comes an abundance of produce. Salads are a classic way to create a mélange of flavors and textures by using the best produce of the season. But often times, produce can become soggy, wilted, or just plain boring. Here are some of our favorite tips to brighten up your salads during this or any other season.
1. Start with the dressing: Though it is commonly added last, dressing should be added to your bowl first. This will help evenly coat the salad when you toss it. Add slightly less than you think you will need. You can always drizzle a little extra over the top before serving. 2. Add a little lecithin:Liquid soy lecithin is a great emulsifier, which is why we add it to our vinaigrettes. Try adding about 12% (by weight of the oil) lecithin to prevent the dressing from separating. Make sure you use the liquid varietythe powdered kind is a foam stabilizer, not an emulsifier. We sometimes use a pasteurized egg yolk (cooked sous vide) as an emulsifier, but this adds flavor to salad dressings, whereas liquid soy lecithin does not.
3. Extend its life: Fruits and vegetables benefit from heat-shocking. Dipping them in hot water for a minute will increase their shelf life. Nobody likes wilted lettuce and shriveled celery in their salads, so, next time you come home with a bag full of produce, try our tips for extending crispiness. 4. Snip fresh herbs: Herb aromas are most potent right after cutting them, so snip them just before adding them to your salad. That’s right, we said snip. Not only do kitchen scissors make it easier to pluck and chop leaves, you can also snip these items directly into your salad bowl. 5. Think seasonally: While you can find many produce staples at grocery stores year-round, those in their peak season will still be best. In the spring, seek out asparagus, fava beans, peavines, new potatoes, rhubarbs, radishes, baby carrots, tarragons, and borages. In the summer, toss together the likes of tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, bell peppers, avocados, zucchini, stone fruits, melons, chervils, lemon verbenas, and basils. Sweet onions, arugulas, celery root, butter lettuces, apples, pears, figs, thymes, and parsleys are all good finds in the fall. In the winter, watch for spinaches, young chards, beets, citrus fruits, watercresses, winter savories, chives, and legumes.
6. Textural contrast: A salad doesn’t have to be all crisp and crunch. Textural contrast can be one of its great delights. Mix and match different textures, such as creamy (soft cheeses, egg-based dressings), tender (braised beets, cooked potatoes, baby lettuces), chewy (dried fruits, aged cheeses), crispy (lettuces, cucumbers, apple slices), and crunchy (fresh pickles, raw vegetables, sunflower seeds, croutons).
7. Use your hands: As long as you thoroughly wash your hands, there is no reason not to use them to toss salads. You will find that you are better able to coat each salad piece evenly. If you remain squeamish about getting your hands dirty, use disposable gloves.
I WANTED IN BUT IT WAS SOLD OUT AND WHAT WAS I GUNNA DO? HUH? WHAT? I WUZNT GUNNA SIT OUTSIDE AND ASK SUM1 FOR A GODDAMN HOOKUP. NAW THAT’S NOT HOW I WAS RAISED HERE AT FAT. THERES A REASON WHY THE FIRST WORD IN “FAT” IS “FREE”. SUMTIMEZ ITS FOR GIVIN FREE SHIT OUT SOMETIMES ITS FER TAKIN FREE SHIT. CLEARLY THEY MADE THE MONEY THEY WANTED I JUST NEEDED SOME INFO ON INFOSEC KNOWUTIMSAYN?
I want to give a big shout out to Adobe Photoshop and Pottery Barn. Without you guys I would have not been able to go to Summerc0n this year. Love you guys.
needed the logo
needed to rework it a lil
needed to holler at my boy Pottery Barn Gift Card (thanks breh)
Then the homie Adobee FOto Shotp came through again
Had to hit it with that Olfa knowutimsayn
threw a lanyard on that bitch
then learned me a whole lot of infosec info i did not understand (sortadid)
happyplaytime is / will be a gamification of “female masturbation,” in the tradition of jane mcgonigal’s idea that no one will want to go for a jog unless they get points for it. (the effect that this actually has, of course, is to disenfranchise us of our own ability to decide the value of the activities we enjoy in our own lives.) the intention of the game is to remove the shame associated with being a girl / woman and masturbating by “rebrand[ing] the entire concept of female masturbation through education and light-hearted games” and by teaching “female anatomy.” the game has a happy anime-vulva mascot, and players are taught masturbation techniques by touching her in various ways.
there’s a lot of shame in our culture associated with being a woman who masturbates, yeah. a lot of women & girls don’t feel as comfortable with their bodies as i’d want them to. but i don’t think gamifying masturbation is the solution. our society already gamifies sex, and it already creates ridiculous expectations for us and our bodies. a scary part of this is the idea that men’s sexuality is normative, and if women aren’t masturbating as much as men, something’s wrong with them.
look through the infographics on the game’s page. look at how masturbation is being framed. “46.6% of women masturbate less than once a month every year. gals, you can do better!” the way to overcome shame is definitely not to shame women for what they don’t do with their bodies. there’s this unfortunate idea of “sex positivity” i encounter all the time that essentially just shames people for not having enough sex and pressures them into doing it more. making masturbation into a universal competition is going to achieve only that: people are going to get pressured into using their bodies in the ways that are arbitrarily defined as normative.
and don’t get me started on the cissexism of reducing “female masturbation” to learning how to stimulate a vulva. let me put this in caps so it’ll be clear: NOT ALL WOMEN HAVE VULVAS / VAGINAS. (as a corollary, not all people with vaginas are women.) i’m a trans woman, i have a cock and i need a hitachi vibrator to get off most of the time. it’s not something i can do (or desire to do) very often. i spent a long time feeling guilty about the fact that i can’t / don’t really want to get off during sex with my partners most of the time. “sex positivity” shouldn’t mean making people feel guilty for not having sex. who defines what “sex” means anyway?
people’s bodies are all different and have different needs. any attempt to define what the one way to masturbate is is inherently reductivist. sex is NOT a “one size fits all” thing, as my friend lillian eloquently put it. in a sex-phobic patriarchal society, we’re taught to feel a lot of shame and confusion about our bodies. the solution is not to put the blame for that on women.
In CounterStrike the only way to deal with terrorists is to kill them, because their ideology is inherently evil and wrong, right? Bioshock and Call of Duty: The Line tried in vain to tell us violence and obedience are a choice while only allowing the player to kill to reach the end….In Anita Sarkeesian’s latest video, Tropes Vs Women: Damsels in Distress pt 2, she takes aim at the way developers box themselves into a corner by making combat the core mechanic: keep swinging that hammer because this level is just full of nails.
quote is from lydia neon on the impetus for the creative conflict resolution jam, which incidentally starts on friday. if we take it as a foregone conclusion that the way our players will interact with our games is through violence, how do we possibly explore the kinds of interpersonal conflicts that aren’t solved by shooting the other party? often, the answer is “in a cutscene,” an exorcism of the player from the game so that the protagonist can do what the player, whose vocabulary is limited to “shoot, shoot, shoot,” is unable to tell her to. we do not allow the player to be present for the negotiation of these conflicts.
merritt kopas’ hugpunx is a queering of zak ayles’ punksnotdead, a game about punching strangers before they can shoot you. merritt’s game is about hugging friends when they recognize you. i’m interested in hearing what games can say to us once they have a wider vocabulary.
I'm a little obsessed with the story that broke yesterday about PRISM, the NSA/FBI project to gather information from popular Internet services, including Facebook, Google, and Apple.
So, naturally, I've been doing a lot of digging about the story on *.gov websites. In the process, I realized that the U.S. government loves the "PRISM" acronym. There are literally dozens of projects and applications named PRISM at the state and federal level, many with delightfully goofy logos. Here are some of my favorites.
Christian & Allegra Poschmann, the design duo behind Montreal based Booth, created this anatomically infused branding for Dr. Cheryl Donah’s podiatry clinic.
Eighteenth-century anatomical illustrations add an intellectual touch to a clean and classic approach to the brand.
I love seeing anatomy in design and wish more doctors and healthcare institutions would incorporate anatomy into design.
On the hidden battlefields of history’s first known cyber-war, the casualties are piling up. In the U.S., many banks have been hit, and the telecommunications industry seriously damaged, likely in retaliation for several major attacks on Iran.
WOOH. Technically, there are some glitches in the early archives, so I don't actually know which comic this is. BUT, the longer I do this, the closer the large round numbers get to being correct.
There’s humor in here somewhere between ColdPlay and ColdFusion and the impossibility of either making any kind of electricity… but I just can’t get it to spark…
What a coincidence. Neither has “dark energy” which we’re assured makes up 2/3 of the universe - and has been peer-reviewed.
And no one has ever observed an elf riding a unicorn handing out free blowjobs and tickets to see U2. Cold fusion is a lot closer to that than dark matter.
At any rate - for the sake of the only liveable planet within range of our over-rated technology - I really really hope Mr. Rossi has hit on something. Because nothing seems able to stop our (collective) endless greed and willful ignorance.
No one debates that. However, pinning your hopes on the guy who says he totally has the hookup on elf-blowjob-based solutions in the back of his van that no one can look at is… a poor choice.
You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google’s CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the facts.
First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.
Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period. Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.
Finally, this episode confirms what we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach. Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests we receive. We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible. We were the first company to do this. And, of course, we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety—including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.
Posted by Larry Page, CEO and David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer
It’s amazing how many efforts to reconcile ideas about God with apparent reality come down to “God is actually a huge dick to people but I’m okay with it.”
God is manifestly a huge dick. That’s what the entire so-called “problem of evil” is about.
posted to Metafilter by Justinian at 7:49 on May 27, 2013
The more they occur, the more obvious it becomes that terrorist acts of this sort are a practically Dadaist crime. They occur for little more reason than that somebody impulsively decided it was a good idea – any deeper reason for their happening is simultaneously so ultrageneric and ultraspecific that there’s little reason to believe in it at all. Yet the media-glutted part of the world collapses inward on that moment, interviewing witnesses, interviewing survivors, asking again and again and again and again and again and again what’s the point, even after we know there’s none, even after we have a full account of mental illness and poorly-checked aggression and privilege of whichever stripe you prefer, white privilege, masculine privilege, religious privilege, none of which matter more than the fact that these crimes are first and foremost crimes against the information age itself. They are committed because we watch and we watch because they are committed.
“Here is the secret news: All people are afraid. No one knows what they’re doing. Everything is getting worse. Your money is worthless. No one is properly dressed. The system is rigged. Your house will never be completely clean. All teachers are incompetent. There are people who really dislike you. Nothing is as good as it seems. Things don’t last. No one is paying attention. Shhhhh.”
This post was originally written for LinkedIn; see comments there.
Have you ever returned from vacation more stressed out than when you left? Is the reason because you came home to 10,000 email messages that managed to convey high pitched anxiety even in text (with a few exclamation points to add pressure)? Vacations should be a break from the insanity, not a procrastination of it.
Years ago, I realized that when I went on vacation, I needed a real break. I didn’t want to be tethered via email or social media. I wanted to go offline. But I also wanted to come back without the onslaught of messages that would take me weeks to unbury myself from. So I started instituting email sabbaticals. The idea is simple: turn off your email. Set up a filter and Send all messages to /dev/null (a.k.a. the Trash). Send a bounce message telling people their message wasn’t received and that they should resend it after X date or send you the contents via snail mail.
Of course, if you just turn off your email with no warning, you’re bound to piss off your friends, family, colleagues, and clients. So here are some tips to successfully taking an email sabbatical:
Step 1: Schedule a vacation. A vacation is not a long weekend. You need time to decompress. Schedule it ahead of time. I recommend at least two weeks so that you can really relax. You’ll spend the first week of it still shell-shocked from stepping away from the computer anyhow.
Step 2: Communicate with colleagues. Long before you’re headed out on vacation, tell people that you intend to be gone from X to Y dates. I tell collaborators months in advance so that I can make sure that we’re on the same page and that they have everything they need.
Step 3: Manage expectations. Talk to everyone who relies on you. Schedule a meeting before you leave and schedule one for when you return. Agree on the to-dos and create a contingency plan for issues that might arise while you’re unreachable.
Step 4: Create a backdoor for emergencies. Identify someone that is willing to serve as a buffer for you that you can check in with every 3 or so days who people will be afraid to contact unless it’s an emergency. I use my mother for this one. Colleagues feel weird about calling your mother, but they’ll do it if it’s an emergency. This is a good safety net if you don’t feel like you can be out-of-reach for that long.
Step 5: Send a final warning note. A week or two before you depart, send a note out to everyone reminding them that you’re about to leave in case they need anything from you. And then turn on your out-of-office notice to warn people that you’re about to disappear into the void. That way, you catch any notable issues.
Step 6: Make your email go poof! I’m a geek. My procmail file is absurd, but you don’t need to be a geek to make your email go into a blackhole. Add an away message / auto-responder that will catch people’s attention and inform them that you’re gone and that their message will never be received. Then filter ALL of your email like you would if it were spam. Use your favorite mail program to send everything straight to the Trash. Bye-bye!
Step 7: Disappear. For realz. Seriously, take a vacation. You need it. There’s nothing like a vacation to rejuvenate and make you better at your job. If you come back refreshed, you’ll have better ideas and be more on top of your game. This isn’t a gimmick to sell you a self-help manual. This is basic logic. We’re all overworked and maxed out and when we’re stressed, we don’t function well. Use your vacation days. Use them well. Cherish them. And don’t work while you’re on vacation. That. Defeats. The. Point.
Step 8: Re-entry. When you’re back, quietly turn everything off. Reach out to the people who depend on you the most for a check-in. Make sure to schedule time to give them what they need. Be attentive, be supportive, be vacation-refreshed calm.
Communication is the key to an email sabbatical. Disappearing without properly making certain that everyone has what they need is irresponsible and disrespectful and people will get pissed off. They’ll be offended. They’ll think you’re all high and mighty. But when you go through steps to make sure everyone’s covered, it’s amazing at how well people respond. And, often, they too start taking email sabbaticals, guaranteeing everyone gets the reset they need.
People often ask me if I’m frantic about the thousands of emails I must’ve missed. Again, because I’m a geek and use procmail, I have log data. What’s funny is that, aside from the first 48 hours where people like to test my bounce message, people stop sending me email. With all of these steps in place, people actually leave me alone.
Are there things I miss? Sure. But I don’t fear missing out because I know how important it is to truly, genuinely, actually take a break. Being burnt out sucks. When I’m burnt out, I’m a crappy employee, a dreadful friend, and a terrible person to be around. It’s well worth missing out on a few things in order to make sure that I’m who I want to be.
So go ahead, don’t be afraid, don’t make excuses. Take a vacation. And take an email sabbatical!
A tool that is growing in popularity among the business community is the business model canvas. In this post we look at what it is and how it can help understand the role of the web in your business.
I am often surprised by how many of the clients we work with struggle to answer fundamental questions about how their business operates.
This is a real problem when it comes to working out how the web best fits into their organisation. I have therefore been looking for a way to help clients better understand their own businesses. This has led me to the business model canvas.
What is the business model canvas?
The business model canvas is a diagram that helps business owners understand the various factors that make up their business. The idea is that they ‘fill in the blanks’ for each of the nine building blocks. These are:
Customer segments – Who are your target audiences?
Value proposition – What problem are you solving or need are you meeting?
Channels – How are you delivering your value proposition to customers?
Customer relationships – How do you go about maintaining a relationship with customers and what expectations do they have about that relationship?
Revenue streams – What are customers currently paying for and how much will they pay?
Key resources – What resources are needed to support the business?
Key activities – What activities does the company need to carry out to support the business?
Key partnerships – Does the business rely on partnerships with third parties or suppliers?
Cost structure – What are the most important costs in the business and what resources and activities are most expensive?
The business model canvas is a great tool for helping clients better understand their own organisation.
What the business model canvas shows us about the web
What is interesting about the business model canvas is that it perfectly demonstrates how the web can impact every part of the business. So many people perceive the web as nothing more than a marketing channel, but it is so much more. Lets look at that list again and how the web might impact on each.
The business model canvas perfectly demonstrates how the web can impact every part of the business.
Customer segments
The web can allow you not only to reach your customer segments easily, but also know them better. The web offers an opportunity to gain a deep insight into their behaviour, problems and wants.
Value proposition
With its deep understanding of how users behave through monitoring and direct feedback, the web makes an excellent tool for refining your value proposition. It makes testing new concepts and gathering feedback considerably easier than before.
Channels
In many sectors the web has become the primary channel for delivering your product or service. Music and news are classic examples of sectors that are now dominated by digital delivery.
The web has revolutionised the channels through we which we buy music destroying some businesses who failed to keep up.
Customer relationships
The web is increasingly being used to support customers both through self service, communities and automated services. The web is even being used to create products and services in cooperation with customers. Take for example Youtube. That service would not exist without customers actively participating in it.
The web has allowed sites like YouTube to build a business that is co-created with its customers. Without people contributing video to its service, YouTube would not exist.
Revenue stream
The web has had a profound impact on the revenue streams of many businesses by lowering marketing and distribution costs. It has even forced some sectors to move to a freemium or advertising driven model.
The web is also ideal for supporting a number of revenue streams from subscription to licensing or advertising.
Key resources
The web can be used in a variety of ways to support key resources. It might be used to search for intellectual property infringements or to better support members of staff through an intranet.
Key activities
Many key activities we carry out as a business could benefit from being brought online. Whether it is using third party tools like Basecamp or developing custom applications to facilitate specialist activities with your company, there are lots of ways the web can increase your efficiency.
Tools like Basecamp have enabled companies to increase productivity while keeping costs low.
Key partnerships
The web is not only a good tool for finding potential partners, it also makes an excellent tool for communicatingwith them. Over the years Headscape have been involved in creating a number of systems for managing the relationship between a company and its various partners.
Cost structure
People often perceive the web as an expense to an organisation, but it can also bring significant cost savings in terms of replacing traditional marketing and distribution channels. It can also bring productivity savings.
Lesson to learn
The lesson here is simple. The sooner organisations wake up and realise the web is more than a marketing tool, the quicker they will be able to benefit from its full potential.
However, perhaps even more importantly, if they don’t they could be out of business. The web has a habit of disrupting sectors (think music, news and now cable TV) and those who have a limited view of its potential get left behind. Just ask Blockbusters or HMV.
This post was originally written for LinkedIn; see comments there.
