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Blogging Resumption

blog.DustinBoyer.com

Please recalibrate your rss contraptions.

This website will stay alive because it still draws quite a bit of random traffic (especially from Morocco).

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Blogging Hiatus

Hey, there’s a bunch of cool stuff going on and I probably (still) won’t be blogging for the next couple days. Before then there’s some stuff you should be aware of

First, BP actually knew about Deepwater Horizon problems 11 months ago and then lied to Congress about it. I love it when news takes a turn like this.

Basically, the onion is on fire right now.

Adderall Receives Honorary Degree from Harvard

National Parks Closed For Annual Remajestification

Melting Ice Caps Expose Hundreds Of Secret Arctic Lairs

Also, I broke the left apple key on my computer which probably means I have too many tabs open….

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Posted in America.


Maybe the Weirdest Email I’ve Ever Gotten

from: Curtis Y
to: wheatgrass@gmail
date Thu, May 13, 2010 at 5:39 PM
subject Nigger

Nigger, the force is strong in you. Especially for a subhuman cripple!

Nigger: ancient wisdom awaits you in the archives of the Sith. The
red pill is out there. Will you take it? Follow these instructions:

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2010/04/join-froude-society.html

Alas, the truth is more bitter than you can possibly imagine. But
don’t worry! Always and everywhere, the Jedi Council’s pleasant lies
remain available. You can return to them at any time. Three old
books will not turn you into Darth Nub. The path of the Sith is long
- longer than I know.

I worry, however, that you are too old to tear yourself away from the
false path of the Jedi. Is there an answer? There is. Increase the
dosage!

It is not just your destiny, young man, to read these three books.
For you, I prescribe a *special* destiny

*****
*****
redacted
*****
*****
Most Sith Lords recommend an audiovisual presentation, perhaps one of
these:

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4540134202583442015
(Netflix also has the DVD)

On your journey, remember: the line between good and evil passes
through every human heart. And the same, presumably, for subhuman
cripples…

I’m not publishing the redacted stuff but I can assure you that it is a whole extra level of what the fuck on this email. I’m too busy to check out all this stuff but I’ve made note of it for later if I feel like checking it out. Luckily I’ve already seen and blogged about the vice guide to liberia (which is quite good and I recommend).

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Posted in WTF!.

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Quote of the Day: Lance Armstrong

“I take nothing for granted. I now have only good days or great days.” –Lance Armstrong

n1014518156_30015378_2004

:: quote via Rachel ::

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Posted in Quote of the Day.

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True

racoon

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Posted in Eye Candy, Hilarity Ensues.

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Interesting Startup Management Nugget

17. If you visit Kayak.com and hit the feedback button, you will get a response via email. Kayak responds, individually, to every email. That’s impressive. What is crazy-impressive is that the email response comes from either Paul (the founder) or someone on the engineering team. He gets flack for using a $150k/engineer to answer support emails when the rest of the world is outsourcing it for $8/hour or something. Why does he do this? Because, when engineers respond to support issues, when the same issues arise time and time again, they are more likely to stop what they are doing and go fix the problem so that they don’t have to answer that same question again. And, because it sends a message to the entire team that they take these issues very seriously.

:: Interview w. Paul English cofounder of Kayak.com via Email (thanks Star!!) ::

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Posted in Information Design, Seriously!, Useful Tips.

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Quote of the Day: John Maxwell

“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. – John Maxwell”

bear-shark-356x1024

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Posted in Hilarity Ensues, Quote of the Day.

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Thursday

I’d like to have a productive Thursday so I just deleted Unblock Me from my phone. For your own good I encourage you to stay away!

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Article Published in a Vermont Newspaper

Sunday, April 30, 2000
By SHARON UNDERWOOD
For the Valley News (White River Junction, VT)

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I’ve taken enough from you good people.

I’m tired of your foolish rhetoric about the “homosexual agenda” and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.

My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.

He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called “fag” incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn’t bear to continue living any longer, that he didn’t want to be gay and that he couldn’t face a life without dignity.

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don’t know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn’t put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it’s about time you started doing that.

At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won’t get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don’t know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you’d best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I’m puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that’s not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?

A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I’ll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for “true Vermonters.”

You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn’t give their lives so that the “homosexual agenda” could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.

He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn’t the measure of the man.

You religious folk just can’t bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.

How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.

You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.

The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about “those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing” asks: “What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?”

Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?

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All of a Sudden the Entire Internet Hates Facebook

In a recent emailing, notable self-proclaimed techpundit and blowhard, Jason Calacanis said this useful and surprisingly uncrazy thing:

The biggest mistake most new players make at poker is overplaying their hand. They spend so much time thinking of the ways they can win that they forget all the ways they can lose. Overplaying hands can affect even the most seasoned players, especially after they’ve won a couple of hands in a row.

Over the past month, Mark Zuckerberg, the hottest new card player in town, has overplayed his hand. Facebook is officially “out,” as in uncool, amongst partners, parents and pundits all coming to the realization that Zuckerberg and his company are–simply put–not trustworthy.

I know some people that temporarily deactivated their accounts in a show of protest, but the real problem is that there is no alternative to facebook. Although, people think the demand is there and there is a new, open source product in the works called Diaspora* It was written up on the front page of the NYTimes today.

This is a key quote that got my attention

Mr. Sofaer says that centralized networks like Facebook are not necessary. “In our real lives, we talk to each other,” he said. “We don’t need to hand our messages to a hub. What Facebook gives you as a user isn’t all that hard to do. All the little games, the little walls, the little chat, aren’t really rare things. The technology already exists.”

However, what they don’t understand is that this isn’t a technology issue. It’s a user interface issue and that is not necessarily easy to do. Facebook is popular not because it does something technologically difficult but because the usability of the site is so incredibly sticky.

Anyway, my prediction is that in the next couple days facebook will announce that it’s changed it’s privacy policy and everyone will forget.

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Huzzah! Braining 2.0

First, let me mention that there is a free version of the game SET for the iphone. Get thee to the iTunes store.

Second, I’ve been using Lumosity.com for the last couple weeks. The site is full of games that are designed to purportedly boost your memory retention, problem solving skills, general mental speed and flexibility. I think it makes me better at things in general and it helps my overall level of focus. This could very well be a placebo effect induced by hype but hey, whatever. My favorite game is Memory Matrix, my high score is 7500ish with 13 tiles successfully remembered.

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Posted in My Advice To You, Nubs Up.

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Quote of the Day: Liz Feldman

“It’s very dear to me, the issue of gay marriage. Or as I like to call it: ‘marriage.’ You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not gay lunch. I parked my car; I didn’t gay park it.”

- Liz Feldman

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Posted in Culture Jamming.


My Favorite Pictures of Some People I Know (Pt. 10)

tarik bunny ears

******, widely known for his political analysis and cheeky one liners, sits here in what is the ultimately archetypal “camp out photo.” We’ve all been here. Yet, reasonable people still disagree if it’s the bunny ears or pipe that truly make this picture.

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Posted in My Favorite Pictures of Some People I Know.

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Quote of the Day: Pete Leventis

“We live in a society in which many people would rather die for their political beliefs than think about them for five minutes.” -Pete Leventis

4kiq37

example: Tea-Bagger Signs

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Posted in Politricks, Quote of the Day.


Quick Thoughts: Emerging Markets

I’m considering the possibilities for starting a business that delivers burritos via a remote control helicopter.

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Posted in Uncategorized.


Did You Send Me A Coded Postcard?

The cipher is a bit off. Little wing took a crack at it too and came back with similar results. I was able to mostly figure out the meaning. Thanks, mysterious person!

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Posted in Uncategorized.


File Under: The Precipitious Decline of Civilization

This embeds so many cultural critiques that I can’t possibly keep track of them all. The real coup is the price…only $19.99

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Posted in Media Warfare.


Quick Thoughts: Fire

Sometimes when people say that they don’t mean what they said in the heat of the moment I think it’s because they didn’t know that they actually thought those things or worse, would dare say them aloud.

clean-me

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Posted in Quick Thoughts.

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Basic Thoughts on Initial Dating Conditions

Yesterday a friend asked me for advice about a dating situation. I was a late bloomer and it took me several years of trial and error to figure these things out so I’m hoping this is useful to someone somewhere. Maybe to my Moroccans!?!?

a. Don’t go on dates! Just chill with friends and meet new people.
b. Talk on the phone first
c. Always at a place close to your house
d. Hard stop

(a. Dating means all sorts of weird expectations and hang ups. Reframe the situation entirely: lets kick it as friends and see what happens. )

(b. Test for vibe via the telephone. 1. it can be spontaneous and requires less planning. 2. if there is no connection you don’t have to commute all over the place. 3. It’s very easy to exit a phone call in case of epic fail.)

(c. Know of an awesome cafe…near your house. Again, in the event of epic fail there is no reason to be traveling all over.)

(d. Establish a hard stop in the event of total awkwardness.)

woody allen chased by a gorilla

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Posted in My Advice To You, Personalized Rambling, Quick Thoughts.

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Word of the Day: Ecclesiastical

ec·cle·si·as·ti·cal adjective
Etymology: from Late Greek ekklēsiastikos, from Greek, of an assembly of citizens, from ekklēsiastēs 15th century
1 : of or relating to a church especially as an established institution
2 : suitable for use in a church

r298j9

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Posted in Word of the Day.