B12 Solipsism

Universal Magic

I’ve borked my blog software installation again¹, so instead of troubleshooting what’s wrong, I’m just going to dump a bunch of article tidbits for your amusement. No gambling.

“Ten Years Ago: David Brooks, Iraq War Hawk” bit.ly/12yaOJT

— Seth Anderson (@swanksalot) March 8, 2013

 and…

“consumers are requested to forward the text message to 7726, which is a central repository for spam messages” nyti.ms/YfuxFC

How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer zite.to/Xtqjyw

Russian Police Say Dancer and Two Others Confess to Bolshoi Attack http://nyti.ms/YWjROq

A Locust Plague, Shy of Biblical Proportions, in Israel http://nyti.ms/Zh8yz3

Maryland Senate Votes to Abolish Death Penalty – on.wsj.com/YdQ15P

Illinois Medical Marijuana House Committee Vote: Panel OKs Pot Plan, Full House Vote Next zite.to/12xxlGB

Scary Dairy Proposal: Aspartame in Kids’ Milk zite.to/13Jr3DB

Government Takes Legal Action Over Phone Spam – nyti.ms/Yfu7iB about goddamn time

The Vendor Client relationship – in real world situations: youtu.be/R2a8TRSgzZY all to frequently true…

Interior Department Nominee Questioned on Public Lands Development, via @nytimes nyti.ms/YPk5oe

Take What You Have Gathered From Coincidence

“After the 9/11 attacks, CNN reported, Acxiom was able to locate 11 of the 19 hijackers in its database.” bit.ly/12yoFzD

— Seth Anderson (@swanksalot) March 8, 2013

“The Republicans strategy of rewriting history in order to rewrite our present is anything but funny.” bit.ly/Yhgvn8

— Seth Anderson (@swanksalot) March 8, 2013

“Kids on food stamps don’t eat any healthier” reut.rs/10hSjEe

— Seth Anderson (@swanksalot) March 8, 2013

Celebrated author, speechwriter and columnist Peggy Noonan: Obama made Pittsburgh depressing because he di… zite.to/15CSj4O

— Seth Anderson (@swanksalot) March 9, 2013

Whole Foods to Require Labels on Genetically Modified Food: The grocery chain announced on Friday that it woul… nyti.ms/VRbzJP

— NYT Food & Drink (@nytimesfood) March 9, 2013

Man has 75% of skull replaced with 3-D printed implant zite.to/WzvNcB

— Seth Anderson (@swanksalot) March 9, 2013

When Bowie met Burroughs zite.to/14FvdrV

— Seth Anderson (@swanksalot) March 9, 2013

and finally

can’t forget to mention Katha Pollit’s defense of Sheryl Sandberg:

Who’s Afraid of Sheryl Sandberg?

With the publication of Lean In, a feminist-accented self-help book for college-educated young women with bright prospects, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg provoked such wrath among feminists that some of them couldn’t even wait to read the book before condemning it as a rich woman’s vanity project. Talk about leaning in! She’s been mocked as a Silicon Valley Marie Antoinette. She’s been equated with Marissa Mayer, the Yahoo CEO who scorns feminism and abolished working from home for her employees—never mind that Sandberg embraces feminism, the word and the movement, and devoted three whole chapters to combining work and family life in saner, fairer ways. The trouble is not that women are attacking women, but that they are using sexist tropes. Melissa Gira Grant, for example, chides Sandberg for having “staff to help keep house, raise her children and throw her women’s leadership dinners.” Grant means to contrast Sandberg’s privileges with the insecure lives of working-class women (not that she knows how much Sandberg and her husband pay their staff, or even that they are women). But the very fact that the morality of hiring nannies and cleaners and—no! not that!—caterers pops up only when a powerful woman is discussed shows how gendered the attack on Sandberg is. Message to Grant: these people work for Sandberg’s husband too.

(click here to continue reading Who’s Afraid of Sheryl Sandberg? | The Nation.)

That should give you something to read for a moment…

1. WordPress widgets are broken – cannot add, delete, or modify anything on my sidebar over there on the right. Probably a conflict with a plugin, or some other problem. Daylight savings has sapped my energy at the moment, so I really don’t feel like digging in and fixing it today, especially since I don’t yet know the solution [↩]

Touching Up

Well, thanks to the magic of IFTTT.com, I’ve started to use Delicious to seed information to my blog again.¹

There is a limit of Feedburner that it will only post the last ten entries into the daily blog email – for Flickr photos, if I’ve had a busy photographic day, or for blog posts – and yesterday turned out to be an epic sitting-in-front-of-the-computer day², so I posted more than ten entries to Delicious.

Here are a few tidbits that got omitted:

1. “And Fake Steve is dead, but the self-important drama queen lives on.” http://t.co/Ij7fiPb4
2. “Special Service Areas are local tax districts that fund expanded services & programs through localized property tax” http://t.co/aHJptHgS
3. “iPhone 5 Wi-Fi Problems Fixed By Manual DNS Settings” http://t.co/co6IWYCc
4. New Tracking Frontier: Your License Plates http://t.co/mEqTRK2l
5. “Obama Orders Chinese Company to End Investment at Sites Near Drone Base” http://t.co/zgOWdrP8
6. “Romney vows to take on Lyme disease ‘epidemic’” http://t.co/T7dJsaQO Uhh, ok?
7. Histoire de Melody Nelson: Serge Gainsbourg’s psychedelic orchestral rock opera http://t.co/u6Y4T8zd
8. Paul Ryan “referred to rape as a “method of conception.” http://t.co/fP4AjEFt
9. “The Satchmo Cocktail: A Sazerac… With A Twist” http://t.co/CCSvBeY5
10. “How many times have you said, “if only we had a president who made Lyme Disease his number one priority?””  http://t.co/r8FSjssX
11. Brian May: Me and my animal passions | From the Guardian http://t.co/1CxVc7vf
12. “Looking to Mexico for Alternative to Abortion Clinics” http://t.co/zukKI39q
13. “Laws Revive ‘World Before Roe’ as Abortions Require Arduous Trek” http://t.co/cyFZ1sZ4
14. “Cherokee Nation Chief Demands Apology From Scott Brown Campaign” http://t.co/nuMbKepI
15. “Romney is perhaps best known for being a clown and a humanitarian, … an LSD-fueled comedian.” http://t.co/8TaXOeJd aka Wavy Gravy

Whew!

Also, I’ve created an IFTTT.com recipe which works as follows:

• new Delicious post is created
• if I use the tag “link”, then a new WordPress post is created with the snippet, with a link to the original URL.
• Benefits – easy to create posts this way – basically select some text, click a javascript bookmarklet on my browser bookmark bar, and add a tag or three.
• Cons – limit to 999 characters, limited HTML formatting, doesn’t include an image, and doesn’t allow me to frame the quote or react to it, unless I do it later.

I just tested, and I can edit the Delicious post later to add the magic trigger word, “blog” as a tag, and posts still are generated, even if they existed first a while ago. Pretty nifty.

In general, the limit of ten new mini-posts in a day won’t be an issue, as most days I am not reading in front of my computer that many hours. So, turns out I don’t need Twitter after all.

1. Boring backstory discussed here and here [↩]
2. due to some work I had done in my loft which took several hours longer than anticipated. Replaced some windows and some springs if you really want to know [↩]

Numberless Reflections

I guess I’ll have to go back to making Delicous posts by themselves since Twitter deprecated one useful-to-me API as I mentioned yesterday. A long time ago, there was a way to merge a day’s worth of Delicious links together and make a post. I’ll see if I can figure out how to resurrect that feature. 

• “Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts — decided to unwind by taking a short break in Fiji.” http://t.co/pHrYo1ev
• “WaPo ombud endorses reader complaints that Wapo is too liberal; wants truth-tellers balanced. Vile.” http://wapo.st/UVOrc0  (via @froomkin)
• Ahh, not just me, but Hipstamatic doesn’t play nice with new phone http://bit.ly/P19tov
• “Catholic Bishop of Springfield, Illinois: Voting for Obama Jeopardizes the Eternal Salvation of Your Own Soul” http://zite.to/PaEZKV  strip non-profit status of Church! Non-profits are, by law, supposed to be non-partisan.
• Bill Moyers: ALEC ‘is still everywhere’ http://zite.to/QLTvKK 
• “Russia bans import of genetically modified corn” http://buff.ly/PxNgKp Possibly. Still looking for confirmation of this catchy headline…
• “Living Landmark: How Cultural Historian Tim Samuelson Became an Encyclopedia of Chicago” http://buff.ly/PwCZya 
• “online grocer Peapod is expanding its virtual supermarkets to 17 CTA and Metra stations ” http://buff.ly/Qw7WW6 
• TV News Covered Paul Ryan’s Workout 3x More Than Record Arctic Sea Ice Loss- Media Matters for America http://buff.ly/THBOSP 
• New book details NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, as the govt moves to avoid accountability in court https://eff.org/r.a8mK  (via @EFF)
• “City Winery-How much longer are we supposed to wait for this New York import to get its act together? “ http://buff.ly/QwqntT 
• The Polarizing Political Paradox Redux « MADE IN AMERICA  http://buff.ly/QmUwMf  

Defunct Tweets

For a long time, I had worked out a good system, using Delicious, Twitter, Feedburner and IFTTT. I found interesting articles or phrases in my daily internet life, tweeted them, and these URLs would be automatically fed into my Delicious account, and this in turn would seed entries into my daily blog email post¹. Thus my blog’s hunger stayed fed, and I didn’t have to go to the trouble of creating an entire post around a few sentences. However, Twitter, in its drive to become less useful, has disallowed this kind of interaction by changing its APIs. Twitter wants to force every user interaction to occur on its own webpage, presumedly so they can sell advertising “eyeballs” – viewers – but this means a lot of the cool stuff that Twitter could be used for no longer are viable. At least that is my understanding of what happened between yesterday and today.

I’ll see what I can do to replace this lack of grist for my web grinding mill, but it is irritating. Anyone have any suggestions? Email me, or leave a comment.

Here is what should have been included in this morning’s blog email²:

• “Mother Cabrini Shrine Reopening; Le Corbusier in Color; More!” http://t.co/w9ainEtn
• “Ross Douthat’s schtick at The Atlantic: repeating Redstate talking points, minus the obscenity and grammatical errors” http://t.co/rkJVN0eH
• “Todd Akin compared the recent debate performance of Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill to that of a “wildcat,” http://t.co/JOmjmi29
• “In 1960, about 5% of Americans expressed a negative reaction to political intermarriage; in 2010, about 40% did ” http://t.co/ONkWfpDk
• “Pro-life asshole vows to fight “to his dying breath” for rights of unborn” http://t.co/bMJ6qFwc C’mon Canada, you are better than this
• Opium Museum http://t.co/vTfSaJm4 
• “How Collecting Opium Antiques Turned Me Into an Opium Addict” http://t.co/KWV4aoey
• “Romney mentioned that it would routinely take up to eight years to turn around a firm” http://t.co/xdbBghjv but US govt easier?
• Why Ryan is worse for Romney than “47 percent” http://t.co/79gHpcPE
• Brad DeLong: I Do Not Understand Why This Is Not Tax Fraud… http://t.co/wLipfAfZ Good ole DoubleClick
• Your Body’s Best Time for Everything http://t.co/N7KUjLQj

And actually, I’m being a little lazy in my cut/paste job here, as these links would also have included the full, original title of the URL, which is sometimes descriptive as well. For instance, the second link about Ross Douthat would have also spelled out “And If Only The Vietnamese Had Worn Bright Red Coats And Formed Infantry Squares”. You get the idea.

Anyway, thanks for messing up my workflow Twitter…

1. and in the sidebar over there to the right if you visit the actual blog page [↩]
2. along with whatever photos I uploaded to Flickr, and if I had written an actual blog post like the one you are reading [↩]

Epicurious.com: Recipes, Menus, Cooking Articles & Food Guides [del.icio.us]

“Absinthe Sazerac Recipe at http://t.co/H1RHjnhs“ http://t.co/kg0sTsNw

Rick Santorum Thinks Satan Has Taken Over America [del.icio.us]

“Rick Santorum Thinks Satan Has Taken Over America” http://t.co/UCudy5P4 only if Santorum wins, which he won’t

Climate Change Leading the Cause « Foster Friess [del.icio.us]

“Climate Change Leading the Cause-Foster Friess” http://t.co/Z6uXc4uB would make sense to me that Friess is “Anonymous Donor” for Heartland

Ah, I see, this automatically updates itself. Too bad, I would be happier if this was unique, based upon the edition itself.

I doubt I’ll keep updating this long, but for the moment, here is yesterday’s Twitter history, via Paper.LI’s robot.

Defunct Tweets

Umm, yay?

Hmm “Now you can embed a Tweet right on your WordPress blog, Posterous Space, or any website. Read more:” dev.twitter.com/blog/tweets-an…

— Seth Anderson (@swanksalot) January 5, 2012

Let’s try the short code version:

[tweet https://twitter.com/swanksalot/status/155011269248819200]

Testing a couple of twitter digest options, this is several days worth of tweets, but the Twitter Digest WordPress plugin published them all. Not sure where the title of this post comes from either, seems a bit incorrect…

• NYTimes: U.S. Challenges China on Island Chain http://nyti.ms/bmFVxc ->
• Love a summer thunderstorm ->
• Yes Men documentary goes online via Bittorrent to evade censorship http://tinyurl.com/2dugzzh ->
• oh great, email server is down. Not what I wanted to do today… ->
• There’s a Battle Outside and It Is Still Ragin’ – http://nyti.ms/chgshZ ->
• Netflix has sent me: Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth: Shipped on 07/24/10.
  Directed by Erik Nelson, this a… http://bit.ly/d1nTXI ->
• Ode to Consumerism http://flic.kr/p/8mGUWb ->
• Step it up http://flic.kr/p/8mGVeu ->
• Evening full of Much Obliged http://flic.kr/p/8mDREB ->
• 312 is golden http://flic.kr/p/8mDUQ4 ->
• @Marcusist indeed, gorgeous outside, didn't want to return inside until next week in reply to Marcusist ->
• Is a sighting of Juwan Howard at The Wit Hotel really noteworthy? Anyway, he was there with his entourage of one… ->
• @mariecarnes Afghanistan war is a cruel joke, and a bailout for the US War Inc. in reply to mariecarnes ->
• I didn't want to bother Juwan Howard, but noticed a few others did. Didn't he sign with the Miami Heat anyway? Frack that ->
• tonight's filming must be at the Jeweler's Building and Wacker. Lots of film crews and props set up there ->
• …especially since Juwan Howard owns property in the Trump Tower, a sighting at the Wit is not surprising ->
• Since Mad Men is about to start, I should pour myself another drink and just shut up for a while ->
• funny how Transformers crew given carte blanche to control the public sidewalk. What ordinance was it that ceded control again? ->
• WikiLeaks Bombshell on Afghan War, an overview http://bit.ly/bCOWHL ->
• Transformer 3 Wreckage http://flic.kr/p/8mSXAS ->
• Transformer3 Soldier extra http://flic.kr/p/8mPPFa ->
• @katiecook yup, and the public sidewalk has suddenly become under the control of the film interns in reply to katiecook ->
• @bynkii I know, I know, but I hate anyone telling me what I can do, especially snot nosed film school interns in reply to bynkii ->
• @katiecook on Wacker, but the interns are really pushy about public getting photos. I took some of the fake wreckage in reply to katiecook ->
• via @windycitizen: In the beautiful outdoors, then indoors, evening much obliged, Meow! And are you? http://bt.io/FhSg ->
• think today is a half day, and the half isn't starting until after lunch. Just can't focus my mind on any useful task ->
• some MP3 freebies at http://www.spin.com/itunes
  #fb ->
• still don't think I've ever tasted Pimm's No. 1 http://icio.us/of1zox ->
• Dusky Blues at Wolf Point http://flic.kr/p/8mZQHp ->
• Looking For a Piece of Something – cross processed http://flic.kr/p/8mZSf6 ->
• On the team: The stunning hypocrisy of Journolist's critics http://shar.es/mMNxV ->
• @the__mel would probably put both states too, only seems logical
  less than a minute ago in reply to the__mel ->
• We haven't been on a proper vacation together since 2001, getting excited to not think about work for a second or two. ->
• NYTimes: At Military Contractor’s Trial, a $100,000 Buckle http://nyti.ms/aNEGYT ->
• NYTimes: Expanding the Boundaries of a West African Instrument http://nyti.ms/c7x98z ->
• @katiecook London next week, five days total in reply to katiecook ->
• @katiecook I emailed (to your gmail account) a quicky London itinerary created in an iPad app called iThoughtsHD – a mindmapping app in reply to katiecook ->
• David Brooks – you've changed! via @GregMitch: http://yfrog.com/12a0lp http://nyti.ms/bRxi6x ->
• When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. – Samuel Johnson
  http://www.samueljohnson.com/tiredlon.html
  #fb ->
• NYTimes: Bringing Data Mining Into the Mainstream http://nyti.ms/cWFIeF ->
• It’s going to get really ugly in CA http://tinyurl.com/29g5oj7 ->
• whoo hoo, can finally get that new Mac Pro I budgeted for about a year ago, was worried fiscal would end before the Mac Pro was released ->
• Forrester Study Says Most Marketers Should Forgo Foursquare – Advertising Age http://goo.gl/pBZ8 ->
• @ourmaninchicago glad I'm self employed – I've been intemperate on the web for too long in reply to ourmaninchicago ->
• Check this video out — Shocking video shows Brietbart's true allegiance: Al-Qaeda http://youtu.be/QHN_IZ7WjSU ->

For a while, I used a free service called LoudTwitter to post a days worth of my Twitter musings onto my Blogspot blog early every morning. I found this quite useful, especially because I tend to use Twitter mostly as a repository for interesting tidbits and news articles which may never actually end up being blogged. And because, quite honestly, my short term memory is for shit. Having an automatically generated page that I could browse looking for a particular link was something I used many times.

Since LoudTwitter is no more, I wonder if there is a comparable plugin for WordPress or even Google’s Blogspot? I actually preferred that LoudTwitter posted to my step-child Blogspot blog, which doesn’t get much attention, other than to post a Flickr photo now and again.

Some additional reading August 14th from 12:05 to 12:45:

William Blake:

• Think You Can Rip Someone’s Image From the Internet and Use it For Free? Think Again, You Just May End Up Sued and Lose | Thomas Hawk Digital Connection – “It was interesting to hear yesterday from photographer Christopher Boffoli who has done a lot of freelance work lately for the West Seattle Blog. Boffoli wrote me and told me about a situation where a Seattle based Realtor, Laura Miller with Catalyst Commercial Partners, used an unauthorized photo of his for a real estate listing (photo above) of hers and ended up having to pay him a $1,000 small claims court judgment over it.

  I’ll let Boffoli tell part of the story”

• Change of Subject: Getting aboard a health plan — it’s time to throw a lifeline to 60 million Americans – “they’re fine with the idea of providing coverage to everyone. But only if it costs them nothing and leaves them with all the advantages, priorities and prerogatives they currently enjoy. In other words, the old “I’d haul you up, but you might swamp my rowboat” argument.

  Others tell me they view access to quality health care as something they’ve earned — either by working hard or being related to someone who works hard. And if others want it, let them earn it too — the old, “Go build your own rowboat, you slacker!” argument.

  Still others say that those without coverage can always fall back on the patchwork of public hospitals, charity and Medicaid — the old “You don’t need a rowboat. Driftwood will do” argument.

  Obviously, though, too many swimmers are drowning:”

• Krugman- Republican Death Trip – NYTimes.com
• - “President Obama is now facing the same kind of opposition that President Bill Clinton had to deal with: an enraged right that denies the legitimacy of his presidency, that eagerly seizes on every wild rumor manufactured by the right-wing media complex.”
• Court extends Tribune Co. control of Chapter 11 case — chicagotribune.com – “A bankruptcy judge said Tribune Co. can keep control of its Chapter 11 case for three-and-a-half more months as it looks to sell off some assets, including the Chicago Cubs, in its bid to exit bankruptcy protection.

  Judge Kevin J. Carey of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., on Monday gave the publisher of the Chicago Tribune an extension to Nov. 30 to file its reorganization plan to emerge from bankruptcy and to repay creditors. He also set a March 15, 2010, deadline for the media giant to win creditor support for a plan.”

• delicious blog » Sharing Made Easier: Email and Tweet Your Bookmarks – “If you use Twitter and want to send bookmarks to your Twitter feed, associate a Twitter account (only a single Twitter account can be associated at one time) by logging into Twitter under the Twitter panel. You have the option to send all your saved bookmarks to Twitter by selecting the “Tweet all bookmarks unless private” checkbox when you add the Twitter account. If you’ve selected this option, your Twitter account will appear by default in the Send field.”
• 
• Juan Gris

A few interesting links collected August 10th through August 11th:

• Which Tweets Matter ? – icerocket has added a Twitter search function, and allows a searcher to save more than the 10 searches that Twitter restricts a searcher to.
• 
• Nearly Getting Arrested in Downtown Atlanta – “I had a run-in with the law this evening while I was with my friends Scott Kublin and Rick Shearer. Just next door to the Olympic Park is the aquarium and the Coke Museum with a big field in between. There were about a fifty people or so there at the park. I set up my tripod to take a photo of downtown and the Coke Museum was in the middle of the shot. A female cop of came over and told me I had to take down the tripod because I looked like a professional. Coke does not allow that, so she said. I said I’m a blogger with expensive toys and hardly a threat. Then she got quite huffy and agitated before telling me if I did not take down the tripod that I would be arrested.”
• 
• Let’s talk about tasers – “Tasers are routinely used by police to torture innocent people who have not broken any law and whose only crime is being disrespectful toward their authority or failing to understand their “orders.” There is ample evidence that police often take no more than 30 seconds to talk to citizens before employing the taser, they use them while people are already handcuffed and thus present no danger, and are used often against the mentally ill and handicapped. It is becoming a barbaric tool of authoritarian, social control.”

Taking a cue from Kottke¹, I am reminding you that you should sign up for my daily email. Signing up should only take a minute or less if you are a fast typer, I absolutely promise to never send you unsolicited email². Feedburner/Google has enabled the email to include items that don’t necessarily make it to my weblog, but that I still think are interesting, or are otherwise topics of note. Like news stories that I Digg, YouTube video I “favorite“, Flickr photos I upload, etc.

Plus you should subscribe to my daily email³ so that you have something fun to read as you drink your morning beverage. A dose of B12′s Solipsism can only enhance your day!

Oh, and you should follow me on Twitter too, if you are so inclined. I have other social media accounts, but I don’t care if you friend me on Facebook, or subscribe to my Tumblr blog, for instance.

1. I hope Jason Kottke doesn’t mind being referred to by simply his last name, I’ve been reading his weblog for so long now, to me he is the blogosphere equivalent of single-named celebrities like Bono or Nenê [↩]
2. unless you want me to, of course. Ahem [↩]
3. usually gets released around 1 AM CST [↩]