Claire's blog

• OVERLY-HARSH PUNISHMENTS: Former Dem House Candidate arrested for voter registration at Occupy San Diego w/updates!

  It’s come to this. Also… nice to know people are being told they will be arrested if they even put their purse on the ground. Really, fuck what America is becoming.

  tags: POLITICS OverlyHarshPunishments AbuseOfAuthority SelectiveEnforcement selective police OccupyWallStreet OccupySanDiego SanDiego California FirstAmendment 1stAmendment ConstitutionalRights Rights RayLutz arrests voterRegistrationTAble votersrights voting v

• SURREALISM: Mike Wallace sits down with Salvador Dali, 1958 – Holy Kaw!

  A video interview of Salvador Dali, for all the surrealists out there.

  tags: media video TV shows interviews YouTube videos MikeWallace SalvadorDali surreal surrealism surrealists Alltop

• CELL PHONES: Android Dev Demonstrates CarrierIQ Phone Logging Software On Video – Slashdot

  Yup. Odds are your phone is reporting every keystroke you make and every text you make to a central data collection authority. Gee, you think the NSA won’t make thousands of requests for that data, the way they do with google accounts, cell phone CALLS, etc, etc?

  You are paying more money than a landline to have less privacy. At least root your phone and remove this shit.

  Apple doesn’t seem to use this package, most likely because they have their own in house data collection and warehousing.

  tags: politics TechnologyWar technology privacy surveillance data collection TrevorEckhart CarrierIQ Slashdot news articles

• LIARS: Newburgh police officer faces possible prison time in hit and run accident

  Here’s the part that strikes me as interesting: The cop that lied was not charged with perjury, because The System really really hates doing that; it taints their testimony in current and future cases.

  But the tow-truck guy who possibly only helped the cop after the cop flexed his authority at him — HE got charged with perjury? 

  What the fuck.

  tags: politics UnderlyHarshPunishments ThinBlueLine perjury ScottHecht ThomasDouglass ThomasDouglassIV milton Kingston NewburghCity MidHudsonNews liars hitAndRun injuries car accidnets felony felonies UlsterCounty convicted InsuranceFraud fraud falsifyingBusine

• “Office” Star Leslie David Baker Sings and Swings! – Celebrity Pictures, Lol Celebs and Funny Actor and Actress Photos – ROFLrazzi

  Stanley from The Office has his own auto-tune’d pool party music video? I think I just shed a few I.Q. points — this is the type of drivel I usually stay away from. HOW DOES THIS EXIST??!?!?
  Who the hell walks around with their dick in a box, also? I mean, outside of SNL members… Hahahahaha, i totally didn’t realize how funny it was that i used the word “member” there. I’ll have to re-member that.

  tags: media video TV shows NBC TheOffice Stanley StanleyHudson LeslieDavidBaker musicVideos music audio 2BeSimple N.U.M. WTF WhyDoesThisExist? WHY ICanHasCheezburger blog posts Youtube videos.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• WAR ON DRUGS: Study shows medical marijuana laws reduce traffic deaths

  Correlation is not causation – but this is something i’ve been saying for a long time. Hell, if you got every person who drank alcohol to do cocaine instead, there’d be less deaths and life expectancy would increase. But society is not nearly up to the level of understanding that. Society’s kind of retarded, that guy.

  tags: politics WarOnDrugs drugs government freedom marijuana traffic laws cars accidents deaths medical medicalMarijuana research studies UniversityOfColoradoDenver legalization drunkDriving alcohol statistics

• CARTOONS: Beavis & Butt-head: parody: Regis and Butthead

  Courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel

  tags: media video TV shows MTV Beavis&Butt-head RegisPhilbin JimmyKimmel parody parodies Regis&Butt-head Regis fromCompn

• FREEDOM: 30 Signs That The United States Of America Is Being Turned Into A Giant Prison

  This is kind of a good summary of some of the various issues and events that I’ve blogged about over the past few years. Our country is going to shit like it never has before. Occupy Wall Street has a lot of sympathy from people due to our government pulling off shit like this. It’s not just the corporations that are angering people — though they certainly help.

  tags: politics government freedom USA top signs 30 30Signs lists AbuseOfAuthority PoliceState police brutality ConstitutionalRights rights PoliceBrutality WarOnTerror terrorism indefiniteDetention JoeLieberman BigBrother surveillance warranteless GPS GPS-tracki

• OVERLY-HARSH PUNISHMENTS: Run a stop sign? Get hospitalized for a week, loose your eye

  Cops hospitalize a man for a week (and he has to go back to have his eye removed). Why? He was resisting arrest. Why was he being arrested/ He ran a stop sign. Except he was a pedestrian when this happened. More american “justice”.

  Uh yeah… Even if you have a video of this guy running a stop sign, charges should be dropped and he should have a settlement large enough that he never has to work again.

  This is bullshit. This is why smart people no longer consider this a free country. Our “freedom” is simply a random roll of the die that some officer didn’t decide to hospitalize us for some unproven crime.

  Then there’s the fact that this dude was a 120 lb diabetic, and that the victim’s name is the only name released here. 

  America is so very un-american.

  tags: politics AbuseOfAuthority PoliceBrutality brutality police beatings RobertEdmonds hospitalized OverlyHarshPunishments RanStopSign pedestrian resistingArrest diabetics eye LostAnEye injuries permanent Indianapolis Indiana WHAS news articles

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Old dream from when my computer was dead…

I was playing some weird role-playing game. It was some D&D level that was part of BrettSpielWelt or something.

I could never do good — people were always playing more creatively than me.

So I did something different. I waited for this huge thunderstorm wave that only crashes up every long game cycle (weeks?), and when it crashed up, I quickly ran down to where the water briefly recessed after the wave was gone. I found some stuff that could only be found there at that moment, or something to that effect(?). I also destroyed a shovel (?).

Anyway, I finally found an admin and fished for compliments for my creativity, but instead he sanctioned me multiple times!

He wrote a 5-part response. Three parts complimented my creativity, but the other 2 parts basically said why I shoudln’t have been allowed to do that, and why I was sanctioned.

I lost the points I gained for that, they modified the wave so it wouldn’t work like that in the future, and they also docked me in such a way that I was worse off than when I started.

So yeah, fuck that game. Reminds me of why I quit MUD’ing in the first place. The admins ruin things.

“Dreams… They’re the hurricanes that wash the soulfilth from the superdome of our nightminds.”
– Xavier:Renegade Angel (more…)

• TV SHOWS: BBC: Comedy: Look Around You

  A hilarious satire – future predictions from the past. Kind of makes fun of bad public access/educational television, thus giving it a kind of Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! / Check It Out With Dr. Steve Brule kind of feel. (But not as frenetic and musical as Tim And Eric; more dry and British.)

  Basically, this show is some weird-ass shit. And the website is pretty rich with stuff too.

  tags: media video TV shows BBC LookAroundYou official pages

• CARTOONS: Daria and Jane by ~SoDespair on deviantART

  Hands-down the best live-action/real-life/cosplay I’ve ever seen of Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane. The only way this could be better would be if they were making out.

  tags: media video TV shows cartoons MTV Daria real-life live real untooned DariaMorgendorffer JaneLane cosplay Deviantart SoDespair

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• POLITICS: Master Lists of TSA Abuses & Crimes | Travel Underground: Safety & Security

  A great list of all the crimes committed by the TSA. IT IS HUGE. This really puts things into perspective. 

  tags: politics AbuseOfAuthority government freedom travel rights TAS lists masterLists Fisher1949 LisaSimeone TravelUnderground articles malfeasance crime crimes ConstitutionalRights 4thAmendment FourthAmendment fromCompn

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• SOFTWARE: WINDOWS 7: ANNOYANCES: Taskbar-Slapper

  If you have your windows taskbar set to autohide — but then it fucking won’t — this is a run-once solution to fix the problem at that time. 

  I have to turn my taskbar to autohide mode before running Milkdrop to get Milkdrop to render behind my transparent taskbar. But then, even that wasn’t good enough at the moment, so I had to do this as well.

  Bandaids on top of bandaids. 

  tags: software windows Windows7 annoyances taskbar autohide slapper fix fixer taskbarAutohide Taskbarslapper AutoHideSlapper AutoHideFixer

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

[IMDB link] [Netflix link]

UNCOMFORTABLE PLOT SUMMARY (inspired by this): [highlight for spoilers]→ Radiologist discovers she is special person in a secret world just beside our own.

PEOPLE: Starring Lena Headey (Sarah Connor in Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Miss Dickinson in the 2007 St. Trinian’s, Queen Gorgo in 300, Angelika in The Brothers Grimm). Melvil Poupaud (Johnny ‘Goodboy’ Jones in the recent Speed Racer movie) as her creepy boyfriend. Richard Jenkins (the dead dad in Six Feet Under, How I Got Into College, Wolf, Me,Myself & Irene, Step Brothers) as the father.

QUIRKS: Slow-building, creepy, doppleganger suspense. And dopplegangers freak me out way more than most things.

VISUALS: It did win some Best Cinematography awards. It was indeed well-done, visually.

BAD STUFF: It did not quite fulfill its potential. The mirror situation could have been explored more. The main threat to humanity is placed on the sidelines while we deal solely with the experiences of the main character.

Also, [highlight for spoilers]→ the twist can be seen ahead of time.

CONCLUSION: Better than your average generic horror. Re-watching Prince Of Darkness did not make mirrors creepy again, but *this* movie made mirrors creepy again! Dopplegangers freak me out. This movie even made ME jump (in stereo with Carolyn, of course). Definitely a cut above most horrors.

RANDOMNESS: Afterward, Oranjello & Lemonjello seemed to just start staring off into a mirror… Carolyn noticed this and was ever-so-slightly unsettled.

RATINGS:
Clint: Netflix: 3/5 stars. IMDB: 7/10.
Carolyn: Netflix: 3/5 stars. IMDB: 7/10. Carolyn “saw it coming” at points Clint did not.
The native public rating for this movie is: IMDB: 5.6/10, Netflix: 2.7/5 stars (Netflix‘s predicted rating for us was 2.9/5 stars).

RECOMMENDATION: Horror / psychological thriller fans and doppleganger foes should watch this.

Watch only in bluray [like we did], or in Euro-DVD. The American DVD is cropped such that 24 percent of the film is missing.

SIMILAR MOVIES: Has aspects of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Others have said this was a good version of the movie Mirrors, which we are also planning to watch soon. “It’s what mirrors could have been if mainstream horror films were still well made”, says CosmicForces@IMDB.

MOVIE QUOTE: Dr. Robert Zachman: “It’s a rare disorder, in which a person holds a belief that an acquaintance, usually a close family member or a spouse, has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor. The condition is most cases is a direct result of brain lesion. With your permission, I would like to readmit you to hospital and get Dr. Kenric to do some further tests.”

COINCIDENCES: (The Broken, Family Guy S8E8/American Dad S5E7) 2 videos in the same night with a female with a bandaged wound on her forehead. Can’t remember if the 2nd one was Family Guy Or American Dad. (more…)

• APPLE: iTunes Flaw Allowed Spying On Dissidents – Slashdot

  way to go, apple. 1200 days not patching a security bug that was used by oppressive governments against dissidents? I guess that’s what you get if you can’t handle managing your mp3s yourself.

  tags: Apple insecure security corporations dissidents government TechnologyWar iTunes sheeple cyberwarfare TheTelegraph GammaInternational hacking FinFisher mp3s Egypt UK AppleSoftwareUpdater software vulnterabilityes

• CORPORATIONS: The Uncooling of America The History of Corporations in the United States

  The United States of America was born of a revolt not just against British monarchs and the British parliament — but against British corporations. 1999 article that pretty adequately explains what Occupy Wall St is standing against, even though it was written quite awhile ago.

  tags: politics corporations AdBusters articles revolution ThirdWorldTraveler

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• CORPORATIONS: AIG Sues U.S. Taxpayers for 25 Billion…Really

  This is fucking ridiculous. I was against the bailout too, and this further supports me being against it. But I’m against AIG pulling more of its bullshit, and this is further bullshit. The sad thing is, their constitutional concerns are actually quite valid. They could win this. In a way, maybe they should.

  Either way, AIG are fucking assholes. I know what needs to be done to them.

  tags: politics corporations baliout lawsuits AIG MauriceGreenberg HankGreenberg government freedom ConstitutionalRights rights FifthAmendment 5thamendment economy Washington DC WashingtonDC Dvorak.org news articles

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

[IMDB link] [Netflix link]

PLOT SUMMARY: Guy wakes up in Vegas married to Camera Diaz. That would be a pretty happy ending right there, but then he blows it by winning $3M on a slot machine. Good luck getting that marriage annulled NOW!

UNCOMFORTABLE PLOT SUMMARY (inspired by this): [highlight for spoilers]→ Drunken legal contracts are unenforceable, except when a woman wants your money. OH!

PEOPLE: Ashton Kutcher & Cameron Diaz. Rob Corddry (Harold & Kumar 2, Blades Of Glory, Old School), Lake Bell, Jason Sudeikis (The Cleveland Show).
Smaller roles by Zach Galifianakis, who finds himself in a marriage-related Vegas haze just like in The Hangover .  Also: Queen Latifah.

QUIRKS: Las Vegas, intoxication, legal battles, awkwardness, purposeful annoyance, seeing who can piss off the other the most.

VISUALS: Cameron Diaz ;)

MORALS: Maybe it shouldn’t be legal to marry people when you’re drunk?

BAD STUFF: There was a moment where Cameron Diaz’s lip quivered a bit as she saw Ashton Kutcher deal with children for the first time. “This is the exact frame where the comedy stops!”, declared Carolyn. She later said she was impressed that it didn’t completely stop at that point. However, there definitely was a point where the comedy stopped, and the romance angle took over. This is pretty inevitable in formulaic romantic comedies.

CONCLUSION: Another formulaic romantic comedy about sham marriages, and thus similar to The Proposal. Not quite as funny, but it has more fun moments. Las Vegas. Trying to annoy each other. And a “closing credits reveal” that shows what was missed. The Hangover was a straight-comedy, this is, in a sense, the romantic-comedy version of the Hangover.

RATINGS:
Clint: Netflix: 3/5 stars. IMDB: 6/10.
Carolyn: Netflix: 3/5 stars. IMDB: 6/10.
The native public rating for this movie is Netflix: 3.6/5 stars (3.3/5 stars for people who rate like me), IMDB: 5.9/10. Rated 1.0/10 less than The Proposal, which we watched immediately before this.

RECOMMENDATION: If you like romantic comedies, this one is a bit edgier than most, and isn’t as sweet as some. The Vegas angle is nice, since we honeymooned there and thus have an affinity towards Vegas.

SIMILAR MOVIES: The Proposal, of course. (See coincidences, below.)

MOVIE QUOTES:

1) Tipper: If I could kill someone with my mind right now, it would be you.

2) Hater: I can have a vial of crabs here in 30 minutes.

COINCIDENCES: (The Proposal, What Happens In Vegas) 2 movies in the same night had sham marriages that the authorities were investigating, as well as a scene with people listening to headphones while taking a bath/shower, and not being able to hear what is going on.

FRIENDS’ RATINGS: Benj liked it.

Rebekah hated it. (She sure hates a lot of movies. I don’t understand how people manage to repeatedly watch movies they hate. If they suck so bad, why keep watching them? I don’t understand how people can’t predict what they will like with some amount of accuracy, to the extent of watching something they find zero redeeming value in. I’ve probably only watched a 1/5 star movie about 3 times out of the last 800 or so movies I’ve watched. It’s not that they aren’t out there. They are. I just know what to avoid.)
(more…)

• TWITTER: Lieutenant John Pike (pepperspraypike) on Twitter

  Unamerican Lieutenant John Pike faces his comeuppance on Twitter — this account where every tweet makes fun of his ridiculous attittude.

  tags: Twitter comedy JohnPike AbuseOfAuthority OccupyWallStreet OWS PoliceBrutality pepperSpray brutality police violence protesters ConstitutionalRights rights 1stAmendment FirstAmendment

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

[IMDB link] [Netflix link]

PLOT SUMMARY: Baby dies, mommy cries. And then everything gets much, much, much, much, much, much, much worse.

HAIKU REVIEW: Ouch, ouch, NOOOOO, OUCH, NOOOO!
Fuck. Holy shit. Oh my god.
No. STOP. NOOOOOOO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

UNCOMFORTABLE PLOT SUMMARY (inspired by this): [highlight for spoilers]→ Wife’s nymphomania is too distracting for husband to notice she is a child-abusing, murderous, crazy bitch. Genital mutilation ensues.

PEOPLE: Directed by Lars von Trier. Remind me never to watch anything by him again.

Starring Willem Dafoe (Green Goblin in Spider-Man, The Aviator, Shadow Of The Vampire, American Psycho, The Boondock Saints, eXistenZ, Wild At Heart, Platoon) and Charlotte Gainsbourg with her weird mouth (21 Grams). And that’s it. It’s just the 2 of them for the entire movie.

QUIRKS: A drama that becomes a psychological thriller. Some say it edges on supernatural thriller while being ambivalent if that is the case — which is a bit how The Number 23 felt.

I never will think of acorns in the same way. Now they are like miscarriages, and will make me think of the Pixies song “Dead” every time they hit my roof. “Uriah hit the crapper… The crapper…”

VISUALS: This is a cerebral movie, not a visual movie. However, they used some interesting “lens effects” that made the woods quite trippy. It almost felt like analog lens distortion, but I heard this was shot on an HD digital camera. Either way, I might be wrong about the technical facts, and they don’t really matter. The effect was neat, and helped add some insanity-related tension to the movie.

MORALS: I’m not sure what moral can be taken out of this movie. The strongest moral might be “don’t watch this movie if you don’t want to squirm”. I think that’s a pretty important lesson that might be more important than any lesson the film has to offer. Seriously: This film will hurt you. This film will make watching the last season of Six Feet Under feel like watching Barney.

POLITICS: There are definitely a lot of gender politics in this movie, causing some to call it misogynistic. However, one must remember that DEPICTING something is not the same as CONDONING it. A Slayer song about a serial killer (Seasons In The Abyss) is not Slayer condemning serial killing. It is Slayer DEPICTING serial killing. In a similar method, the director is not necessarily condoning the violence towards women [AND men] depicted in this movie. So quit your whining, feminazis. This movie isn’t exactly pleasant for guys to watch. In fact, it’s about the least pleasant movie ever.

BAD STUFF: Horror. Sorry. Anguish. Emotional pain. Depression. Crying over a baby. And then there’s the REAL HORRORS that I don’t want to talk about, because I don’t want to spoil the movie. Amazingly, there were people who laughed through this movie. Wow. We actually aborted this the first time we watched it, because we realized it was far too heavy for our mood that night. This movie caused me to have to take some major deep breaths. Carolyn couldn’t even look at the screen for some of it. Some of the most painful, horrible, disturbing images ever.

But not a lot of them. This is no Saw or Hostel. The TRULY TRAUMATIZING, horrible moments maybe only add up to 1-2 minutes of on-screen violence. Most of the rest of the movie is an exercise in exploring sorrow and heartache.

The movie is definitely quite pretentious and “artsy”. That is the source for some people’s laughter. Apparently, a lot of people laughed at the whole “Chaos Reigns” thing. They thought it was so pretentious and hackneyed that they “burst into laughter for 15 minutes”. I knew this was a heavy “art film” going in, and did indeed feel the air of pretension permeating the whole movie. Especially the epilogue — which apparently was not the original ending to the movie. I found the epilogue to actually make the film worse.

Symbolism can only take you so far. When you obfuscate the true meaning of a film in the name of artsy symbolism, you actually obfuscate the meaning of your work and make it harder for people to understand. The contest of rising up to the challenge of understanding obfuscated symbolism is mostly a pissing contest among academics who want to flaunt their superior analytical skills, and doesn’t really have much to do with the enjoyment of a film. Unless you’re David Lynch, an overuse of symbolism can actually harm your work for a lot of observers. I think some of that happened with Antichrist. The talking fox? The epilogue? I think this might have been a more powerful film for most WITHOUT those parts.

And yes, I get that there are deeper meanings. But they have to be interesting and germane to the plot for most people to care. Seeing the variety of speculation in the IMDB forum helps prove the point that the director’s point wasn’t proven.

CONCLUSION: This is one of the most painful things I’ve ever watched in my life. As horrible as the experience was, this movie gets bonus points for invoking intense emotion — even if it’s unpleasant emotion. And this movie has about a minute of some of the most horrible things I’ve seen. Ever. In my life. I get adrenaline rushes and slight terror attacks just thinking about some of the events that transpired in this movie. As horribly painful of an experience as it was, I would recommend it to any serious movie watcher. TEST YOUR VIEWING MIGHT.

RATINGS:
Clint: Netflix: 3/5 stars. IMDB: 7/10.
Carolyn: Netflix: 3/5 stars. IMDB: 7/10.

But if one were to rate the *intensity* of this film, it would be 5/5 stars, 9/10. The worst moments are some of the most intense things I have seen ever, period.

The native public rating for this movie is Netflix: 3.6/5 stars (3.1/5 stars for people who rate like me), IMDB: 6.9/10.

RECOMMENDATION: It’s definitely worth a trip to the IMDB forums after seeing this, if not to glimpse the myriad of reactions that people had to this film.

SIMILAR MOVIES: Hopefully, none ever. But why the FUCK are they making a video game based on this? WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK??????????? “According to the Danish newspaper Politiken, a video game called “Eden,” which is based on the film, is in the works. It will start where the film ends. “It will be a self-therapeutic journey into your own darkest fears, and will break the boundaries of what you can and can’t do in video games,” says video game director Morten Iversen.””

MOVIE QUOTE: She: A crying woman is a scheming woman.

COINCIDENCES: (South Park S3E08, Antichrist) In the same night, aborted 2 videos that both had the son walking in on his parents having sex right at the beginning. I don’t remember why we aborted South Park. I think we’d seen it already.

FRIENDS’ RATINGS: Ian didn’t like it. Glen hated it.
(more…)

• CHART: Which glue should I use?

  I like charts.

  tags: charts glue reference which plastic paper ceramics wood glass fabric styrofoam metal organicMaterials HotGlue WoodGlue CraftGlue FabricGlue SprayAdhesive SuperGlue RubberCement Silcone Epoxy ExpansiveGlue

• OCCUPY WALL STREET: Reporters For Right-Wing Publication Daily Caller Beaten By NYPD, Helped By Protesters

  But will Michelle Fields change her mind about police-protester interactions, after being beaten herself, and then helped by the very protesters she criticized?  

  Meanwhile, the police have now barricated people IN Zucotti Park, not letting them out. Wait – are we not allowed to camp, or do we have no choice to camp? Which is it again? You forced them out a few days ago, now you’re forcing them in?

  The authorities don’t know what to do with Americans they can’t control.

  I hope this is the re-awakening of the American Spirit that seemed to die around the time I was born (1974).

  Too bad police don’t beat more conservatives until they wake up…

  I have to admit: Her position makes me think she’s a bitch, so I’m happy to see her cry, because she deserves a little punishment for foisting her bullshit attitude on the world. Maybe now that her rights have been violated, she finally understands what is happening?

  tags: politics OccupyWallStreet right-wing conservative reporter MichelleFields DailyCaller protesters police AbuseOfAuthority policeBrutality beatings FirstAmendment constitutionalrights rights 1stAmendment FreedomOfPress freedom government Thinkprogress news

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• DRUGS: Survey Shows Marijuana Can Replace Prescription Drugs

  I wonder how many peoples’ views are so polarized that they can’t accept this?

  tags: politics WarOnDrugs drugs freedom government medical marijuana medicalMarijuana pharmaceuticals MPP blog posts surveys BerkeleyPatientsGroup AmericanPsychiatrocAssociation InstituteOnPsychiatricServices

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• TECHNOLOGY WAR: American Censorship Day November 16 – Join the fight to stop SOPA

  Congress is trying to censor our internet. In Europe, a country did this, and censored a wikipedia article about a 1970s album that had a naked girl on the cover. In Australia, they did this, and articles criticizing the blacklist showed up on it. The government should not have this ability whatsoever. This is worse than all the bad things that happen with the internet combined. The 1% does not want the 99% to have the ability to freely spread information the 1% does not approve of.

  tags: politics TechnologyWar technology internet censorship Government freedom information FirstAmendment 1stAmendment ConstitutionalRights rights blacklists SOPA

• WAR ON DRUGS: DEA Raids Seattle Area Marijuana Dispensaries

  remember when Obama the liar wrote a letter to the justice department, then claimed that there would be no more raids on dispensaries in states where it is legal? I remember the Obamicons arguing with me at length – some of the most intelligent people i know – that this would be what happened. I knew he was full of shit then, just as I did before he was ever elected. Hopefully with OWS others have finally realized this.

  tags: politics WarOnDrugs drugs freedom government medical medicalMarijuana ObamaAdministration states’Rights raids dispensaries CannabisDefenseCoalision DEA JennyDurkan Washington StopTheDrugWar DRCnet news articles JusticeDepartment DOJ DepartmentOfJustice

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The “flat” sound that some people describe mp3s as having has nothing to do with them being mp3s. This is a misconception that I’ve seen repeated about as many times as people claiming that vinyl sounds better.

The “flat” mp3 sound (often attributed to ALL digital formats) is typically is due to the fact that when mp3s were first adapted, harddrive space cost a lot more, and they encoded them at low bitrates such as 128kbps, with most encoders cutting out 16kHz-20kHz range altogether. So yeah. That’s pretty bad. Unlike vinyl or cassette or CD, mp3s can be encoded in more than one way. And most of those ways were shitty when the format first came out. Unfortunatley, that’s when most people ripped their music, and music piracy helps keep such shitty encodes circling the globe.

This is why I’ve found myself buying a CD even though I’d already downloaded the mp3s of it. Because I wanted to make PROPER mp3s that actually SOUND GOOD.

The encoder itself matters, too. The same bitrate with different encoders that use different acoustic mathematical models will result in different sound quality. Such models have improved greatly over the years. I recommend LAME.exe. Many power users consider it the best encoder out there.

Let me play you a lossless recording and a LAME.exe, VBR-encoded mp3 over my 5.1 system compared to a WAV or FLAC of the same song. (But only after making sure they both come out at the same apparent volume; people often pick whichever one is the loudest one otherwise.) When you can correctly choose which is which 75% of the time, I might consider you an exception to the normal abilities of the human ear.

I hear a lot of people try to make up a silly claim that mp3s sound flat because they are in fact only discrete points of the audio, with math filling in the rest. And our “brain can tell the difference”.

Sorry, bub. That’s just not true. Your brain may be able to tell the difference between some files on your harddrive, but that is because they are bad files, not because they are digital. Reality is simply a matter of our brain being fed certain signals. There are most certainly upper limits in the resolution and processing power of what we can perceive — even if science may have the wrong limit stated (or not know them at all), and even if human beings exhibit a wide variance in perceptual talent. (There may be 1% that need double the bitrate to be fooled!) Yes, some people definitely hear at a higher resolution than others, just as some people have a greater tonal range. Eventually, however, technology will be advanced enough (and storage space ridiculously cheap enough) that it will be quite possible for everybody to carry a recording of something in such great resolution that no human being on the planet could ever distinguish it from the original analog production of those same sounds.

We’re not there yet, but how many of you have done a controlled study? Did you have someone play you back the 2 files? Did you make sure they both had the same volume? {mp3 encoding often mucks with the volume levels slightly}. Did they record the results? Were they randomized? What percentage of the time were you able to tell? So far, I know few people who have done a test like this. I did in 2000 — and years later decided that the results I had recorded for myself were wrong. I thought 160kbps was good enough. Then I thought 192kbps was good enough. I was wrong. I now encode at the highest bitrate with the highest quality. The point being — I’ve been willing to correct my own personal assumptions several times over the years.

Further complicating things is this:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/03/11/153205/young-people-prefer-sizzle-sounds-of-mp3-format

They did surveys and found that people who grew up on inaccurately-encoded mp3s preferred the sound of that to lossless recordings!
In other words, they preferred something worse!

This explains all those vinyl people right off the bat. They like the “warmer” sound because it is what they are used to. And it’s hard to perform a double-blind test when comparying vinyl to other formats, because vinyl is such a broken format that it’s impossible to NOT tell it’s vinyl. I’ve never not been able to hear the needle, to hear pieces of dust. I’ll carve an exception for people who use laser-based vinyl record players (which do not use needles), but they are still subject to the RIAA equaliation curve which causes vinyl to actually represent the full tonality of sound IN AN INFERIOR WAY. But because they can always hear the hiss and crack, in a survey, vinyl will win. It doesn’t mean shit. It means as much as the college kids in the study above preferring shitty 128kbps mp3s over lossless FLAC. People are dumb and don’t even know what they want. I didn’t know what I want and changed my own mind a few times.

The conclusion of the study for me personally is that when a single human being claims to like one format better than another — it really doesn’t mean much in terms of the format being better. People like worse things if that’s what they are used to. Aggregate controlled surveys are what truly dictates which format is better.

I grew up on vinyl, but I know CD is an improvement on it, because I personally think the people who say they prefer the “warmer” sound of vinyl are as full of shit as the students in the slashdot article linked above. The same thing applies to those who think that digital music is automatically “flat”. No. It depends on far more than whether it is digital/mp3 or not.

[P.S. If you haven’t done a blind, controlled study with volume-normalized encodes at the highest possible bitrate — please do not leave a comment about your opinion. I’m only interested in the opinion of people who understand proper testing methodology, and have gone through a proper test.] (more…)

We watched 176 movies in 2010 (down 28% from 245 last year). 172 total unique movies (one was watched 2 times, another 3 times). About 8 were movies we’d already seen, though most of those were for the audiocommentary.

One movie was aborted: Break Up Club (Japan), which we gave 1.6/5 stars and 3/10 to.

Two were seen in the theatre, for the fake-IMAX 3-D (Avatar thoroughly trounced Alice In Wonderland).

Here are some graphs:

Genres: (comedy=63/31%, horror=29/14%, action/adventure/superhero=27/13%, fantasy=27/15%, drama=23/11%, scifi=19/9%, thriller/mystery=15/7%, romance=1/0%):

Ratings: (5-star=44/26%, 4-star=69/40%, 3-star=48/28%, 2-star=9/5%, 1-star=1/0%):

Animated (25/14%) Vs. Live (151/86%): Apparently we are watching more animated every year (10% last year, 7% the year before):

Quality: 79% in HD this year (up from 28%,19%,14% in previous years; the transition to HD video is nearing completion):

LANGUAGES: English, Japanese (8 or more), Korean (3), Swedish (1), Danish (1), French (0.5*), Hungarian (1, but it was dubbed in English).
[*The Science Of Sleep was half-French, half-English, thus French=0.5.]

AWARDS:

FAVORITE MOVIES OF THE YEAR: upbeat: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World,  downbeat: Deadgirl (2008).

BEST MOVIE-GOODNESS TO BAD-TITLE RATIO: Get Him To The Greek

COMEDY, BEST:  Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.   HONORABLE MENTION: Zombieland, Hot Tub Time Machine, Drawn Together Movie: The Movie (2010) .
COMEDY, MOST UNEXPECTED: Informant!, The
COMEDY, BEST HOLIDAY COMEDY: Hank And Mike (2008) – Does for Easter what Bad Santa did for Christmas
COMEDY, MOST PERVERSE/SEXUAL COMEDY: Control Alt Delete (2008) – never seen a guy fuck a computer before
COMEDY, BEST FOREIGN: Night Of The Living Dorks (currently being remade by Michael Showalter of The State)
COMEDY, MOST EXPLOITIVE OF CHILDREN: Lower Learning
HORROR, MOST HUMAN SUFFERING: Human Centipede 1 (2009)
HORROR, TOUGHEST CHOICES: Saw 6 (2009) (Saw 7 wasn’t as good)
HORROR, BEST FREAKOUT FOR SINGLE-FAMILY HOME VIEWERS: Paranormal Activity 1 (2007
HORROR, MOST TENSION/ANXIETY: Frozen (2010)
HORROR, BEST MIRROR-RELATED HORROR: Into The Mirror (2003) (Korea)
HORROR, POLITICAL: Zombies Of Mass Destruction (2009)
THRILLER, POLITICAL: Eyeborgs
MOST BORING PARTS FOR A GREAT MOVIE: Enter The Void (2010)
BEST BLACKLIGHT SCENE:  Enter The Void (2010) 
FANTASY, BEST: Inception (2010)
SCI-FI, BEST: Avatar (2010). Honorable mention: Time Machine, The (1960), War Of The Worlds (2005) (surprised me).TIME TRAVEL, BEST: Triangle (2009)  (honorable mentinon to Hot Tub Time Machine)
VAMPIRE, BEST: Daybreakers (2009)
ACTION, BEST: Machete (2010)
SUPERHERO, COMIC, BEST: Ghost Rider
SADDEST MOVIE: Mysterious Skin (2004)
TV ADAPTATION, BEST: The A-Team (2010)
DISAPPOINTMENT, BIGGEST:  Midnight Chronicles (2008) , Storytelling (2001) – my 2nd least favorite (?) Todd Solondz movie, In Bruges
Also… Very disappointed that Virtuality was never picked up as a series.

WORST MOVIE: Wish Upon A Star (1996), Midnight Chronicles (2008). Honorable mention to Camping (2009) (Danish), In Bruges.

Read past the jump for the lists of individual movies, separated by rating. (more…)

• RELIGION: Catholic Charities Abandons Thousands of Children Instead of Adopting to LGBT Parents

  Catholicism is directly responsible for keeping orphans from having parents. But oh, it’s important that we have a moral framework to discus things, right? That’s the lame-ass excuse sky-fairy-fuckers keep giving me, oh that and calling The Holocaust an “Atheist genocide”. 

  tags: politics religion Christianity Christians Catholicism Catholics children orphans LGBT rights GayRights adoption Virginia parents parents’rights HuffingtonPost news articles

• Tim Heidecker Wants You To Feel Ze Endless Cain « My Stupid Blog

  Like Tim and Eric? Hate Herman Cain? Here’s an album for you — from John The Canadien’s blog!

  tags: media audio music comedy parody satire politics HermanCain TimHeidecker TimAndEric albums Cainthology SongsInTheKeyOfCain JohnTheCanadien blog posts

• ABUSE OF AUTHORITY: Zuccotti Park Closed Despite Judge Orders City to Allow Occupy Wall Street In

  It’s bad enough that our politicians often ignore our desires, but now they are flat out ignoring the law. A judge specifically ruled that the protesters must be allowed to say in Zuccotti Park (which is a 24 hour public park, despite private ownership, due to legal agreement upon) — Mayor Bloomberg simply ignored the judge. I’d like to see him hauled in on contempt of court, but of course he’d probably have some sort of immunity.

  tags: politics AbuseOfAuthority ConstitutionalRights FirstAmendment 1stAmendment rights peacefulAssembly protesters bullshit excuses MichaelBloomberg Bloomberg ignored ignores legal ruling LucyPillings BrookfieldProperties OccupyWallStreet government freedom de

• MUSIC: KMFDM releases a free track

  Download it here.

  tags: media audio music bands KMFDM songs free downloads VampireFreaks

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Out of the 176 movies we watched in 2010, 27 (15%) could be classified as action/adventure/superhero movies, and 15 could be (8.5%) classified as thriller/mystery.  About half of the ones we rated 5 stars were actually over-the-top unrealistic comedic action movies like Machete, Scott Pilgrim, Kick-Ass, Bitch Slap, and The A-Team.  Over-the-top ridiculous action is better — action movies were never really realistic to begin with, so why pretend?

We watched two adaptations (1996, 2009) of The Phantom. Guess which one was way better?

Read past the jump for the lists of individual movies, separated by rating. (more…)

• OCCUPY WALL STREET: ANARCHY | Frank Miller Ink

  Yeah… FUCK Frank Miller. I guess when you’re a rich enough snob that you can refuse to watch the movie adaptation of your comic book (but still cash those royalty checks), you’re divorced enough from the reality of the way our society is currently operating. So FUCK YOU Frank Miller. 300 was a shitty movie, too.

  tags: politics OccupyWallStreet OWS FrankMiller idiots anarchy

• CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Federal Appeals Court Creates New Precedent Allowing Warrantless Door-breaking-down for suspected DUI

  Man, our judicial branch is out of control, no longer representing the constitution. The supreme court ALREADY SAID, “police may not make a warrantless entry into a home to make an arrest for DUI.” The lower courts are now trying to interpret that as “police may not make a warrantless entry into a home to make an arrest for DUI, unless the punishment is more than it was for the case where we last said that.” Huh? Does that make any sense? If the punishment is greater, then the constitution — and previous SCOTUS precednet — do not even apply?
  TOTAL BULLSHIT. This is the type of shit the 99% need to be concerned about. Unfortunately most people’s emotion about drunk driving is greater than their emotion regarding the constitution. But it never should be an emotional decision anyway…
  Officer M.A. Reeves fought this because state law says you lose your cop job if you violate the constitution right. HE SHOULD LOSE HIS JOB. But our courts would rather side with constitution-violating cops than protect our rights, because our courts no longer represent the people.

  tags: politics ConstitutionalRights rights 4thAmendment FourthAmendment precedent SCOTUS FourthDistrictCourtOfAppeals FourthDistrict bullshit legal rulings brokeDownDoor warrantless drunkDriving driving WarOnAlcohol AlanJ.Cilman M.A.Reeves

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.