I must be feeling masochistic. Suffice it to say that Beck has Muslim Brotherhood and Iran Tourettes. Whatever. What’s noteworthy is that I made a second mistake on Beck’s site. I scrolled down to the comments. And just… wow. It was like some sort of Jesus Apocaplyse Insane Asylum. I can’t do it justice, just read:
Gleen;
It is exciting to see the Scriptures coming to life! Isaiah says, 2500 years AGO.
The Brotherhood, will set up the alliance you speak about. Israel will be surrounded but not forsaken. The God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob will be faithful to a people [...] Continue Reading…
If any of these signs apply to you, you might be a faux-President dictator…
You live in a “presidential palace”
Your government has a Ministry of Information
Your police forces are structured nationally rather than locally
You have won an election by more than 80 percent of the vote
Your Ministry of the Interior has its own paramilitary forces
You came to power via an “emergency”
Your BFFs are generals and spies
You’re constantly worried those same BFFs are going to assassinate you
You have ever worn a green or brown uniform to a press event
Whenever there are protests in your country, it’s because of “foreign infiltrators”
You lack [...] Continue Reading…
I’ll try to make this quick, since I feel like it’s painfully obvious. Arguing either that social media “caused” these events or had “nothing to do with them” are both stupid arguments.
Clearly people are marching in the streets because they are rejecting decades of oppression, human rights violations, corruption and poverty. It’s just as clear that tools like Twitter and Facebook help people connect, communicate and organize… and… ergo, help enable popular organization. It’s just like the communications equipment assisting Solidarity in Poland. These tools are disruptive accelerators and empowerers not causers (yes, I know I just made up at [...] Continue Reading…
Regarding the US State Department’s private vs. public efforts to support the Egyptian protestors, I just found myself in the startling position of agreeing with a statement out of AEI, via Foreign Policy:
“The real problem is that when your macro policy and your micro policy don’t match up, it takes all the credibility away,” said Danielle Pletka, vice president at the American Enterprise Institute. ” It’s one thing to stand up and say don’t shut off access to cell phones, but when top administration officials refuse to side with the protestors overall, it sends the message that there will be [...] Continue Reading…
Obama needs to denounce Mubarak, and soon. As of this post Egypt has cutoff all communications except land phone lines (edit: looks like the ISP Noor is still up), deployed anti-terror units, and police are setting fires to cars and public spaces. This has all the hallmarks of being setup for a massacre.
Obviously, the US can’t intervene militarily. But the US can certainly denounce Mubarak, pull US aid money and offer humanitarian aid to the Egyptian population.
This is a pivotal moment. If the US denounces Mubarak it’s a huge blow to his government and sends a message to the [...] Continue Reading…
Per my earlier tweet:
Law of Unintended Consequences: western news becomes shitty and sold out, inspires wikileaks and social media, which free the middle east
Not only is there not a single mention of the word “Egypt” above the fold on the current cnn.com homepage, but even the SOTU headline is embarrassing.
And really, are you kidding me, there’s actually four dead white girls in the secondary story? It’s like CNN has become a bad parody of itself.
Compare this to the BBC homepage from the same time stamp. I left my clock in the screenshots so it was clear they were from the [...] Continue Reading…
I’ve never actually had the patience to write up a proper an Ayn Rand rant. Her drivel is just too damned boring and stupid and the people who need to see it discredited won’t read it anyway. But this is worth at least skimming for gems like this:
Rand takes the derisive straw-man leveled against materialists by dualists and other spiritual rabble, and adopts it as a moral imperative. It’s like the difference between an atheist and a Satanist. One disregards religion, while the other accepts its premises, then deliberately sides with the comic relief. Rand’s materialism is pure slapstick.
via [...] Continue Reading…
I think the two huge things that technology is changing in online advertising are 1) targeting. And 2) what I am starting to think of as “applitisements”, which is to say: display and mobile ads are going to become more and more like mini web applications. Neither of these things is a singular, momentary “innovation” in its own right, nor do I think as trends that they started or will end in 2011, but I think 2011 is when they start really coming together beyond the clumsy first steps.
Targeting is a bit more obvious and already on more people’s [...] Continue Reading…
I’m not a designer but also not wholly ignorant of design concepts, so at the moment the body copy is Meta Serif and everything else is Meta Sans. I feel somewhat guilty that I’m messing with someone else’s thought-out theme (in this case, the excellent Basic Maths by Khoi Vinh and Allan Cole), but I really wanted to fiddle with TypeKit and this is the only active site I run where I make design decisions.
I think Meta is maybe making the whole thing too “not maths,” so if any designers have any better suggestions I would be thrilled for [...] Continue Reading…
A lot of people have posted or tweeted the tragically comic visual juxtaposition on glennbeck.com before it was scrubbed. But if you actually read the post, you’ll see the same sort of double message in the words as well. Blatantly.
The post is titled “Glenn responds to the tragedy in Arizona.” It starts off like many such official statements:
The nation was shocked this weekend by Jared Lee Loughner’s attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that left her in critical condition and six people dead, including a nine-year-old girl and a federal judge. Glenn joined the rest of the country in [...] Continue Reading…