New Blog Location

http://seanfuture.blogspot.com

I moved it. Sue me.

Police on alert as graffiti artists gather in city

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/0…

I used to work for Next Generation Media, the company promoting the “gathering of as many as 300 graffiti artists planned for tonight at a secret location in South Boston.” That is one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve read in a while. This witch hunt of local “marketers” sparked by the equally absurd “bomb scare” slash idiocy has gotten completely out of hand. I won’t sit here and say anything event remotely decent about the guys at NGMedia, but as a local marketer I’m concerned. Not to mention that my newest employer Future Classic (futureclassic.net) runs one of the largest art exposés largely based on graffiti in the nation. Thankfully we don’t have another planned in Boston for at least a month or so.

Yes, I am a fan of tasteful graffiti, street artistry, “tagging”, whatever you want to call it. It’s beautiful and when a real talent goes to work it is ludicrous to call it anything other than artwork. I also understand the issue concerning vandalism of property, in this case that of the MBTA. Honestly, I think I speak for all Bostonians when I say I love staring blankly at plain brown, grey, whatever, subway station walls and such. Who wants them all colorful, unique, and intriguing. A bland commute is something I look forward to every single day and I certainly am glad our tax dollars are being well spent on arresting local, national, and international artistic genius and charging them with completely legitimate crimes like “the intent to deface” and “conspiracy to tag property.”

Give me a break, “intent,” “conspiracy?” We are talking about people who spend their free time decorating what would otherwise be the hideous underbelly of our city. NOT people looking to murder your mom or assault you late at night. “You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit beautification. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in a circus of media blitzed politics.”

Anna Nicole Smith Quotes

Marrying into money was not a good thing for me.
- Anna Nicole Smith

It’s been seven years since I’ve had sex.
- Anna Nicole Smith

It’s very expensive to be me. It’s terrible the things I have to do to be me.
- Anna Nicole Smith

I don’t have a boyfriend right now. I’m looking for anyone with a job that I don’t have to support.
- Anna Nicole Smith

I have to go home and masturbate.
- Anna Nicole Smith - The Anna Nicole Show, after a long day of house shopping.

Trimspa Baby
- Anna Nicole Smith

I don’t drink as much as I use to could.
- Anna Nicole Smith

I want to be the new Marilyn Monroe and find my own Clark Gable.
- Anna Nicole Smith - Her ambitions in 1992, according to her Playmate data sheet

Brian Williams is Not a Friend of Free Speech

Brian Williams seems to think he is some sort of big shot… at least that’s what I heard via my interviewers last week.

A friend of mine, whom I met this past summer when placed in campus housing with him, gave me a call the other day about a documentary he is working on.  The point of this documentary is to highlight the ways in which younger generations are getting their news.  Working to cover everything from traditional news network’s, their websites, and down the list to blogs, they’ve interviewed all kinds of people including Brian Williams of MSNBC.  I got a phone call because my friend knew that I was at least vaguely informed on current events, spent a lot of time on the internet, and yeah, one might call me a “blogger.”  I basically jumped at the chance to help a friend with what I thought was a “whatever” sort of video project.

As it turns out, this is not just a student project.  My friend is assisting a professor in acquiring student perspectives on the current state of the everyday college student.  What do we know about current events, how do we know it, and how much does it interest us.  There is also the case of blogger vs big smart news anchor, specifically, Brian Williams, since it was a theory of the project that many college students used something new called “blogs” to get their information.

As it turns out, Brian Williams wasn’t to kind in regards to bloggers while he was being interviewed.  He seems to think that a well paid, educated, and experienced “journalist” like himself is a much better source of information then just some schmuck in front of their computer typing out a blog.  Ouch, sounds reasonable I guess, I mean obviously Brian Williams isn’t a schmuck that sits in front of a computer, right?  Not only is he super smart and important, he clearly has good genes– as made clear when Mr. Williams chose to mentioned that his daughter goes to an “unnamed” ivy league university.  Furthermore, who even KNOWS what asshole is typing out a blog, right?

Listen Brian, you do look and sound impressive all the way up their on your high horse, but lets make something perfectly clear; you are an ignorant prick.

First, respected journalist my ass.  Brian Williams is part of the same bullshit sensational American media that all the ridiculous cable news networks, including Fox News, are a part of.  The last time I heard anyone speak about the current state of the media presenting us with any sort of respectable journalistic work it was the early 90s, CNN was king, and the war we were involved in over in Iraq was legal.  Weren’t those the days?

Second, Brian here doesn’t seem to understand what he said himself.  Anyone could be writing a blog, yeah, someone who knows nothing, or perhaps someone who knows a LOT– for example, an expert in a specific field.  Yes this is very possible.  Someone who has first hand knowledge and understanding of what they are talking about and not just some reporter who is trying to understand it, then proceeding to simplify it almost beyond recognition to be consumed by the hungry ratings monsters.

Recently, I stumbled across this clearly uninformed little blog that didn’t seem to know what it was talking about.  A comparison between CNNMoney and a Blog.  If you don’t care to read it you can probably guess that it is a long explanation of how the blog made more sense than CNNMoney… and was right.  The big difference?  The blog knew the difference between correlation and causation while CNNMoney did not.

Well that is pretty damn hilarious to me.  What a completely blatant example of how the media, in this case CNN, is willing to be herded like sheep.  “Oh the NAHB and S&P seemed to plummet and sky rocket in the same correlated manner a little bit once?  It MUST mean one is a predictor of the other.  Get this up ASAP, we’ve clearly got an exclusive on dementia!”

Just for everyones further information, Brian Williams also noted that bloggers shouldn’t be able to sit down in front of their computers and just say whatever they want.  It can be misleading and they aren’t educated journalists like him.  I’ll have you know I defended mine and everyone else’s right to free speech on the internet by blog and all mediums during the interview.  Though, if you aren’t in the business of informing people, then you shouldn’t be informing at all according to Brian Williams.

Breaking News: Some Show Aired on TV like Always!

What is a respectable, or even acceptable, submission on Reddit? Daily Show clips, cool pictures of space, a video clip catching a politician in a lie, or some breaking scientific news? Hmm, not the first one. Those seem to get a lot of up votes though, which never ceases to irk the crap out of me. If two girls found a way to more efficiently derive energy from bio-material, THAT is interesting news. A dolphin with legs… eh alright. But clips of a TV show that was aired last night, early this morning, not so early this morning, early in the afternoon, and then again three more times before the cycle begins again with the next new episode airing that night? No. It is a great way to get karma, congratulations, but it’s nearly as cheap as those ass-polls “vote up if you are a man,” or “vote up if you are breathing right now.” Am I the only user who feels this way?

At least it isn’t the Digg yet, with teams of total nerds who use elaborate methods to basically spam vote all their submissions to the front page.  “I got on the main page again!”  “Wow awesome, don’t you feel super fulfilled?”

PBR for President

Regardless of what future government office I may run for… my campaign sign will be something similar to this:

I’m currently working on the slogan. Something along the lines of “Vote High Class,” “Vote for the Blue Ribbon Candidate,” “I’m a Man’s Man,” or of course “I’m Drunk.” Suggestions are welcome.

Speedit + Macbook = Brain on Drugs

With the recent breakdown in 90% of my brain logic, which caused the need for me to reinstall OS X, (see this post followed by this one) a silly thing or two has not been working properly, namely:

Speedit.kext (found here)
For some, what temperature their CPU may be running at would seem like something trivial and unimportant. I however, NEED TO KNOW. Not for any real reason other than that I like to see it go up and down as I press or do not press my CPUs capabilities.

Anyway, the issue here is that it USED to work just fine. It no longer does. Following these directions:

Putting speedctl into my user$ directory along with speedit.kext, and then typing the following in Terminal, one command at a time:
sudo chown -R root:wheel speedit.kext

sudo kextload -v speedit.kext

This installs speedit. Then to test it I type:

sysctl kern.cpu_temp

This works, my CPU temperature is at something like 100C, oh wow how dandy. Now of course for the graphically pretty and user friendly interface of iStat Nano, a glorious little widget that even lets me choose what color it will be. OH GEE, IT WORKS! Also, very exciting. I can now watch my CPU temperature update every second or so. It now seems as though everything that once worked on my MacBook has now been restored.

Think again! Because as soon as I restart OS X, it is as if the install never even happened. I need to do everything all over again if I wish to see my CPUs pretty little temperature.

SOMEONE TELL ME WHY! What do I do to fix this?

DON’T Use Monolingual on your Intel Mac!

If you don’t pay attention and leave any of the architectures checked, you WILL trash your OS X install and be forced to reinstall it, assuming you can find the CDs that came with your pretty little MacBook.

Read the comments here.

I’m such a jackass.  What an amateurish mistake.

Failed States and External Intervention

“Outside intervention can be both a symptom of and a trigger for state collapse. A failed state may be subject to involuntary restrictions of its sovereignty, such as political or economic sanctions, the presence of foreign military forces on its soil, or other military constraints, such as a no-fly zone.” — Foreignpolicy.com

So which countries faltered as a result of external/outside intervention? I’m curious to know the repercussions which fell onto the average Iraqi as a result of sanctions and other forms of intervention prior to our invasion. How much of the poverty or “economic decline” did our sanctions to prevent Sadam from building “weapons of mass destruction” cause?

Then the case of future failed nations. Afghanistan and again, IRAQ. Clearly things aren’t going well. Without our persistent “help,” the likely-hood of these countries “failing” yet again is high.

You can find the rest of the Failed State Index here. You may need to log-in, I had success with the username ‘anonymoususer’ and password ‘anonymous’. Check bugmenot for more.

Monolingual

No, I guess there really isn’t a point to keeping unneeded language resources in Mac OS X. Not only does this piece of software take care of, lets say, how much space Albanian is taking up on my hard-drive, it also gets rid of architectures for all other macs… like Power PC or Intel 64bit.  Since this is just a regular old Intel, I don’t need any of those.  It saved me nearly a gigabyte of hard-drive space.

Nifty:

Cupcakes Hate Bush

This is Burgers and Cupcakes in New York City:

Someone owes me hundreds of cupcakes.

This Post was too large for Itself

In a way, this post collapsed in on itself before I even began to collect my thoughts onto the keyboard.  I’m reading too much, knowing too much, and far to unhappy and angry about all of these things.

The current “movement” of free news is refreshing and incredible.  I only hope one day new outlets where people can vote on news articles and discuss them freely, instead of news media, are how all people are getting news.  Real news.  Not controlled CNFoxMSNBBC entertainment programming.

Many Americans disgust me.   I believe in God no more than I believe in witches.  Our founding fathers were a collective of genius, far ahead of their own time and possibly even now.  The government is corrupt and to follow its rules is to disservice freedom, democracy, liberty, and self.  To not say something or to allow yourself to be brainwashed by societal normalcy’s equates you to a lemming.

Please, scrape at least the surface:

Programmer Testifies: US Elections Rigged

The Founding Fathers were Not Christians

US Politics ‘obsessed’ with Ads

Leachers; Suck it

Waste of oxygen. A waste of earthly resources including food, fresh air, water, and even the space they consume. That is what I think when I see high leacher numbers. What can the argument on their behalf even be? If it’s legal they are full of shit. You are already stealing, and by not contributing back like bittorrent is set up to work, you are destroying the system and sucking broadband and human resources that you don’t deserve, dry. That includes bandwidth and MY oxygen, H2O, and sidewalk space. You as a leacher should be forced to wear the letter ‘L’ at all times. Or even have “LEACHER” tattooed on your forehead. That way, the next time I pass by you in the city, I will know you aren’t really there, since you take and take but refuse to give back, you are a negative drain on society. Hmm, a negative drain… sounds like something that sucks. Perhaps I won’t be able to avoid getting sucked towards you and will just bang into you with extreme force causing you to be severely injured. Wow, good thing I didn’t actually run into and injure a real person that contributes to the world they use selfishly for themselves, or I’d feel pretty bad.

See for yourself how leachers are sucking us dry:

A bittorrent ratio should be, at the very least, 1. No arguments.  Behold:

Ghost in the Shell? More like a Secret Internet Fatty.

Are you a Ghost in the Shell(freesoftwaremagazine.com)? Does your online personality represent you better than your actual real-life appearance? Mine definitely doesn’t, I am not nearly as unfriendly or pompous in real life as I appear online. As far as looks… I’m a firm believer that a person cannot judge the quality of their own photographs.

I sure know what a Secret Internet Fatty is, though. Remember when Facebook first came out? It was and continues to remain the best and fastest way to get a ton of chicks in your apartment for a party… freshman chicks too. Simple, easy, informal, and you can even seek out some girls with similar interests to you or your roommate… if you care. Where does it fail? Looks. A girl’s picture does NOT prove she is hot, it only provides a non-convincing amount of evidence… some of the time. If you can only see her face? Shes fat. If the angle is funny? Shes ugly. If the flash is way to bright? She has bad skin. You know the drill.

PS You won’t find your true love on the Internet unless you care NOTHING about looks. Those one in a million couples in the match.com commercials are just that; one in a million.

The internet is not a replacement for real-life social interaction.

Street Drummers

I’ve seen a few guys around Boston, usually Newburt Street, doing this sort of thing. None that I have ever watched were this good… or energetic. I’m curious if this guy is in fact in Boston…

Computer Melt Down

Thanks to the recent recall by Dell of over 4million notebooks, a curiosity to see completely obliterated/melted electronics has come over me. Dell, of course, is not the only name to be associated with the battery malfunction, as it was the lithium-ion batteries, manufactured by Sony, prone to overheating and catching fire that sparked all of this. Melting computers and electronics is nothing new though. I remember when I was younger seeing a friends stereo, which he had left sitting sealed in his car on a hot summer day, completely deformed and almost looking fluid. This brings one thing to mind: “Oh, cool!” Here is a collection of photos I’ve put together from various places for those who react the same way:

Don’t Doubt the Dance, Kids

Met some interesting guys this week. Boston kids I know seem to do one of two things; graduate from school with a degree or drop out and pursue something related to entertainment… whether it be a band or something else. These guys are doing both a band and something else. This is the something else:

Do viral videos offer a viable alternative to the typical go-to-college-get-a-job route? I’d say no… unless you are talented and lucky. A knowledge of how to promote on myspace doesn’t hurt either.

“I cast Lvl 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.” “You are the worst cyber partner ever.”

I know this conversation is ancient, but I consider it an Internet classic. I posted it under this same title on Reddit about two weeks back and it sat on the front page for about 20 hours. Just in case there is anyone left out there yet to read it, this is the text in its entirety. I would give a site credit, but it can be found in so many places there is no way to know the original source. Enjoy:

bloodninja: Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
BritneySpears14: Aight.
bloodninja: Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
BritneySpears14: I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.
bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up.
bloodninja: Me too baby.
BritneySpears14: I kiss you softly on your chest.
bloodninja: I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.
BritneySpears14: Hey…
bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 Cock of the Infinite.
BritneySpears14: Funny I still don’t see it.
bloodninja: I spend my mana reserves to cast Mighty F*ck of the Beyondness.
BritneySpears14: You are the worst cyber partner ever. This is ridiculous.
bloodninja: Don’t f*ck with me bitch, I’m the mightiest sorcerer of the lands.
bloodninja: I steal yo soul and cast Lightning Lvl. 1,000,000 Your body explodes into a fine bloody mist, because you
are only a Lvl.2 Druid.
BritneySpears14: Don’t ever message me again you piece of ****.
bloodninja: Robots are trying to drill my brain but my lightning shield inflicts DOA attack, leaving the robots as
flaming piles of metal.
bloodninja: King Arthur congratulates me for destroying Dr. Robotnik’s evil army of Robot Socialist Republics. The
cold war ends. Reagan steals my accomplishments and makes like it was cause of him.
bloodninja: You still there baby? I think it’s getting hard now.
bloodninja: Baby?

User Flaming; Is censorship ever appropriate?

An interesting Talk topic has been overflowing recently, pointing out a trait of online communities that is to be both expected, and feared:  User Flaming.

It is pretty common; users trashing other user’s thoughts or opinions.  You see it in forums, comment threads, etc.  Well with Yelp’s growing popularity in Boston it was bound to happen sooner or later.

This is the talk thread in Boston, in reference to Sympathy for the Kettle, a business located in NYC.

When something like this happens, is censorship appropriate?  Obviously this type of thing should be discouraged, but when it does happen, and under circumstances making one suspicious of the flaming user’s account legitimacy (he may be associated with the business), should the offensive review be removed?  I’ve never been a fan of censorship, (one of the reasons I read reddit and not dig ;-)) but I don’t think uncalled for behavior like that can just go unchecked, either.

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