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Month: August 2013

You got guts, Erin Palette

I confess that even though she and I are both considered Gunbloggers (she more than I, though she disputes her gunblogger status), Erin Palette really wasn’t on my radar. Not until yesterday when I noticed this graphic popping up across the gunblogosphere: Blogs like this one and this one and this one told part of the tale. But everybody stepped aside to let Erin Palette reveal what she has gathered the great courage to say about herself. I can’t add anything to what’s already been written. Erin Palette, you got guts. But Erin’s story is also a great testimony to…

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Friday links

We were all probably hoping and thinking that Glenn Greenwald and his partner David Miranda weren’t behaving stupidly while sending/transporting Snowden documents over international borders. Alas, perhaps they were. Even if you’re in major anti-news mode, you’ve probably heard about or seen Miley Cyrus’ grotesque “twerking” performance a few days back. The ‘Net has been full of tsking about the way “Hannah Montana” turned on her little-girl fans with her crude display of sexuality. But everybody’s missing the point, you see. It’s not that Cyrus’ performance was over-sexualized. It’s that it was racist! Yes. Seriously. Racist. I think this sets…

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A reminder to live

This came from C^2 with the title “A Cartoonist’s Advice.” It’s that (words by Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, art by cartoonist Gavin Aung Than). It’s one heck of a lot more. A deep-breath-taking reminder that no matter what anybody else wants, demands, or expects of us, our life is ours to make. —– Raining this morning. The first really good fall-like rain. Though temps are still summer-mild and there’s not even a breeze to rattle the wind chimes hanging outside the window, it’s another reminder. It reminds me of this. And to live while life lasts (a…

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Tuesday afternoon data dump and linkfest

I’ve been saving some of these for a week or more. So if you’ve seen a few before bear with me. Chaos is gradually receding. But gradually … NYPD refuses to answer questions about how they (and Bloomberg) pointed firearms at an innocent audience. “At war with the concept of secrecy itself.” ‘Nother good one from Tom Knapp. The Free State Wyoming project has a brand new forum hosted by my old friends at the Mental Militia. (UPDATE: Please see Mama Liberty’s correction in comments. The new Wyoming Mavericks forum has no official connection with the FSW.) “23 signs you’re…

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Can’t fight the NSA?

Since the Snowden revelations, there’s been a lot of this sort of talk on the Tubz. Summary: You can’t fight the NSA’s surveillance because you can’t even understand the NSA’s capabilities and methods. Some truth in that, of course. Not only can we not know just what the NSA’s doing and how. But for all we know there could be 15 other secret spy agencies using yet other technologies and methods to poke and prod into our lives. All with the happy cooperation of tech companies like Google, Facebook, Verizon, et al. We are the first in all of human…

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Right or no right, privacy invasion is still increasingly creepy, especially when the power balance between creeper and creepee is in total tilt mode

When I was 10 or 11, the 16-year-old boy next door would sit pressed up against the fence between our properties, listening to my friends and me talk. During backyard campouts our conversations often turned to sex, as we shared misinformation and bad jokes in hopes of understanding that mysterious adult something we were beginning to feel in our bodies. Though we whispered, evidently we didn’t whisper quietly enough because Roger would sit there on the other side of the fence for hours, doing we did not know what, though it involved occasional grunts and groans. Even when we were…

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A week of suckage. And now Google. But I repeat myself.

Last week was busy. But productive. This week has been busy — but almost entirely occupied by suckage. Coping with sh … stuff. Don’t worry. This is not the sort of stuff that matters in the vast scheme of things (though one of the individual stuffs has the potential to be painful in the near term). It’s mostly just the mundane irritations that make you want to tear your hair out, wish you’d never gotten out of bed, and ask yourself how much pain you’re willing to bear tomorrow for drowning your sorrows in not one but two bloody Marys…

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Not dead. Yet. Really.Plus: stupid governments

Yikes. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be away from the blog this long. Expected to be back with you by Sunday afternoon, but each time I hoped to sit down at the computer, chaos piled on the chaos that was already piled on top of the chaos. And that on top of an Internet connection that’s extremely sketchy and drops entirely every five or 10 minutes. So give me a couple more days to really get coherent, please. By Wednesday I should also have a functioning ‘Net connection, too. Knock wood. Cross fingers. Throw salt over shoulder. Burn incense to…

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