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Living Freedom Posts

How many seconds would you have to die?

Outrage over the murder of Andy Lopez seems to have run its media course. And a short course it was. A few days. Even while the gunblogosphere was spreading the news that a California sheriff’s deputy had assassinated a 13-year-old boy for walking down the street with an Airsoft gun, the story was already being dismissed. One of the more conservative gunbloggers sniffed (I paraphrase), “Too bad. But after all, he refused to obey a police command.” Carl-Bear Bussjaeger blew that notion away with his terrible, moving, “10 Seconds to Die.” That poor kid, just minding his own business, was…

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Good causes for the holidays (UPDATED)

As mentioned earlier, I’m not holding a fundraiser or hoping for Christmas gifts this year. I do hope you’ll my Amazon links for all your online Christmas shopping. —– Beyond that, I hope you’ll consider sending holiday bounty to EDITED Joel’s Eyeball Fund. Use the bolded link, scroll down, then click the donation button on the right. Our entertaining hermit buddy is managing his glaucoma, but he’s going to need expensive cataract surgery. And right now he can’t even afford his winter’s oatmeal. I’ve removed two other donation recommendations, one because its campaign is over, the other because it has…

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Not a good week for Deep Thought, but …

Okay, I started out the week telling you I was working on something that required Thought. Yeah, well. Try that while you’re deadlining and spending the days having parts of your house reduced noisily to rubble, being unexpectedly without both power and plumbing for much of the time (and listening to the plumber blame the carpenter for plumbing screwups and the carpenter explain why he needs to take an extra day and a half on the job playing electrician), and … well, ETC. Lots and lots of ETC. Whether I’ll be able to return to the Deep Thought blog, I…

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Colbert on U.S.-world relations

Such a sign of our times that the only public figures telling the truth are comedians. It reminds me of my favorite quote from when I was young and read Deep Thinkers. This one’s from Soren Kierkegaard: “A fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.” BTW, here’s the latest in NSA paranoia: apparently we now…

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Oy, whotta day. Or how I got to look cool, calm, savvy, and prepared, all with minimal effort

Yesterday was … a day. It was a Monday that fell on a Tuesday and a Friday the 13th that fell on the 29th. Yeah, that kind. Or maybe it wasn’t really so bad but my hermitty, deadlining writer self just doesn’t deal well with the particular type of chaos that involves people in and out of the house all day, asking questions, wanting to chat, making alarming saw, hammer, and cuss noises, and hauling mounds of deconstruction rubble through my living room. All for one little ex-bathroom. But bathrooms are complicated, and therein lies where I got to look…

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Where to go for OFFSHORE email and VPNs?

I’ve been using the U.S.-based company Cotse.net for email and proxy services for many years, ever since I learned about it from S. Cotse gives good service at a good price. I’ve been a happy customer. There’s nothing at all wrong with Cotse. Except that it’s based in this increasingly thuggish surveillance state. Which has already driven more than one privacy-protecting company to shut its doors. I’m seeking a back-up service. I’ll keep Cotse, but I want to be using a Plan B if the feds drive them out of business, too. So I’ve been reading articles like this one.…

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Tuesday links

I’m still working on that blog post that requires Deep Thought. But with a deadline approaching, a construction project pounding away next door, a guy tearing a derelict bathroom out of my place, and Ava having gone insane from all the people around who won’t throw tennis balls*, Deep Thought is as impossible right now as endorsing Obamacare or v*ting for Michael Bloomberg. So for now here are some links. Here’s one of those news stories that’s no surprise at all to us political cynics realists but is still pretty stunning considering the MSM source: the Obama administration has known…

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