Dave Duchene

Dec
5th

Wed

‘The Emerald Night Train is a wonderful set, so we can understand why it is your dream to own it. I commend your willpower and patience to save money for over two years just to purchase this. We have located an Emerald Night Train for you, James, and included it in this package! I am sure you will enjoy building it and cherish your time playing with the train. Fans like you are why we are so lucky as a company. Who knows, maybe you will be working for The LEGO Group one day! You certainly have the heart and passion for our bricks to do so! Happy building, James!

— LEGO Finds Spare Discontinued Set So Boy Who Saved Up For 2 Years Wouldn’t Be Disappointed – The Consumerist

Nov
30th

Fri

Pinokio (by Adam Ben-Dror)

Nov
27th

Tue

In the meantime, maybe you’ll run into someone with a terrific investment idea, who won’t go forward with it because of the tax he would owe when it succeeds. Send him my way. Let me unburden him.

— A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy - NYTimes.com

Nov
26th

Mon

The day Rob Ford got himself fired - Canada, News & Politics, Politics - Macleans.ca

This was no technicality that went unnoticed by all but vigilant Ford enemies who were waiting to pounce. It was a small-beans issue Ford willingly escalated into a giant hill of beans, which he proceeded to die on. It could have been defused and de-escalated at any number of junctures. But Ford’s unwillingness to follow anything but his own increasingly erratic lights turned it into a court case. As the judge noted, Ford’s defence relied “essentially on a stubborn sense of entitlement (concerning his football foundation) and a dismissive and confrontational attitude” to the rules and those who’d enforce them.

Nov
20th

Tue

Also, the main UI restricts users to a single window, so the product ought to be renamed “Microsoft Window.

— Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice & Power Users (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)

Oct
23rd

Tue

The World of a Professional Naked Girl | VICE

Beauty is powerful because it is pleasing. Real power means not having to please.

Oct
11th

Thu

The vanishing moderator: Jim Lehrer answers your questions about his part in the first debate » Pressthink

3. None of this lessens in any way President Obama’s responsibility for a listless and passive performance. In fact, it makes Obama’s failure look even larger. If Lehrer’s account is correct, then Obama and his team knew he could not count on Jim Lehrer to correct anything or raise uncomfortable issues. “The challenging is done not by the moderator,” as Lehrer put it. Romney got that memo. Obama did not.

Oct
9th

Tue

Thing X is coming soon!

DUE TO A NUMBER OF LEGAL, ETHICAL, AND BIOLOGICAL CONCERNS, THING X WILL NOT BE ACTIVATED UNTIL OCT. 16, 2012. WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE WHILE WE SORT THROUGH THE VARIOUS FEDERAL INJUNCTIONS AND WIDESPREAD PROTESTS, AND WE KNOW THAT WE CAN COUNT ON YOUR UNWAVERING SUPPORT.

PLEASE REGISTER NOW TO BECOME A MEMBER OF THING X.

Sep
21st

Fri

(Source: riotclitshave)

Sep
6th

Thu

You seem to be under a misconception that there is some monolithic entity called “The Government” which metes out “solutions” and causes “problems”.

Let me correct that for you right now. Listen up ‘bama.

The government is made up of citizens. “we the people”. It is the representative head of our civic institutions at a particular point in time. It is ever changing and full of the infalliableness which come from being human. Don’t like the government? Change it.

Saying “The Government is the problem” is like saying our citizenry is the problem. Our society is a problem. That democracy is a problem. That representative government is a problem. That being human is a problem. Such words are utter nonsense, spoken by An Ignorant.

You’d prefer a monarchy? Or a cartel of power brokers with zero accountability to the citizens? I suppose the other option is anarchy - every man for himself? Perhaps this is really what you believe in, but… sorry… I have to profoundly disagree with you here. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say probably 95 % of Americans have the same opinion.

“The Government” is the problem huh? Pray tell, what would you suggest as an option to “The Government”?

— What Bill Clinton Wrote vs. What Bill Clinton Said - Politics - The Atlantic Wire

Rails turned many of us from dabblers into developers and Ember has that same feel of rightness for me that Rails did in 2004. You might reject Ember, but I hope it’s after you’ve toyed with it and built something serious so you can reject it for substantive reasons or informed aesthetics, not simply because it seemed odd, new, or frighteningly different.

— Trek by trek

Aug
27th

Mon

Mitt Romney’s abortion record: flip-flop or conversion?

Which persona is real? Neither. Romney’s soul isn’t in the five minutes he spent as a pro-lifer in that interview, or in the two seconds he spent as a pro-choicer. It’s in the flux, the transition between the two roles. It’s in the editing of his record, the application of his makeup, the shuffling of his rationales. Romney will always be what he needs to be. Count on it.

Aug
23rd

Thu

Outside of the direct value from its graph, Twitter is in an extremely unusual position for a social service. While it is ostensibly a sharing service, it is actually a broadcasting medium. People use Twitter more like they use TV; they follow accounts they are interested in, namely celebrities and companies, and then they consume the content as a form of entertainment. Normal people have very little incentive to use Twitter except to communicate unidirectionally with their interests. This is why it has been shown that the vast majority of Twitter users who sign up never tweet, even though a huge number of those people view their feed often.

— Black Widow | Dustin Curtis

Aug
22nd

Wed

It can be done, but do the Canadian people have the power and the will? Do they have the collectiveness and guts to do it? I’ve followed your politics for many years and I don’t see it. When I was in Canada I saw a system of regulators who were very much infused with the U.S. way of thinking, but also willing to make tough stands when required. Today I believe most of them are and impressed by suits and the titles and no longer dare to stand up and fight for the Canadian resource rent.

— The Tyee – Rolf Wiborg’s Tough Love for Canada

Aug
18th

Sat

Treating Addiction: A Top Doc Explains Why Kind Love Beats Tough Love | Healthland | TIME.com

Some critics claim that it prevents addicts from “hitting bottom” and getting off drugs entirely.

I worked for 12 years in the Americas’ most concentrated area of drug use, the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. People live there in the street with HIV and hepatitis and festering wounds: what more of a bottom can they hit? If hitting bottom helped people, there would be no addicts at all in the Downtown Eastside. ‘Bottom’ is very relative, so it’s a meaningless concept. For me as a doctor, rockbottom might be losing my medical license, but what is a bottom for a person who has been abused all her life and lives on the street? It’s meaningless and false.