Ask George Smith e-mail: webmaster at dick destiny
Proposed “album” cover for Loud Folk Live, where “Jesus of America,” performed at the First Church of USA!USA! & Mammon in Pasadena, among others, will go.
Then I can post it on the net and no one will listen to it. Sounds at least as good as finding work in the Corporate Bund.
Also, because national and computer security coverage blows. Everybody lost that one. Game over.
Permalink Comments off
From this blog, earlier in the summer:
In years to come, the effect of global warming on [the incidence of Vibrio vulnificus] will bear watching.
From the Washington Post, in a piece on Vibrio vulnificus in the Chesapeake:
“It is likely that over the next few decades, if global warming continues, the vibrio will start to multiply in the tidal waters of the bay earlier in the year and will persist later into the fall and possibly the winter,??? said Laurence Polsky, health officer at the Calvert County Health Department. “This will increase the number of people exposed to the bacteria over the course of the year, and the result will be a higher average number of cases as each decade passes.???
The story describes the usual cases in which the microorganism rapidly and catastrophically invades the tissue of the infected person.
I earned a Ph.D. identifying the collagen dissolving enzyme it produces, something that is, by its very nature and activity, uniquely suited in that function.
It goes without saying, again, that it’s always a horrible disease. It remains rare but it is not as rare now as in 1982. Every summer one sees regular news of it.
Imagine. You know someone who worked on a germ that produces a “flesh-eating disease,” every day, for a few years.
Permalink Comments off
Although humorous, yours truly does Mark better than Comedy Central’s bit.
In the “sermon” introducing “Jesus of America:”
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a poor man to get into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Here it is. Don’t be a jerk who only clicks content pre-approved for the Culture of Lickspittle, give it a listen.
Permalink Comments off
In the Culture of Lickspittle even the app economy takes no prisoners. It’s winner take all and the devil take everyone but the top 1.6 percent.
According to a comprehensive survey of app developers for Android and iOS, 98 percent off all developers earn less than $500/month. Many make virtually nothing at all.
The latter make up forty seven percent of all developers and are dubbed, straightforwardly, “have nothings” — because they make zip.
“The majority of app businesses are not sustainable at current revenue levels,” reads on “key insight.” “[Fifty percent] of iOS developers and 64% of Android developers are below the ‘app poverty line??? of $500 per app per month.”
Permalink Comments off
Trampled underhoof.
There is, however, one big difference between corporate persons and the likes of you and me: On current trends, we’re heading toward a world in which only the human people pay taxes.
Permalink Comments off
Ranting, in Oshkosh, just before calling people “unclean vermin” blew up in his face.
Open thread.
Permalink Comments off
Jesus of America, live from deep inna heart of Pasadena south of Colorado. Especially enjoy the sermon and organ music. Share, share, share, like, like, like.
The beer tip jar’s open.
Permalink Comments off
You just can’t call people unclean vermin. It’s a lesson Ted Nugent learned the hard way yesterday.
Yes, the wheels must have popped off the Ted Nugent tour bus last night when news arrived that another Indian tribe, the Puyallup, canceled the two shows he had at their casino in Tacoma at the beginning of next month. The Coeur D’Alene tribe of Idaho canceled his gig at its casino on Monday. (Note: Nugent relies a great deal on casino gigs. And the casinos are the property of Native Americans.)
“The First Amendment gives people the right free speech, but I think racism is intolerable and not acceptable here,??? Puyallup Tribal Council Vice President Lawrence W. LaPointe told a news agency.
Media Matters quickly queried a number of prominent rock music promoters around the country about the Nugent cancellations. The consensus was his racist image has become such a liability its starting to really hurt his music business.
“No one should be surprised by any of this,” Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of Pollstar USA, told Media Matters. “It’s a free country and Nugent has always had a big mouth. But if he keeps making incendiary statements his future tours may be limited to NRA conventions and Fox News events.”
Dives in the deep southern part of WhiteManistan, too.
The Media Matters piece is here.
Altogether, Nugent has had six cancellations on his summer, all as a result of his image as America’s most famous rock and roll bigot.
Prediction: Ted Nugent will be apoplectic in public, making things even worse for himself in the next few days.
Give him the microphone now.
Urgent fictitious memo from Ted Nugent’s public relations firm:
Dear Ted, if you are to continue making the case that you are not a racist in the court of public opinion, it is unwise to call your opponents “unclean vermin.” Unclean vermin is not a common derogatory term in the United States. In fact, no one uses it, ever. However, there was one place where the words unclean and vermin were regularly used — in the propaganda of Nazi Germany. Word to the wise, Ted. If you are trying to convince people you are not a bigot and fascist, using unclean vermin to describe those who are making the case that you are only reinforces the impression.
— Cringely, Lost Cause Promotions
Nugent on Tuesday, on people protesting his show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin:
“I take it as a badge of honor that such unclean vermin are upset by me and my positive energy … By all indicators, I don’t think they actually qualify as people, but there has always been a lunatic fringe of hateful, rotten, dishonest people that hate happy, successful people.”
Today, Nugent lashes out at the refugee children invaders that are the center of the immigration crisis on the country’s southern border:
And now I think all sane people can agree that Gov. Rick Perry of the great Republic of Texas has shown rare and genuine leadership by making the long overdue move to actually secure the border by deploying the Texas’ National Guard and bring a halt to the dangerous flow of illegal invaders …
I don’t know about you, but America should be keeping an eye on Rick Perry and the handling of this Obama-engineered criminal invasion trainwreck on the border. We are either a safe, protected sovereign nation, or we’re not. Real leaders living up to their constitutional oaths will make sure that we are.
After the CdA Tribe of Idaho canceled Nugent’s gig at its casino on Monday, Nugent replied the he honored Native Americans in this way:
[He] cited the lyrics to his song “Great White Buffalo??? to point out that he isn’t racist towards Native Americans. “But then came the white man/ With his thick and empty head,??? it goes. “He couldn’t see past billfold/ He wanted all the buffalo dead.???
A Native American news publication didn’t quite see it that way:
The racist remarks most often cited are jabs at President Obama which include calling him a “subhuman mongrel” and a “chimpanzee.” But Nugent’s racially-insensitive behavior extends to Native Americans as well. He frequently wears a feather headdress on stage and appropriates a sacred Native symbol in his song “Great White Buffalo,” both of which are highly disrespectful to Native culture.
In an April 2013 article for the right-wing commentary site WND.com (formerly WorldNetDaily), Nugent took aim at the movement to change the Washington Redskins team name using language that many Natives will find objectionable. The article was called “A Tomahawk Chop to Political Correctness” and included these turns of phrase:
“Every so often some numbskull beats the politically correct war drum protesting the names of sports teams.”
“If there are Native Americans whose feathers are ruffled over the names of sports teams, I submit that they are sorely focused on all the wrong things.”
“Call me crazy horse, but maybe we should start by addressing issues that truly matter most and would actually save Indian’s lives.”
Nugent concluded the essay by casting himself as a savior of Natives:
“Because of my clean and sober, hands-on conservation bowhunting lifestyle and song ‘The Great White Buffalo,’ Native American tribes have invited me to teach their young people how to reconnect with the land and teach them how to bow hunt the mighty American bison. It was in their midst that I learned firsthand about the terrible problems facing my Indian BloodBrothers.”
Yesterday’s decision by the Coeur d’Alene suggests Nugent may need to double-check his standing in Indian country.
Boy howdy!
And in this video, recently uploaded to YouTube, Nugent talks about how his new song, “Do-Rags and a .45,” is meant to be a help to African Americans living in cities.
“I get called a racist for trying to save black peoples’ lives,” he insists.
This bit starts at around 5:30.
Proven by science quote of day (no link):
“Austrian researchers … found people feel crummy any time they’re on Facebook for too long, no matter what kind of stuff pops up.”
I wouldn’t leave all the glory to Facebook. Much of the 2014 web makes you feel crummy.
I started publishing on the net, an e-mail newsletter in 1990 or so. A bit later I started posting to a university site, NIU’s Critical Criminology Department server, when most people were still using the first browsers, even image-less, like Lynx. So it’s a legitimate observation.
Part of the feeling crummy phenomenon is the complete corporate takeover of all aspects of the web. This has given everyone an environment in which Google search is a winner-take-all proposition with only the illusion of millions of choices. The practical reality is that only the top half of the screen in the first page of results matters.
Much of everything else has devolved into pushes to buy things and ubiquitous, inescapable advertising. Most big newspaper sites are now like bad television, news magazines and the Los Angeles Times being a very good working examples.
The actual news text furnished by journalists makes up a minor part of what is sent to visitors/readers. The rest of the bandwidth is reserved for squirting even more HD advertising and idiotic video on whatever’s trending at you.
This brings us to viral content, a feel good buzzterm which really means manipulative trolling, much of it to make you subconsciously feel bad or inferior for not doing something or appreciating the wild and amusing miracles of the day. This, obviously, so the viral sites can net millions of users, what might be thought of as internet plankton, to lure venture capitalists into giving them millions in cash money while they attempt to come up with a way to monetize it more, the latter usually be selling still more HD advertising or by the not-so-subtle pushing of corporate services and products.
From the AP:
US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has a hot stock tip for you: stop throwing so much money at anything that calls itself a social network.
Specifically, the Fed thinks the “valuation metrics” for “smaller firms in the social media” sector “appear substantially stretched.” And it’s not hard to see why.
Yo, an app that only lets you send messages that say “yo,” just received $1 million in funding. Cynk, a nonexistent social network for buying friends online, somehow – fraudulently – got a $6 billion valuation despite having no assets and no revenue.
And now NBA star Carmelo Anthony is pivoting to a second career as a venture capitalist with his own seed fund. As he told the Wall Street Journal, he has “long been interested in technology.”
You should feel crummy after being exposed to the internet every day for hours. It just shows you haven’t gone insane.
I’ve commented before on how parasitic web engineering is for the average user. In my experience, most of the code delivered to you has only one purpose. It’s to tie up your machine while it squeezes whatever it can from your web presence and private data.
A good working example is SoundCloud. And you can do a little experiment to see what I mean.
Travel out to the link I posted a day or so ago (or if you don’t want to listen to Dick Destiny’s tune, choose another to your liking).
Set the tune to play and bring up the Task Manager on your PC. When I do this, using the latest edition of Mozilla-Firefox, I immediately see that Soundcloud starts executing so much code on the client side that it hogs most of the processing power. Mind you, this is only to stream MP3 audio, the actual file of which was only between four and five megabytes.
Now minimize the window.
Voila. The processor immediately drops back to a normal rate. So most of the activity SoundCloud sends to you has nothing to do with vending audio at all, it’s all on the video and miscellaneous end, junk parasitic code that torques the engine of your machine.
Browser extensions like NoScript and NotScript, the latter which I use, also illustrate the predatory nature of the web. When you start using them and look at what they’re blocking, you’re given a nice course in what the corporate web is doing to you.
In other words, you’re being worked over by grasping corporate web design, none of it for your benefit.
And from the Department of Speaking of Which
My hosting provider runs a script that can’t be turned off, one to collect web statistics for the benefit of, ahem, my alleged small business. It polls clients every few seconds.
Perhaps you have noticed it.
I have nothing to do with it and don’t use any statistics it provides. If you use a no-script extension on your browser, you’ll see it. Block it.
It will not affect the usability of the blog.
Permalink Comments off