bgood79, it's nice to see Bob is as cheesy off stage as he is on. You should post some more Dead clips from you're favorite shows. I'd definitely be down with a personal tour so I could bypass hearing the shitty ones. Maybe some with Bruce Hornsby??

For example, with the Twitter API, if I had a Hubskier's Twitter username, I could know who they follow on Twitter, and maybe use that data to help make following recommendations here on Hubski. i.e. you follow Bob on Twitter. Bob is here on Hubski, so I'll suggest that you follow him here too.

I assume that Twitter would be in the same business, more or less, but make $ my sharing their API, rather than by ads. Eventually, Twitter could fade further into the background, I suppose.

I shared this, and I'll tell you why... there are so many "remixes" of Bob Ross's teachings that it's refreshing to see one of them uncut. That said, I would have liked to see the entirety of this painting, but I'm glad it's not set to music etc. Bob was the man, I watched him a lot growing up.

I'm rather anti-clutter so I'm actually pretty good at getting rid of old clothes, but I do have some bits and bobs I'll probably never get rid of.

Here's a very blurry photo of two of them. The first is a t-shirt I picked up at a Police concert back in 2006 - they were and are one of my favourite bands, and I was thrilled to be able to see them live. The second is a leather jacket my dad gave me when I was about seventeen; I have no idea where he got it, but I've worn it for years whenever I've needed a couple of extra coolness points.

This is an old pair of jeans that my then-girlfriend repaired after holes had worn in everywhere. She was mad into sewing and stuff so she threw all sorts of bits and bobs on it, and it now has 100% more pockets.

This is one of the t-shirts I wore on my walk last year.

Which brings me to the hat. I was given this by Sally, a lovely woman I met in Kenmare on my walk. For the rest of my walk, it only left my head when I was sitting down to sleep. I love this thing - it was great in both sun and rain - and now it evokes fond memories of adventuring.

Two more hats. This paddy hat was given to me in very curious circumstances. I was sitting outside a café in Dublin with a different girlfriend, and this dude walked past giving me thumbs up and exclaiming "Yeah! You're doing it! Keep at it, man!" We barely had time to wonder what he was on about before he turned back, told me he was my father from another universe, and said that this was the hat of David Hill, and if I wore it no-one would mess with me. I'm 100% serious. And no-one has ever messed with me while I was wearing it. Relax, I washed it first.

Finally, Yoongen's hat. He was a Korean golfer who joined our impromptu little gang on the Camino a few years back, and became a close friend despite our almost total lack of ability to speak to each other. He left in Santiago as we were about to push on to Finisterre, and gave me his hat.

D00d I can beat that.

Nixon’s former chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman wrote in his book The Ends of Power that Nixon had explicitly outlined a version of the strategy the previous summer:

“I call it the madman theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I've reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he is angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button’ — and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”

never mind that it didn't fucking work

Hit me with quotes.

I finally got around to reading The Laundry Files and I'm loving it.

Book three, The Fuller Memorandum, opens up with

“I wish I was still an atheist. Believing I was born into a harsh, uncaring cosmos – in which my existence was a random roll of the dice and I was destined to die and rot and then be gone forever – was infinitely more comforting than the truth. Because the truth is that my God is coming back. When he arrives I’ll be waiting for him with a shotgun. And I’m keeping the last shell for myself.”

It's super new-atheist-edgy at first, totally admitting that. However it also connects to this sub-theme of a lot of other urban fantasy taps into in different ways, the idea that there are incomprehensibly powerful, negative forces at play in the world and there is real bravery in opposing them with every possible resource. In The Dresden Files this comes across as Dresden's cheek and wise-cracking even in the face of titanic magical opposition like Faerie Queens, literal fallen angels and dark hoary old gods, as well as their literal conflict. Butcher plays this off as just a character quirk but it's a great piece of characterization (That worked really well for Spiderman) that serves to give an extra layer of meaning to the various challenges that Dresden overcomes.

Bob Howard of The Laundry Files is damn close to British Harry Dresden. There is even a scene in The Fuller Memorandum where Bob is having a contemplative moment on a train after finishing a book that is blatantly described as being about a wizard private eye in Chicago, so this whole thing is very self-aware. Charles Stross knows his audience and caters heavily to the 'geek' crowd in that way. In fact there has been a case made that a lot of urban fantasy is essentially a power fantasy for kids who grew up reading Harry Potter.

Anyways, post your quotes. If you've read Dresden or The Laundry recently I'm happy to discuss. I'm starting The Apocalypse Codex today.

Cheers

I try to imagine the conference rooms where these things happened. Nine white men in suits with thin black ties, discussing ... well, utter lunacy, with serious faces.

"Right, Gene. An exploding cigar. I like it. Talk more about that."

...or...

"Goats, you say? So we will need a farm. Bob? Do we have a farm?" Bob: "Uh, let me check. Yes. Yes, sir. Pennsylvania."

And then these guys would go home and watch George Burns and Gracie Allen on TV, while the wife wore a poodle-skirt, and their son played with Lincoln Logs. Just... bizarre.

Nothing personal francopoli, but I kind of hate videos like this.

sigh

They're destroying video as a medium.

It's worth noting that they exist only on Youtube. Vimeo doesn't have shit like this. Amazon doesn't have shit like this. Youtube videos look like Youtube videos for the same reason that the most successful locksmith back in the days of paper phone books was "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Locksmith."

Youtube viewers have the attention span of gnats. They'll add something to the queue if it looks good in a thumbnail. Excessive, dumb graphics look good in a thumbnail. They'll switch away the minute things are boring. That's okay because on Facebook it's a view after three seconds. Youtube is now claiming it's 30, but last year it was 6, so WTF ever especially since they're currently experiencing a catastrophic advertiser revolt. So you get this kind of video - stupid voiceover graphics that mean nothing.

But wait! There's more! It's a social network so if I like your gaming channel and you like my gaming channel and we all like John's gaming channel, Youtube is going to suggest you, me and John to anyone who clicks you or me or John so you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. And if Bob watches John, and Jim watches John, then if Sam watches anything Bob or Jim watch Sam will also get John because really? Youtube exists to force-feed you bullshit on autoplay so they can count views so they can charge advertisers for it.

And the content? The content doesn't fucking matter. It's for people who can't get away from the computer long enough to boil a cup o'noodle so they sit the laptop or the phone or WTF ever on the counter and let it chatter at them while they sit there fondling their balls and wait for the microwave to ding. They'd be reading memes on Reddit if they weren't busy actually using their hands for something so it's a good thing there's a charming British dude to tell them shit they already knew about rocket launchers while showing them footage from video games.

You know, video games. You've played a few, right? Here's "fair use"-length clips from all of them stolen without credit so that you'll relate to at least a handful. Fuck yeah. (that game). Fuck yeah. I used to love (that other game). Didn't we all? Oh, yeah. Follow this channel and we'll remind you of other things you already like.

Nobody on the planet ever said "I'd like to watch something that tells me something I already know that I don't really have to pay much attention to that the people producing it don't give a fuck if I watch more than a few seconds of whose primary value comes from the fact that it's very much like all the other superficial shit I don't pay any attention to" but that's what Youtube rewards. The Youtube model delivers payouts to exactly.that.bullshit so that's the bullshit we all get.

Know what drives me up the fucking wall? Unprofessionalism is a style now. See this guy?

https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee

One of the top tech bloggers on Youtube. Know what he shoots on?

Know why? Because it's super-duper fetish gear if you're a Youtube punter and he gets enough hits he can afford it. But you know what would make his shit look even better?

Two fucking iphones instead of one so he wouldn't be doing that bullshit jumpcut farklefuck that every youtuber used to do because they only had one camera but now every youtuber does because that way you know they're legit or some shit.

Cinematography and editing are a settled fucking thing. Fucking Merian Cooper used the same techniques for Grass in 1925 that Warner Fucking Herzog used last week: A roll, B roll, voiceover, maintain continuity in the cut. Youtube? Youtube has decided that jarring is good because 99.9% of their content is jarring so if you edit like a human you're pretentious or some shit.

It is the worst fucking thing in the world and I hate it so much. There's 300 hours of fresh and shiny new useless bullshit uploaded to Youtube every minute and Youtube gives not the first fuck if any of it is good, they only care about finding ways to force you to sift through it so they can charge advertisers for whatever pearls you pluck out of the shit. Except the pearls aren't pearls, they're horse apples and seriously. How many gamers are there out there that don't understand how a rocket launcher works? It's a rocket. In a tube. That launches.

Jesus.

Sorry. Struck a nerve. I didn't realize how much I hated Youtube until I found myself with two roommates who blast it at 110dB for hours at a time without ever once being in the same goddamn room as the panel on which it is playing and none of it - NONE OF IT is even vaguely illuminating.

Seems like a pretty fragile defeat. If Bob Menendez falls to conspiracy charges Chris Christy will appoint a solid yes vote. If McCain expires than Asa Hutchison will appoint a solid yes vote.

John McCain is no mere mortal, he might hold on till 2018. Bob Menendez looks guilty as as can be but I'll bet he's got a fantastic legal team.

Health care is one personal tragedy away from sweeping change.

There are some good comments on the post, better than average internet quality, and they make me feel that the $20B calculation has too many assumptions to be very useful. We don't know how many workers make $10/hr; Walmart claims an average of $13.36. Many workers are overseas. We don't know how many are part-time. Noncash benefits are left out.

The comparison to Apple is a stretch, but even other retailers like Costco have very different profiles. Costco has far fewer employees, and far higher revenue per employee than Walmart. Perhaps satisfied employees work harder, or perhaps Walmart operates in different demographic areas with different shopping patterns.

It reminds me of an old conversation.

Say a Walmart wants to make a small expansion and has a budget of $30/hr for additional labor. What are the options?

Option 1 Hire Alice, Bob, and Charlie at $10/hr each. The Harvard comparison, claiming that there are many more applicants than open positions, suggests that this is what the unfeeling textbook would call oversupply. The market-clearing price is below $10/hr, so the textbook says to maximize market efficiency and ignore everything else Walmart should hire more people at a lower salary.

Option 2 But we can't ignore everything else. We want Walmart employees to be able to eat. So the alternative is to hire Alice and Bob at $15/hr each.

Question: What happens to Charlie?

In practice, Charlie fades away into the crowd of unemployed Walmart associate wannabes, and does the best he can with Plan B. Nobody blames Walmart for what happens to Charlie. But Walmart's decision to use Option 2 is what made Charlie switch to Plan B.

It's not obvious to me that two people making a living wage and one on the street is better than three people making less than a living wage.