For want of charisma

Big Brother is but a name for a charismatic enough leader, with enough power, who shapes the State to his will.  With today's insane Republican party, a charismatic leader could do pretty much anything if given the power to do so. But I don't think there's a charismatic enough GOP leader alive today.

Oh for the days of St. Ronaldus Magnus Reaganus! The greatest bestest leader America's ever had - it's true. Ask a Republican. But thankfully, today's Republican party has eaten its own product (Propaganda) for too long, and is now batshit stupid insane. I look upon the GOP horizon and see nothing but crackpots and hypocritical assholes. Old people gone completely bitter and deluded by the grifters and liars of the GOP.

Reagan has become unto a God to these Teabaggin' morans. For real - it's weird and creepy. Fun fact you could tell them and they'd never believe it: Reagan signed 11 tax increases during his two terms.

Cuz facts don't matter anymore to the so called "Conservative" party. They are 100% in with pure Ideology, whatever it is that given day in opposition to Liberals - because that's the gist of it: Whatever you're for, they're against.

If they get full power of the Government again anytime soon, we're in big trouble. If FSM be praised we can have a Democratic Administration and Congress from 2014 - 2024, we could do some serious work of undoing the damage they've done to this country and the world over the past 35 years.

It's up to us to decide - literally, the weight of the world is on our shoulders, upon our choices.

Future Fashions

We're in the Brave New World, friends, and the times demand a new fashion sense. Tired of being recorded everywhere you go? Try on the Infrared LED hat! Invisible to people, but blinding to cameras. Looking for more anti-drone clothes?

Conceal your face or upper torso from the prying eyes of the drones no doubt flying overhead as you read this. Here's some examples:

Keep your heat signature to yourself!

And the latest in anti-AI trends - makeup masks! These styles are designed to throw off facial recognition software that is being used more and more often. More examples:

As you can see, the idea is to confuse the software by asymmetrical designs - and don't forget the hairstyle too. Sadly though, the makeup tricks will only work so long, until a better generation of software comes along and foils this simple, and fashionable trick.

Also, and perhaps more importantly: Looks like the future!

Fluff tha Police

Oxford's finest - dedicated towards putting down overzealous keggers.

There's far too many pictures of militarized police posing with their new toys on the internet. But if you spend that kind of money, you want some documentation.

You're really the "Reading Rainbow" guy? Totally, man.

That's the epic 2 pound joint confiscated at the recent Denver 4/20 celebration. Read it and weep.

Or smoke it and dream.

Never stop living your art.

Never stop expressing yourself. Never stop fighting The Man - Fuck The Police!

Click below for literal example.

The March of Inevitability

This is a cheap fingerprint reader intended for use with a PC. Cool in theory - rather than needing a password to log into the machine, you simply use your fingerprint. Different users on the same computer could all have secured access to the machine with no passwords required - just fingerprints.

However, as with all technologies, the cool aspects merely mask the insidious aspects. Fingerprint readers are poised to take off in all sorts of areas, or already have. On recent trips to Canada and Europe, I noticed the "Fast track" customs lines where folks who have signed up for the program get to go through "speed" lines, where there is a fingerprint and iris reader. Like here:

It's convenient! The lure of many intrusive technologies. On a trip to China a few years ago, I noticed (in horror!) that Hong Kong residents had to go through a biometric checkpoint in order to enter China. And that will no doubt become more and more prevalent across the world.

"You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide" the authoritarians among us will say. But that is a false assumption - it should not have to be on the individual to justify his/her desire for privacy. But that's the world we're living in now, and it's only going to get worse. Accept this as an impending reality, and prepare yourself accordingly.

If you care.

Pink Hitler (Fashion Fuhrer)

Behold a monster rendered ludicrous by color. Color, of course, is simply the wavelength of the photon hitting your eye, translated by your brain into "pink". Shorter wavelengths are "purple"; longest are "red". And all the other colors in between. Look at this complicated diagram!
And here's a far simpler diagram that shows the small slice of the overall energy - just at different wavelengths - we call "color":

Oh yeah. That pink hitler picture was from an actual ad campaign by a fashion something or rather in Italy:

The use of English in an Italian ad featuring Pink Hitler intrigues me.

Somebody IS always watching you

We're just about there - the time and place where there are security cameras everywhere, such that you in fact might spend a majority of your day monitored remotely.

Does it matter to you? If so, how will you, or anyone respond? And always remember: If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!

Kindlenacht

Folks, this is some incredible stuff. I'm slightly flabbergasted, and I thought myself immune to all forms of flabgastery. But, here I am. This is so... outrageous? Incredible? Chilling? So many things at once. Read the entire article below, original post from the NY Times.

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

Scary.

I had been vaguely thinking about at least checking out a kindle, as I find the medium to be intriguing, especially the idea of instant downloads. But this, this is just beyond the pale in my mind, and ensures I will never buy a Kindle.

And that they would do this with George Orwell books? Boggling. In fact, I am thoroughly boggled and flabbergasted. Nice work, Amazon -- if you had the choice, you should have pushed back against the publisher rather than do this. No one will trust the product now with this kind of behavior.