$530 million cryptocurrency heist may be biggest ever — CNNTech Read more →
January 2018
It Was a Very Definite Thing
It was a very definite thing within myself, that happened, that I allowed myself be so open, and let my defenses down enough . . . it was almost as if, I’d got to the point . . . of no return . . . and I thought, “I’m going to go for it.” Read more →
All the Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while. Let your senses and bodies stretch out Like a welcomed season Onto the meadows and shores and hills. Open up to the Roof. Make a new water-mark on your excitement And love. Like a blooming night flower, Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness And giving Upon our intimate assembly. Change rooms in your mind for a day. All the hemispheres in existence Lie beside an equator In your heart. Greet Yourself In your thousand other forms As you mount the hidden tide and travel Back home. All the hemispheres in heaven Are sitting around a fire Chatting While stitching themselves together Into the Great Circle inside of You. — Hafez Read more →
19 Insane Tidbits From James Damore’s Lawsuit
The Federalist recently published 19 insane tidbits about the Google office environment gleaned from the James Damore lawsuit. Keep in mind I’m a programmer, not a lawyer, when I say that Damore has a prima facie case of illegal retaliation: he engaged in protected activity — i.e., exercising the right to improve working conditions — by opposing several discriminatory practices, and was fired from his job. Damore wrote in his famous (or infamous) memo that “Google has created several discriminatory practices.” Classic case of opposition to an unlawful employment practice. The law does not require that the employment practice actually be unlawful, only that the employee believes the practice to be unlawful. Read more →
Everyone’s a Critic
Funeral: For Us His Gold
after Gerald Stern The insect was yellow with crumpled-black banded legs and shellacked back that would outlast us and wistful eyes from what I could discern on that trail between fields, and we laid him out in the open air under a sky fast-blue with change, wedging a leaf beneath his triple-belted belly so he didn’t rest on plain dirt, and we placed two cloverblooms by his head and he was old you said, could tell by how definite the stripes were, how complete the patterns bold and dark, almost engraved, and he was beautiful in that pasture… Read more →
Fernando and Barbara Ann
I got an email today from a guy named Fernando and I can’t get the song out of my mind . . . Can you hear the drums, Fernando? There was something in the air that night The stars were bright, Fernando. I would not want to have a name that reminds people of a song that they immediately start singing to me my whole life. Like Jude. Or Barbara Ann. Barbara Ann would be a bad name to have . . . Read more →
West Coast Tsunami Warning
Those of us who live on the west coast, including Alaska and Hawaii, got a tsunami warning yesterday morning, following a 7.9 earthquake in Alaska. My first thought was “This is going to make me look like a genius for not getting my car washed last weekend.” Read more →
Something Terrible Would Happen
It sounds a little bit strange but the idea that something terrible would happen . . . I feel something here . . . Something over here . . . It’s like a pressure . . . on my heart. It’s pushing, it’s like it’s pushing. And it hurts. Something is pushing there, it hurts. Sadness, there’s a lot of sadness. I don’t want to feel it. Something is pushing there, it hurts, there is sadness, and there is something that doesn’t want to feel it. I don’t want to feel it . . . Read more →
Neil Diamond Retires From Touring
Neil Diamond Announces Retirement From Touring After Parkinson’s Disease Diagnosis — Variety Sorry to hear this . . . as a young person I had the Hot August Night live album on an 8-track tape and I played it till it wore out . . . Read more →
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Pope Francis and Donald Trump were both vexed this past week by natives of shithole countries. The pope showed up in Chile to accuse local sex abuse victims of calumny against the church. “Calumny” means he’s calling them liars. Look it up. Oh that reminds me! Cardinal Law sends his regards. Then he was on to Peru, where he called violence against women a “plague” across the Latin American region. They’re murderers, rapists . . . and some, I assume, are good people. What a character! I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. See you in Hell! Read more →
Ghosts
You must not think that what I have accomplished through you could have been accomplished by any other means. Each of us is to himself indelible. I had to become that which could not be, by time, from human memory, erased. I had to burn my hungry, unappeasable furious spirit so inconsolably into you you would without cease write to bring me rest. Bring us rest. Guilt is fecund. I knew nothing I made myself had enough steel in it to survive. I tried: I made beautiful paintings, beautiful poems. Fluff. Garbage. The inextricability of love and hate? If I had merely made you love me you could not have saved me. — Frank Bidart, “The Ghost” By Robert Lowell: Read more →
Best Place to Live in Every State
This Is the Best Place to Live in Every State — MONEY I can’t speak to the other 49 states but Monterey Park is not — repeat, NOT — the best place to live in California . . . Read more →
Good News, Bad News on Minimum Wage
Good news: Seattle (among other cities) has established a $15.00 minimum wage. Bad news: Seattle (among other cities) is automating minimum wage jobs out of existence. Readers are invited to formulate their own cause-and-effect hypotheses. Read more →
Names
You call me a Christian, to make me angry and to make yourself feel happy. Others call themselves Christians, to make themselves feel other emotions. Very well, if we are dealing in exciting words, I will call you a devil-worshipper. That should give you an agitation which will please you for some time. — Zabardast Khan Read more →
The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. — Nietzsche
How Did the Rose Ever Open Its Heart?
How Did the rose Ever open its heart And give this world All its Beauty? It felt the encouragement of light Against its Being, Otherwise, We all remain Too Frightened — Hafez Read more →
This is My Year!
My dad is 82 . . . he says he always thought that someday he would get everything organized and under control but it never happened. That being said, I feel like this is the year I get everything organized and under control . . . Read more →
When Death Is Not Death
A certain man was believed to have died, and was being prepared for burial, when he revived. He sat up, but he was so shocked by the scene surrounding him that he fainted. He was put in a coffin, and the funeral party set off for the cemetery. Just as they arrived at the grave, he regained consciousness, lifted the coffin lid, and cried out for help. “It is not possible that he has revived,” said the mourners, “because he has been certified dead by competent experts.” “But I am alive!” shouted the man. He appealed to a well-known impartial scientist and jurisprudent who was present. “Just a moment,” said the expert. He then turned to the mourners, counting them. “Now we have heard what the alleged deceased has had to say. You fifty witnesses tell me what you regard as the truth.” “He is dead,” said the witnesses. “Bury… Read more →
Two Reasons For the Low Number of Women in Computer Jobs
I saw this chart on LinkedIn with the heading “Chart: Women in tech continue to face uphill battle” and the hashtag #STEMSexism. The first reason for the low number of women in computer jobs is that we rarely hear about women in computing except in the context of pay gaps, harassment, discrimination, “uphill battles” and #STEMSexism. It’s self-perpetuating. “Computing is a terrible profession for women in so many ways.” Followed by “Why aren’t there more women in computing?” You’ve answered your own question. If you think computing is a hostile profession (I do not, btw), why do you want more women to go into it? The second reason for the low number of women in computer jobs — sometimes the simplest explanations are the best — is that women prefer to do other things. Men and women are different and make different choices about their lives, as a result… Read more →