They arrived today and it’s glorious. It comes in a nice gatefold jacket, with an especially nice touch: on the front and rear covers, the text and the zebra graphic are printed in a glossy UV coating, glossier than the rest of the cover. The effect is subtle but very obvious when you look at it.

Each color is /500. The black is 180g vinyl, the green is not.

I deployed to the Iraq War in 2004 as a Marine. I came to see my experience in Iraq as that of a pawn doing the work of liars, profiteers and chickenhawks. I say this to illustrate that my outlook on gun control is influenced both from the standpoint of a Constitution-observing public servant and as a person who came to question the integrity of our system of governance to the very core. In short, I was reverent of the Second Amendment’s freedom-guarding intent. I still am.

But my reverence is irrelevant. The Second Amendment stopped giving the insurrectionists among us a chance as soon as military technology advanced beyond the rifle. No modern Shays’ Rebellion is viable, militarily speaking, unless the Second Amendment is read to protect an individual’s right to bear surface-to-air missiles, Abrams tanks and depleted-uranium artillery. Who in their right mind would want to live where these things are available to any person, no matter how law-abiding or responsible?

[Jamaica Plain Gazette]

Previously.

I want them so badly.

The title of the piece might be a bit much. “The History of Drone Music Culminates in ‘Now That’s What I Call Drone’”. Culminates? Let me look that up in the dictionary just to be sure:

Hyperbole, sure. Obviously I think it’s a really good compilation and worth of your listening time, but that might be a bit much.

I certainly appreciate it, anyway.

A couple of months back, a small group of people, myself included, were joking around on Twitter about doing drone covers of Top 40 hits. We took the joke so far that it became a real, actual, ontological thing called Now That’s What I Call Drone: Vol. 1 complete with twelve tracks, which has been released to an unsuspecting public today. It’s actually really awesome. If you like drone or ambient music, you will probably like it, because it’s got twelve really excellent drone/ambient re-imaginings of recent Billboard Hot 100 chart-toppers.

I really like my track, I’m proud of it, and I also think every other song on the compilation is far superior to mine.

Please feel free to download the compilation for free. You have the option to pay an amount of your liking if you really feel some kind of need, but you should feel no pressure to do so. All we care about is you having a nice musical experience for about an hour and a quarter.

[link to the compilation, in case you missed it above.]

One one hand, yeah ok, they were using the Olympic rings logo and I’m fine with saying you can’t do that, but saying a Greek guy can’t use the name Olympic for his restaurant is like saying an American couldn’t name their business Liberty Real Estate or Rushmore Pizza.

The Olympics have turned into a bizarro-land of corporatism gone amok, where you have to get a special dispensation to sell fish and chips (sort of an English staple, yeah?) anywhere near the London Olympics because McDonald’s is the Official Restaurant Sponsor of the 2012 London Olympics and as such has the Exclusive Right to Sell French Fries (or “chips” in the local parlance). McDonald’s was kind enough to allow this only for the combination “fish and chips”, but otherwise, try to sell just the chips without fish and well you’re gonna be in some kind of Big Trouble.

There was a time where the Olympics were about sports at their most awesome¹. Those days are long gone, and now the Olympics are merely another tactic mega-corporations to squeeze every last dime out of the populace.

The USOC should get bent, and bring the IOC along.

¹ Now that I’m thinking about it, this time was probably before I was born.

¹ moderate understatement ².
² ok, massive understatement.

Civility isn’t fancy-talk for “being nice.” It’s the essential quality we require to live together in complex social structures built on our jumpy, irrational primate brains. Online, where we increasingly live, we need it more than ever.

The essential, crucial, must-read piece of the week. Gordon Withers calls it Required Reading, and I’m inclined to agree.

The answer turns out to be “a lot of things”, and they all happen very quickly, and it doesn’t end well for the batter (or the pitcher).

My favorite part so far is this bit, which clearly would have been an XKCD alt-text if it had been a regular comic:

A careful reading of official Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) suggests that in this situation, the batter would be considered “hit by pitch”, and would be eligible to advance to first base.