Want a new reason to dump Facebook/Google? Yes. You do.

As a quick catch-up, most large scale Internets companies are tracking as much info about you as possible. This is why Google, Facebook, etc, are free. They sell that shit, or use it to sell ads to people (like me!)

That might be OK by you. Trading some weirdly specific ads on other websites is a small cost to pay for a free Gmail account and the ability to use a sub-par search engine to find how how birds fuck. Your searches may be for different stuff, I end up in a lot of weird conversations.

Until lately, I was OK with this too, since all my online profiles are filled with filthy lies, so my ads are for random shit like Muslim singles dating sites and server hardware. But there have been disturbing rumors lately that Facebook is spying on your phone. For example, they're listening to your calls, and stuffing that conversation in a database somewhere to help profile you further. FB denies doing this, sort of. They say they aren't selling that information to any advertisers (I can't tell you how comforting that denial is.)

Which I could almost buy. Until today.

See, today I started seeing ads for diapers. I have purchased diapers precisely one time. Two days ago. I don't use any other social media platforms with any real data at all. I don't have kids, and am not expecting one in the near future. I don't have the FB app on my phone. But my girlfriend does. And we had a baby shower to go to. So I bought some diapers, for the first time in my life.

Today? A shitload of ads for diapers on various sites on the internets.

Sounds like Facebook. Might be Google, or a handful of other jackoffs. Either way, I'm a fucking paranoiac about privacy on the internet, and they made me. Your information is being consumed and distributed to advertisers and who knows else far more than you're aware of. Two days turnaround to fling ads at me after a on a one time purchase from a brick & mortar offline store. Happy browsing.


As an addendum, I believe this is a Thing, because I do not see such ads at work, where I haven't ever logged in to Facebook or other stuff I check at the house. I don't dick around when I'm in the office.

I think, therefore, I am not a Juggalo

For Reasons, I did some reading on ICP over the last day or so. I knew they did a big "reveal" a couple years ago and unveiled the secret message behind their last dozen albums was "god." This was moderately surprising from a band that uses a maniac with an axe and a gun as their logo, and released tracks like "Chicken Huntin", "Bugz on my Nuts", "Dead body man", and "Murder Go-Round".

Full disclosure; I did, briefly, own copies of The Great Milenko, Riddle Box and Ringmaster. This was before YouTube or Pandora, so the only way to find out about new music was to get a CD or know a friend who had a copy.

The thing on my mind is what happened afterwards. Over the course of a couple interviews and since-deleted tweets, Mssrs. J and 2-Dope explicitly stated that they don't go to church, and "We weren't taught about the [Ten] Commandments [... or] what's in the Bible and all that. We just [...] want to see good people hopefully go to heaven, which we refer to as Shangri-La"

Well OK then. They're not claiming to be some type of Christian. I doubt very much that they're secretly Jewish, Muslim, or Scientologists, so now I'm trying to figure out what the fuck they're trying to say here. To me, it looks like we've got two scenarios:
1) ICP are actually new age hippy types with a dream of a happy afterlife available to anyone who "lives right" (whatever the fuck that means, the duo haven't clarified what their deity might require or deem worthy)

or

2) ICP have unintentionally created a new religion. Which their thousands of fans tacitly subscribe to. I'm pretty sure this is the correct interpretation, based on what I've read.

Bear with me. The Wiccan new-age people that I know tend to believe in the threefold law, which basically says that whatever intent you put out into the world will come back on your head three times. Help your cousin move - get rewarded, act like a greedy violent dick and you get colon cancer. ICP seem to live profoundly unexamined lives, thinking about repercussions, or indeed anything at all is antithetical towards being a Juggalo. Here's an excerpt from an interview in the Guardian:

"One of the ICP road crew locates the video on his iPhone, and it is indeed withering: "The [Miracles] video is not only dumb, but enthusiastically dumb, endorsing a ferocious breed of ignorance that can only be described as militant. The entire song is practically a tribute to not knowing things."

"Fuck you, man," says Violent J. "Shut the fuck up."

"Did you anticipate this kind of reaction?" I ask them.

"No," sighs Violent J. "I figured most people would say, 'Wow, I didn't know Insane Clown Posse could be deep like that.' But instead it's, 'ICP said a giraffe is a miracle. Ha ha ha! What a bunch of idiots.'" He pauses, then adds defiantly, "A giraffe is a fucking miracle. It has a dinosaur-like neck. It's yellow. Yeah, technically an elephant is not a miracle. Technically. They've been here for hundreds of years…"

"Thousands," murmurs Shaggy.

"Have you ever stood next to an elephant, my friend?" asks Violent J. "A fucking elephant is a miracle. If people can't see a fucking miracle in a fucking elephant, then life must suck for them, because an elephant is a fucking miracle. So is a giraffe."

We watch the video for another few seconds: "It becomes apparent that Shaggy and J consider any understanding of the actual workings of these 'miracles' to be corrosive. To them, knowledge is seen as a threat… For ICP a true understanding of 'fucking rainbows' would reduce them to, as Keats put it, 'the dull catalogue of common things'.""

For them, the song Miracles was deep. And they don't know why other people laugh at this. They want an afterlife without the burden of figuring out Ethics, or they think that writing songs about murdering rednecks and beating women is a positive thing to do. Or they're making shit up as they go, and their fans come along for the ride without requiring any explanation. This last bit is all too similar to how various cults, gangs, and fringe groups work, which I find depressing. If you're going to find yourself with the ability to shape the goals and actions of a large population, try to have something with more of an impact in mind than "smoke weed every day."

Well played, Marvel. Well played.

I was lazy looking up the date on this, but it took Marvel less than a month to respond to one of my silly dares way back when: Carol Danvers, the one, the only, Captain Marvel is getting a movie.

I ran across this a little while ago when reading up on the Jessica Jones Netflix series. Carol Danvers was supposed to take the Trish Walker / Hellcat spot in that show, until Marvel apparently told the writers there was other stuff coming down the pipe for that character.

I am giddy for a Ms. Marvel movie. Carol Danvers is rad as hell, and there's a tiny option to throw in Wonder Man in the background. This is absolutely what I like about Marvel stuff. The Superman-level ass-kicker hero is more or less a stay-at-home husband/boyfriend when compared to Captain Motherfucking Marvel. DC has no idea what to do with Wonder Woman or Power Girl (or the Huntress. Or Bat-girl. Or Carol Ferris. Or Harley Quin. Or. Or. Or.)

Ms. Danvers? She will come and fuck your shit up. She is a top tier face smasher and badass, and if we're lucky she'll show up in the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie to instantly solve the plot when Starlord is trying to set up another dance off. There wouldn't be Rogue without Ms. Marvel, and I very much look forward to seeing Carol throw a building through a dude in the upcoming film.

I owe someone a better writing thing than this.

But for now, I am a bitter motherfucker.

It's been a fun summer

I haven't updated this space in a while, mostly because I'm lazy. And it's the all-too-brief summertime here, so I'm taking the opportunity to spend time outside without immediately regretting that decision.
I have been reading a bunch of Stephen King and Harlan Ellison, and am enjoying their stuff a lot. The one distinction that has been jumping out at me is that King is writing a story, and Ellison is writing a story. The difference is subtle, but once you notice what's going on behind the scenes, it seems to shout from every page.

More stuff on my mind, more work to do.

No, I do not respect your viewpoint.

I burned a bridge at work by explaining myself in graphic detail. One of our corporate overlords wandered into a politically tinged conversation, and very gently explored his options. In a normal world, this is fine.
But.
A boss interjected with his viewpoint that he respects people who strongly hold their viewpoints. Which I asked him to clarify. And he Did. Any viewpoint held by someone, that they sincerely believe in, grants that person automatic respect from the boss. He works with people who don't have the same beliefs that he does, and he respects that they have different viewpoints.

I find this to be retarded. Just because someone strongly believes in something doesn't make it worthwhile. Nor does it mean that this person deserves respect.
I was in a shitty mood, so I brought up examples up to and including Nazis, homophobes, and racists. He seemed OK with this. And seemed confused that I didn't respect that individuals in those groups held their beliefs.

Well. Here's a Hint. Those people are assholes. I know a lot of fucking stupid people, and just because they think something is true, Does Not Make It So.
Fuck them. Fuck Racists. Fuck Homophobes. Fuck Nazis. (I really didn't think I'd ever need to type that in 2015) They can all be burned on a pile of tires, because the things they believe in are odious and disgusting. I try to be a pacifist these days, but I will, at any point, gladly sucker-punch one of those douchebags, even if I'm just trying to grab a couple tacos 'cause it's lunch time.

For what it's worth, I hold the same viewpoint about flat-earthers and young-earth creationists. I'm real sorry you sincerely believe in something objectively wrong, but you will get no respect from me for your strongly held convictions. This is the difference between having an open mind, and having a mind so open your god damned brain falls out.

I made this!

I spent the week or so building out a sandbox site for the day job. This is NOT normally something that takes this long, but since I didn't have an available backup server, or budget, or any tools to automate any part of this, it did.

So, I had to cobble the fucking thing together using a spare hosting account I had laying around, and glue all of the frameworks, databases, and plug-in modules by hand. While doing other "useful" stuff, obviously.

Today, I got it finished to the point where bugs we started seeing on the production site were also being replicated on the sandbox. Success! I was also able to find fixes for a few of these, and apply them to the company site.
I took a minute to grab the boss and explain what a neat thing we now had: here's a place where I can test out patches to things without fucking up the company website! This is a Good Thing because I don't pull my hair out trying to test things in production when our customers are, you know, using the site.

Naturally, 20 minutes after I showed him this, I nuked the thing into oblivion when an update patch went off the rails, and spent a half-hour restoring the damn thing.
But! That's what it's there for. If this thing blows up in the middle of the day, I don't have an office full of screaming lunatics and pissed off customers. We get to keep making money and everyone else can keep working.

I've been doing web stuff for over a decade, and this is only the second time I've worked with a development sandbox. If you ever wonder why most of the stuff on the internet sucks, this should be a big clue.