For more freakiness, visit this guy’ profile: Sierra Horizons.

WTF?!

From Tim Boucher back in 2005

Lemme just say this:

America’s prisons are often touted to be the best in the world, treating inmates like human beings compared to the rotten treatment that they get “outside of America”.

Well, I doubt that they’ve ever heard of San Pedro prison in La Paz, Bolivia.

The fact that families live in there with their husbands is enough to make me tell anyone who still thinks that our prisons are better than non-American ones to shut the fuck up.

That is all.

Well, the nays have it.

I know full well that I couldn’t possibly hold it down, anyway. Our family is part-Native American; we’d be beyond-fucked with alcohol.

Plus, I’ve teetotalled all my life. Beer, and just about every other alcoholic beverage, smells like straight nauseating crap to me.

So to start right now, even for the need of a creativity boost, would drag me over hot coals. Not a pleasant experience, I’m sure.

Anyway, for users of Firefox (or Flock) who’ve been waiting for it, Allpeers is finally available, although the beta is for Windows only (which is odd, but not totally unheard of as far as FF extensions are concerned).

It’s been converted for Flock, but it acts really wonky with the settings for it. It should work better with FF.

Geotagging is now the “in” thing to do.

After a year or so of nagging and Greasemonkey hacking, Flickr finally incorporated geotagging into its photo service.

What I’m seeing next for Geotagging:

Digg (newsstory geotagging)
Del.icio.us (bookmark geotagging)
Last.fm (music geotagging)
Wikipedia (article geotagging)
Upcoming.org (event geotagging)
Youtube (video geotagging)

Of course, you could find geotag userscripts at http://userscripts.org but it would help matters if they’re to integrate the capability into their services.

Early this morning, while riding to school (at 6 AM, two hours before class starts), I thought upon the effects of drinking, and how it could affect me mentally.

If weed makes you introverted and slows your senses to a crawl (depending upon how much you’ve smoked), then alcohol is the almost *direct* opposite, as shown in the famous example of Rock Lee from Naruto.

So if weed does that, and, as a result, makes you slow to do anything, then maybe alcohol would make you extroverted and, as a result, somewhat more able to do things that, most of the time, would refuse to come out onto the paper from the thinking stage.

Of course, alcohol would propel such activity to the point of burnout.

But I have many ideas or images which I try to put on paper, or at least set my mind onto long/hard enough to get it done, but never gets out of the thinking stage.

So would alcohol help that?

androgynism, you’d probably know about this better than me.

Andre Agassi, in his last game before retirement, vs. James Blake, No. 1 in the United States.

And they fought to the bitter, tiebreaking end; tonight, they both had their first fifth-set tiebreakers, and the crowd was standing up for the majority of the time, cheering them both on (chants of “Andre! Andre!” and “Blake! Blake!” rang throughout the auditorium without ceasing).

Agassi won, but at the very last match point (#2).

I quote the USA Network commentators’ memorable statements within the last 5 minutes of the match:

Commentator A: “Does anyone have to lose?”
Commentator B: “I hope not.”

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/397003349731

Lots of hacks involved with getting it installed.

Plus, this is momentuous, since Microsoft last released IE for Mac back in 2000.

The funny thing about it is that IE for Mac used a different rendering engine than IE for Windows (IE for Mac’s Tasman, compared to IE for Windows’ wonky-ass Trident), one that makes better use of web standards than IE for Windows.

IE for Mac was killed off because the 5-year deal between MS and Apple had ended. Three years after its last release, Apple released Safari, and MS halted any further bug fixes 10 days before Safari 1.0 was released to the public. IE for Mac didn’t come as a default in Tiger (4/29/05), and all official support for it was ceased on New Year’s Eve. A month later, IE for Mac was taken off of Microsoft’s website.

Tasman is still used for the remaining Microsoft apps for OS X (Office, Messenger for Mac, and a few others), and Apple has so far made few moves to completely drive out MS from OS X. With IE6 being hacked to run on Intel Macs, its possible that other Windows-native MS apps will also be brought over by similar means.

In the “taken-way-too-seriously” scenario, Microsoft would cease development of any other OSX-specific apps by its Macintosh Business Unit, as it would no longer be needed.

Of course, Apple already has a system-level compatibility layer called Boot Camp, which allows for people to run WinXP on Macs. So if hacking Windows-native apps to run on OS X gets a bit more streamlined, Apple would also probably have to create yet another compatibility layer to allow WinXP-native apps to run on Mac OS X, just to make it semi-official.

This should be interesting.

From Eye on Africa

Jean-Pierre Chalupa is running for office as a deputy for Lukunga district in the middle of Kinshasa.

What sets him apart is his race.

He’s the only white guy running for public office in the elections (dunno if he won), and he’s native to the DRC.

He was born to a Greek mother and Portuguese father in Uvira, Sud-Kivu Province. He grew up in Kinshasa, studied in Brussels, came back only fairly recently to start an advertising firm called “Pixel-Light”, and received Congolese citizenship in 1999. His wife is black, and yet, no one has gotten into a tizzy over his color.

That’s perplexing, since president Kabila has caught tons of flack in Kinshasa and surrounding regions over his “Congolity”, as he was raised in Tanzania and speaks fluent English and KiSwahili rather than the French and Lingala which are prominent in the east. He didn’t win a majority in the election, and a run-off is scheduled in October.

Maybe its a regional thing rather than a racial or religious one.

Anyway, more power to Chalupa. I cheer for anyone of any minority status who runs for office with the support of his constituents.

But I’ll make an exception.

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