Spontaneous ∂erivation

Because I’m tired of hanging onto links.

Candy Blog

Epicurean discussion of candy, very lovely blog.

The bite is soft, the chocolate barely flakes, which is a great relief after the red licorice catastrophe.

The licorice at the center is quite soft and has a strong molasses flavor – the chew is almost jelly like, but has the satisfying rib-sticking of a wheat-based confection. The anise and licorice notes are rather mild and more of a generic spice cookie feel. The chocolate is sweet, not terribly chocolatey but seems to seal in all the flavors well.

It’s nice to see an Aussie licorice being sold at American candy prices. It was a nice change up from Twizzlers, Good & Plenty or Crows, which are really the only plain licorice products sold in single serve packages any longer.

And I am reminded: “All things can be reasoned within a discursive community.”

Epic Win: Casio Super Magic Diary

Brenna M comments: “When I was in 5th grade, my friends and I would exchange the FIRST text messages during class with the casio Super Magic Diary.”

FEDCON USA: Making Flanvention look Good

Not to be too much confused with the original FEDcon in Germany, the USA version fell apart into impressive flaming bits in 2008. Complete fail on the part of the organizers, and very much win on the part of the actors who could make it, and the actors who were cut off by the con organizers and yet still advertised to be going there.

It took me a while to find the site with the most links, and this was apparently (though I didn’t remember at the time) my first encounter with Fandom Wank! Links and screencaps in the comments, but probably one should make note of a capture of particular posts on the FedConUSA’s board that were deleted, especially since they featured Aaron Douglas, known by fans both as Chief Tyrol in BSG and also as being made of win.

He turned out to be made of Epic Win. As was John Billingsley (Enterprise, Dr. Phlox), who got up on stage and demanded refunds for all the fans when the convention was canceled half a day into the schedule. Here it is on YouTube (with related videos).

Time is Running Out?

Remember Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation”, nominated for the 2009 Hugos Award for best short story?

There’s a proposition that, instead of the universe expanding, another explanation is that time is slowing down instead. Hat tip to TYWKIWDBI.

William Shatner Reads Sarah Palin’s Tweets

High-quality video from Hulu:

Hostesses and Herbivores

When the economy went to hell in Japan (it’s still there, by the way), social and cultural shifts started to happen as well. Hat tip to the Daily Dish.

Hello Kitty Monopoly

Just as saccharine as you can imagine it. Hat tip to Hello Kitty Hell.

Ale to the Chief!

Photo gallery of the “Beer Summit” via Talking Points Memo.

The Big Picture: Lightning

As always, cool huge hi-quality photo gallery from the Boston Globe, featuring Lightning. Also one of my favorite Despair, Inc. posters:

I think I’ll keep my subscription to Wired Science, as it delivers interesting articles every week day (although apparently not so much on weekends).

Here are images of people’s brains shutting down when they receive “eXpert financial advice.”

Pushing this up the queue of Kindle Shots because, um, wow:

Mind you, nothing has been confirmed. But I think this is why I still subscribe to the NYT Latest News Blog on my Kindle: so I can be boondoggled earlier.

I love him so.

There are quite a few people upset at the House of Representatives’ Republican behavior with respect to the bill. All that wasted talk and compromise from Obama, seems to be the general thought on the left side of the line.

But I’m not upset, despite liking the bill.

First of all, it’s the House of Representatives. The House is like the LiveJournal community of the U.S. Government. I’d have been deeply impressed if the Stimulus Package vote had gone down without some kind of high school melodrama.

Secondly, the Republicans seem to have forgotten the rules to the blood sport of Washington. Yes, you can indeed ignore the rules of reciprocation and trust when you’re in the clear majority. But when you aren’t the majority, it’s easier to accumulate political debt than political interest.

Put plainly: Obama, by visiting the Hill rather than staying put in the White House, and having all of these successful talks with the Republicans, more or less invested his available political coinage (of which he has quite a bit of, being as popular as he is with the country right now). He gave the opportunity to the Republicans to do the same. But instead of investing, they decided to spend what little coinage they had left in cock-blocking the bill (and especially the way they spun it to the media).

This might have been worth something were they able to actually get something in return, like actually blocking the bill; but they didn’t and indeed they couldn’t. Obama’s investment, on the other hand, paid him dividends. He had little risk, which is not the same as having little to risk, which is what the House Republicans have. And thus Obama played his hand well, much better than most Presidents would have done, I think.

So, House Republicans: they’ve effectively blown their political brokerage account. They didn’t actually incur debt, because Obama came to them; they just cleaned themselves out with little leverage left to actually build up their accounts again. Such accounts do eventually gain interest as the memory of the public fades, but for the near future, Obama has them dead to rights.

And, you know. It wouldn’t be LiveJournal the House of Representatives without a little soap opera floating around.

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twitscoop: One subject on twitter right now: http://tinyurl.com/45oo9n – no need to comment, this tells it all… This is clearly a market crash :(

I first got wave of this from the Twittersphere, which is actually how I get most of my ground-breaking news these days (hurricanes, earthquakes, real and fake heart attacks, and now the upcoming global market crash). As you can see, Twitscoop really does have the scoop on this:

When the Apocalypse comes, the sign of the first horseman shall be Tweeted.

Twitter is an interesting observation deck for events that ripple across boundaries; despite Twitter’s scaling issues (which are being addressed, so the spectacle of the FailWhale should appear less often), the fact that Twitter is first-to-market and simple has given it a firm foothold in the heart of teh Internets. We wouldn’t think of turning to Jaiku or Utterz (now Utterli) or even FriendFeed (which aggregates across everything social media) for first-wave information.

These days it’s hard for me to think in terms of country boundaries when I think about the world in general; I’d call it a World-o-sphere or something, and think mostly in terms of domain names. How quickly the future arrives.

As for my stock portfolio: I’m in for the long haul and invested in big tech companies, fortunately, and not banking or other financial institutions (which have really cratered). I managed to avoid the AAPL-from-200-to-88 as well. It’s likely going to be pretty dismal for the future—at least as long unto 2010, and perhaps even as long as 5 years.

And I’m also very not invested in EBAY right now, for reasons that are probably most clear to people who have been following eBay news closely for a year, e.g., their direct competitors and random weird people like me. Y’all, somethin’ ain’t right when you lay off 1000 people for pretty much no reason—neither a big buy of BML nor the beginning of a crash (nor even the two combined) qualify as “a good reason,” unless the bleed was necessary before either happened or your future looks a bit hazy. 10% of a high-bar technological workforce is not easy to replace unless you’re going to be dropping your bar to the floor.