October 2011
2 posts
“Contrary to the traditional views of the music industry, removal of digital...”
– Rice University | News & Media
The secret life of pronouns →
I’m a social psychologist whose interest in these words came about almost accidentally. In the early 1980s, I stumbled on a finding that fascinated me. People who reported having a traumatic experience and who kept the experience a secret had far more health problems than people who talked openly. Why would keeping a secret be so unhealthy? If you asked people to write about their secrets,...
If your life is a stream of water, that carries you along if you don’t swim against the current, then what, in that metaphor, is clutter? Is that water that you put into bottles (because you dare not leave it behind), slowly creating a dam that distorts the river’s path and holds you back?
What would a working metaphor be?
August 2010
3 posts
Kleine gedachten →
I have started posting longer regular postings about politics, society and psychology on a new dutch blog. Hope someone will enjoy it!
“Radical Muslims have set cities afire because their feelings were hurt. When a...”
– Kathleen Parker (via GeenCommentaar)
Een rechts kabinet? Dan een progressief... →
Of de PVV nu in de regering komt of alleen gedoogsteun geeft, een rechts kabinet is niet mijn kabinet. Begin jaren zeventig vormden oppositieleiders Joop den Uyl en Hans van Mierlo een schaduwkabinet dat klaar stond om te regeren. Als er daadwerkelijk een rechts kabinet aantreedt dan moeten Job Cohen, Alexander Pechtold en Femke Halsema de handen ineen slaan en een nieuw schaduwkabinet vormen,...
July 2010
2 posts
“Power is constantly sought through the use of means which render its effective...”
– Ezra Klein - Discrediting the legislative process itself
“Here’s a nifty trick a psychology professor once told me: Always ask, “What are...”
– David McRaney
May 2010
2 posts
“You will never be prepared for the things you are capable of doing. You will...”
– Matt Nowack (via toldorknown)
January 2010
1 post
“Rape Victims Vs. Prison Rape Victims”
– Rape Victims Vs. Prison Rape Victims - The Sexist - Washington City Paper
December 2009
1 post
“It seems clear to me that Obama and the rest of us cite Hitler because it is...”
– mills baker - A nonviolent movement could not have halted…
November 2009
3 posts
“Infodrome, in 1999 door detoenmalige regering ingesteld als denktank op het...”
– Raad voor Cultuur - Nota ‘Mediawijsheid’
Now we are faced with the daunting task of wrapping our minds around the Palin memoir Going Rogue, appearing atop a bestseller list near you. Millions of copies will be sold of a book written by someone who can’t write, intended for an audience that doesn’t read, about the thoughts of a person who doesn’t think. God is dead.
ginandtacos.com review of Going Rogue
“Tired of media saying that the internet is isolating people. Try being a geek...”
– Marco Arment (via toldorknown)
October 2009
1 post
Spotify.fm 2 Beta released
Spotify.fm has been entirely recoded to be clearer, easier to extend and to be more interactive. The recode was a long process, because not just hacking something together (as it was) but really making it stable (for the long term) takes much more time. I’d say there’s about 2000 lines worth of code here, not including the framework. The site is currently in beta since some error...
September 2009
1 post
“Art may explore the limits of the nasty things humans are capable of doing to...”
– Squashed: Morality, Art, and the Artist
August 2009
4 posts
On a scale from heaven to hell, I am a hell-class procrastinator. i’ve searched all my life for a way in which I finally match up intent and action. I notice that I just do not know the way. I do know what is not the way, so far. One way that is not the way is making a fuss over it.
Beginning of a realisation: I do not know the solution but I know that there are a lot of things that I...
I’m starting to wonder if you have to be able to be content with ‘good enough’ if you want to be a functioning perfectionist. Doesn’t the kind of judgement that leads to good decisions come from being able to rationally judge quality? I notice that the one thing my perfectionism does is ruthlessly kill that sort of rationality.
Spotify.fm - Spotify&Last.fm mashup
I totally forgot to post about this.
A few days ago I released my newest project: Spotify.fm. This tool will show you the latest Spotify releases for your favourite artists (retrieved from Last.fm). Not just the 50 most listened to, but all of your favourite artists from the past six months. This is invaluable (to me) for finding new music to listen to on Spotify, and if artists I like get added...
1 tag
aTumble (tumblr app for Android) 1.6.8 review
A while ago I posted a tiny “review” of aTumble, a small tumblr app for Android. Since then the author has added or changed some features, and I think it’s time for a review of the changes and a more expansive review of the application. I haven’t used it in a while so I don’t remember everything that has changed. Still, here goes.
aTumble is a small ($0.99)...
June 2009
1 post
“I do not think the compiz behavior is wrong, just hard to understand.”
– Travis Watkins, unintentionally summarizing in one line why linux usability sucks
May 2009
3 posts
Talk of swine flu might have been hysterical, but... →
To which the correct response should be: So what? Before “that panic was ridiculous” becomes the conventional wisdom, let’s be frank about it: Where infectious diseases are concerned, panic is good. Panic is what we want. Without panic, nothing happens. Up to 500 million people will get malaria this year, and more than 1 million of them will die, mostly in very poor countries....
For those as annoyed by GNU inconsistencies as me
If ‘find’ throws “unknown predicate `-regexptype’” at you, it’s because it’s -regextype. Do ignore that the regexp argument is -regexp. Might escape you, as it did me, if you’re very very tired.
aTumble for Android ($0.99) "review"
My thoughts: It looks like it does whatever it’s supposed to do, but its features seem meager. No post editing, no hooks into Android, and the post screen layout is slightly messed up on Cupcake. Right now there’s little benefit above Pingdroid and its smooth tumblr/twitter/facebook/gazillion other services combination. A separate tumblr app only makes sense if it has smooth Tumblr...
April 2009
1 post
The Development Dilemma: Can parking tickets... →
RCPS is foreign aid targeted at employing young men—the most likely to take up arms in times of famine—and providing food to rural families, which are the most likely to kill off helpless old grandmothers and aunts when food is short. RCPS is humanitarian aid, but it aims at prevention rather than cure. Whenever rainfall patterns indicate that famine is ahead, donors send money to head off...
March 2009
23 posts
Republicans try to take back the word "universal." →
Since when do Republicans use the word universal to describe their health care policies? And what—if not government-sponsored, single-payer, socialist health coverage—do they mean by it?
“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed...”
– Robert A. Heinlein (via Brigno) (via shadowfirebird)
It's time to kill the idea that newspapers are... →
slateinbrief:
Most newspaper stories aren’t about government, and other organizations will step in to fill the investigative role.
The Magic Behind Amazon's 2.7 Billion Dollar... →
In 2008, Amazon brought in $19 billion, of which 70% came from media products, such as books, movies, and music. It’s not an accident that these products also make the best use of the reviews feature. As we’ve watched Amazon customers make purchases on the site, we can clearly see that promoting the most helpful reviews has increased sales in these categories by 20%.(One out of every five...
“It is individuals who have rights, not religions.”
– Canada’s representantive to the Human Rights Council, in response to a non-binding resolution condemning “defamation of religion” as a human rights violation.
(reblogged from dailymeh)
Would Immigration Solve Housing Crisis? →
“Here is what I don’t understand about twitter. When blogs came out and started...”
– You Kids Get Off My Lawn! The Trouble With Twitter
Despair over financial policy →
The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay...
Chrome only browser left standing after day one of... →
These contests contribute to the growing culture of commercialism that surrounds the art of exploitation. In an interview with ZDNet, Miller said that the vulnerability he used in the contest was one that he had originally found while preparing for the contest last year. Instead of disclosing it at that time, he decided to save it for the contest this year, because the contest only pays for one...
Userfly Review « Usability Post →
Userfly, a startup that launched about 3 months ago, is a new way to study user behavior on your site. The service lets you record your site’s users’ actions and then play them back in your own browser. You are able to see exactly what people are doing, which includes mouse clicks, keystrokes (except for those in password fields for obvious security reasons), page scrolling and navigation across...
“So as far as I am concerned, the big contradiction has not been on the right....”
– Van Jones (via azspot)
“I’m listening to the “market analyst” on CNN, and she assured me the market is...”
– John Cole
Paul Krugman: I'm concerned about Europe →
Why is Europe falling short? Poor leadership is part of the story. European banking officials, who completely missed the depth of the crisis, still seem weirdly complacent. And to hear anything in America comparable to the know-nothing diatribes of Germany’s finance minister you have to listen to, well, Republicans.
Obama's "enemy combatant" policy: following a... →
After many years of anger and complaint and outrage directed at the Bush administration for its civil liberties assaults and executive power abuses, the last thing most people want to do is conclude that the Obama administration is continuing the core of that extremism
…..
But it’s becoming increasingly difficult for honest commentators to do anything else but conclude that. After...
“That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than...”
– Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable « Clay Shirky
The Reversal That Isn’t | Lean Left →
Yes, certainly the Dickey-Wicker ban is stupid, anti-science and anti-intellectual, and annoying. But it does not undo the policy that Obama overturned, and which Bush had previously implemented.
Slate - War on the Rich? →
The bogus GOP claim that Obama is trying to bleed wealthy Americans.
Toilet-Trained Cats Threaten Environment →
So yeah, don’t let Fluffy flush anything.
(via azspot)
Idea #9036: "Provide aspect ratio in screen... →
This idea was marked as implemented the 29 January 09. Available starting Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.
Aspect ratio information seems to be available in the resolution chooser in the new Ubuntu. I will now go on and pretend that this was caused by my Brainstorm suggestion.
Was approached in the library by two young reporters working for the dutch radio station FunX, asking me “evolution or creation?”. They were slightly surprised when I answered “both. These don’t rule eachother out.”. Our society’s so dualistic.
Due to my oh so innovative answer i’ll be on radio somewhere on sunday afternoon. If they don’t edit me...
February 2009
19 posts
Fox News "war games" the coming civil war - Glenn... →
Major exhibit in proving american political discourse is fucked.