Trapdoor goalposts - noun phrase - When two or more requirements are set up so that meeting one automatically means failing another. This is a bad faith argument whereby it is impossible to meet the requirements someone sets, without admitting refusal to allow the outcome the other person desires.
Example:
"If you're making a decent income you can't possibly talk about poverty, you don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm actually below the poverty line."
"You just want a handout!"
technical heresy - noun phrase - Openly demonstrating the imagination to come up with actual uses for a platform or application that it is currently popular to hate.
I've been keeping quiet about the mass school shooting in Florida some weeks ago because it's such a hot-button topic, and many people speaking out are catching harrassment and death threats - even the students who survived the massacre. Of course, the National Rifle Association went on the record as saying, quote, "The NRA doesn't back any ban." Meaning, of course, they'll do their damndest to hamstring any new legislation that has to do with guns. It's also worth noting that there were multiple law enforcement officers - trained and armed - at the school, and they did nothing. Which isn't surprising to …
Platypus truther - noun - Someone who doggedly, ruthlessly, and almost to the exclusion of anything else (including good sense) espouses, defends, and picks fights over a position, idea, or hypothesis that is completely and totally around the bend. Even taking into account the context of this person's other activities (social media history, books written, and so forth) it makes absolutely no sense why they would claim to believe such a thing, let alone fight with people over it. There is absolutely no way of telling if they're communicating in good faith or not. It could be trolling, it might be absurdist …
Well, I'm finally back from Defcon 25 and writing up my notes while in the throes of con drop before too much of the experience fades from memory. Suffice it to say that I have opinions about last weekend, which I will attempt to write as concisely as I can. I don't like being negative about things because my experience is my own, and I much prefer that people have their own experiences and make up their own minds about things. However, I would be lying if I painted a rosy picture of my attendence of the largest hacker convention …
"First, stop being failures. It's absurd to judge ourselves against a scale larger than our own efforts. Do the right thing, help one another, raise the less fortunate without ulterior motives. Live simply, never lie, never steal, limit personal wealth, donate to charity, meditate, practise self-denial, live a pure life and spend some time as a monk. Above all, don't be afraid of nothingness, because the universe is full of it and therefore it must be natural and good. In this way of being 'no-mind', we escape ajiva and achieve enlightenment."
For any topic you can imagine, there is a healthy and active blog by and for people who are or who are strongly interested in that topic. They will also have a Cafepress store which is slightly surreal.
I'm not going to recap the Occupy Movement because there is, quite simply, too much to it to pack into even a one paragraph summary. Suffice it to say that the political system has, if I may be blunt, failed too many people one too many times, and the reaction of the people has been to gather and camp out anywhere and everywhere. Town squares and city parks are occupied. Colleges are occupied. Big cities (like New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC) are occupied. Little cities (I really don't know what constitutes 'little' in the United States, so …
The top ten most often quoted people in my .plan file (myself excluded) as of 8 February 2010:
Lyssa (199 times)
Anonymous (114)
Hasufin (110 times)
Jason (49 times)
Pegritz (46 times)
Kyrin (41 times)
Unknown (34 times)
the.Silicon.Dragon (33 times)
The Ferrett (29 times)
Terrence McKenna (22 times)
All quotes of multiple people have been collapsed into a single name based upon the number of times all of the names appeared. People appearing under more than one name had all of their quotes totalled up.
