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Things I Liked From the Innernets

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Just a few things I like that you might that I found on the innernets, which is often a fun place to visit though you wouldn't want to live there, at least I don't think so. However, find here fun finds Twitter-style if that helps, but minus the Twittering and more like a maxi'd out micro-blog.

This idea was sparked while reading the following article, a good example of a young and hip voice ripping apart some mainstream political B.S. that everyone is supposed to swallow with gusto and flare. When you call something allegedly boring that's factually crazy and explain how it is, it's more interesting than boring. Rolling Stone runs Matt Taibbi because he can do this while staying on point for his audience. I am not for either candidate in the U.S. Presidential elections and like to have good reasons why. This is a good one.

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Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital

How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the bill

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4885

By Matt Taibbi

August 29, 2012 7:00 AM ET

Sample:

... Debt, debt, debt. If the Republican Party had a James Carville, this is what he would have said to win Mitt over, in whatever late-night war room session led to the Ryan pick: "It's the debt, stupid." This is the way to defeat Barack Obama: to recast the race as a jeremiad against debt, something just about everybody who's ever gotten a bill in the mail hates on a primal level.

Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America's federal borrowing. "A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation," he declared. "Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love." Our collective debt is no ordinary problem: According to Mitt, it's going to burn our children alive.

And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.

Read more:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829#ixzz260Rcd8ie

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This and the following interview with Snoop and Diplo are good, they give you a bit more context for the artists and characters that many people know and like.

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'Reincarnated' Traces Snoop Lion's Rastafarian Awakening

Documentary screens at Toronto International Film Festival

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Snoop Lion filming "Reincarnated" in Jamaica.

Courtesy Photo

By Karen Bliss

September 8, 2012 10:26 AM ET

The marijuana smoke-filled opening of Reincarnated, the documentary chronicling the personal and spiritual evolution of rapper and one-time gangbanger Snoop Dogg to reggae artist and Rasta Snoop Lion quickly cuts to shots of a bonfire and singing.

Read more

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/reincarnated-traces-snoop-lions-rastafarian-awakening-20120908#ixzz260Txngoz

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This one here is absolutely nuts, at least in my estimation.

You would not believe how sex is being marketed to children these days. Or you would and find this interesting. Either way, this article is definitely food for thought and toys and clothes and activities that adults can recognize overtly promote sex for children should be discouraged in some ways by sane people worldwide at the very least. Perhaps that goes against common wisdom in quarters, but perhaps we should leave the topic open for discussion and here all-sides in perpetuity just in case we figure out more about it since it might be important. They also make the article pretty funny if you can summon a dark sense of humour, at least for the moment. Just crazy.

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8 Weirdly Sexual Products You Won't Believe Are for Kids

Raising a little girl is hard. You have all these decisions to make: schools to choose, what to feed them, how to make sure they don't grow up half as weird as you did. And of course, at some point you'll have to tell her about the birds and the bees. But all that sex stuff can wait until later, right?
Well, around age six, if your nearest department store is to be believed. In stores and catalogues for kids you can find items like ...

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Tesco Peek-a-Boo Stripper Pole

This is one of those pictures you see floating around the Internet, and you always just assume it's either 1) a photoshop or 2) some handmade project from a feminist making some heavy-handed statement about the exploitation of young girls. "Just imagine if they sold toy stripper poles!" But, the toy is very real and was indeed sold in the toy section.
In case you were thinking the pole dancing kit was intended for some kind of nonstripper (poles make for good exercise, right?), then you didn't notice it comes with a garter and play money to stuff into it.

Via Crunchgear.com
Good old-fashioned exercise!

The product was sold in a chain called Tesco, which is like the Walmart of Great Britian, who denied that this was marketed to children and has since relegated it to the exercise department. That's not only about as transparent as selling a pole dancing kit in the children's toy section -- it's also a hilariously blatant lie. As advertised on the website before being forced to take it down, the Peek-a-Boo Pole Dancing Kit was "suitable for participants of 11 years old and upwards."
Oh, bonus fun fact for those of you whose eyeballs are still intact: The product description on the box invites purchasers to "unleash the sex kitten inside."

A Tesco burns down from, we assume, combustible shame.

Read more:

8 Weirdly Sexual Products You Won't Believe Are for Kids | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19288_8-weirdly-sexual-products-you-wont-believe-are-kids.html#ixzz260VPDdvA

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This is fun in our smartphone obsessed cultures. Heck, the word is fairly new but it didn't even come up on the Blogger spellcheck, like "spellcheck" did, (and spell-check didn't). All sorts of new gadgets on our smartphones which I am not entirely sure are a good things. It's great their cool and fun, but it seems like they may not be making more people more cool and fun for each other, so they are winning a lot more battles for time and interest even as safe and enthusiastic topics of conversation. Regardless, they're here to stay and we should figure out how to use them wisely and have fun in the future.

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6 Sci-Fi Technologies You'll Soon Have on Your Phone

Cellphones define our times in the way that cars defined the early 20th century: They're the clearest, most tangible sign that we truly live in the Future. Impressive new cellphone technologies are being developed each week, and there's no telling what wonderful procrastination possibilities our portable speak-boxes will have in a few years.
Because we're telling you right now, some of this stuff borders on magic ...

#6. Touchscreens With the Texture of Fur, Sand or Anything Else

Modern cellphone technology offers all manner of audiovisual achievements, and even the ever-elusive Smell-a-Vision seems bound to make an appearance sooner or later. Yet there's one sense that even the most accomplished smartphone is unable to stimulate: touch. Sure, the manufacturers try, but at the end of the day, the vibration function is just a buzzer and the touchscreen is just a hunk of glass that you tap while it autocorrects your words into nonsense. But what if they made the touch feedback system so good that the screen under your fingers would turn into fur, or sand, or brick? That shit isn't science, it's witchcraft.
But Science, maintaining careful eye contact, courteously flips that statement the bird. Because not only do they have the technology all figured out, but it's totally going to hit the market within a few years.

You could be TouchSkyping your grandpa by 2015.

In fact, there are two different ways of achieving the seemingly impossible. A company called Immersion is developing a more sophisticated version of the vibration function. Using a set of advanced, localized vibrations, the technology is able to manipulate your sense of touch to make you think that the smooth touchscreen has ridges and bumps. Add a correct set of vibrations to a picture of, say, a tiled wall, and you'll be able to feel all the bumps and cuts of the surface as if it were real.

Getty
Which is great news for everyone with a kitchen tile fetish.

Another, even more impressive version of the technology is under development by a new company called Senseg. Their approach utilizes the Coulomb force, better known as the static electricity that causes a balloon to stick to your hair when you rub it. Manipulating the electrostatic forces between the touchscreen and your skin, Senseg can induce sensations of different surfaces, but the technology also actually enables the user to push a virtual marble around the screen and make it feel like a real object.

Guardian
"Alright, that's enough rocks. Bring on the taint page."

Think of the applications of this technology. For one thing, forget about people who still insist on slide-out keyboards for their phones -- this could mimic the feel of plastic buttons under your fingers. People who have lost their sight could operate their iPads without a problem -- all they'd have to do is switch the language to Braille. Virtual cats and dogs could be petted just like real ones. And let's not even discuss the hordes of inevitable iBoobs apps, because otherwise we'll be here all night.

Read more:

6 Sci-Fi Technologies You'll Soon Have on Your Phone | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19994_6-sci-fi-technologies-youll-soon-have-your-phone.html#ixzz260XXMLDk

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This is finally a great explanation from the legendary Bootsie Collins and John 'Jabo' Starks of why James Brown's music was so catchy, or going hard on the one worked great. Which one? Check it out.

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Bootsie and John 'Jabo' Starks explain the JB's "One"

http://youtu.be/ey2qm-y7G7U

Black Krishna

Sunday, September 09, 2012

Things I Liked From the Innernets