How four social networks inform me about the current Israel/Gaza conflict, in order of where I first started seeing things:

• Facebook: Shares of pro-Israel/anti-Gaza graphics, some of them direct Israeli Defense Force propaganda with the identifying logo at the bottom. All of the sharers are personally known to me, and all are Jewish. Most (maybe ( Read more... )

New icon! It’s the same one I’m using over on Google+.

Hey, indie role-playing game designers! I love many of your games, but there’s this one thing’s been driving me nuts, and I think you could maybe do something about it: When you’re coming up with a name for your game, could you consider that people interested in it are going to do Google searches, not just for the game’s home page, but for online ( Read more... )

Back in 1989, when that big quake hit San Francisco, I called up drcpunk, who was then at UCLA, because I was a lifelong New Yorker, and had no idea that San Francisco and Los Angeles were 300+ miles apart.

Now I’ve got Google Earth to reassure me that Jakarta and Rembang are likewise 300+ miles apart, so I probably shouldn’t worry that tinpan might have been ( Read more... )

I was browsing through some old Usenet discussions, when I found this old post by nancylebov using “google” as a verb on 17 July 2000 back when it was still a relatively new coinage (though I’d used it two weeks earlier in the same thread ( Read more... )

NY Times, “Time Warner Plans to Sell 5% of AOL to Google”:
Finally, around 9 p.m., Richard D. Parsons, chief executive of Time Warner told Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, that he would accept Google’s recently sweetened offer. Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content ( Read more... )

Wikipedia’s been in the news a bit recently. John Seigenthaler, former administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy, discovered recently that a prankster had posted a biography of him to Wikipedia, claiming that he‘d been thought to have been involved in the assassinations of the two Kennedy brothers. Painful, but there are assholes all over, and at ( Read more... )

So how it works is, you google for “your_first_name needs”, and grab the first ten results. Mine:

1. Avram needs some transformation.
2. Avram needs to get involved in this battle and be victorious.
3. Avram needs someone to take over sound editing when he leaves in three weeks.
4. Reflection will reveal that this is not the only decision Avram needs to make ( Read more... )

A Viennese art group has made a 200-foot long pink toy rabbit and placed it on a mountain in Italy. They say they expect it to stay there for twenty years. I can’t wait till Google’s satellite view of that area gets updated.

Women’s Books Decoded: You never knew legs could say so much. (via Mimi Smartypants)

Searching Far And Wide For Cycling Companion: Jackass has a personality meltdown on a cycling discussion board, coins epithet “chickenshit poltroon”. Read down to bottom of first page for added insanity (but don’t bother with later pages). (also via Mimi ( Read more... )