Tuesday, April 14, 2015

When Those Who Serve and Protect Stay Silent

So... you know how all the police associations unify and publish / present in media the same narrative during all the recent "white officer shoots unarmed black man" incidents?
The silence of the same police associations in the wake of the Walter Scott murder is deafening.
I'm a big fan of effective, efficient, community focused police. They're there to protect us, we should be there to support them. When that breaks down we get police departments who fight wars against our own people and a frightened, cornered, occupied population. Every encounter is a potential shooting, a potential assault, every incident puts everyone in extreme danger, and people on all sides flip the fuck out.

...and the unarmed colored folks are doing the dying.
I want my son growing up in a world where police are respected, trusted, loved and fiercely protected by their communities so they can do their jobs: providing essential services and protection to the communities they serve.
Until then I get to worry that, even though we have the privilege of living in an area with great local police, if my son who is half latino stays outside enough and gets a little too brown or ends up in the wrong area or hangs with brown or black friends, he may feel he has to run when he sees the police instead of giving a friendly wave and a smile.
Here's hoping individual officers step up publicly, condemn this shooting, and reaffirm their own commitment to protecting the people they serve so we can restore a little sanity and start working on fixing our problems.

In the meantime, here's an incomplete but rolling recent list of "excessive use of force against minorities" incidents.

c/o The Chicago Tribune
FBI investigating death of teen shot 16 times by Chicago cop
Chicago police officers trailed the knife-wielding teen for nearly a half-mile last October, from a trucking yard where he'd allegedly been trying to break into vehicles through the parking lot of a Burger King and onto a busy street in the Archer Heights neighborhood.
...with family commentary on the settlement from the Chicago Sun-Times.

c/o The Guardian
Michael Slager radioed in Taser claim six seconds after firing at Walter Scott:
Analysis of police audio synced with video raises further questions about whether officers performed any CPR on Walter Scott after he was shot eight times

c/o The Washington Post w/commentary via Daily Kos
Report confirms that police killed Natasha McKenna with her hands cuffed and legs shackled
A mentally ill woman who died after a stun gun was used on her at the Fairfax County jail in February was restrained with handcuffs behind her back, leg shackles and a mask when a sheriff’s deputy shocked her four times, incident reports obtained by The Washington Post show.



...and for a counterpoint of police restraint when "white people be crazy":

c/o CNN
Christian family band members in deadly parking lot brawl aka: "Brawlmart"
Arizona investigators have released dramatic video of a Walmart parking lot brawl that left a police officer wounded, one man dead, and reportedly involved members of a Christian family band.

c/o mLive
Tense encounter between open-carry advocate and Kalamazoo police detailed in recordings, reports
Police reports and recordings of a sometimes tense 40-minute encounter with a belligerent, rifle-toting man offers insight into how officers tried to defuse a volatile situation without infringing on his right to openly carry the gun on a city street.
...with some commentary via Daily Kos



....aaaaaand for what happens when the good ones stay silent. The bad ones speak up

Supervisors told to falsify reserve deputy's training records; department announces internal review
Supervisors at the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office were ordered to falsify a reserve deputy’s training records, giving him credit for field training he never took and firearms certifications he should not have received, sources told the Tulsa World. Bates, 73, is accused of second-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of Eric Harris during an undercover operation on April 2.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015


A past coach of mine decided to speak up and break the silence surrounding peoples' relationship with Roller Derby, good and bad. I've been rolling comments around in my head the last couple days and I think I've come to a better understanding on why derby can be so wonderful but so hard.

People have passion.

People express passion for sports all the time both as fans and as players and that passion, when your team is winning a championship and that sense of loss, helplessness or a feeling of seeing insurmountable tasks pile up people feel really are two sides of the same coin. The highs are dizzying and wonderful, the lows are soul crushing and make you wonder why you bother. People want to love, people want to fall in love with what they do, with who they root for, with the people they do it with.

In this way, roller derby is no different than any other sport, except for that many of the people who play roller derby also run the league's day to day business; from accounting to marketing and sales to legal to management to human resources, slamming a small but motivated motley crew of players from nearly all ages, experience levels and areas of competence together and expecting to get a perfect result is not a recipe for perfection.

Roller derby isn't a business. We fall in love. We get hurt. We get angry. We express that anger. We get frustrated. We fall out of love. We set fire to the people and places that hurt us and vow to never let it happen again. We start new leagues, we taken on entirely too much responsibility. We burn out. We get bitter. We see motivated people as naive and useless. We lose the patience to build the team and the sport we love.

... because it's like a goddamn relationship, except your in a complex multipersonal relationship between people with varying levels of communication skills, trust levels and commitments. It's so easy to fall in love and pull all the wonderful relationship energy from everyone, and so easy to get hurt by just one thing, one miscommunication, one slight whether intentional or not.
Everyone can be well meaning and still fail. Everyone can want the same thing but still end up moving in terrible directions. Everyone can still love the team and love the sport but take action to destroy it all.

It's because we love what we do and we need to give it the space, the respect and I think most importantly... the understanding and the compassion to help everyone on the team succeed,

to push the team to succeed.

to push the sport to succeed.

to learn to love and maintain a long term healthy relationship with roller derby and to steward that love and spread it to other people.

Comments? Head over to Reddit and chime in.


Tuesday, April 1, 2014

OkCupid Throws Down the Gauntlet, Misses the Target

Multiple friends in the various sex-positive and sexual education fields posted a link to an article they saw on Valleywag about OkCupid coming after Mozilla and its CEO and its call to action to not use Mozilla software.

 
Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid. Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there's a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we're asserting ourselves today. This is why: we've devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we've worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it's professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure. If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.
 
LOL 

So... I'm really torn about this.

Mozilla -is- a corporation but the software they write is open source. Mozilla Firefox is just software, it's a tool, and in general I endorse using the best tools for the job and the fact is... Mozilla Firefox is the only truly platform independent open source browser that's completely functional and unencumbered by platform preferential setups like Safari (for Mac/iOS), Chrome (for Android/Windows/Chromebook) or Internet Explorer (Windows/Windows Phone). Firefox and its companion software works everywhere on virtually every platform. It's free as in free software and no bigot ceo can end that.

The solution here -is- to hit the Mozilla corporation in its pocket book and it's correct; not using Firefox can eventually have an effect but it also has significant collateral damage. Not searching -through- the search bar in Firefox has the same effect; the Mozilla corporation makes a significant amount of money via google searches initiated in the in-browser search bar. Corporations can be pressured, they have bottom lines to worry about and even the Mozilla corporation isn't immune to bad press. I fully endorse exposing their current CEO for who he is and what he's done and for taking action against the corporation but... the Free Software / Open Source movement is a natural ally of the equality movements.

I disagree that we should take action by telling people not to use Mozilla and therefore disagree with OKCupid's call to action.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Capricon XXXI 2011! (2 of ???) Live Band Klingon Karaoke (Now with more Leia!)


Sunday, February 20, 2011

Capricon XXXI 2011! (1 of ???) Live Band Klingon Karaoke

Heh.


Capricon (www.capricon.org) rocked, and my favorite part.... the live band Klingon Karaoke of course with Sing With the Band!

First Video is up, more to come!




Monday, February 8, 2010

... ever needed to use another wireless adapter with your Mac?

*** GUEST BLOGGER ***

We just got a Apple iMac G5 with no Airport Extreme Card in it. Dave has a tiny USB Wireless Card, it's a Buffalo WLI-UC-GN. He told me that he wasn't sure if the USB wireless card would work at all. First thing I did was grab my MacBook to go find drivers on the Buffalo website. They only had drivers for Windows. So my next step was to do a bit of research because I knew it had to work. I did a google search for Mac drivers. Looked at a couple of websites and found a forum that had the answer http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=193751. I was directed to go to the ralink site http://www.ralinktech.com/. I was a little confused at which UBS driver to download but the forum posted which file to download. After the download finished I popped in my 2gb flash drive and copied the file over. I plugged in my flash drive and installed the driver. I used the ralink software to connect to our wireless at home and went to the system preferences, network to make sure I was getting an IP address. It works and works very well.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Fuck you Pat Robertson.

Pat Robertson: Haiti 'Cursed' By 'Pact To The Devil'

Fuck you.



Hypocrisy and Religion, re: Haiti Earthquake

I'm livid right now. However, I've channeled that into an intelligent, well thought out response on Facebook. Since Facebook is a crappy isolated walled garden, I'm posting it here for everyone to see.

Hey.

ASSHOLES.

Yeah, i'm talking to you.

If you work for the "Christian and Missionary Alliance" or decide that the mere fact that you go to church or claim to worship the "one true god" whatever that may be (Allah, Buddha, Jesus, Flying Spaghetti Monster, whatever) and claim that you're Pro-Life "from the moment of conception", practice that shit.

'cause you know what? If you don't, i'll call you on it, and use the nuclear option on you publicly, in front of your friends and family, you fucking hypocrite.

I'm eloquent, educated, and previously a very interested party in biblical scripture and history. If you want to measure your Christian Penis (tm) with me, I'll make mine go "TIIMMMMBER" in front of you and embarrass the hell out of you.

TL:DR:
Publicly avowed Pro-Life Christian decides non-believers deserve death via earthquake in Haiti. (see a parallel with Katrina & sinners?) I call them out in front of friends and family, and an epic win ensues.

wtfxtian

Monday, January 4, 2010

Nathan Quote #4:

"I'm going to pee on you, because I hate you."We told him he could not have candy.

  • He decided to argue. I sent him to his room.
  • He cried, complained, and yelled. I sent him to the top bunk, took the ladder away, told him he was in his room for the rest of the night, and sat there with Nikki watching him and not speaking until he calmed down.
  • He stripped off his clothes and threw them at us. He then threw down his teddy bears, and his bed clothes and sat up there naked.
Parenting is fun. I barely contained my laughter. Since on the Internet I don't have to, here's what I instantly thought of. :)


Wednesday, December 2, 2009

gifLOL

EPIC REDDIT THREAD ALERT

"Hey Ask Reddit, what's your favorite .gif?"

Mine is really a c-c-combo:


Thursday, November 26, 2009

Help! Need help naming a track (v2.1): DK & Santogold & TEPR Update!

I forgot that I followed up on this request for help and found the answer...


Santogold - Say Aha, remixed by TEPR
I believe TEPR's site (LOL MYSPACE) is here:

Sooo, here's the mix I was looking for:

Friday, November 13, 2009

Sing With The Band f/ VINNY!



Sing With The Band does Live Band Karaoke every thursday night at Chicago City Limits


Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Thinly Veiled Excuse of Drink and Game for Make Benefit Glorious Operating System of Windows 7! (The Presentation, The Pictures)

The pictures... the presentation...

Prepare yourself, oye... :)
*NOTE
These videos are available in HD on youtube, so click on 'em to go to youtube, or just watch and laugh here.




So we started out with some music, we oooh'd and aww'd over a new Windows 7 laptop one of the guests brought in. We moved on to some Rock Band 2, and some Skype conferencing with another party in North Carolina.

We ate some pizza, drank a bit, fooled aruond, and started the presentation, which... I gave you above.

After we moved onto a Bomberman Live contest that ended in me giving away the Party Pack copy of Windows 7 Ultimate!
IMG_1080
Second place got the poster. :)

Full Flickr Photoset here:

IMG_1071

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Halloween 2009!!!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

What I've Bought Lately: UPS


I've needed some better surge protectors / uninterruptible power supply, and I saw a special for a 1285VA UPS, so, I grabbed two!

I bought a Cyberpower CP1285AVRLCD UPS
I got 2 for $200 total from Buy.com. (Now they're available on Amazon for $108 each)


I'm using one for my television / stereo / gaming equipment, and one for my computer equipment in the other room.

Monday, November 2, 2009

What I've Bought Lately: Video Card

Well, I hosted that Windows 7 Party and had my computer hooked up to my television (Toshiba 40RV525U 40" LCD) and realized if I wanted HD Audio I had to use three minijack/headphone to rca converters and send them to my receiver... I don't have an optical audio out (toslink) or a coaxial audio out port on my motherboard (ECS G31T-M, purchased for free at a Fry's B&M store) so... I needed to remedy that.

My video card, an XFX GeForce 8600GT worked well, but didn't have any native hdmi out, just two dual-link DVI which are great and work with DVI-HDMI converters, but... do not output audio.

So I looked for the best card I could get for under $100 that did not take up two slots. nVidia didn't have anything to offer with these requirements, however AMD/ATi did, I found a HIS Radeon HD 4670 that fit the bill.
It may take up two slots, but it's "second slot" is to the LEFT, not to the right, and I had space to the left!

So, that's what I've bought lately

Friday, October 23, 2009

Thinly Veiled Excuse of Drink and Game for Make Benefit Glorious Operating System of Windows 7!

Just to clarify:

My Windows 7 Party, "Thinly Veiled Excuse of Drink and Game for Make Benefit Glorious Operating System of Windows 7!" is happening tonight. So, get a hold of me and join us there!


Windows 7 Whoppers! Hmmm..... mmmmm....

I think I know where we're getting dinner tonight at the Windows 7 party. :)


Linus Torvalds Gives Windows 7 a Big Thumbs Up!

Linus Torvalds Gives Windows 7 a big Thumbs Up!

heh heh heh

So I'm holding a Windows 7 Launch Party of my own!

Happening tonight, check it out!
http://houseparty.com/party/176744

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Toshiba 40RV525U: Awesome, when it works...

We have a Toshiba 40RV525U flat panel television that's nine months old. For six of these months it's had some issues. We had it repaired a few months ago, it still has the same issue.

I'm keeping track of it all here, just so if someone needs to refer to evidence, they can.



Also:
From 2009.09.25

www.flickr.com
Xystance's items Go to Xystance's photostream