n8han

Just one more edit.

[makingmeetup]

One of the joys of working at Meetup is seeing the variety of things people meet up about all around the world. So, as we were doing final QA for the next release of our Android app, we tried a search for all Meetups within 100 miles of Tbilisi and were surprised to find the Toddler Olympics in Oakland County, Michigan, among the results.

A bug, of course, but why?

We did a bit of research and found that our database does in fact believe that the Meetup is in Georgia, so it wasn’t a bug in our search algorithm. Our next guess was that we had somehow flipped a sign, or confused latitude and longitude, but the real problem turned out to be more subtle.

It turns out that the Organizer of the Toddler Olympics didn’t want to post the full address of her house, so she’d written “TBA” — “To Be Announced.” However, the Georgian word for “lake” is “ტბა”, which can be transliterated into the Latin alphabet as “Tba”, and so our geocoder was confused.

There’s always something new to learn when dealing with user-generated data and a global userbase!

[n8han]

Google decided to make an animated gif from our photos of Cesar Ramirez plating, Brooklyn Fare early days.

[n8han]

People holding passports from the selectee countries were automatically pulled aside for full-body pat-downs and had their luggage examined with a fine-toothed comb. The selectee list was purely political, of course, with diplomacy playing its role as always: There was no Saudi Arabia or Pakistan on a list of states historically known to harbor, aid and abet terrorists.

TSA Agent Confessio

[n8han]

When our trigger happy border patrol staff teach children to shoot at migrant dummies in front of the fence we've built around Mexico, at LEAST they have the multicultural decency to train pint sized killers of diverse colors and sexes.

[n8han]

> I agree. However, one reason private companies have to put up with the left-wing cities like SF and NYC is that the younger workers like to live there. They don't like suburban life anymore. Or apparently, "right-wing" life. But the irony here would be more delicious if the mainstream liberalism of NYC and SF were not itself such a joke.

[n8han]

Typical Friday night at our corner of Schermerhorn and Adams Stroad.

[lelands]

Just had my most beautiful ride ever across the Brooklyn Bridge

[azspot]

One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all have to take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty one school shootings since Columbine and no change in the regulation of guns.

John Oliver (via azspot)

Fuck the NRA

(via wilwheaton)

The NRA relentlessly and effectively defends a popular, plausible reading of the second amendment. I'm okay with that. It's up to their opponents to promote a different reading, a different set of values, and so far they have utterly failed. Being a sore loser doesn't help their cause.

I see firearms in my city every day. Often a hand rests on a holstered handgun, caressing it like the object of fetish that it is in our culture. I'm no less sickened that this armed presence is wearing a uniform. I'm not particular in my opposition to deadly weapons in public places.

So sorry. I can only halfheartedly endorse schemes to incrementally restrict the ability of citizens to arm themselves while the state indulges in ever more elaborate displays of local and global militarization.

Here's how the NRA succeeds: they fight for the values of a coherent and popular ideology. The contrary ends sought by the liberal establishment, to institute "gun control" by itself, can only be thoughtfully celebrated by statism.

Let me know when there's a plan to mutually reduce the deadly weapons of public citizens and the state. I'll fight the NRA for that.

What we more desperately need is an NRA for the rest of the Constitution.

[n8han]

I've made a resolution for 2014. It is to do whatever I can to reverse my country's trajectory toward being a surveillance state, and to push as hard as possible for a truly open internet.

My 2014 resolution: stop my country from becoming a surveillance state | Dan Gillmor | Comment is free | theguardian.com

[n8han]

In fact, some studies indicate that the number of snow-sports-related head injuries has increased.

Ski Helmet Use Isn’t Reducing Brain Injuries - NYTimes.com

[n8han]

Yeah

[n8han]

Transit Museum with Noah

[n8han]

> When Adam Bialik, a bartender, stepped off the curb on his way to work at the Ritz-Carlton a few blinks after the crossing signal began its red “Don’t Walk” countdown, he was met by a waiting police officer on the other side of the street and issued a ticket for $197.

LA is there to remind us: things could always be worse.

[n8han]

Street View scene, across the street from our apartment.

[n8han]

> Yemeni officials conceded soon afterward that some civilians had been killed, and they gave **101 Kalashnikov rifles** and about 24 million Yemeni riyals (about $110,000) to relatives of the victims as part of a traditional compensation process, a local tribal leader said.

Yeah so.. That sounds a lot like a transaction we should not be initiating.

[lelands]

Fun times at the holiday party

[n8han]

Hat was bigger than I realized

[n8han]

> In a scathing 68-page opinion peppered with exclamations of incredulity, United States District Judge Richard Leon, of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia, found that the seven-year-old phone-data collection program — which was established under the Patriot Act and has been repeatedly reauthorized by a secret intelligence court — “almost certainly” violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches.

Like we've been saying.