SOPA Sucks

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Sad Day

mickswanson:

derricklovatt:

I have officially ran out of things to do on the internet.

Derrick, things get 100% better on the internet once you have a beard. I mean, look at me. All I did was let my beard grow for, what, 9 months, and already I have like over 100 followers on my beard blog (which are mostly ladies, might I add), people on gaming forums are filling like 15 pages of “+1 epic beard.” My only problem on the internet these days is “Where can I take this bad boy next?”

Don’t want to grow a beard? Here’s a list of other things you can do that are always fun to do on the internet:

• Sign up on Last.fm and discover new music

Bored with what you’re listening to but don’t really know where to start looking for new music? Aha! That’s what Last.fm is for! Simply download their software and it will start tracking all the music you’re listening to and start giving you some good recommendations on what else you might like. Don’t feel like signing up? Just check out some of your favorite artist’s pages and see what bands they’re ‘similar to.’

• Start reading some web comics

You probably haven’t read any comics in a long time. Well, I have news for you - they’re still around and they’re still good. Here’s a few of my favorites:

• Dinosaur Comics It’s the same frame every time with long, intelligent, witty humour.
• Gunshow Usually always good, with some great multi-part comics hidden within.
• xkcd Every good geek’s favorite comic.
• Hark! A Vagrant Literary humor that sometimes needs some research to understand. Hilarious and educational!
• Pictures For Sad Children Sometimes very dry, sometimes very ordinary. Only certain people will “get” the humor, but it’s great.
• Perry Bible Fellowship A collection of very morbid or “not PC” comics. Very awesome.
• Wondermark! Scans from old-time publications with very accessible humor.

That should be enough to get you started on the wonderful world of web-comics. There are so many more though, you could spend your whole life reading them and wouldn’t finish.

• Make some crafts with Instructables

If you’re a crafty person, Instructables is a great way to find some new ideas to try out. I, for example, am in the process of getting the materials for this DIY screen-printing for cheap. Basically anything you could ever want to make you will find on this site. Impress ladies, make cheap holiday gifts, and get off your lazy butt! When you’re done, you could always sell your hand-made stuff on Etsy - especially if you’ve made something Twilight-related.

• Spend some time acquainting yourself with the backbone of the internet

Memes! If you’re a brave one, you could check out one of several image boards where you’ll spend hours and hours laughing, being disgusted, feeling guilty, and finally logging off. Some better known boards being 4chan, 4chan archive, 7chan, or imagechan. If you don’t feel like throwing yourself right into the middle of the action, take a more “zoomed out” approach by browsing Encyclopedia Dramatica - A place to learn about memes Wikipedia style. A truly educational experience.

And this is just a springboard into a vast ocean of fascinating things to do on the World Wide Internet! Enjoy your stay!

An excellent compilation of things to do online.  I would add Questionable Content and Penny Arcade to the list of webcomics.  The former has the most engaging characters out of all the webcomics I’ve read, and the latter never ceases to amuse, especially if you’re any kind of a gamer.

Browsing music blogs is also endlessly entertaining, including Mick’s own Raptor Hideout, Radiobutt, Zamboni Soundtracks, Sharing is Caring etc. Just make sure you have a big harddrive before venturing into music blog territory.

A new species?

jakelodwick:

Readers of the evening paper, radio listeners, movie or TV viewers certainly constitute a mass that has an organic existence, although it is diffused and not assembled at one point. These individuals are moved by the same motives, receive the same impulses and impressions, find themselves focused on the same centers of interest, experience the same feelings, have generally the same order of reactions and ideas, participate in the same myths — and all this at the same time: what we have here is really a psychological, if not a biological mass.

From the book “Propaganda” by Jacques Ellul. Emphasis mine.

I just started reading this book, from 1965. Lately I am preoccupied by this notion, that groups of humans are literally a type of organism. I think it’s another philosophical concept that sits in most humans’ blind spots. We probably don’t like to think of ourselves as components in a larger biological machine.

But if you could talk to a cell, it would probably say, “I’m a cell, I’m surrounded by cells… nobody here but us cells!” I mean, it’s plausible that it wouldn’t notice it was in fact part of a dog.

A very thought provoking post. This is something that is very hard to acknowledge particularly, I would think, as an American. I would add that I think there are some organisms that are easier to be a part of than others. Take for instance the huge hulking monstrosities that are the Republican and Democrat parties, which are so large they pull people in with what one could almost call gravitational force.

It’s also interesting to note, given the time period during which this book was written, that the development of the internet since that time has allowed for the development of smaller, more agile organisms. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we have become single-celled, but there are certainly many alternatives to the evening paper and network television that were simply non-existent 40 years ago.