{"id":2378,"date":"2009-01-23T11:08:56","date_gmt":"2009-01-23T16:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=2378"},"modified":"2009-01-23T11:08:56","modified_gmt":"2009-01-23T16:08:56","slug":"friday-notes-breaking-the-ice-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2009\/01\/23\/friday-notes-breaking-the-ice-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Notes: Breaking the Ice Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"tt-flickr tt-flickr-Medium\" title=\"Frozen Potomac\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/blacknell\/3215163905\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3263\/3215163905_78f564faf7.jpg\" alt=\"Frozen Potomac\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I understand that we&#8217;re getting alll the way into the 40s today, before plunging back into the frozen winter.\u00c2\u00a0 Sounds like a good time for my annual solicitation for employment near the Equator.\u00c2\u00a0 I mix an excellent martini.<\/p>\n<p>~<\/p>\n<p>Matt Cooper thinks that if we really want to change government, <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2009\/01\/procurement-reform-is-sexy-honest.php\">we should get serious about improving defense procurement<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I think that the public appetite for this is fairly thin, but if it were done right, it could bring massive returns.<\/p>\n<p>~<\/p>\n<p>Getty Images <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/help\/gettyimages\/\">goes looking for content at Flickr<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Interesting.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 There are loads and loads of phenomenally skilled photographers on Flickr, but I can&#8217;t help but feel like this is just one more step in the direction of making it harder to make a living as a professional photographer.<\/p>\n<p>~<\/p>\n<p>Apple, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pocketgamer.co.uk\/r\/iPhone\/Prohibition+3%3A+Candy+Wars\/news.asp?c=11065\">making sure your kids sell candy instead of dope<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Or something like that.\u00c2\u00a0 (DopeWars has been on every handheld I&#8217;ve had since 1998).<\/p>\n<p>~<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Fuchs and Felix Sockwell <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomasfuchs.com\/site\/digital\/Digitalpage001.html\">ofter some branding help to the GOP<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of them are actually quite thoughtful.<\/p>\n<p>~<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d really like to see some follow-up on, and independent confirmation of, NSA whistleblower <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/storyonly\/2009\/1\/22\/002\/24210\/125\/687385\">Russell Tice&#8217;s claims aired on Wednesday night<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>TICE: Well, I don&#8217;t know what our former president knew or didn&#8217;t know. I&#8217;m sort of down in the weeds. But the National Security Agency had access to all Americans&#8217; communications, faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications. And that doesn&#8217;t &#8212; it didn&#8217;t matter whether you were in Kansas, you know, in the middle of the country, and you never made a communication &#8212; foreign communications at all. <em>They monitored all communications<\/em>. (emphasis supplied)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He goes on to explain how the NSA, under the guise of trying to ensure that they weren&#8217;t reaching into communications they shouldn&#8217;t, were doing exactly that.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Now, I do tend to believe that the NSA has done that (see, e.g., statements that some NSA employees were <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Blotter\/Story?id=5987804&amp;page=1\">listening in on intimate conversations between deployed soldiers and their wives<\/a>).\u00c2\u00a0 A systematic wholesale monitoring on the scale of what Tice is talking about, however, goes well beyond my original suspicions.\u00c2\u00a0 But not beyond possibility.\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;d like to see his claims taken seriously and investigated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I understand that we&#8217;re getting alll the way into the 40s today, before plunging back into the frozen winter.\u00c2\u00a0 Sounds like a good time for my annual solicitation for employment near the Equator.\u00c2\u00a0 I mix an excellent martini. ~ Matt Cooper thinks that if we really want to change government, we should get serious about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4,6,8,3,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dc","category-law","category-policy","category-politics","category-society","category-tech"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2378"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2380,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2378\/revisions\/2380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}