See?

ProPublica wrote a story about a couple in CA that sound just like Shelley and I. Our healthcare costs are about to go up by 70%. We support the law, but in our case (and it appears 2-3% of the general population) it’s going to hurt badly; my insurance will be my second highest expense behind my mortgage.

How do we fix this? Jeez, the guy even looks like me!

Eating hokey-pokey ice cream with pomegranate sauce.

“Ted Cruz is one sore loser”, says the Washington Post. I don’t think he lost at all; his grandstanding has made him a household word all around the world. 3280 posts on Reddit, and counting. It’s all about Ted Cruz, not any particular issue. Maybe his constituents will figure it out, like the Houston Chronicle did (“Why we miss Kay Bailey Hutchison”)

This recipe for cooking lambs’ brains is not a parody.

MaKey MaKey: An Invention Kit for Everyone – Buy Direct (Official Site).

Nice! Hook up anything as keyboard or mouse input.

From the Economist, more on the Bullshit Jobs article

Emphasises the point we’ve been thinking about: the necessity of divorcing income from work. Go, Economist!

This is a big deal.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175

As the people behind Silent Circle have said, there is currently no technical solution for the exposure of metadata in email; current encryption mechanisms only apply to the body of the message.

So, currently, using email means we all have to put up with this creepy feeling that the operator of Groklaw refers to.

Or “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night”, by Tom Churchill. A new play by Tom, one weekend run just finished. I was honored to play the Piano Player.

The show was littered with old IWW “wobbly” songs from “The Little Red Songbook“, in print since the beginning of last century. Lots of seditious lyrics set to old hymns and folk tunes that everyone knows, so you don’t have to teach ’em the tune. We got the audience singing before the show. There was lots of mid-century “modern” film-y underscoring, too, right up my alley, improvised throughout the show.

The play’s about the persecution of suspected Communists in the late 40’s, made personal in the story of someone who used to live on Whidbey. Turns out this stuff was local, too.

The whole thing felt intensely topical. Songs about people claiming back power after being laid off for an age and tossed away as disposable. Banding together to take on the establishment. Got me revved up; the words and the ideas are energizing, and relevant.

Tom writes good stuff. I’ll do whatever he asks. He video’d one of the performances; let’s see if he’ll put it online with a Creative Commons license or something.