Grabbing a flaming piece of fruit sounds like good fun. Also, Lord of Misrule sounds like a better job title than Founder or Chief Technologist. Maybe it’s time for new business cards.
Celebrating the Christmas of the Past
English Heritage has some tips for celebrating Christmas in the Tudor and Victorian styles, if you want to be more traditional than everyone around you. For example, a Tudor-style Christmas would start with putting one person in charge of Christmas and all its parties.
The writing has been great on this show, but it’s probably run its course.
Chevy Chase is off Community, effective immediately
While reports say that the decision was mutual, Chevy Chase has made a deal with NBC to leave Community and never come back. Chase had filmed the majority of the fourth season’s episodes, but there is no word yet on how the absence of his character, Pierce Hawthorne, will be addressed. Everyone who enjoyed his voicemails and borderline racist behavior will miss him dearly. (via Deadline)
The good news is, you can see Louis CK’s stand up material from this year in an upcoming video either via HBO or via a $5 download. It was irritating that in his most recent tour, he decided to screw with the free market on tickets by stopping scalpers from marking up the tickets. The demand has been much more than $40 face value, but Louis prevented the market to push those prices up. So, people who could afford to pay $100 didn’t have that choice. I read that he put these anti-scalper rules in place because he was uncomfortable with people being angry that prices from scalpers were high. Well, now he can deal with those of us who can afford higher prices getting screwed out of seeing him live.
To be clear: I have always liked Louis, well before the show on FX. And kudos for bucking the system with the DRM-free downloads. But what he’s done with ticket prices is stupid, obviously stupid. If he doesn’t want scalpers making money, he should either set prices appropriately high or offer more supply to bring demand in line with his preferred price. If that means a month of shows in SF, so bet it.
Louis CK to offer HBO show as DRM-free download, chip away at cable content deals
With certain exceptions, HBO has developed a reputation for being protective of where and how its content goes digital. That makes Louis CK’s plans for a 2013 comedy special a slight jolt to the system, even though it’s not his first digital release linked to the channel. While HBO will get a first crack at airing the show, which will be recorded during Louis’ ongoing tour, the comedian now plans to post the production online a few months afterwards using the same successful formulathat has become his calling card: $5, no DRM and no region restrictions. The offering doesn’t overhaul the industry, but it undoubtedly wrests control from the network as soon as the download link goes live. Think of Louis as making a small crack in cable TV’s content wall.
With enough eyes, all cryptography is useless (with apologies to ESR).
Also, you can play with a Copiale Cipher Encoder.
They Cracked This 250 Year-Old Code, And Found a Secret Society Inside | Danger Room | Wired.com
For nearly 250 years, this book concealed the arcane rituals of an ancient order. But cracking the code only deepened the mystery.
The gag: find people who say they support Obama, offer up stuff he’s done in the past four years but claim it’s Romney’s plan, then ask if they agree. Finally, admit you lied and enjoy the cognitive dissonance.
This might be the best example I’ve seen of how most people hold beliefs for psychological reasons and then construct “logical” scaffolding to justify it after the fact.
Obama Supporters Pwned by Own Ignorance of Obama’s Policies « Political Pwnage
This is such a damning indictment of so many Obama supporters that it may be misconstrued as somehow being in support of Romney. It is not. (just look at our past posts Re: Romney. There’s no doubt one could find a similar video like this calling out the ignorance of Romney supporters, as well. If one such video exists, we would love to know. But, we digress.)
