I barely even remember this blog, until someone posts a comment and I get an email to Approve it.

Every single one is in response to “I Hate Xeni Jardin”. In fact, looking at my stats it’s one of the main reasons anyone finds this blog. And while I’d originally hoped we’d all come together for our shared love of HDR photography and my childish attempts at flash fiction, I guess having a headquarters for the Bitch-needs-to-get-her-ass-off-boingboing Society isn’t such a bad thing.

Below are some of the comments posted agreeing that Xeni Jardin is offensive to all 5 senses, and is pretty much the antithesis of what boingboing is supposed to be. I would attach the standard, boilerplate “views represented are those of the poster, and do not reflect the position of the owner of this blog” but, no, they really do.

Comments are shown as they appear, without censoring.. because what kind of self-righteous fuck would censor the comments of someone just because they disagree with them? If you feel misrepresented, have changed your opinion, or wish to expand upon your comment please feel free to notify me.

Fuck you.

Freakishly accurate.

[Via Eviljaymz]

So somewhere along the line I became the number one Google result for
I hate Xeni Jardin. I am so proud of that fact I could just shit my pants. I rank higher than a website called xenisucks.com. Go there, btw. It hasn’t had anything new or interesting to say since 2006, but then neither has Xeni… Zing!

 Having to look at her annoys me most.

She takes photos of fucking everything. Like, it’s not enough just to go and see the yodelling goatsmen of Upper Whoogivesashit, you have to take a thousand photos and stream them to your flickr as well. Or else how will people know you where there?

You also have to be in the photos along side the oppressed but determined people of Lower Fuckoffistan. Or else how will people know that YOU were there?

Oh well, at least we don’t have to listen to her anymore. Thanks to science.

An open wiki for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulator technology; a method of applying magnetic fields to the external of the skull, creating electric currents within the neurons of the brain resulting in modifications to cognition.

The project hopes to encourage backyard brain experimentation, create a community of amateur brain hackers and hopefully even produce a low cost, simple-to-build mind altering device.

Dr. Ed Boyden displays the small prototype Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation machine built by his students at the Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Lab at MIT. The copper coils generate magnetic fields that creates a current in adjacent brain tissue.

Quote: “Our goal is to design a simple, safe, effective TMS device for modulation of emotion, sleep, attention, and other central nervous system properties. Many commercial entities sell TMS hardware and software, often for prices exceeding $50,000. We will devise a TMS device that will be constructable by a practitioner skilled in electrical engineering, for less than $400.”

This is, without hyperbole, the single most exciting and scary thing I’ve ever heard.

This project aims to create a world where a sparky with $400 can build a device that allows him to manipulate his, or anyone else’s sensations and emotions. Is this legal? Disseminating information for building simple, cheap, easily made devices for harmlessly, temporarily and non-invasively manipulating the working of the human brain? This is ok? Hell, I’m fine with it. Transhumanism FTW. I just assumed this was another one of those areas where I’d be on my own, shrugging and going “..what? Just me?”.

I mean, this is drugs. From a practical standpoint, isn’t the end result of experimenting with the working of the brain through applied magnetic fields almost indistinguishable from doing the same thing through pharmacology?

The results people fear from legalized access to drugs would be just as likely to stem from widespread use of TMS for central nervous system modification. In certain ways I’d imagine TMS to be more dangerous. List? Sure.

1) Drugs are consumables. Even if you manufacture the drugs yourself, there’s still a monetary and time cost involved. This limits availability. A TMS device could constantly induce a hilarious, delicious orgasm within a person forever, and requires nothing more than electricity.

2) Larry Niven fans will tell you; the most dangerous and fear inducing weapon in the world is one that can give you pleasure against your will. Imagine a government, corporation or employer with the ability to give you pure joy. This technology with either become mainstream, used by everyone. Or will be controlled and used only by those in power. Either situation is terrifying.

3) Once perfected, TMS would be a much purer science than pharmacology. Using direct electric stimulation to create desired neurological patters vs. relying on drugs as a medium. Experiences could be tailor made and 100% reliable. Imagine the popularity of a drug that could perfectly recreate the first moment you felt pure love.

4) Instantaneous gratification without continued effect. You can’t shoot up and expect to go work right after. You could, however, hit the ‘Cum From A Blowjob From God’ button a hundred times and then go commute. This, along with the next point, would lead to a cataclysmic increase in “drug” users.

5) Drugs are stigmatized, not for their successes but their failures. It’s the unintended side-effects of drugs that people fear. Health, mental function, addiction, association with crime. None of these things are the goals of drugs or drug users, they are consequences resulting from the imperfect nature of the medium. Without any of these consequences, using TMS to achieve a perfect state of never-ending happiness forever would be.. obvious. Why wouldn’t you?

Which leads to my final most terrifying point;

If all existence is the pursuit of happiness, in one form or another, and happiness is now bottled.. what’s the point of anything else?

An image of a person, index finger extended, with the macro’d text ‘fgsfds’.

One of my favorites. Originating, as all things do, on 4chan back in the days of yore when anonymous replied to a random thread with a left handed keyboard mash.

Seeing as how this is 4chan and random is the watchword,  another anon macro’d the text onto a picture of German talk show host Harald Schmidt, seen here.

Anon decided this was filled with the potential for lulz and decided to run it into the ground. The upward pointing index finger, it was silently decided, was all-important and so the meme became a person, an upwards pointing index finger and fgsfds.

To be used when one finds a threat or topic pointless, or just whenever the fuck you feel like it.

And now you know.

Saehan Information Systems MPMan F10

Inflicted upon the world at CeBIT in March 1998 the MPMan F10 was, for 6 months the only mp3 player in the whole world, making it the iPod of it’s day,

However it was quickly overshadowed by Diamond Multimedia’s Rio PMP300, by virtue of the fact that the Rio wasn’t styled like a set of bathroom scales.

Diamond Multimedia’s Rio PMP300

Saehan Information Systems was also one of the first members of Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), a group of like minded industry jackasses who’s goal was to produce the worlds first DRM. And how did that work out? SDMI went under in 2001.

The lesson  is: Industrial design is important, even for ground-breaking technology. And don’t piss off Cory Doctorow or he’ll destroy you. Through time.

[Via The Register]

	The spirit of bershon is pretty much how you feel when
	you’re 13 and your parents make you wear a Christmas sweatshirt and then pose for a family picture, and you could not possibly summon one more ounce of disgust, but you’re also way too cool to really even DEAL with it, so you just make this face like you smelled something bad and
	sort of roll your eyes and seethe in a put-out manner.
	Bershon defined by writer Sarah Brown

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I love new words. Not jargon, mind. Words that describe and explore and celebrate the minutia of human existence. The idea that 200,000 years of existing together as people  and 1,500 of talking about it in English still hasn’t fully defined the way in which we live.. This describes to me a world of endless complexity.

But it’s a small world and we’re all basically just people. For all that complexity, for all those infinite possibilities, we’re all very much alike. Put any teen, forced to associate with their mother, in front of a camera and your going to get a Christmas card of pure unadulterated burshon. I’ve done it and so have you.

There’s more that unites us than divides us. Like fucking Christmas jumpers.

Bershon Flickr photo pool

Paul:     “It’s not that big a problem. You can recover. You’ll need to kiss ass like a one legged man at an ass-kissing contest, but you can recover.”

John:     “It wasn’t me.”

George: “Damage control.”

Paul:     “Damage control. You need to get in front of this thing and control the damage.”

George: “You need to, exactly.. You need be the one talking about this. Don’t get attacked with it. If you’re the one talking about it then noone’s going to imagine it was you that fucked up.”

Paul:     “Exact.. No, wait..”

George: “I’m saying he shouldn’t even concede the point it was him that..”

John:     “It wasn’t..”

George: “I’m saying; be the one talking about it. Be all “What the fuck happened there? That was a fuckup”.”

Paul:     “No..”

George: “No it’s like.. two lines of defense, right? First: make a lot of noise about it. That’ll throw people off. Everyone’s expecting you to hide in a hole and wait to get fired. If you’re the one hunting round for a head to cut off it makes it look like it wasn’t even you.”

John:     “This is the problem. People don’t listen.”

Paul:     “Nope. I disagree. I’m thinking more like cop to it but act like it’s nothing. Smooth it over with management but for fuck sake don’t walk around hunched over in front of the plebs because your going to look weak.”

George: “This is what I’m saying. Lines of defense. First act like it wasn’t you, to the users and management, right? If that doesn’t work then fall back, cop to it to management and smooth it over.. But, like, the boss isn’t going to send a newsletter out to the plebeians saying “John fucked up.”

Paul:     “Ask him how.”

George: Laughs “Right? Take your whipping from the boss and walk out like nothing happened. Plebs don’t have to know you borked it. Plebs don’t have to know who borked it. Plebs don’t have to know shit.”

Paul: “Actually that’s not bad. Go with that.”

John: “It wasn’t me.”

Proving once again all you need is a soldering iron and a dream.; Shredz64 is a Guitar Hero port for the Commodore64, using a PSX64 board to interface the PlayStation GH controller.

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It allows for imported songs and can detect when the controller is lifted up, to activate ‘shred’ mode. Lord.

Link [via Engadget]