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Religious Radical Nut Jobs Come to California Thinking it\'s Stephen King\'s The Stand

Filed under: CA, MyTake, Sacred Religions, activism, sites, travel by Goff - No Comments →

I can’t be the last to know about this seeming follow up to Black People Love Us
Fight the urge to qualify, parse, fight, defend…at least until the comments piss you off. (2500+ comments on the “Asian Girls” topic alone at this point.)

Then join the Facebook group

Top Posts from “Full List of Stuff White People Like”
#96 New Balance Shoes
White People in the News: Education Special
#11 Asian Girls
#1 Coffee
#9 Making you feel bad about not going outside
#4 Assists
#88 Having Gay Friends
#2 Religions that their parents don’t belong to
#81 Graduate School

Of course there is already a Stuff Queer People Like in nascent stages, an offshoot of a blog to watch.

Filed under: MyTake, Politics---National, Sacred Religions, blogging, freeculture, ghey, noted, short list, sites, webnotes, zeitgeek by Goff - No Comments →

It’s not Forbes magazine. It’s neo -hippy -do -good -won’t -ipo -customer-focused -san-francisco -kook -free-speech -of-a-business that’s changing offline small business as much as any online entity. Thanks to Craigslist, I just rented my little backhouse in a single day for the third time in five years, at my asking price with plenty of back-up interest. Cost: $0

After the guy who re-did the shower and another who hauled away the junk, Craigslist served up the recent-immigrant entrepreneur whose team cleaned and shampooed the rugs. He doesn’t know where that list came from or who this Craig is, but "I don’t waste my money on the other places anymore. I stopped every one." Not a single ad in newspapers, yellow pages, penny savers, or Yahoo Local like he used to. He gets more calls, almost all from the better-off with more computers. And that’s fine by him. As is the cost. He doesn’t think much of the prospects for newspapers going forward. Does a good job too.

And finally, a business-travel lifehack that’s made my life better…Since about a year ago, if I am in a city for more than a few days with work to do, first thing I buy a used CRT monitor off Craigslist. I send off 3-5 emails when i hit town and usually get a quick response. The longest took 5-6 hours. They’re about 1/10th the cost asked by retail rental services, and these monitors are conveniently all over town rather than in a single store. Here’s the rss feed for monitors under $100 in NY.

I acquired one after a late flight, when it was hard to get a cab but a seller responded in minutes. I was back at my hotel, set up, and revising notes for a morning meeting within 20 minutes. There’s always a choice of 17" and 19" models, ranging from "come and get them" to "$35". And I’ve been lucky to find always find them blocks or a quick cab from my where i’m staying. Most laptops support extended desktop mode, so even a 15" doubles your work area. Twice, I got a full size keyboard thrown in when i asked if they had one for sale. (You can also get them new for under $10 in discount stores.). And when i leave….
Then I just abandon them. I just check out. I leave them in the room. **
It feels wrong. I’ve offered a last gasp of life to those beasts that will never be allowed on my desk at home again. Hotels won’t hold them for others because they really are big and ugly. The maids don’t want them, nor could they get a 1000 pound monitor out without some management rule kicking in. I’ve offered them back to sellers saying I’d leave the monitor for pick up at the front desk. But even with assurances that i’m not looking for a refund, they admit they don’t ever want to see the things again.

I even tried to ignite an entrepreneurial flame in one seller, promising i’d rent one every time if he’d deliver and pickup. And i assured him there were clearly others like me. He wasn’t having it. Maybe someone else out there can make that work. Othewise, I’ll keep doing this until they’re gone.
**ASIDE (Tip): I have learned to leave a note taped to the screen so you don’t get off the plane to messages on every number you have from the concierge, proudly assuring you that your precious equipment is safe and will be shipped off and billed to your credit card. I did head that off.

cc attribution license pics. By Flickr members: southernpixel, endlisnis, and akubba

Filed under: LosAngeles, blogging, capitalism, local, sites, travel, webnotes, work by Goff - No Comments →

UPDATE: Musicovery is down. Too big of a response. On the site, “We plan to rapidly provide the service again on a more sustainable basis.” Send mail to get an alert when they are back to: postmaster@liveplasma.com

* * * * * *

LastFM and Pandora have gotten much deserved attention. And, i’ve been pleased to enjoy them…all the while discounting the fact that LastFM seems like too much comittment and Pandora is more complicated than it needs to be for what you get. Playing with Musicovery once, it’s clearly something different. Check it out. You think you know what it does, and then it does something else.

Del.icio.us users are saying…(the French is pretty self explanatory).

• The coolest radio ever

- tcboo

• music discovery tool

  - mikeyspice

• Great music discovery concept. It’s in French though.

  - bjtitus

• Music-choosing tool and player…choose songs by emotional association…same as you would buy grapes…

  - AaronZ

• A flash based web radio. Very slick, very cool

  - duncanponting

• FUCKING AMAZING AND SO MUCH BETTER THAN PANDORA

- iamthepinkylifter

Filed under: music, sites, techtotry, webnotes by Goff - No Comments →

• While I blogged at Yahoo’s expense in the previous post, we’re laughing with Yahoo’s new “reality show,” Hook Me Up (video link). I bow down in awe of the brilliant programming: Tech advertisers are among the biggest spenders per slot online PLUS, the reality show should bring in a more mass audience solving age-old problem of scarce tech inventory PLUS, Yahoo just happens to be launching a new tech property to take on CNET, PLUS it’s dorky enough to have a chance of getting a cult following, PLUS it’s actually informative, PLUS the first subject is hot but not threatening to other women, AND yes i’m still on the gay side, but a good huckster. (…and after a few beers)
• New Yahoo front page launched as a Beta. It’s like AIMToday (the most beautiful and info-loaded page of its type) met MySpace and mixed things up with some really dorky icons. Definitely easier to use…but truth is–if the stats are similar to an analysis i saw a few years ag–no one uses this page. The Yahoo front page has served more as a branding image representing the depth of the service and has only been used for navigation by fewer than 15-20% of users on any regular basis. Most use search, my.yahoo.com, or deeper links. Also, is everything destined to become Myspace? The just-launched Goingon Network? It’s kind of a lot like Myspace for adults. And i think that’s just where it all should be headed.
• Skype calls are free between computers, and for the rest of the year (8 months!) it’s free to call from your computer to phones in the US and Canada (usually a charge of about 2cents/minute). It’s not perfect. Lines drop sometimes, though at other times the sound is better than any regular phone. For the SlowTechies (see Slow Food movement) and who want nothing to do with being early adopters, it’s time for Skype.
• Gay Prof’s discussing misogyny among gay men in his an East Texas blog and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. What he’s talking about is rampant, inexcusable, and embarassing. He cites gay self-loathing as the reason and notes leadership by women in winning gay rights. (Not that anyone should have to lead a movement to get respect.) Not sure why he didn’t go all the way. He wouldn’t be the first to point out that homophobia is misogyny. Effeminate gestures are the core of gay mockery, but the mere mention of a “female” sex role elicits the most contempt. (I’m talking the real homophobes here, not the majority of folks who are just unfamiliar.)
  They don’t hate us because we like guys. They hate the parts of us that remind them of women. So, misogyny among gay men doesn’t come from self loathing. It is self loathing. And, a homophobic streak is a telling indicator of how he thinks of women, my sisters. I’ll be reading more Center of Gravitas, and not on my rss reader. I don’t want to miss the vintage Wonder Woman comic covers with each post.

Filed under: MyTake, gay, misogyny, sites, yahoo by Goff - No Comments →