Bryce Womeldurf:
In the past, I’d been to what I thought of as large car meets. Forty or fifty Subarus? Sure! That’s enormous! But I recently learned that it really isn’t. I’ve heard that the Miata community was large, but little did I know how big it really is until I recently attended this year’s Miatapalooza in Lakeland, Florida. This is a parking lot celebration of every generation of the diminutive roadster from Mazda.
Gotta have one.
Brian Resnick at The National Journal spoke with attorneys who defended high profile terrorist,like Timothy McVeigh, explaining why they do so, and why they feel it’s so important.
Tamar Birckhead, one of the defense attorneys for Richard Ried:
If someone like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev does not have the very best defense possible, then it puts our entire criminal-justice system in jeopardy. Because the most despised and hated among us—we as a society have a responsibility to protect them with the same commitment that we have to protect anyone. That’s the only way that our due process rights are going to endure. We can’t start picking and choosing among worthy and unworthy criminal defendants. We have to be very principled about it.
It had to happen.
Reuters:
Police records show West Fertilizer began complaining of repeated thefts from the facility in June 2001, when burglars stole 150 pounds of anhydrous ammonia from storage tanks three nights in a row. Nearly a year later, a plant manager told police that thieves were siphoning four-to-five gallons of the liquefied fertilizer every three days.
That’s bad.
West Fertilizer did not report to DHS, despite storing hundreds of times more ammonium nitrate than the amount that would require it do so. Depending on the grade of the chemical, companies are required to report if they store at least 400 pounds or 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate.
That’s bad.
Finally, my iOS podcast list is on my Mac.
For years, podcast listening was mostly relegated to my driving ritual. If there was an episode that I had to listen to, I would play from Instacast on iPad, using it’s speaker.
That ends today. I suspect my podcast listening habit will increase by about 100%.
The Mac beta is simple, light, fast, and syncing worked instantly on the very first try. I just hope they add swipe gestures soon. Get it.
Rumors of a major-ish redesign of iOS pick up steam, and per 9to5 Mac, we should expect it to be mostly visual:
While the look of the updated system may be surprising to some, iOS 7 is reportedly not more difficult to use than earlier versions of software platform. There is apparently no new learning curve in the same way there was no learning curve when the iPods went color. While iOS 7 does look different, its core apps and system fundamentals (like the Lock and Home screens) mostly operate in a similar fashion to how they do today.
If this is true, I’ll take it. iOS’s functionality lacks features that look good on a spreadsheet, but when such simplicity is met by a massive base of eager developers, amazing things can happen.
Merlin Mann said it best during his latest visit to Mac Power Users. The limitations brought by iOS have forced developers to think more efficiently, which leads to works of genius like Drafts. I’ll take it.
via Shawn Blanc
Marc Maron drops a great answer to a bad question regarding fellow comedian Louis C.K.
Q: Is it hard not to be jealous of his success?
A: I would have to assume that the first guy that sang “kumbaya” was doing it because he was furious. To generalize, I’d say that the competitiveness people feel can be applied to any business. No matter what your feelings are, if they’re inappropriate or come across as bitter, you learn to keep them to yourself. There’s diplomacy to it; it’s being a grown-up. But it’s my assumption that we’re all kind of competitive. The trick is to realize that everything in the world is not a threat to you.
Here come rumors of a cheaper iPad mini, but this problem appears to have been solved years ago.
It’s entirely plausible to me that Apple would simply follow the model set by the iPhone, where the latest model is the flagship, and the previous model or two hang around at lower price points.
Please, please, please, please…don’t call it Xbox 720.
A new Microsoft Xbox Live app, scheduled to launch on April 23, will allow users of the gaming and media service to order Pizza Hut products directly from the Xbox 360 console. The new app gives customers access to the restaurant’s entire menu, and features full Kinect integration in addition to voice recognition, or regular game controller use.
Right now I have an Ethernet cable plugged into my Xbox, which runs to absolutely nothing.
This announcement will not change that.
Susan Cain:
The one important exception to this dismal record is electronic brainstorming, where large groups outperform individuals; and the larger the group the better. The protection of the screen mitigates many problems of group work. This is why the Internet has yielded such wondrous collective creations. Marcel Proust called reading a “miracle of communication in the midst of solitude,” and that’s what the Internet is, too. It’s a place where we can be alone together — and this is precisely what gives it power.
Too often, I hear people huffing and puffing about how the use of computer or mobile devices are damaging to “real” communication and social engagement.
Russell Brand on the death of Margaret Thatcher:
It always struck me as peculiar, too, when the Spice Girls briefly championed Thatcher as an early example of girl power. I don’t see that. She is an anomaly; a product of the freak-onomy of her time. Barack Obama, interestingly, said in his statement that she had “broken the glass ceiling for other women”. Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. She is an icon of individualism, not of feminism.
Though not my favorite comedian, I really admire his wit.
From Petrolicious:
Ashley Rodriguez, an amateur train photographer, has owned over 15 E28s in her lifetime. As a former trained BMW tech, she has spent her time buying and fixing various 5-Series models. She has owned every E28 model available, and as a lover of rare things, she now has her dream car, the M535i.
The early designs are pretty nice, but things go awry in the 70’s before “Are you kidding me?” in the 80’s, then to “Kill it with fire!” in the 90’s.
But now it looks pretty good again.
Kirsten Schlewitz:
After World War II, the majority of the Slavic people of the Balkans, who had long been under the rule of various empires and exchanged like pawns in a giant game of chess, came together to form one independent state: Yugoslavia. The state was composed of six republics and two autonomous regions and, for the most part, ethnic and religious differences were smoothed out and hidden under the rug of nationalism. Yugoslavia survived, in one form or another, for nearly sixty years. But after the death of long-time ruler Josip Broz Tito, the union began to disintegrate.
This could have been one devastating back line.
