Category: News

After Robin Williams’ suicide, this Zelda commercial becomes super dark and sad…

First thing I thought of when I heard the news that Robin Williams was dead at 63, and seemingly at his own hands succumbing to his depression was the Zelda, Ocarina of Time video game commercials him and his daughter were in. Williams named his daughter Zelda, after the princess in the video game and I found the short spot touching while he was alive and crushing now that he’s dead. Williams, looking like how I imagined The Giver (from the book we had to read in 6th grade that is soon to be a lame-looking movie) calls his daughter “magical” in that Williams-y love and pain mix smile that I thought took on a new form in this commercial when I first watched it and is why I immediately recalled it when I heard he had killed himself.

Watch the extended version and maybe cry a little tonight…

Condolences to his family.

His wife, Susan Schneider, said: “This morning, I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings. I am utterly heartbroken. On behalf of Robin’s family, we are asking for privacy during our time of profound grief. As he is remembered, it is our hope the focus will not be on Robin’s death, but on the countless moments of joy and laughter he gave to millions.”

UPDATE: Robins last tweet was wishing Zelda a happy birthday. ug… 🙁

https://twitter.com/robinwilliams/status/494989879340584960

Hippie court basically say it’s illegal to not offer jobs to certain people

Years ago, by way of some emails bein all “hey, wtf man?” and “okay dawg. i’ll back off cuz I agree thats not cool” style emails between CEO’s – Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe agreed to not poach each others employees. The employees didn’t like that because they of course want to be pursued for better deals for themselves plus leverage to demand more pay from their existing employer if a competitor is offering them a more attractive deal. The companies on the other hand could do more harm than good for themselves if they poach competitors employees either successfully or un, causing unnecessary friction. The companies decided that it was in their best interest to leave each others existing employees alone.

In 2011 the tech employees brought forward a lawsuit alleging a conspiracy that closed their options and capped their potential salaries. That totally happened, but that’s not illegal. It’s not even improper. No one was denied a job because of some evil corporate conspiracy – people were simply not sought out for positions within a corporation because they were already working for another corporation.

Bloomberg classifies this as “screwing over employees” as their report includes the image below. Actually, it is merely an effort by the companies to stop screwing themselves.

In pure anti-progressive traditionalism-as-law, the court actually used the allegation of this not being a standard practice as part of its slam against the corporations, creating a regressive and illogical precedent in a search for an excuse to restrict their freedom to make its own employee-poaching policies. Even though this is not true, as a memo released with the emails of the “do not entice away” agreement note, the argument would be just as terrible without that little/crucial inaccuracy.

The companies had conceded that the pacts “contained nearly identical terms, precluding each pair from affirmatively soliciting any of each other’s employees,” Koh noted. The judge stressed how unusual this kind of systematic plotting is—in the Valley or anywhere else. CEOs of rival companies may nod and wink to each other over drinks at the club. Competitors may refrain from going after a select number of one another’s most highly valued employees. In the antitrust case, Koh said, the defendants’ own experts admitted “they are unaware of these types of long-term, all-employee agreements ever occurring between other firms.”

In other words: This would have been 100% fine by the American judicial system if it was shadier and more conspiratorial. But since it was a legit agreement actually stated on the record and because companies usually don’t go on the record in legit ways, these companies must be penalized…for not being sketchier about their perfectly reasonable and legal agreements they make with each other.

Unfortunately you can sue for anything in America and there is no loser-pays rule in place (not that I think this case would even be a likely loss for the plaintiffs) so it was in the best interest of the tech corps to settle this rather than have to open up their records defending this frivolous allegation of something that isn’t illegal but that some people don’t like because they could have benefited if only other parties didn’t act in their own best interest. The problem is that even though “lets agree to not poach each others employees” is not against any rules, it is enough in the direction of something that sounds like a budding conspiratorial monopoly and there *are* laws against that. As far as I know, however, there is nothing actually wrong in any way to agree to not actively pursue currently employed people in efforts to convince them to be employed by you instead. As far as criminal collusion regulations go, it sounds more than a little bananas to be forcing companies to try and poach each others employees at a higher priority than any other employee pool.

But it sounds not nice and it involved billion dollar corporations (and often times millionaire employees, lets not forget), sooooooo… the 4 companies settled, agreeing to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to these employees. for the non-crime of not offering them new jobs…

How much do you think a reasonable amount to get paid for not being offered a job? A few hundred million divided up, enough, you think? A judge has to approve the settlement, so there is literally a person in charge of deciding if the person suing is getting enough money to be “settled” or not.

CNBC reports that San Jose, California U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said the proposed settlement amount “falls below the range of reasonableness.”

The four companies agreed to settle with the plaintiffs in April for a total of $324.5 million. The plaintiffs had planned to ask for about $3 billion in damages at trial, which could have tripled to $9 billion under antitrust law.

The case was based largely on emails in which Apple’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs, former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt and some of their Silicon Valley rivals hatched plans to avoid poaching each other’s prized engineers.

In one email exchange after a Google recruiter solicited an Apple employee, Schmidt told Jobs that the recruiter would be fired, court documents show. Jobs then forwarded Schmidt’s note to a top Apple human resources executive with a smiley face.

Plaintiff attorneys argued Koh should approve the deal because the workers faced serious risks on appeal had the case gone forward.

I get the emotional appeal of wanting businesses to do things that benefit you and getting mad when they only benefit you a lot instead of more than a lot, but I don’t see the anti-trust criminality in emailing someone in your field of businesses and deciding to not fkk with each others employees.

Colluding to keep safety hazards in your products a secret from the public, blacklisting certain people from being hired when they apply to work for you, or conspiring to artificially jack up prices across an industry – these are criminal and immoral practices of antitrust corporate scummery. These 4 companies did nothing near any of that. This is stupid and unreasonable.

6 Conspiracy Theories Potentially Behind the Ballot Initiative to Make California 6 Separate States

Learn the REAL Secret Behind the initiative to Make California 6 Separate States…

Here they are, in order of my levels of suspicion.

 

1- IT’S ACTUALLY VIRAL MARKETING FOR MAGIC MOUNTAIN

This is my top theory because it’s the first thing I thought of when I saw the color choices and size and placement emphasize of the bold “Six” typeface.
Here is the official logo of 6 California’s…

And now the Six Flags official logo…

Even the colors of the States and Flags are the same except for the red state corresponding to a pink flag because the symbolic exclamation mark background is red so it was only a choice of necessity. Dude…

I can’t be the only one who see’s the resemblance… This has to be a subliminal-message marketing campaign. Case closed. But if you want to entertain 5 lesser theories, then go ahead.

 

2- ATTEMPT TO CREATE MORE LIBERAL-DEMOCRAT or CONSERVATIVE-REPUBLICAN STATES

The tiny little entity known as Washington DC (the nations capital on the east coast – totally different from the state named Washington on the upper West Coast, in case you’re a version of me until solidly-through-high-school who constantly had trouble remembering or understanding the distinction between the two)  has gone through several attempts to become it’s own state for some reason. Except many point out the “some reason” is not likely to be anything related to governance or representation but rather as a ploy by Liberal Democrats to give statehood to a Liberal Democrat controlled city and thus add 2 new Liberal Democrat senators to congress, making 2 new Liberal Democrat votes that could very well be tie breakers.

Congressmen are apportioned to districts based on population but states only get 2 senators regardless of whether the population is 2 thousand or 20 million. That’s our system. We currently have 435 congressional districts represented by one person each but only 100 senators representing the states in Washington. So Montana only has 1 congressman representing it in Washington while Texas has 36 but both states have 2 senators. This matters. All the senate does is vote on stuff, essentially. 2 extra votes in your big-government (Leftist) or small-government (right-wing) favor is a big deal.

Remember that Obamacare was only passed by 1 vote in the face of bipartisan opposition with a cluster of Democrats joining 100% of the Republicans in Congress to try and stop that trainwreck without at least some reform of some of its most train-wreckiest aspects. 2 more solidly Lefty votes would really come in handy in a situation like that in the future. More than 2 would be even better. Cuz math.

So how would the 6 states stack up? Oddly sortov evenly, with an advantage to the Democrats but not an overwhelming one.

There would be 3 solidly Democrat states and 3 Lean-Republican states.

Jefferson – Libertarian Republican.

North California – Leans Democrat.

Silicon Valley – Liberal Democrat (solid).

Central California -Leans Republican.

West California – Solid Liberal Democrat

South California – Swing State that Leans Republican.


3- BIG BUSINESS

I don’t really have a specific theory for this one. Just a vague hippie conspiracy about “business”. I can think of a bunch of possible theories relating to economic interests in the state but none with any actual evidence except for Jefferson (current Northern-CA) who is open about disliking being forced under the regulations of the rest of the state without getting access to its recourses.

It would make sense that Silicon Valley would be tired of carrying the poorer farm areas of the state like the would-be Central California, but I’m short on actual details of why this would be a big enough benefit.

Is prospering San Diego wishing to cleave from failing Los Angeles? Central California would be one of the poorest states because its mostly mountains, desert and farm-towns so at first glance it would seem that they would love being attached to the rest of the current states wealthy area’s but in reality that kind of demographic skews much more conservative because of the adage that only rich people can afford to be socialist. It’s more valuable to the smaller business types to be free of confiscatory regulations and fees than to have any perceived benefits connection to the wealthy areas might appear to offer.

Still though, money guides most political changes and this proposal is being lead by a wealthy guy, but where exactly the biz angle is (if it is a major factor) is foggy.

 

4- IT’S OVER-ASKING IN ORDER FOR A COMPROMISE

I get the whole population divide thing (because there’s just so many dang people errywhere in this place) but 6 divisions with all new statehoodnesses is a lot of change at once. The surface area we call California today probably should have been 6 states in the first place, sure, but changing something that big is hard and changing something that iconic is extra-super-kindov-impossible-hard.

Half the proposal would be just as hard in the convincing stage but would be more feasible in the actual division stage. 3 California’s would be better and easier to manage and not make all that huge of a disruption, governmentally wise. But maybe THAT’s the real conspiracy and maybe that’s the end-game from this initiative? Maybe 6 California’s is a shell organization designed to give itself bargaining power and support only to “compromise” with it’s real goal all along which is to cut the state into three’s?… Via the official 6 California’s website:

I really like the idea, but 6 may be too big too soon. The Three Californias reaches the same goals but in a more palatable form that would get the population on board more thoroughly. North California, Central California, and South California. By doing this, and including resources that include the coasts and mountain ranges in all three states, the chances of approval are greatly increased. South and Central California would benefit from investing in Water Collection, Solar Power, and Desalinization Plants. All three states would be strong enough in ther own resources, then, that the chances of disapproval would drop. The 6 States plan divides natural resources “Too Much” to get the vote. By giving all “3 States” resources from the ocean to the mountains- your chances of approval increase exponentially.

 

5- ITS ACTUAL STATED GOALS (ABOUT GOVERNANCE AND REPRESENTATION)

Could it be that the conspiracy is really that there is no conspiracy?

Nah…

 

6- TO MAKE A POINT AND START A CONVO

Whatever his angle is, I doubt it’s the one that is stated because I doubt Tim Draper, the wealthy spearheader of the division, expects this to actually happen. I suspect more so that this is a several million dollar venture to spark a conversation on taxes, regulation, political representation and government accountability and although i’d spend the millions differently, it’s a worthy convo to instigate.


Why Chopping Up California into 6 Different States is a Good Idea (that will never happen)

California used to be Australia: A couple actual cities, some small towns and then vast unpopulated, seemingly uninhabitable outback wilderness. Now California has stuff in it. and it’s not being governed very well at all.

Representing such a large surface area with diverse political views is sure to under-service all of them and – surprise – it totally does, but lately there is growing push to solve that problem by letting the different regions of the state govern themselves independently of the others. Meaning: make new states out of the existing one.

I first heard about this a few months ago when ReasonTV released this segment on what would-be the Libertarian state of Jefferson (the northernest part of Current-California).

Activists in Northern California, near the border with Oregon, are pushing to secede from the Golden State. They say they’re fed up with taxes, regulation, and lack of representation. If they get their way, the country’s 51st entrant would be called the State of Jefferson.

“The three major urban areas dictate politics for the entire state,” says Mark Baird of the Jefferson Declaration Committee. “Our children are leaving, our economy is crashing, we are taxed, every breath we take is regulated, and we feel that a free state will cure that.”

To date, five county governments have signed on the plan and more may be joining up.

“We can’t afford to run a California style bureaucracy, that is true,” says Baird. “But as a small rural state, we don’t want to. ”

The idea of secession in California isn’t new. During the Great Depression, folks started pushing a similar plan in the same part of the state but threw in the towel after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Now Californians may get a chance to vote on chopping the state up into 6 smaller states.

The most accurate spoof of this I’ve seen has been this cartoon making it’s own split-up proposal:

 

This one is a little more to the point and keeps the same divisions of the official 6 California’s movement:

And finally, this is what the 6 California proposal actually suggests:

Background on the initiative from Reuters:

Timothy Draper, a founder of a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that has invested in Twitter, Skype and Tesla, among other companies, has been agitating for months for a ballot initiative to chop the most populous U.S. state into smaller entities. “It’s important because it will help us create a more responsive, more innovative and more local government, and that ultimately will end up being better for all of Californians,” said Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the campaign. “The idea … is to create six states with responsive local governments – states that are more representative and accountable to their constituents.” Salazar said Monday that the campaign had gathered more than the roughly 808,000 signatures needed to place the measure on the November, 2016 ballot. Draper and other supporters plan to file the signatures with California Secretary of State Debra Bowen on Tuesday.

Here’s the official pitch from the movement via one of those live-drawing videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyPNjPzUTuo

Sounds kindov impossible but isn’t totes impossible when in the hands of voters.

No U.S. state has been divided since the Civil War. But this idea sounds less antiquated after considering that just one of California’s 58 counties (San Bernardino) is larger than nine U.S. states and four of them combined. Supporters have gotten the go-ahead from the secretary of state to begin collecting signatures, so this idea could spark a thought experiment.

The whole “State of Jefferson” thing is mentioned and noted as the pipe dream it is but then asks the legitimate question of how things change if and when voters get a say on the matter:

Even small U.S. states have differences, but California’s are arguably so extreme that it’s hard to imagine any way to reconcile them. There are efforts in the rural far north to join with some Oregon counties and become the state of Jefferson. They already have a flag. Folks there say California’s land-use restrictions are leaving them in penury.

That movement lacks political clout, but what happens if state voters say yes to a divorce? It’s hard to imagine they would do so given that urban residents can easily out-vote disgruntled folks in the hinterlands. It seems likely that the legislature would fight this and unlikely that Congress would accept a break up. But campaigns – provided they are serious, and that’s far from clear in this case – can lead to reforms that address simmering frustrations.

Whatever your opinion on the matter, I will now proceed to tell you the right one: It’s a good and fair idea that will not happen for emotional reasons. Mostly because of branding.

The California brand is a thing. None gives a crap if Fresno and Sacramento don’t feel a part of the beach culture/Golden Gate western coast of America. California is California and it will stay the way it is, regardless of how massively unfair to its far stretching diverse groups of residents it is.

Because that’s how ‘Merica works, y’all.

38 Story Apartment Complex has a top floor “sky bridge” pool that I want to do laps in

This apartment complex set to be built in Singapore has (or will have) 38 stories, an offbeat shape and a cool pool on the ground floor.

It will also have a cooler pool on the 38th floor.

Dude!

It’s called Sky Habitat and boasts green areas on every level and on the 3 bridges connecting the 2 towers.

Via the official website:

Sky Habitat, an iconic and architecturally distinctive development right at the heart of Bishan. Relax at the Sky Pool on the 38th floor, where a rooftop oasis awaits as you enjoy panoramic views spanning city to park.

Take a dip in the infinity pool, enjoy your very own living space that opens to the sky, set up a picnic on the terrace for the family or cultivate a garden corner. Sky Habitat is your sanctuary in the sky, providing the perfect escape without having to the leave the creature comforts of home.

Units are a steal at $1-2 million per unit for the Bishan located complex.

“The pricing is attractive and the design is iconic,” said Madam Lilian Teo, 40, who works in the energy industry. She bought a 1,249 sq ft three-bedder for around $1.63 million or $1,304 psf.

Another buyer, Mr Lau Yuk Mun, 54, said he picked up a one-bedroom plus study unit as an investment after seeing the redesigned showflat for the 710 sq ft apartment.

“The showflat optimised the usage of space and showed that it could be well utilised… The price is also more attractive now,” he said.

He paid $1,411 psf or slightly more than $1 million for the unit, and said he hopes to reap a rental yield of 4 per cent to 6 per cent.

Mr Mohamed Ismail, chief executive of real estate agency PropNex, said the solid sales show that buyers and investors are “not ready to buy if the price is not right”.

CapitaLand has pared prices at other projects before.

This is how the Ninja Turtles should have looked like in the Bay movie that’s going to suck

I dont even like currently; and was never a fan of the Ninja Turtles despite being prime age in the early 90s for the craze, but I still have principals over media works that show reverence to their subject matter and this is just not okay. The Turtles in this new Michael Bay movie look like dogsh#t. There is no good reason to not have made them resemble their source material better/at all.

Some artist whom I was unable to track down (email me & i’ll update to add credit) fixed these screenshots from the trailer to show how simple and legitimate the changes that should have been made would have been. Pity. Lost opportunity.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZZ0PnDZdZk

VIDEO: Talk Show Baby Momma Madness full of twists…

Paternity Court is a talk-show judge-show hybrid that I just heard of when a friend shared this clip and my “just wow” reaction to it meant you needed to see and know about it as well.

This is a bizarre format to package a Maury Povich style talk show as a court show but it works here and is fascinating. It is the traditional Maury format of telling personal stories involving questions that require taking blood tests and adds a more intense and obviously more literal prosecutorial angle to it.

This segment is so bananas that your potassium levels will increase after watching it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysrFruJRwBc

Gut punch to the Feels hearing the daughter repeatedly defend and proclaim the fact that the man in the court room was the one there for her all those years and thus is her father no matter what. Bravo for her.

That Arrested-Development-mom lookin skank of a mother can go to hell.

Immigration is tough

A specific gentlemen used to service an area of my house months ago until the route that included my area was shifted by his company to someone else but he came back today and, having been friendly previously, we had an extended conversation that included his life background.

He is originally from Honduras and had a bunch of tales of run-ins with immigration ranging from outrunning an overweight Immigration Officer who caught him and was yelling at him to stop, to just playing it cool on a Greyhound bus that was boarded by Immigration to crossing the border by covering himself with plants and dirt and slowly crawling under the noses of the tower watchers and drones (who can be avoided all together by border-crossing on rainy, windy or even cloudy days). But one of the important staples of his tales was how harsh Immigration is everywhere and how the Central American countries treat the issue and its offenders less compassionately than America’s.

The U.S. gets all the heat because hippies who live here in the closest-to-perfect Governmental structure and system that exists thus feel twice as outraged on the gaps between that level and perfection while ignoring the far larger gaps elsewhere but it’s important to note.

I mentioned to him my long held annoyance with our immigration system that makes it so damn hard to just enter to work or enter as a candidate for citizenship and was surprised to hear that met with caution from my friend with years more experience dealing with the various systems. He said that there are a lot of bad people trying to get in and that the security makes a lot of sense. This – from a guy who had to cover himself in dirt and plants to crawl into this country at more than one point. Something to consider.

Actual churches that preach getting drunk off Jesus

Forget “Jesus Juice”. Did you know you can get drunk off of pure, uncut, all-natural/organic Christ?

People who get really entranced by music, whether on a substance influencing their chemistry or not, really freak me out. This goes double for religiously entranced people listening to words talking about their religion. These things give me the creeps because they are humans checking out from the dimension we share and existing somewhere in their mind openly for a few moments. It’s like they’re sleepwalking because they’re physically inhabiting our public space but their mind is completely somewhere else.

Music doesn’t send radiation into the human receiver and manipulate anyones chemistry to put them in this alternate reality state and neither does religion. What both offer is a platform for the human mind, self aware and multi-layered as it is, to launch into a train of thought and emotion combined with a focus that tunes out other senses making you more isolated from the stimuli of your environment.

Our minds are able to tap into the physical control panels in our brains and dial the faucets that produce the chemicals responsible for joy, elation, sadness/depression, arousal, happiness, serenity and so on. When someone is being impacted by the profundity of a musical beat, lyric or speech from an impassioned pastor, they are giving themselves a low-level but mind altering drug in some form.Could be in dopamine or Gamma-Aminobutryic Acid (GABA) or testosterone or something else depending on the setting, but they are getting a brain bath of some chemical for sure and its a different mixture for each individual.

There are some fringe churches in the frozen American Northern mid-west who offer “God highs”. The God-drug-addicts claim to experience physical highs from God in this process. Mostly they go through the motions of drinking something or inhaling from something and experience positive effects. Most people probably think they’re just fooling themselves, but don’t realize that fooling oneself has physical biochemical effects, as I described above. So that leaves the freakiest conclusion of this matter, which is that this is very easily a real thing.

They don’t explain the process of what is happening to them in the way I did, and I don’t know if they make any actual claims that anything other than what I described is happening (I don’t know if they are claiming that God literally enters your body through magic if you pretend to inhale him) but they mime the use of an imaginary pill, blunt or pipe and get themselves high through their imaginations.

It’s bananas, for sure. They even do group sessions where they all do imaginary drugs and get drunk on “Godka”. This is not a joke.

For more info, check out the micro documentary below…

Take-away quote: “But really how weird is it compared to any other religious experience?”