• drrodebaugh:

    The Fisher King is an amazing movie that I’ve seen dozens of times. It’s also one in which Robin Williams portrayed a completely unrealistic person with schizophrenia. I don’t mean to criticize him here: The problems are in the writing and the directing more so than the portrayal. 

    Then why do I bring it up? Because Parry, the character he played, tells us something about what people are struggling with in the aftermath of Robin Williams’s death. Parry’s illness is caused by a brutal, but simple narrative event; his symptoms are exacerbated by simple event and solved by a simple event. At the end he seems to be cured by an act of self-sacrifice symbolized in another character handing him a cup.

    We’ve been told by the media to think about mental disorders as plot devices, obvious narrative arcs, things with simple causes and simple solutions. They aren’t. Someone can seem to have everything, yet be miserable. Someone can have access to the best treatment, but still fall to suicide. 

    Sometimes the media tells us mental disorders are hopeless, but that’s not true either. We have treatments that work pretty well for many things. At the same time, for some people those treatments are not enough, or work much more slowly than one would hope.

    Some of the people around you are having trouble, and some of them make it through each day with a force of will you would never suspect. We are not fiction, and our problems are often complicated and rarely solved by plot twists. If you can support someone who is struggling one day at a time, please do. 

  • scz:

    “They’re using it for Twitter spam, the dark web equivalent of boiling the bones for stock.”

    — [The Russian ‘hack of the century’ doesn’t add up The Verge](http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/6/5973729/the-problem-with-the-new-york-times-biggest-hack-ever) (via mikewebkist)

    Dear Tech Writers,
    Please include the “dark web equivalent” expressed as a culinary metaphor in all future stories about hacking. It makes them much more enjoyable.

    What’s the dark web equivalent of deglazing a skillet? Clarifying butter? Heating olive oil until it shimmers, or testing a cake for doneness with a toothpick? The world awaits your metaphors.

    “…by running malware on the microcontroller of your phone’s SIM card, the dark web equivalent of an Arduino-based sous vide setup in a gypsy food truck in Chiba City…”

  • They’re using it for Twitter spam, the dark web equivalent of boiling the bones for stock.

    —[The Russian ‘hack of the century’ doesn’t add up The Verge](http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/6/5973729/the-problem-with-the-new-york-times-biggest-hack-ever)

  • madmanwithajohn:

    Reverse engineer an IBM PC with me

    I know the name’s quote is for Gordon but I think it sums up Joe/Cameron’s relationship (while it lasted).

    1. Don’t You Want Me - The Human League
    2. Ever Fallen In Love (With Somenone You Shouldn’t’ve) - The Buzzcocks
    3. Handsomome Devil - The Smiths
    4. Lie To Me - Depeche Mode
    5. Fascination Street - The Cure
    6. Tainted Love - Soft Cell
    7. When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still - The Police
    8. I’m Not In Love - Talking Heads
    9. Lips Like Sugar - Echo & The Bunnymen
    10. Without You - David Bowie
    11. This Is Love - Gary Numan
    12. The More I See You - OMD
    13. Passion Of Lovers - Bauhaus
    14. Atomic - Blondie

  • Other things being equal, and speaking very broadly, newer tech tends to work better than older, which is why Apple keeps getting us to buy the latest and greatest iPhone. So, at the mass-market consumer level, we have a strange state of affairs in which people are eager to vote with their dollars, pounds and Euros for the latest tech but they flock to movies depicting a relentlessly depressing view of the future, and resist any tech deployed on a large scale, in a centralized way, such as wind turbine farms.







  • Because in the UK they just went ahead and used Peter Murphy.