Taking the Train!
View from Amtrak's Coast Starlighter, Washington
We got on the train in Seattle’s King St. Station: a quick ID check, and that was it.
No nude pictures.
No irradiation.
No groping.
This is how travel should be.
What Did You Win by Playing Sports? Rally to Help Girls’ Sports Day
I almost never blog about sports here … but since today is National Women’s Law Center’s Rally to Help Girls’ Sports Day, I figured I’d make an exception.
The theme for the blogging day is “What did you win by playing sports?” First, though, a little context.
And it’s something that made a lot of difference to me personally. I was the stereotypical “weird smart kid” in school, wearing glasses starting in first grade, with a lot of multi-syllable words in my vocabulary and a preference for reading instead of TV. In the classroom, I didn’t fit in well at all with most of the other students. But on the baseball field, I totally did.
Second base and shortstop were my thing in Little League. We moved to a new town when I was in fifth grade, and my team (go Mansfield Mets!) was pretty bad my first year. But the next year, when I was twelve, we somehow got a lot better, and wound up in a tight race for the championship. One of our star player’s moms was the main coach, and my dad (who had no athletic ability whatsoever but was a great teacher) helped out too.  I made the all-star team and we went on to the district finals. Cool!
So one of the biggest win for me was winning people’s respect.  I practiced hard and played hard too, and didn’t mind getting dirty. Even though I was a lot smaller than most of the other guys my age, I had a decent eye and was a good bunter — so I added a lot of value to the team.  It really changed how the other kids reacted to me.
Calls to Boycott Amazon over Wikileaks: #amazonfail 2.0?
Heading into the busiest shopping time of the year, Amazon is suddenly facing threats of a boycott over censoring Wikileaks.  Seems like a good time to dust off the #amazonfail hashtag.
It started last week, after a hacker took one of Wikileaks’ sites down with a relatively weak attack. Wikileaks moved their online base to Amazon, which from a technology perspective makes a lot of sense: their services are reliable and very scalable. So it was all good. Briefly.
Yesterday, after a public request from Senator Lieberman (and rumors of pressure from DHS), Amazon shut Wikileaks’ sites down for “unspecified violations” of their terms of use. I think EFF’s Kevin Bankston speaks for a lot of us when he describes it as “disappointing”.
Unsurprisingly, there are calls for a boycott. From Austria, Kurier has a great screenshot in Wut weil Amazon Wikileaks fallen ließ. Seattle Weekly has a good roundup including links to the Facebook page and the #amazonfail hashtag.
Hey wait a second.
Where have I heard that before?
Wikileaks and Cablegate: the view from Taiwan
By NMA. Currently at 1500 views…
2010 11 30
political
social sciences
Tales from the Net
Comments Off on Wikileaks and Cablegate: the view from Taiwan
Time to celebrate!
November was such a busy month that I didn’t do any journalling. But now, with the draft of g0ddesses.net wrapped up, it seems like a good time start up again.
So …
Wow, what a month. I wrote a novel! Well, at least a draft of one … 75,000 words. g0ddesses.net needs a lot of work of course, but still: I’m pretty darned happy about it. D got her novel done too, and I can wait to read it. Yay us! Tonight’s the end of NaNoWriMo, and we’re having champagne to celebrate celebrating. Thanks to ladysheishou and the ![[community profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
nano_writers community. Dedication and links to some excerpts below.
And that’s not the only reason to celebrate. We made great progress on Tales from the Net this month, and the second half of the month was filled with activism. On the night before Thanksgiving, after National Opt Out Day, my Facebook profile said “i heart the grassroots” and wow it’s true. I think when we look back at what just happened we’ll realize that heroes across the country stood up and said “enough is enough”. The organizing happened on message forums, blogs (including me on I Will Opt Out and Pam’s House Blend), Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, tribe.net, and email; social networks really are the the future of civil liberties. I’m proud to have been a part of it and looking forward to working together as we fight for our rights.
So all in all, a great month. Pass the champagne!
Imagine this … (DRAFT!)
DRAFT !!!! Â Revised version published on I Will Opt Out as What Just Happened?
For more discussion of Opt Out Day and what’s next, please see
We Won’t Fly, Fly With Dignity, I Will Opt Out, and FlyerTalk
Resources for National Opt Out Day
Wednesday, November 24, is National Opt Out Day. We Won’t Fly, a grassroots organization that’s taken the lead in organizing, describes the goals
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An important clarification on point #2: the goal is not to interfere with other passengers getting to their destinations. As AP’s Ray Henry describes in TSA chief: Resisting scanners just means delays, the government is trying to convince travelers not to exercise their rights. But as We Won’t Fly’s George Donnelly discusses, Opt Out Day could make security lines move faster by reducing the number of people flying and giving travelers better information than the TSA is providing.
Whether or not you’re planning on opting out, it’s important to know your rights — and to know what your options are if something goes wrong. Fortunately, there are a lot of great resources out there. Here’s a quick guide:
Continue Reading »
Security alert: bots using Facebook chat
If somebody starts chatting with you and asks you to try a link, be wary …
No, I didn’t click on the link. I do my best to keep up with security patches, but why take the chance of visiting a site that’s likely to be filled with malware?
Dinner with D (part 0 of g0ddesses.net)
“Hellrazr and Nemesis is working with a startup for an interim interim CEO. Are you interested? If so, I’m going to be in Seattle Saturday night. Are you free for dinner?â€
Interim interim CEO didn’t seem like a particularly empowered job so my first reaction was that I probably wasn’t interested … but hey, never say never: I was trying to keep an open mind as I was getting my consulting business off the ground. On top of that it had been a few months since we had talked and when I heard her voice I realized that I was really looking forward to seeing her. So even though I did have dinner plans on Saturday night, after D’s out of the blue Friday afternoon phone call I decided to reprioritize.
She was already there when I got to Rover’s, checking email on her phone as she waited. She looked lovely as always, in a black velvet dress that highlighted her red-and-purple hair, and had already ordered champagne for both of us. She seemed happy to see me as well, and as I sat down she proposed a toast:
“To the future!â€
“Indeed — because that’s where we’ll be spending the rest of our lives.â€
Happy Halloween!
18 years … wow … and they said it wouldn’t last …
Actually, nobody said it wouldn’t last. But if they had, they’d have been wrong.
“Tissue turgor” and pink elephants: about Y Combinator (DRAFT)
DRAFT! Work in progress! Feedback welcome
One advantage startups have over established companies is that there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. For example, I would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small children, or was likely to have them soon. But you’re not allowed to ask prospective employees if they plan to have kids soon. Whereas when you’re starting a company, you can discriminate on any basis you want about who you start it with.
— Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, in How to Start a Startup
Christopher Steiner’s The Disruptor in the Valley in Forbes discusses how this essay, along with Paul’s Harvard talk, eventually inspired red-hot technology incubator YC. He doesn’t include this quote, alas, and also doesn’t mention the reports in the Mercury News and Wall Street Journal of YCs #diversityfail or Tereza Nemessanyi’s XX Combinator. I guess they didn’t fit in with the article’s subtitle: “Paul Graham’s Y Combinator has stormed Silicon Valley and pioneered a better way to build a company.”
YC has indeed had a huge impact.  Christopher reports that YC typically puts about $15-$20K into the companies in return for a 5% equity stake; with over 400 companies in their portfolio they’re a powerful force in the tech startup world. With the help of a lot of gushing coverage in the TechCrunch and their buddies in the tech press, 30 of their of the 36 startups in the most recent crop incubator have gotten funding since Demo Day in August, many of them over $1 million.  Collusion is soooo hot these days so it’s as good a time for a fluff piece as any.
g0ddesses.net: org chart and cap table
My novel g0ddesses.net is set in the Silicon Valley startup scene and there is a some corporate drama behind it, so I want to make sure that the organization and ownership stakes make sense. Here’s what I’m currently thinking … feedback welcome!