omg yes

“Five years after her husband died, two years after she moved to a cabin in Montana, and six months after the world ended, Marie opened her curtains to discover her front garden overrun with roving, stumbling advertisements. ... There were at least twenty of the ads, and for all it seemed they were doing their damnedest to step lightly, her red and yellow tulips were completely trampled. Marie had stubbornly continued to cultivate those flowers despite the certainty that she ought to be using the gardening space, and the captured rainwater, to grow food. Not that it mattered what she’d been growing there. It was all mud now.”

i liked it better when i had -$140 and no dilemma

“In search of a devil’s advocate, I engaged a regularly confrontational friend in conversation. ‘They’re kids, man. God, you can be so petty.’ I tried to get this friend to discuss the ramifications of marketing with me, and he wouldn’t have any of it. ‘I don’t see what’s wrong with Pikachu being on the side of a jet. Man, just let people do their jobs.’ I tried to explain how creepy it was that Pikachu and jets had nothing to do with each other, that, as it was their coexistence was like two plastic-coated mattresses slowly rubbing against each other in a vacuum. ‘Look, man, those marketing people have to do something. If they don’t, how are they going to feel good about themselves?’”

“As *we* know, it just isn’t like that. Most of us do work with passion to produce things of value and of beauty, that will please their users and last for years to come. The many little decisions that make up our days affect software products much more than the back scratching, eye clawing theatre of the conference room. And we know software better than anyone that doesn’t write it: what is possible now, what will be possible soon, and what really needs to happen for the next breakthrough. This passion for the *how* of computing, nerdy as it sounds, isn’t any more pathetic than tweeting a photo from an iPhone is pathetic. Computing [is] what humans do these days, and we make it possible.”

Frank Hecker offers the most favorable possible reading of the Emusic changes

“It is money that, in the language of economic sociologists, enables us to become ‘disembedded’ from our social context, with contradictory effects. Because a £10 note is the same regardless of who holds it, money can be viewed as a dreadful force for anonymity and dissolution of community. But because a £10 note is the same regardless of who holds it, money can also be viewed as the best basis for anonymity and cultural equality. It permits an absence of judgement.”

oh man that Explosions in the Sky poster is awesome