"I have no idea what I'm doing. I do it, I write it up, and then wisdom pours down from the Internet."

"Advance talk notes from a presentation at Personal Archiving 2012 by Maciej Cegłowski."

"One August morning in 2010 I woke up before dawn to go bushwhacking near the Belarussian border. My guide…was waiting outside to take me into one of the last patches of primeval wilderness in Europe, Białowieża Forest."

"The forest is sensitive to small changes in microclimate & soil chemistry. They determine which species of tree will grow best, & the trees in turn affect everyting else. Some of them engage in ruthless chemical warfare, dropping leaves or seeds that poison the soil for their rivals, or attracting animals to trample the competition. Others suction up water at a prodigious rate to dry out their neighbors. The forest is one giant monument to plant’s inhumanity to plant."

"Apart from a blade of bisongrass, each bottle of this vodka also includes an implicit raised middle finger to the Latin alphabet, in the form of the magnificent Polish word źdźbło (blade of grass). That last vowel represents the rest of the word laughing at you after you have tried to pronounce it."

"The funny thing is, no one's really hiding the secret of how to make awesome online communities. Give people something cool to do and a way to talk to each other, moderate a little bit, and your job is done. Games like Eve Online or WoW have developed entire economies on top of what's basically a message board…

My hope is that whatever replaces Facebook and Google+ will look equally inevitable, and that our kids will think we were complete rubes for ever having thrown a sheep or clicked a +1 button. It's just a matter of waiting things out, and leaving ourselves enough freedom to find some interesting, organic, and human ways to bring our social lives online."

[Related: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/11/evil-social-networks.html ]

"So I would like to stand up for the language nerds and give some reasons for studying Arabic that have nothing to do with politics. The language of the National Designated Other is bound to switch to Chinese in a couple of years, but until colleges start teaching Martian, Arabic is going to remain the strangest, most interesting language you can study in an undergrad classroom.<br />
<br />
And don't fall for the bait and switch with Chinese or Japanese! They might tempt you with an exotic writing system, but after a few months you find out that the underlying language is pretty vanilla, and meanwhile there is a stack of three thousand flash cards standing in between you and the ability to skim a newspaper.<br />
<br />
Arabic, on the other hand, twists healthy minds in twelve ways:…"

"There's something about intelligence agencies - maybe the familiar comfort of a three-letter acronym on the wall, maybe the late-night spanking parties - that draws fraternity boys like ants to a picnic, and right now the road to bro advancement leads through an Arabic classroom. Their complete lack of a sense of irony allows these students to combine sincere appreciation for The Fountainhead with a desire for a lifelong career in government service, and the hardest part of studying Arabic is having to listen to their asinine opinions after they have gained enough proficiency to try to express them."

"A number of people asked about the technical aspects of the great Delicious exodus of 2010, and I've finally had some time to write it up."

"In US legal system, if you plead guilty to crime, you show up to hear sentence pronounced on you…only possible reason Polanski has to demand sentencing in absentia is so he can decide whether sentence is something he'd like to come back to serve…what sane court would agree to this?…<br />
<br />
Despite this laudable, if belated, concern for rights of victim…not how legal system works. We pass laws against child rape because we don't want…people can go around raping children w/ impunity, regardless of whether those victims later forgive rapist & want matter put behind them.<br />
<br />
…extradition isn't even about rape case, but rule of law. Polanski pled & fled, & he wants to get away with it. The Cal DA argues that it is bad idea to let felons go free after pleading guilty if they don't feel they'll like the sentence. There's not a lot of gray area here…<br />
<br />
Polanski asks in letter to be 'treated fairly, like anybody else'. & in this I wholeheartedly agree…wish him safe journey back to CA"

"Things got decidedly sketchier a few weeks later, when legacy.com decided to email me a reminder that the guest book (which I had only posted to, not created) was about to meet a fate very similar to the person it was honoring if I didn't act promptly to renew, which, legacy.com suggested, would be the perfect way to show my support to a grieving family in a difficult time.

"This is a side project for Ceglowski, so charging a fee for new users certainly isn’t a dumb business move. And if enough people pay to use the service, maybe it will signal to him to move this front and center on his priority list. I would have done things a little differently, though - let people in for free and charge them after a week or so or shut down their account. That lets people try it out before they open their wallet."

"The site is now open for beta testing (which means bookmarks are backed up and features are less likely to break). Give it a try if you find delicious too slow for your needs." ... "Social bookmarking for introverts

"When a small company does what AIG did, it is called 'fraud' and people are sent to jail. However, since AIG had signed contracts with most of the biggest financial institutions in the world, it instead received a very large sum of money ($170 billion so far). This also makes sense. When a teenage kid breaks your storefront window, you chase him down and give him a pounding. But when the local mafia breaks your window, you sweep up the glass and make sure to increase the heft of your next monthly envelope."

"What does this site do?

"We are facing an economic crisis that is within our capacity to solve, and an ecological crisis that we lack the political means to prevent. It's only by failing at the former that we might have a chance at surviving the latter."

"found myself in bus heaven...[seat] didn't just recline flat - I'm pretty sure they reclined past flat....When I had finished the steak, the same steward floated by to find out what I would like to drink. ¿Whisky? Right away, sir!"

"defining characteristic...the non-absorbent napkin....Moscow to Valparaiso...a square of waxed paper that takes grease from your lips & spreads it to the rest of your face, you can be certain of encountering the whole constellation of other traits"

""I try to picture in my mind one of those big magazine advertisements from the forties, with the cursive lettering, where a smiling woman's face is telling me "Relax... You're on Argentime!" And immediately I feel better."

The bug and his crew had incredible stamina and the ability to stay hidden in the tiniest of crevices for months at a time without eating; I had a brain the size of a cauliflower and a high-speed internet connection. It was on.

"Paste text below and hit preview until you are happy. Submit auto-generates a web page and posts it to del.icio.us"

"The Bedbug Registry is a free, public database of bedbug infestations in the United States and Canada. Use it to check for bedbug reports before booking a hotel room or renting an apartment."

"Languid is a statistical language identifier. Give it at least 20 characters of UTF-8 encoded text and hope for the best."

"When the meat is cooked, it is roasted in thick pieces over open coals by obsessive meat chefs who have been cooking meat all their lives, for other people who have been eating meat all their lives, in a country that takes its meat extremely seriously. Y