I was using Google Reader today (Google’s RSS application) and went to share an item with a note to my friends, when low and behold, Google was tacking an ad to my note. I suppose this shouldn’t surprise me, nothing in life is free and Google needs to pay all of their great engineers that put out great products like Reader. But for me, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

I don’t like how much Google knows about me. I don’t like that they probably know what I’m going to do next better than I do. And now I ready to pay for software to read my RSS feeds and to hopefully maintain some semblance of privacy. At least one private company won’t know what I do with every single waking hour of my day.

Next up replace:

- reader with Vienna or Net News Wire

- gmail with ? (any recommendations on a good provider with exchange support?) 

- google calendar with ical

- google search with bing

- google docs with zoho

And I’m happy to say I’ll be able to replace Facebook with an open source alternative soon. Have you read about Diaspora yet? Looks like it’ll be available September 15th hopefully.

I personally don’t endorse the use of marijuana, probably because of my strict upbringing and the negative impacts I’ve seen it had on some people’s lives. But, I also know plenty of people that use it occasionally with no worse effects than alcohol.

I’ve also sat through a day of District Court in Durham, NC  and watched as at least 3 out of 4 cases were charges of less than an ounce of marijuana. These cases were entirely made up of low-income black males. These men were being put through the system and given a record for the same charges I’ve seen every white person I know get expunged from their records. This is institutional racism. 

I’m sure no one intends for this disparity to happen, but when the actual enforcement of a law has such a disparity between black and white there is a structural bias. This needs to change.

It’s interesting to see that the people at the Turbo Tax blog created the above graphic highlighting the tax benefits of legalizing and taxing marijuana. I’m mostly curious though at what effect this would have on preventing young black males from entering the jail system and creating cycles of poverty. I realize this blog post comes across as patriarchal, but shouldn’t everyone be able to have such a charge expunged from their record, and not just those that can afford a lawyer?

via Turbo Tax

szymon:

I love the idea. Stoplight indicator by Damjan Stanković

This will be perfect for wannabe dragsters. Can’t wait for the sound of squealing wheels.

Amazing visualization of data by Information is Beautiful. This makes me want to use the parental controls to permanently block Hulu and Netflix streaming from my computer. Since moving to the beach for the summer and being mostly cut off from the internet (except for my iPhone and the occasional coffee shop) I’ve been much more productive and have been feeling much more creative.

I read another interesting statistic recently as well that TV viewing is apparently up again this year. I know that I personally gave up my TV and computer four or five years ago, but with Hulu and Netflix I’ve been watching a lot more TV than I used to. 

And while I’m on the subject, Self Control is a great free app to select certain websites to block for a specified period of time. Be warned though, once you start the timer you cannot shut it off till it runs out. No restarting or switching users or putting in administrator passwords will get you your poison. So test it for a short time before setting it for 24 hours or something.

Great video outlining a brief history of modern social movements, and what will be necessary to convince people of the importance of climate change. In brief, they argue that we will need to create a “swarm” or open source movement creating an open and transparent database of climate change information. 

Sounds like a start, but it is really troubling how much of America revels in its ignorance, and “common sense” over “book lurnin’.” Seems like our problems are much larger than just convincing people about climate change. We need to convince people about science. 

I have just started, or more specifically restarted, The City in History by Lewis Mumford. Written in 1961 the book is nearly 600 pages and chronicles the city from its Paleolithic origins to modern suburban culture. I’ve created a reading plan which will hopefully be slow enough to help me absorb and think about the material of the book, while hopefully not drawing it out too long so I never finish it. My goal is to have it finished in two weeks. Right now Mumford is talking about Hammurabi and the early formation of walled cities.

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After a month of owning my iPhone I am beginning to hate any monitor that isn’t ultra high resolution. Where’s my ≥20 inch external monitor or macbook pro display? This should be the new standard, I don’t want to see pixels anymore. 

iPhone 4: 326 ppi

Macbook (1280x800): 113 ppi

Dell ST2410 24” (1920x1080) Monitor: 92 ppi

Figure out your ppi here.

This app makes me want an iPad (like I needed something else to make me want one).

you can get it in iTunes here for free.

And you can read about it in depth at the Next Web.