• On Life and Love

    Attending a Charlottean Protest

    I visited uptown Charlotte tonight, amidst the current protests and unrest after Keith Scott’s death. My friend and I had a few tidbits of info on where people were meeting, but nothing concrete, so we wandered along several streets. In areas where people weren’t protesting, businesses were closed, and the streets were unusually silent for 20:30 on a Friday night. Troops stood in clumps of three on corners, waving or saying hello when you passed them. The occasional humvee or police SUV drove by. Things were more lively at the Omni Hotel, where folks had covered the sidewalk in chalk. There were lots of media there: it was clearly an…

  • On Life and Love

    Good reads

    It’s been a loooong time since I posted some good reading. 5 Things I Learned as the Internet’s Most Hated Person | Cracked.com "I watched every avenue of social media suddenly blow up with messages of abject hatred from thousands of strangers. For the first five days, I couldn't sleep. Every time I would start to doze off, I'd be shocked awake from half-asleep nightmares about everyone I love buying into the mob's bullshit and abandoning me. The ceaseless barrage of random people sending you disgusting shit is initially impossible to drown out — it was constant, loud, and it became my life." They Are Not Trolls. They Are Men.…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage

    A fun chunk of links for the last couple of weeks. I’m not all caught up in my reading, but I’m catching up, too, despite some new video interests I’ll be writing about soon. Damn you, internet videos. Big Diabetes Study Ended Because Exercise And Diet Didn’t Do Squat | Alas, a Blog – "Note that, perhaps out of necessity, the study defined “significant long-term weight loss” quite modestly, since on average this intensive lifestyle intervention produced a little less than a 5 percent reduction in body mass (i.e., a 160-pound “overweight” woman in the program weighed, on average, 152 pounds after four years of participation). In other words, what…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: With a Bit of Politics

    This week’s internet cruising: EJ Flavors – Cupid’s Hunt 2012 – Lost And Found: The Lost – An excellent Valentine's Day mix by EJ Flavors. Yeah, I know it's barely even February anymore, but Angela Bofill's "I Try" puts chills up my spine whenever I hear it. Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year’s End – NYTimes.com – I'm totally going to want to be an early adopter of these. If they seem promising, it'd be worth switching to contact lenses for. World population statistics – I always like these types of infographics. ^_^ Slavery By Another Name – I heard this on my local NPR station the other…

  • On Life and Love

    When Reading Drags

    I may have caved to an Online Reading Syndrome. I’m finding it increasingly hard to read some books, while I have no trouble reading various articles, blagoposts, stories, and graphical matter on the internet. Now, in my defense, I’m reading non-fiction, and that’s never been my strong suit, no matter how much the concept of the subject matter appeals. But still. I find myself feeling the flaws of books more acutely than I would in an online piece. For instance, Amartya Sen’s Identity and Violence. Excellent concept for a book: