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Justin Corwin
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Nov 06
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Going home, surprisingly not that tired. Tonight is the night to catch up on nano

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This was the major leagues of Colonialism. To give you an idea of how important Ceylon/Sri Lanka was back then, try this on: in 1802, when French armies were kicking British and Prussian and Italian and Russian ass all over Europe (weird how nobody remembers that, huh?), the Brits were so terrified they tried to give Napoleon all their colonies except Sri Lanka and Trinidad. Those were the two they needed to keep.
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Nov 05
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A lot of young Dominican [kids]—and I’m sure a lot of other communities too where these kids walk around feeling like freaks—they walk around feeling like X-Men, because whatever they like, it’s such a weird thing for their communities. For me being a nerd is just like I like to read.
I was lucky because I came from an incredibly tough, you know, what they would call in my community, a legitimate family, I had a lot of tough people in my family, so I was allowed to be a nerd and no one would really bother me. That’s not really the case for most people—most people in my community. If you loved to read, people would think you were soft and trying to act white. I heard that stuff too growing up, but again for the most part, I was protected because I had a brother and a sister who did my fighting anyway, and would have happily done so to defend me.
They say that [being a] nerd is really cool, that now people are all into computers, but I don’t know, man, I just wonder if in the communities that I’m talking about, whether it’s gotten easier to be a smart kid, it’s gotten easier to be a kid who’s into art, gotten easier to be a kid who reads. I don’t know. I can’t speak to that.

Guernica / Nerdsmith

Junot Diaz. I’m all over this stuff.

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what? Cute Overload is blocked by the Great Firewall of China? REALLY NOW. Somebody queue up Disapproving Rabbit.

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first heard the song in an ad, to my shame. but hey, I’ll take it. ♫ http://blip.fm/~fx7px

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On the 10th January some snowballing took place in front of the College, in which the students took part. The warfare between the students and the townspeople was renewed on the 11th, and became more serious. Several shop windows were broken, the shops were closed, and the street traffic suspended.
The students, believing that the constables took the side of the mob against them, appeared on the 12th armed with sticks, to defend themselves against the constables’ batons. Then a regular riot took place, sticks and batons being freely used, and matters became so serious that the magistrates found it necessary to send to the Castle for a detachment of soldiers of the 79th Highlanders, which arrived and drew up across the College quadrangle, and peace was restored. [University Snowdrop, 1838]

This may be history’s only instance of military intervention in a snowball fight. Five students were tried; all were acquitted.

thank to Futility Closet, for this and many other delicious historical tidbits
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Nov 02
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Changing the World Panel — Singularity Summit 2009 — Peter Thiel, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Aubrey de Grey on Vimeo (via Vimeo)

watch this later

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