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Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

If there was ever a robot in need of a fourth law of robotics, this one is it.

Not everyone has eyes. Or hands.

Or a pulse.

And a sports event that a lot of people cared about is hardly 'shit'.

It's a pro sports event. A set of contracted employees playing a game against another set of contracted employees while a bunch of rubes watch and yell things like 'the sports team from my area is superior to the sports team from your area'.

People who "care" about professional sports - particularly one as parochial as baseball - must have a pretty easy life. You don't even know the players. They are not family; they are not friends. They are just some guys wearing a uniform.

All the employers/owners care about is getting your money by trying to tie your brain up in concepts of "team loyalty". The Onion's hilarious until you realise that otherwise reasonable, intelligent people "care" about pro sport.

It's ephemeral entertainment, not brain surgery.

And a sports event that a lot of people cared about is hardly 'shit'.

It's a pro sports event. A set of contracted employees playing a game against another set of contracted employees while a bunch of rubes watch and yell things like 'the sports team from my area is superior to the sports team from your area'.

People who "care" about professional sports - particularly one as parochial as baseball - must have a pretty easy life. You don't even know the players. They are not family; they are not friends. They are just some guys wearing a uniform.

All the employers/owners care about is getting your money by trying to tie your brain up in concepts of "team loyalty". The Onion's hilarious until you realise that otherwise reasonable, intelligent people "care" about pro sport.

It's ephemeral entertainment, not brain surgery.

This informative news article might shed some light on that one.

This post needs some perspective I think. Let me qualify my post by saying:

1) I am a former Blockbuster employee (5 years ago while I was in college).

2) I am a current Netflix subscriber and occasional Redbox user. I can not recall the last time I walked into a Blockbuster. I think their business model is archaic

http://www.theonion.com/video/historic-blockbuster-store-offers-glimpse-of-how-m,14233/

Good reminder from digg:

http://www.theonion.com/video/historic-blockbuster-store-offers-glimpse-of-how-m,14233/

Obligatory Onion reference

Why didn't you just post the link?

Although they were referring to the entire Internet, not just Facebook - it seems there's less and less of a difference nowadays.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/48hour-internet-outage-plunges-nation-into-product,779/

Reminds me of This old chestnut from the Onion.

Stop. I just had a stroke of genius. Are you ready? Open your mouth, baby birds, cause Mama's about to drop you one sweet, fat nightcrawler. Here she comes: Put another core on that fucker, too. That's right. Three cores, one chip, and make the third one play MP3's or someshit. You heard me--the third core plays MP3's. It's a whole new way to think about computing. Don't question it. Don't say a word. Just key the music, and call the chorus girls, because we're on the edge--the razor's edge--and I feel like dancing.

This is similar to another recent discovery: http://www.theonion.com/video/paleontologists-discover-skeleton-of-natures-first,14320/

Oh, come on.

Americans can be irritating, but wanting them to go down in a blaze of self inflicted gunshot wounds is mean.

Which reminds me of this...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/mexico-killed-in-drug-deal,18109/

Oh, I think I've read about you: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/

"About a week after I met him, we were talking, and I made some kind of Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert reference," Gerela said. "He asked me what I was talking about, and when I told him it was from a TV show, he just went off, saying how the last show he watched was some episode of Cheers,..."

I don't have cable or satellite either, but I know perfectly well who these two men are. It has nothing to do with having cable, I suspect is has everything to do with "look at me, I'm above popular culture".

Jonathan? Jonathan Green? Wow! I didn't expect to see you on here! I thought you were still hanging out at the Suds 'N' Duds Laundromat in your free time.

Seriously, every time there's a story on /. about facebook or twitter someone just can't resist but point out that they don't use it or think it's worthless... Please can this retarded meme die now?

It reminds me of this article from The Onion...

Notice also that he jumped in randomly to show off his elaborate disinterest apropos to nothing. He probably does the same thing every time he hears anyone mention Avatar or Cameron, or whatever his current trendy object of fashionable disdain happens to be. Reminds me of this guy.

No. Really enjoys movies != "no life."

Do yourself a favor and don't be this guy.

Electronic voting is probably the biggest threat to democracy looming in the USA right now.

Didn't Brazil manage to pull off an election with 128 million votes, and zero miscounts?

http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/08/10/07/0029224.shtml

I always thought that voting machines, in general, were designed to provide the illusion of democracy:
http://www.theonion.com/video/diebold-accidentally-leaks-results-of-2008-electio,14214/

mach 5 reference

They really should go to FIVE, or [#%$!$ it] all the way to SIX, because Sharp's pixels already go to four (which they call "Quad Pixel" technology, which at least makes sense).

Fuck everything, we're doing five pixels.

When abusive and threatening language is homegrown, it qualifies as a form of protected speech.

I believe you are referring to this : http://www.theonion.com/video/sony-releases-new-stupid-piece-of-shit-that-doesnt,14309/

This thread is pretty much old and dead but I thought I would just post this Onion article. It about sums it up.

Time Magazine reports ...

It was BookTwo that originated this story because that's written by the guy who put the book together (which was picked up by a blog which was picked up by The Awl which was picked up by Time's NewsFeed). Of course, we are talking about Time here. I found the images of what's actually inside very interesting but I would bet that the guy who used some simple code to create the Creative Commons work is probably the only person to tender cash for a physical copy.

Here's another complete rewrite reducing the whole article to:

-
Iraq War, eh???
-
All your oil are belong to U.S.
-
Stup up stoopid Americans

But you know what's really interesting? When Bridle compiled this used their lexer to transform the XML, he kept the IP address in the upper right of each edit. So the above edit's IP address is forever in print: 68.162.123.240 Of course if you had used a username to make an edit, that was put in place of the IP address.

This whole thing reminds me of the time lapse video done of the Virginia Tech shootings. Creative stuff you can do with Wikipedia.

An interesting post, thank-you!

I do actually agree with a fair amount of what you said, I do tended to lump religions, nationalism, the big 20th century ideologies, and I suppose football teams (well maybe not) into one basket. Not as a direct comparison, but there is a similarity in that they are all big overarching ideologies, and they do have the potential to inspire their followers to do terrible things in the pursuit of some distant but glorious goal. They provide ends, I suppose, and people being people this can lead to some pretty nasty means being employed.

Considered like that religions are much more benign than secular ideologies. Simply due to their longevity, and the number of very smart people who have been working on their theology over centuries, most of the rough edges get smoothed off. It is considerably more difficult to justify killing someone to please the God of Love than it is to ensure the triumph of True Socialism In Our Lifetime. Both do have the potential for it though. (One of my favourite Onion stories is on this issue: here)

I'm afraid I'm going to paraphrase Richard Dawkins when it comes to your arguments about the placebo benefits of religion. Just because believing something provides benefits, it doesn't mean it is actually true!

This is the thing about atheism. It isn't a religion no matter what some religious people like to say. It is the absence of religion, it is not meant to achieve anything since it isn't anything so defined as that. Atheism is simply taking an objective look at the world and at the various contradictory religions, poking around for any sort of evidence to support any of them, and after failing to find any deciding to reserve judgement until some appears.

That said I can see why the comparisons of atheism to religion are made, in particular as there often seems to be articles of the 'faith'. Chief among them being that religion is harmful, and that removing religion would make the world a better place. Like you I'm sceptical along those lines, it may be true certainly, but the case is hardly proved. While it may remove certain tensions between religious groups, I suspect people can find other reasons to hate each other without too many problems. And I agree the change to our societies and psyches is profound. But I'm not an atheist for the benefits package, I'm an atheist because it is the only logical position to take.

I bow to your knowledge on scripture re: homosexuality. I've been watching the Anglican church in the UK tear itself apart on this issue with some interest, and I assumed that the traditionalist side must have some scriptural backing for their position (and not just Leviticus).

I guess someone has never read that article from the Onion:

Fuck everything: we're doing five blades

Snooki is a recurring character on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" skit. She is a promiscuous Oompa-loompa from New Jersey. We're talking about her to flaunt our conspicuous ignorance of American pop culture.

You narrowly avoided being this guy., because at least you're not pretending not to know who pop culture stars are..

>Snooki who?
"Snooki from Jersey Shore"

I don't watch that crap either, but it's in the damn text you quoted. You're not impressing anyone.

What I need is a map to get out of the basement and interact with real people!

Still, when you get out you'll remember all those things you read online on how to treat people.

Operation completed successfully, say log files.

Everyone is forgetting Google already has an established method to opt-out: http://www.theonion.com/video/google-opt-out-feature-lets-users-protect-privacy,14358/ The opt out village!

They didn't forget. They all chose to pretend that it means something else. And by their definition, Wikileaks is most definitely not journalism. Wikileaks has never mentioned Lady Gaga even once! On a similar note, I highly recommend this from The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/video/time-announces-new-version-of-magazine-aimed-at-ad,17950/

http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/

That one isn't so sad.... http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/ being perfectly accurate was pretty depressing though.

All I can think of is this:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/

In my memory, it seems like the Onion was right on it. But the internet tells me it wasn't until 9/26/2001

I also made a 9/11 joke and never intended to let it slip into the wild. But, it did :/

That's the second place the cops look.

The first?

What it do pimpinz? We be keepin it real in dis bitch. All yo' base iz belong to us, go tell that homie. Be real, be ez /.ers

Similarly, this just in. Looks like the administration is taking a page out of the Onion's book.

fox news doesnt count as "the media" its more along the lines of entertainment a la the onion

http://www.theonion.com/

Google already has the technology to suggest ads during chats ;)

http://www.theonion.com/video/new-google-phone-service-whispers-targeted-ads-dir,17470/

The moon landing was completely different from what we were told.

http://store.theonion.com/product/holy-shit-man-walks-on-fucking-moon-1969,158/

So... if I say that “I don’t even watch YouTube”, have I become the 2010 version of “that guy”?

I saw that news article!

Maybe this guy can help answer the question. He seems to be on the leading edge of the future.

It wasn't unnamed, just classified. Here's a video of the voting procedure on the bill in question.