Pure Twaddle

Mozilla’s highlight and right-click search is an indispensable part of my browsing. When I’m reading text and I come across a strange word or reference that’s way over my head, I right-click, search it in a new tab, learn what I need, then jump right back to what I was reading.

To my dismay the New York Time‘s blocks this functionality with a nasty little ToolTip script that forces you to research highlighted words with there terrible meta-definition system (in a pop-up, no less!). This script also blocks the ability to copy-and-paste text; probably a paranoid reaction by the Times that a blogger, heaven forbid, may want to blockquote some text from an article.

After a bit of digging around in the page source, I found the offending scripts and excised them with AdBlock using these rules:

||graphics8.nytimes.com/js/util/tooltip.js

||graphics8.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js

Light testing shows these rules don’t break any other site functionality.

On a side note, when I first sought a solution, I searched Google for “new york times copy paste script,” which brought up Free Copy & Paste JavaScripts and other Scripts as a first hit, from About.com, which is owned by the New York Times company. At least one of their branches doesn’t fear basic information sharing.

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Here’s a bizarre example of big-media fear of internet sharing:

This error message pops up on an embedded a video of ducks being knocked over by the wind accompanied (inexplicably) by Nas’ Hate Me Now. Sony is cool with you watching ducklings in distress while listening to low-grade rap as long as it’s not outside of the YouTube.

I can’t help but imagine an intern in a gray cubicle mulling over whether this video should be embeddable or not.

As seen on invertedsoapbox.com.

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Here’s where I prepare a topic sentence to introduce an entire paragraph leading up to an obscure subject. Here’s where I talk about how long I’ve been in the blog game. Here’s where I talk about my experiences that everyone has had and I know can certainly relate. Here’s where I mention how what I’m about to talk about has never been encountered by mankind and I’m the first to notice it. Here’s where I use an Oxford Comma to vary, expand, and complicate my sentence structure.

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It’s Friday (actually Saturday) and I’m lazy. Here are some YouTube beat boxers, from best to worst:

Gypsy Rhythm Machine Crazy Beatbox - Watch more Funny Videos

I can’t find this guy anywhere online. Is he homeless?

This guy is good, but he obviously didn’t win whatever obscure TV contest this is.

This guy’s good, but his collection of narcissistic series of videos worries me.

These are drunk Spaniards who were surprised by dawn and sangria.

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I don’t want to alarm anyone, but it looks like the central source for hipster satire and transplant hate, diehipster.com, is dead. Is this a nefarious plan perpetrated by some hipster who has finally had it? Has Brooklyn been nuked from orbit and I’m only just finding out? What is the American Apparel connection?

Beware those who poke fun at the weak-willed and poorly dressed of Brooklyn. They, too, will come for you.

(Or perhaps their hosting company has just hit the “website off” button.)

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One of the questions that has plagued me since the advent this digital age: are there really this many screwed up people in the world, or did the internet just make them more visible?

From Craigslist.org NYC:

“young jabba the hut looking for a temporary apartment, prefers something cool and damp, like a basement, and most preferably near washer and dryer (he loves the smell!) also he is neat and tidy (get him now before he becomes a huge ball of slime) and likes to fall asleep being read love poetry, preferably in arabic though fractured french is also accepted. good cuddler, too, and just so darn cute. check out the artist’s rendering: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bearandbird/3707464588/in/set-72157621227964172/“

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Sadly another month without regular internet at home. No matter. I’ve been on a book-buying binge ever since I found a Salvation Army and a used book store within walking distance of my flat; this is dangerous for a bibliophile like me. I knew I hit rock-bottom when I bought an obscure Umberto Ecco novel from a dodgy man in Union Square. Who knows what I could have caught!

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Actual Craigslist sublet title:

$550 very specious Brooklyn apt. to share

At least they’re honest, just like my previous spammer.

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Wired EIC (editor-in-chief), Chris Anderson, has just published a book espousing the nature of the free economy. As part of the book’s promotion, he gave a speech at the Wired Disruptive Business Conference outlining his main points (below). I offer a rebuttal in the form of early ninety’s hip-hop. Watch and learn:

Chris Anderson’s “bitch-ass” speech:

V. MC Double Def DP‘s Don’t Copy That Floppy! from 1992 (with extra whitey hate)

Bonus: DCTF sequel coming soon (with extra prison rape)!

P.S. If your game/movie/television show is so bad that only pirates will watch it (read: no one wants to pay to watch it – I’m looking at you, Michael Bay), then you need to re-think your media. Shit’s changin’, yo!

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The Washington Post seriously needs to reconsider where online news is going. They have started a new “blog” called Innovations In News which, according to the sub-headline, offers a peek at “the latest creations from Slate and The Washington Post.”

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