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Looking out my window at the leaves
that finally came in the last few weeks,
and having played this video game Fortnight
where you build shieldish fortresses,
I can see that my tree building a shield
so it can incubate things along its thick brown branches
behind the green ruse we use, we and our crafty cousins,
to ward off the sun who loves the green
and forgets about us, and forgives the trees

Just made this. It’s not quite bad.

• 1lb ground beef
• 1 jar salsa
• 1 can baked beans
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1/2tbsp paprika
• 1tsp cumin
• 1tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2tsp salt
• 1 can beer

Brown and drain the beef. Mash it up with a fork or something.

Throw in the other ingredients. Simmer for an hour.

Work is good when it’s used as an agent of self improvement.

It’s no wonder the machine (however you want to define that, the powers that be, the man, our corporate overlords) is mining our data. It’s always mining something: iron, gold, oil, electricity (although the more elegant term for that is harvesting) – it’s just incredible how much data we produce and how easy it is to mine it.

The Social Dilemna does a good job of exposing that, although I could have done without the cheesy scripted stuff. However, it fails to point out the counterpart to our data, and what is in fact infinitely more valuable: our content.

Every post we make-video, photo, rant, tweet, comment, is like food for the machine. Without content, there is no internet. No one logs into Facebook so they can click on ads or fill out surveys or practice browsing habits. They go for content–to consume others’ and to post their own.

Content self-propagates; the machine doesn’t have to invasively collect it, analyze it, reconfigure it, or present it to its paying advertisers, as it does with data. And there’s mountains of it, and we give it away for free!

One of the interviewees suggests that we tax the machine for its data. That sounds great in theory, but I have a hard time understanding how it could be enforced. Instead, they should be taxed on their content they collect. It’s far easier to monitor.

Better yet, we could demand compensation for the food we’re keeping the machine alive with. Kind of like selling the glut of solar power you’re harvesting with your roof panels back to the utility companies. Let’s figure out how to do this.

The speakers are good, but it is hard to sit still for hours at a time. I like workshops much better.

I had planned on picking up a new mini for my kids once the imac g5 loaner goes back, but this puts me over the edge:

http://www.switched.com/2009/03/17/new-ipod-shuffle-only-usable-with-apple-authorized-headphones/

It seems that apple has begun the same downward spiral toward pissing off the customer base that nearly ruined Microsoft. I hope they can turn it around.