The Internet in Brief: 8/04/09

• Nick Cannon and Nas decide I don’t watch nearly enough stomach-churning blackface youtubes in my summer session AC class:

• Speaking of weird racial shit, there is a new instance of bizarre and ideologically confused political “art”:

*accidentally breaks Photoshop contrast tool*

Look, taking an American Cultures class will make anyone start seeing blackface and reverse blackface (kind of a thing in the 1820s for real but not in the way I mean at the moment) in anything, but even without the possible racial connotation, this shit is really weird, right?

Found via Andrew Sullivan.

[P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY OBAMA I AM RATHER DISAPPOINTED WITH HOW HEALTH CARE IS SHAPING UP BUT I AM STILL GLAD YOU ARE PRESIDENT HI-FIVE]

• Some genius at Vanity Fair gets the same incredibly clever idea. Look guys. Neither of them embody the primal force of chaos. Get the fuck over it.

• Going back to Andrew Sullivan, maybe I shouldn’t click on everything he posts. After all, his idea of a mental health break is making me watch a moonkin sing Beyonce.

• I’ve been itching to make another Riley Waggaman trackback, so here it is: fucken Sallie Mae overcharged the government. Did you know that sometimes I get so mad about administrative and bureaucratic wrongdoing that I consider writing a letter to the government? Haha just kidding no I keep it all pent up inside me and then take it out on the homeless. Oh the warm spray of human blood.

Serious Business: “Bleaching” the UC; or, Fuck those Whiteys

I know our readership prefers videos of farts and poops to “sober, thoughtful commentary”, but unfortunately I only have so many farts and poops to offer you.

I’ve been fairly out of the Berkeley news loop, given that I’ve been spending about 60% of the last two weeks not in Berkeley. Also someone other than Andrew Sullivan is blogging over at the Daily Dish for the time being and that’s enough anti-incentive to keep me away from blogosphere. So to speak.

The last sober, thoughtful commentative post was put up about four days too late, and now that I’ve spend the last hour or so reading up on the recent queef in the face that the UC administration has offered up to the student body, my blogging Tourette’s forces me to comment on this particular op ed.

The writers (Christine Hong, Catherine Lee, and Andrew Leong; incidentally, it’s also illustrated by Alan Chen) complain that the administration has been brutally dismissive of the impact of new admissions policy as well as the UC Berkeley cuts on the Asian (and APA) population.

Although intended to promote greater African American, Chicano/Latino and Native American admissions, the new policy, as the UC’s own commissioned study and data indicate, will have negligible impact on the designated target populations while decreasing Asian and APA admissions rates by 10-20 percent. At the same time, white admissions are projected to increase by 20 percent or more. Far from diversifying the UC student body, this misguided policy will result in the latter’s dramatic bleaching. As Professor Emeritus of ethnic studies Ling-Chi Wang, notes, the new admissions policy is essentially “affirmative action for whites … extremely unfair to Asian-Americans on the one hand and underrepresented minorities on the other.”

Oh wait, just in case you didn’t catch it the first time:

…white admissions are projected to increase by 20 percent or more.

What? I didn’t quite hear you.

…white admissions are projected to increase by 20 percent or more.

Internet in Brief / IRL News: 7/07/09

As David might have mentioned, I’ve been somewhat busy doing non-blog things… like writing a final exam, and then fleeing Berkeley to get really high and watch Shaft (2000), starring Samuel L. Jackson.

While everyone else up here in Tahoe is having a great time doling out their hard-earned money to Blizzard Entertainment, this hard-working blogger is going to throw a cursory glance around the internet and copy/paste some links your way! Because we at the Sqlog are dedicated journalists. Also, really good at instance groups.

• Berkeley feeling scarier of late? You’re not going crazy– it’s apparently ranked 43rd most dangerous city in the nation. Though I have a feeling that moving to Northside would pretty much solve everything.

• Berkeley Rep director headed for Broadway! I do not particularly care for musicals!

• More Amtrak casualties in the Bay!

• Thousands of Germans play at being Native American; Germans are fucking weird. (from MarginalRevolution)

• Dan Froomkin, who got dropped from the increasingly shitty WaPo, has been hired by HuffPo. My own feelings for HuffPo can be summed up with a sneer and a fart in the general direction of the internet, but yay for HuffPo and yay for Froomkin. Just don’t make him write any stories about Michelle Obama’s wardrobe. Please. Also, Palin is a weirdo. (both from the Daily Dish)

• Highest grossing movies, adjusted for inflation. (from Matt Yglesias)

• In case you weren’t already sick of hearing me squee over Iran, here’s the full collection of clips of Jason Jones in Iran. Although that link isn’t working for me at the moment (srsly wtf), this one still is, and is the funniest anyways.

• Instead of linking the last items, I’m going to embed them. Please. Watch them.

Internet in Brief + IRL News: 6/06/09

• UC Berkeley’s very own Purple Guy (aka Gregory McGarry) spotted on Look at this fucking hipster.

• Church of Scientology = Wikipedia trolls.

• I write up on a post where Vivianblog writes up on a video found on Megan McArdle’s blog, only to add that I have seen 80s harem pantsuits with more of a striking resemblance, but since this isn’t BARE blog, I have absolutely no need to turn this into a fashion post.

• Creepy Commie Bullshit. Eat it up, Hollingsworth!

• I don’t see why this is a challenge. (link from MarginalRevolution). The answers are: 1) P/F; 2) F/P; 3) P/F; 4) F/P; 5) P/F; 6) F/P; 7) P/F; 8) P/F; 9) F/P; 10) F/P

The trick is to see which guy looks like he has a sense of humor. Hint: not the French one.

My comp sci/physics boyfriend finds these pictures confusing. Perhaps he should have taken more classes with that one philosophy professor rumored to be Foucault’s last lover?* (*the answer is: no, not majoring in philosophy is superior to all other outcomes).

• Wells Fargo hates black people. No really, they do:

Former loan officer Tony Paschal said Wells Fargo targeted black communities for bad loans by focusing on African-American churches, using black employees as its public face, and using software to translate marketing materials into various languages, including something called “African American.”

He also said that other employees called subprime loans in predominantly minority neighborhoods “ghetto loans” and used racial slurs, including “mud people.”

• A lama leaves his Buddhist order! “They took me away from my family and stuck me in a medieval situation in which I suffered a great deal,” said Torres, 24, describing how he was whisked from obscurity in Granada to a monastery in southern India. “It was like living a lie.” He says this, but is currently studying film in Spain. (from MarginalRevolution)

• This is late, but the embarrassment factor of David Carradine’s death isn’t old just quite yet. Hopefully his people will be able to do a good job burying it? I’m rather fond of David Carradine, and would like to watch his movies in the future without people constantly making jokes about him strangling his own nuts.

• Was that an earthquake? Maybe just a big truck.