Oregon is a blue state, because it only has a few population centers; Portland Metro, Eugene/Springfield and Salem. In those areas, people tend to have better job (and probably health insurance) and be more liberal. The rest of the state is made of very small towns than are conservative. This is a gross generalization, but it's also fairly true.

Oregon isn't blue; Portland and Eugene are blue.

Obama is a commie muslin socialist Nazi in much of the state, and Obamacare is just a way to take away you guns - or some such bullshit.

I bet you can still use the the same cartridge shot from a different gun, like a Mini-30. Later, they'll be able to say that an AR-15 isn't a hunting rifle, and should be banned.

Say what?
Can you elaborate, and provide sources. I am not aware of specific rifles being banned for deer hunting. Nor am I aware of cartridge rules, other than a centerfire requirement. If a specific cartridge, say the .223 were banned for its inability to kill, why is a bow legal?

Disclaimer: I'm in Oregon, and have not researched all state's hunting laws.

The Facebook interface is death by 1,000 papercuts.

One small example:
They have decided that news will be delivered by what's popular, rather than in chronological order. Of course you can switch it to "newest first", as long as you're willing to switch it almost every time you visit the site. If they gave me a simple button that said "chronological or popular", I wouldn't have a desire to use SF.

Their arrogance makes Steve Jobs look like Michael Dell.

14,000 sq ft is a lot of space, but it's certainly not the largest of the hackerspaces.

TechShop has 6 locations, and one more opening next month, that all have 15,000+ sq feet indoors. Monthly fees are $100 to $125 for access to everything. They have newer equipment, as well as walls between the woodshop, metalshop and machine shop.

It's great to see places like this opening all over the country.

I run a small site that is mostly a personal photo blog. I keep an eye on the logs, and when one of my images gets a lot of hits, it's obviously being leeched. I just replace it with Goatse or something similar. If it happened often enough, I'd automate it.

The event has changed, drastically.
My first year, there were 8,000 people on the playa. The ethic of "no spectators" was strong. Very strong. Of course some people had less to contribute than others, myself included. I understood what I was supposed to do, but not to the degree. My next many years, I was much more involved in creating things for the community. One year I took a month off, and worked for the DPW - I worked on the crew (of 4 people) who made the giant spheres surrounding the man in '99. Other years, my friends and I would take our tools, and spend the day fixing art cars, bicycles, and other broken stuff.

The last time I was there, the level of participation had fallen dramatically. I won't go into great detail, but the number of people showing up for the festival has gone up in relation to the number of people creating the festival. I'm not just talking about rangers, dpw, dmv, etc. I'm talking about people setting up art, making *interactive* theme camps, and other things that involve more than just making their camp a "cool chill zone with a rad dj".

Sure, I've changed too. But the event is not what it once was.

I had a 4 day back country, backpacking trip scheduled for last weekend. The fires in Yosemite made it impossible.
Sad face.

Your first statement is not true. I'm getting a fairly constant flow of photos and updates from friends out there now. Most for them work for the BORG, so they have a hard line data connection.

But yeah, most people turn off their phone.

Many of us who have been going for a long time have stepped away as the event changed. It isn't the same as it was, so we've decided to walk away from the event.
I'm not saying it isn't fun, or I'm too cool for it, but it no longer appeals to me.

My Facebook feed has slowed by 50%, so I still seem to have a bunch of friends who are going - but I'm getting photos and updates from the desert. That part I don't understand; I loved being off the grid for a week or three.

Damn right we are.

I fucking hate straight piped bikes. "Freedom" my ass.

I've been on /. since '98 or '99, and have been modded as a troll once or twice.
Figures.

And while I understand not all pro-gun people are rabid GOP deniers of [insert topic they don't like], it's a pretty good correlation.

No, it's really not a good correlation. There are a lot of very vocal anti-gubmint gun owners, who make the rest of them look kind of loony. The vast majority of gun owners I know are somewhat left of center. NPR listening, democrat voting, pro-choice, not interested in NASCAR or truck pulls, do not believe Obama has a Kenyan birth certificate, are not members of the Klan, have mufflers on their motorcycles...

Most gun owners don't get into the public debate. For one, the anti-gun folks use lots of emotion and almost no logic to make their point, and there's not much reason to engage them. Secondly, the vocal part of the pro-gun folks use lots of emotion and almost no logic to make their point, and there's not much reason to engage them.

Fuck you. You earned it.

Rather than produce interesting movies, with good characters and great dialog, you relied on effects. Sure, a lot of people love that stuff; see Fast & Furious 27 or whatever it was. The rest of us aren't interested.

You attack your fans. You make me sit through a barrage of crap to watch a DVD if I purchase it (so I don't). You use the federal government to be your cop. You won't let me see movies how I want. You penalize Netflix when they try and give me what I want. The prices at the theater keep going up (I paid $12 to see Star Trek in 3D?) You rely on gimmicks, rather than content (see 3D).

Fuck you. You earned it.

If the subject is complex enough, the reviewer may not understand the book, and be forced to give it a superficial review.

Amazon is making the problem worse. When I first started writing reviews for Vine, I had to review 75% of the items I received in order to be able to receive additional items. Seems fair. Then it was raised to 80%, and was recently raised to 100%.

If I don't review it in 30 days, I am barred from ordering another item until I review it.
So, if somebody orders a book, and finds it way over their head, they still have to review it. Now we have a problem.