Paul M. Jones

On the heels of last week’s slew of releases, we have three followups!

The Aura.Input package got a feature-level bump to 1.1.0, with a new FormFactory. Thanks to Hari KT for championing that one.

Aura.Sql is now at 1.3.0, due to lots of work from MAXakaWIZARD to provide SQLite- and PostgreSQL-specific query objects.

Finally, the Aura.View package got a bugfix and is now at 1.2.1; it handles content-type negotiation better for those times when there is no Accept header.

Take a look at all of the Aura packages here – each of them completely decoupled from the others, ready for you to use with no additional dependencies.

via Aura for PHP.

(With apologies to Ambrose Bierce.)

bloat, bloated

One or more lines of someone else's code that do something I don't need right now. Used as a reason to write my own code.

collaboration

Other people working on my project. "I believe strongly in collaboration; other people should be helping with my projects."

fast

The performance of my favored projects. (When benchmarks show otherwise, this explains why the benchmark is skewed, measures the wrong things, or doesn't matter.)

easy

The work that other people have to do.

good coding style

The code looks and feels just as if I wrote it myself.

hard

The work that I have to do.

practical, pragmatism

Whatever is expedient at the moment, regardless of long-term considerations. "Your use of (good practice X) just isn't practical in this situation." (Note especially the appeal to absolutes instead of tradeoffs between options; as an aside: "What is 'practical' depends on what you want to practice.")

quality

The project overall is designed just as if I did it myself.

reuse

Other people using my code. "I believe strongly in reuse; stop writing your own code and use mine."

slow

The performance of projects other than my favored ones. (When benchmarks show otherwise, this explains why the benchmark is skewed, measures the wrong things, or doesn't matter.)

Read the Reddit discussion about this post here.

1. "Rape Culture" ... This phrase is used as a blanket term by feminism for describing all male sexuality, far in excess of the actual crime of rape. Use of this term indicates that a woman is suspicious and fearful of male sexuality, even if she finds herself attracted to it.

2. "Delicate Male Ego" ... She's thinking she's displaying her strength and independence. What she's actually doing is revealing her contempt for masculinity and her ignorance of its subtleties. Yes, dudes, we have subtleties.

3. "I deserve" ... Feminine entitlement is frequently a problem in a relationship, as women rationalize just what they "deserve", usually without much in the way of supporting data. ... If you encounter a woman who uses "I deserve . . ." you can bet that she's going to deserve a second husband someday.

4. "I don't believe in marriage" ... Declaring that they don't, especially on short acquaintance, is a clear sign of one of two things: either she is so commitment-phobic that she will leave you for the next pair of pecs to ponder her panties, or she is clearly bullshitting because getting married is on her mind so much that she's desperate.

5. "I want to work on my career" ... [I]t just means that a woman who sees herself as a professional first will only see herself as a wife and mother second. That's great, for some women. After all, with fewer men working these days, it's going to require a lot of women filling the taxation gap, so that their brilliant careers can subsidize other women's children in the future.

6. "Why can't guys just ______________ ?" ... This is an expression that clearly predicates ignorant male-bashing. In most cases women do know why guys can't just ______________. They just don't like the answer, and want someone to change it for them. A woman who has so little knowledge and experience with men as to not understand their basic motivations (Sex, food, shelter, entertainment, companionship, in that order) is an unwise choice.

7. "...feminism..." Pretty much any mention of feminism in a positive light, beyond the basics of equity feminism, is a Red Pill Alert for stormy seas ahead. Women who invoke feminism are shit testing you. Women who self-declare as feminists are challenging your masculinity right up front, and no clearer sign of a life of torment and abuse in a relationship with them is available.

8. "Men feel threatened and intimidated by me." ... No matter how loudly she protests the contrary, most men don't feel "intimidated" by her. Most men are merely annoyed by her, and she chooses to see that as "intimidation", because that little rationalization means it's THEIR fault, not hers.

9. "Women can do everything just as well as a man can." ... In about 80% of the cases, that's a correct assumption. Men and women are fairly on par in aggregate when it comes to everything from long division to programming Javascript. But if a woman thinks that the gender differences stop at the physical, then she's not wife material. ... [M]en and women are different. We have different goals, aspirations, measures of success, drives and ambitions. We have different strengths and weaknesses. We have different areas of interest.

10. "I don't need a man." ... Women who proudly declare that "they don't need a man" are trumpeting a competence and independence they mistakenly feel men, in general, admire. And while most of us can't stand a truly helpless woman, a woman who doesn't need a man shouldn't get one. ... When a woman proudly proclaims her independence in these terms, she is revealing her attitude toward men and marriage in general ... It's not an admission of incompetence to admit you need a man in your life, ladies. It's an expression of general desire that men find hopeful.

I expect that certain female readers to take offense to this. I expect the feminine ones, on the other hand, to see it as mostly true, even if they have never seen it in words before. I expect the white knights to complain about how I'm pre-emptively shutting down conversation by drawing a distinction between "female" and "feminine." The Red Pill Room: Wife Test: Red Pill Alerts.

Something pretty remarkable happened in Colorado on Tuesday night. John Morse, the Democratic president of the state Senate, was recalled from office. So was Democratic state Sen. Angela Giron.

Taken together, the losses arguably represent the biggest defeat for gun-control advocates since the push for expanded background checks failed in the U.S. Senate earlier this year.

Morse and Giron appeared on ballots Tuesday in the culmination of a recall campaign that largely shaped up as a referendum on the state’s recently passed gun-control laws, for which both Morse and Giron voted. Out of state money poured in on both sides. On one end, the National Rifle Association dished out six figures. On the other, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did too.

It’s not every day that you see an incumbent recalled from office, let alone someone as high-profile as a state Senate president. The message the defeat of Morse and Giron sends to legislators all across the country is unmistakable: If you are thinking about pushing for new gun-control laws, you could face swift consequences.

A civil rights victory. Via The Colorado recalls dealt a serious blow to gun-control advocates. Here’s why..

As of yesterday, the three remaining “Google Beta” libraries were marked as stable and released:

Aura.Filter provides validation and sanitizing for data objects and arrays.

Aura.Input has tools to describe and filter user inputs from an HTML form, including sub-forms/sub-fieldsets, fieldset collections, an interface for injecting custom filter systems, and CSRF protection.

Aura.Intl provides internationalization (I18N) tools, specifically package-oriented per-locale message translation.

This means all the Aura library packages are now stable, and formally ready for production use. Woohoo! /me does the happy dance

Read the rest of the entry for other news regarding Aura. Aura for PHP.

(If you like clean code, fully decoupled libraries, and truly independent packages, then the Aura project is for you. Download a single package and start using it in your project today, with no added dependencies.)

As the 2.0 state fails, we are seeing increasing awareness, urgency, and activism in response to a deepening crisis. The emerging America 3.0 will reverse several key characteristics of the 2.0 state: decentralization versus centralization; diversity and voluntarism rather than compulsion and uniformity; emergent solutions from markets and voluntary networks rather than top-down, elite-driven commands. Strong opposition to the rise of America 3.0 is inevitable, including heavy-handed, abusive, and authoritarian attempts to prop up the existing order. But this “doubling down” approach is doomed. It is incompatible with both the emerging technology and the underlying cultural framework that will predominate in America 3.0. 

via America 3.0: The Coming Reinvention of America -- The American Magazine.

Poetry is an industry. It has always been an industry. It is something that people do. Writing poetry is work. You may be paid for this work in money, or you may be paid in the esteem of your peers, or you may be paid only in your own satisfaction. But you are paid.

Before the New Deal, poets were paid either in the esteem of their peers, or in book royalties. ...

Here is the way poetry works now. The business is teaching. The currency is the book. Now that Tryfon Tolides has a book, and one published by Penguin at that (rather than, say, Dirt River Press), he can get a teaching job. His teacher, Karr, has "made" him. ...

When I say "teaching job," of course I don't mean eighth grade. With a Penguin book, Tolides is qualified to teach creative writing anywhere that has an opening. Of course openings are scarce these days, because everyone with an IQ over 95 is going to college and the system simply cannot be expanded. ...

... one ascends in the poetry world exactly the same way that one ascended in the Soviet intelligence services: by joining the right clique and remaining loyal to it. It is a pure pyramidal patronage system.

... There is simply no independent pool of taste. There is only a vast river of books released by an endless stream of careerists. ...

And worse, what these careerists seek is not even good filthy money. Teaching poetry is an abominable career. Unless you are ridiculously lucky, your students are subhuman morons, your pay is laughable, your prospect of tenure is nonexistent.

However, you are paid with something that no money can buy, the social status of poet. And no one - and I mean no one - in the world looks down on a "published poet." ...

What a pathetic and contemptible system! These people are nothing but bureaucrats. And the situation is only getting worse.

via Unqualified Reservations: Tryfon Tolides: an almost pure empty poetry.

The Guardian, Greenwald’s employer, reports the journalist’s partner, David Miranda, was held for nearly nine hours and questioned under the Terrorism Act at the UK’s Heathrow airport. Officials also confiscated Miranda’s electronics, including his cell phone, laptop, camera, and memory sticks, according to The Guardian, without saying when they would return the items.

...

Miranda was reportedly released without being officially charged with anything. Authorities had detained him for the maximum amount of time allowed under the law before they would have had to issue a formal arrest, according to The Guardian.

...

“This is obviously a rather profound escalation of their attacks on the news-gathering process and journalism,” he wrote. “It’s bad enough to prosecute and imprison sources. It’s worse still to imprison journalists who report the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists is simply despotic.”

via NSA Journalist Glenn Greenwald’s Partner Reportedly Detained at Airport for 9 Hours, Questioned Under Terrorism Act | TheBlaze.com.

the NSA and their fellow swimmers in the acronym soup of the intelligence-industrial complex are increasingly reliant on nomadic contractor employees, and increasingly subject to staff churn. There is an emerging need to security-clear vast numbers of temporary/transient workers ... and workers with no intrinsic sense of loyalty to the organization. For the time being, security clearance is carried out by other contractor organizations that specialize in human resource management, but even they are subject to the same problem: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

via Snowden leaks: the real take-home - Charlie's Diary.

Here's a link to the slides: http://www.slideshare.net/pmjones88/all-you-jokers

Seeing as we don't have a joind.in event registered, please leave your comments about the "All You Jokers" talk here.Please rate the talk on joind.in (thanks Jordan!).

Thanks for attending!