More tabs, political this time.

I've got to stop opening web pages. Seriously, it only leads to trouble. Anyway, here's trouble for you.

Suddenly Republicans want the press to be a watchdog on the American government. A majority of Democrats still do - making them somewhat less inconsistent than Republicans - but that percentage still dropped a lot. This all came up in the contest of Fox News screaming that the Obama administration was trying to "control the media," which is pretty laughable given things like the illegal domestic propaganda campaign in which they participated (and refused to report upon, like all the major networks, when it was discovered), Bush administration threats to arrest reporters, and so on. Fun times, by which I mean fuck you very much.

New York cops are harassing and arresting gay men (mostly) via a law ruled unconstitutional in 1983. Despite losing several cases since then - and being ordered to stop, more than once - they're still doing it. That's fun:

Instead, in the 26 years of this law's odd posthumous career, district attorneys brought 4,750 prosecutions and judges convicted 2,550 defendants. For violating an imaginary law, these defendants paid a decidedly non-imaginary $70,000 in bail and $190,000 in court fees and fines. In the last 10 years, NYPD officers also issued 9,693 citations, forcing citizens to pay $71,000 in fees. The criminal records of these victims have never been expunged and the fees and fines have not been refunded.

Isn't that just awesome?

Here, this is unfathomably vile, but I mean, what do you expect: get raped, take anti-AIDS drugs to ward off possible HIV infection, lose your health insurance. Apparently this is a standard reaction and they can't seem to figure out why anyone might be upset. Ah, health insurance industry, you really are your own worst enemies.

You've heard the horrible story about the Washington State woman on vacation with her partner in Florida when her partner had a stroke and she and their children were forbidden from seeing her dying partner? She sued, of course, but she lost the case, with it being thrown out in Federal court. That actually happened a few weeks ago, but I didn't hear about it until last week.

unrelated to any of that

A couple of friends are passing along links to save_dave, so I'm propagating. I don't know Dave, but he's known to them and he's trying not to lose his house to foreclosure, which would suck. You can read more about it on s00j's LJ, here.

Amtrak tickets to Vancouver are on sale! 25% off. Take the train!

I'm not going to work on this right now, because I'm trying to make a CD, not tweak the DAW more, but here're some instructions for optimising Jack on Ubuntu Studio 8.04. I have not done all of this - mostly I still have PulseAudio running. But for future reference: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Mostly for my own reference: Ubuntu Studio 8.04 and Jack

I'm not going to work on this right now, because I'm trying to make a CD, not tweak the DAW more, but here're some instructions for optimising Jack on Ubuntu Studio 8.04. I have not done all of this - mostly I still have PulseAudio running. But for future reference: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.