One mailgroup. 7000+ users who don’t know why they’re on it.

The Catalyst [T=0]

I have no idea that my stupid question is about to start some shit.

“Could someone please let me know if I can join this group as I need access to the [mailgroup] ASAP.”

The Initially Curious [T=1]

Well now, what’s this? An email to a group I don’t recognize! I’d better ask everyone what’s going on.

“Hello, I’m not sure why I am on this distribution?”
“I am not sure why I am receiving these messages. Can someone please remove me from this email distribution list please?”

The Meetoos [T=2]

That applies to me also! Everyone should know.

“Hello, I am also not sure why I am on this distribution list.”
“Ditto. Not sure how I am on the list.”
“Same.”
“Me too. Please take me off.”
“Me too… Can someone tell what this group is about?”

The Unamused [T=3]

These people are stupid. I’d better let them know.

“Please do not reply ALL”
“Let’s not do a reply all please. I am not supposed to be in the list either, but a reply all is adding spam on top of spam..”
“Before this gets out of hand, please do not reply to all including the [mailgroup]….. It has tons of folks on it….. thank you ..”
“FOLKS: STOP THESE MAILS, PLEASE. [sender of initial mail]: CALL THE HELP DESK!”

The Late Comers [T=4]

Hello! Where did all these emails come from? I should respond right away and let everyone know I don’t understand how email works.

“Can you please remove me from this distribution list?”
“Same here.”
“+1″
“Please remove me”

The Outraged [T=5]

Seriously! These people are really stupid! Don’t they know that every reply gets sent to thousands of people? Even just one more response causes several more to respond back! It’s a vicious cycle!

.. I’d better let everyone know!

“Everyone – please stop replying all to a mailgroup with 7,500 members!! If you don’t want to be on it, follow up directly with the owners”
“It is possible to remove yourself, there are over 7500 members so probably best that each person doesn’t reply to all saying they shouldn’t be on here!”
“Can people please stop replying with “me too”. It’s doing nothing but adding to E-mail load.”
“Guys, This is really not hard. Stop replying to all. [Simple instructions for manually removing yourself from list]. The emails have stopped for me.”
“Hi All. Please stop replying to this thread and simply unsubscribe from group [simple instructions for manually removing yourself from list].”

The Witty Observer [T=6]

I see what’s going on here.

“Awesome chicken and egg situation here – you can’t tell everyone to stop replying all without replying all”

The Braindead [T=20]

“Please remove me from this group”

I probably don’t know enough about wiring electrical systems, but why do we still have cigarette lighter sockets in cars? I mean, there are probably a few people out there who are still using them to light things they want to smoke on fire. But the primary function nowadays seems to be to provide power to things like GPSes, cell phones, etc. So why the useless round socket? Can’t we just have.. I don’t know.. a normal three-prong plug?

Part 1 – DMCA

Piracy is bad. We can all agree. But like many of the world’s ills, it’s somewhat unavoidable. In my opinion, if you treat your customers well, and create quality content, you’ll probably make out ok. Alternatively, if you treat everyone like a potential criminal and lock your content down to the nth degree, you will likely just alienate your paying user base and hardly affect the people who were going to rip you off anyway.

But that’s just me. I can hardly blame a company for taking the pessimistic view of humanity and going the latter route. What I have a problem with is anti-circumvention laws. Because they redefine what it means to own something. They criminalize tinkering, tweaking, exploring, repurposing — aka “hacking,” for some definition of the word — your own goods.

If I buy a book, I can use it however I want. I can read it; I can use it as a coaster; I can skip ahead and read the last chapter. But when I buy a Playstation 3, I can only use it in the ways that Sony has intended. I paid for the system. It’s in my possession, but it’s not mine. For example, if i try to run software on it that Sony does not approve of, I am breaking the law, regardless of the nature of that software.

This, I believe, is not only wrong, but counterproductive. Sony (or any other company) has every right to try to protect their content through convoluted DRM schemes. And the consumer should have an equal right to do what they want with the products Sony sells them. To seek legal, rather than engineered, solutions just encourages laziness. After all, if you protect your end-user devices with laws, rather than smart technology, you’re likely to get burned.

..is kind of an awesome show. Timothy Olyphant is a great cowboy.

Hey, fellas. Uhh.. Forgive me, I can’t tell if you guys are following me or not. And I’m just uh.. a little out of sorts to be honest with you — shot and killed a guy just three days ago — so at this intersection here I’m gonna go right. I want you two to go left. I go right. You, go left. If you go right… then I’m gonna want some answers. Alright, you guys have a good one.

I received a letter in the mail today. I knew that it was special right away.

A very old church? Is loaning me something? Or not me specifically, but someone connected with my home? And they’re giving out blessings? Tell me more.

Dear… Someone Connected with This Address,

Yes, that’s me, but only my friends call me that.

People just like you are writing to this 60-year-old Church,

Apparently very old means 60.

…telling us of all types of blessings since this Church started praying with them. They are receiving divine help in the form of answered prayer. Some are seeing loved ones saved, and many of them are receiving spiritual, physical, and financial blessings of all types…

Sigh. Yeah, I get it. Jesus wants to give me money, and all he needs is some money. But what was that about a loan?

Wait what? There’s a “Prayer Rug Of Faith” in this envelope?

Oh my god it’s a fold-out paper “rug”! Stay classy, Saint Matthew’s Churches.

Look into Jesus’ Eyes you will see they are closed.

You are doing writing wrong.

But as you continue to look you will see his eyes opening and looking back into your eyes.

Yeah. I see it. It’s a miracle. So now what?

Uh huh. Let’s have a look as what Wikipedia has to say about this nonsense:

St. Matthew’s Churches, formally St. Matthew Publishing Inc., is an evangelical “Christian ministry”. It is primarily a mail-based “ministry” with an address in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with churches in New York and Houston.In 1999 St. Matthew Publishing Inc. reported $26.8 million in revenue. In 2007, it reportedly earned $6 million a month.

The ministry has been accused of preying on the very low income and the elderly by using census records to target their mailings.

According to the Trinity Foundation, an evangelical watchdog group, the physical churches are only associated with the mail-based ministry as a cover that allows the lucrative operation to retain tax-exempt church status.

I thought so. This requires a response.

Dear… Someone Connected with This Address,

Your “loan” of enclosed “prayer rug” will be unnecessary. I don’t pray, and I never liked Magic Eye. I wouldn’t want to deprive any other families of a good paper rug to kneel on, so here it is.

No postage necessary if mailed in the United States. How convenient.

If you’ve ever had fresh mozzarella cheese — and I’m talking still warm fresh — you know that it is truly one of the greatest foods ever created. The problem is, the window for optimal enjoyment is a small one. The “fresh” stuff you get in the most groceries pales in comparison; as soon as it’s refrigerated, it loses 90% of it’s deliciousness.

Luckily, you can make your own delicious fresh mozzarella cheese! Just follow these simple instructions:

Go to your local specialty Italian market to find some milk curd.



Do not be distracted by the fancy hanging meats. We’re on a mission here.



You’ll probably want to find two hot assistants.



Because we are about to make magic happen.



Cut the curd into small cubes and put them in a metal mixing bowl. Add enough warm water to cover the curds, but don’t pour the water directly over them (go along the sides of the bowl). Basically, you want to slowly heat them up. Repeat once or twice, using very hot water the last time (almost boiling). Save some of this water for salting and soaking the mozzarella in later.



Are you drinking while you do this? Because you should be drinking.



Once it’s nice and melty, stretch it out!



Form the cheese into balls, then drop into the water to soak and brine. Holy crap, that’s delicious.



Eat all of the cheese in one sitting. Wallow in shame (not pictured).

In a nutshell:

The strongest case against these people isn’t that their rhetoric inspires political violence. It’s that they frequently utter indefensible nonsense. The problem isn’t their tone. It’s that the substance of what they’re saying is so blinkered that it isn’t even taken seriously by their ideological allies (even if they’re too cowardly, mercenary or team driven to admit as much).

They’re in a tough spot these days partly because it’s impossible for them to mount the defense of their rhetoric that is true: “I am a frivolous person, and I don’t choose my words based on their meaning. Rather, I behave like the worst caricature of a politician. If you think my rhetoric logically implies that people should behave violently, you’re mistaken – neither my audience nor my peers in the conservative movement are engaged in a logical enterprise, and it’s unfair of you to imply that people take what I say so seriously that I can be blamed for a real world event. Don’t you see that this is all a big game? This is how politics works. Stop pretending you’re not in on the joke.”

Because they’re not a serious organization:

In France, the shrine at Lourdes is surrounded by hundreds of hotels and has received as many as 45,000 pilgrims in a single day. Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico, draws millions of fervent worshipers a year.

Now, a little chapel among the dairy farms here, called Our Lady of Good Help, has joined that august company in terms of religious status, if not global fame. This month, it became one of only about a dozen sites worldwide, and the first in the United States, where apparitions of the Virgin Mary have been officially validated by the Roman Catholic Church. (emphasis mine)

Oh wow! If the Catholic Church says it’s real, it must be legitimate, right? Let’s examine their meticulous reasoning process.

1. In 1859, a woman claimed she saw the virgin Mary appear three times.
2. Serious theologians spend two years “investigating,” to determine there was no fraud or heresy.
3. The church declares with “moral certainty” that this is the real deal!

Uh huh… I see. What would science have to say about this?

1. Anecdotal evidence is no kind of evidence at all, especially when it’s over 150 years old and not even first-hand. Not to mention the witness describes Mary’s “flowing blond locks,” which seems pretty unlikely. Sounds like a clear-cut case of religious delusion.
2. Let’s have a snack!

A lamentation on computer programming:

The things they did do, they did wrong. They found bugs. They found ways to circumvent all of your carefully constructed system rules and validations. Not because they were master hackers or brilliant technicians… but because they were just stupid. They clicked on things they shouldn’t click on. They typed things in that they shouldn’t type in. They didn’t read simple instructions. They didn’t listen in training. They were personally insulting you by being terrible at using your software.

via Benny

I just read Stephen King’s The Running Man. It’s set in a future, post-apocalyptic world (as envisioned in the early 80′s), where the world’s most popular TV show involves hunting people for sport. It’s not a bad book, largely about class and racial tensions, and television’s effect on society.

I also watched the movie “based” on the book. The plot is almost unrecognizable (i.e. the main character goes from a scrawny black man to Arnold Schwarzenegger). The movie is mostly an excuse to watch the Terminator kill people and deliver absurd one-liners.

But the best part though? It stars both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, who, after years of starring in over-the-top action movies, are later elected to the highest executive offices of California and Minnesota, respectively. Lesson learned: the future is always way weirder than you think it will be.