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31 May 2010 23:46

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Culture: Guess who said this quote, and we’ll tell you later

  • I feel like I’ve been pregnant more than a year. I never gave up. But I can tell you that it was physically and emotionally exhausting.
  • Celine Dion • Regarding her new pregnancy (finally!); Dion had been trying in-vitro fertilization for a while before it actually happened. She was successful on her sixth attempt, and now her spawn will start spreading Diane Warren-inspired over-the-top light-pop vocals in about 16 years or so. Sigh. We can wait. source

31 May 2010 23:36

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Tech: Google on Windows: That’s nasty, use OSX or Linux instead

  • nope Reportedly, new Google employees won’t be able to use Windows as one of their OS options anymore; it’s just Mac and Linux.
  • why? Blame it on security concerns in the wake of Google’s whole hack thang with China that happened a few months ago. source
  • » The real question: How many of their employees are holdouts working on Amiga or BeOS? Really, we want to know. If this is a company of nerds, there has to be at least one.

31 May 2010 23:20

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World: Mustafa Abu al-Yazid: Another Al-Qaeda leader goes down?

  • He’s a top-ranking dude in Afghanistan. It’s still not confirmed, but the U.S. believes that Mustafa Abu al-Yazid was a victim of a missile strike that hit over the last couple of weeks. Al-Qaeda is talking about the dude like he was killed. “His death will only be a severe curse by his life upon the infidels,” a member of the group wrote on a radical Web site. source

31 May 2010 22:21

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Tech: Apple to Foxconn workers: Here’s some money; stop killing yourselves

  • 20% the size of the raises Apple is giving FoxConn employees so they stop committing high-profile suicides
  • .7% the amount the raises will raise the outsourcing cost of the iPad’s sale price, from 2.3 to 3 percent source

31 May 2010 21:57

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Tech: WHOA: Pulse is officially the coolest iPad news-reader, ever

  • We want to have babies with this RSS reader. OK, maybe not babies, but definitely some sort of spawn. Our statistics meet your cool little boxes in a dark room somewhere, and things might happen. After all, you’re my wonderwall. (Thanks TechCrunch for the tip. This $3.99 pile of awesome, created by a bunch of recent Stanford grads, is totally worth it.) source

31 May 2010 21:42

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U.S.: The dude in this photo has his own personal lobbyist

Rodney Anderson is a cool dude. A mortgage broker, he realized that some of his clients weren’t able to buy homes because of old medical bills. His lobbyist is fixing that. source

31 May 2010 21:30

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Politics: For some reason, Obama not ready to throw Israel under the bus

  • The President expressed deep regret at the loss of life in today’s incident, and concern for the wounded, many of whom are being treated in Israeli hospitals. The President also expressed the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances around this morning’s tragic events as soon as possible.
  • A statement from the White House • Regarding today’s insane flotilla situation in Israel. Obama has to respect the diplomatically-important relationship with Israel, but it’s kinda tough because they keep doing stupid crap like killing humanitarians. There are a lot of sides to this story, so it’s good to take them all in, but it’s clear that Israel had to get on that boat somehow. They weren’t there for tea and strumpets. They weren’t there to show off their new iPads. They weren’t there to give high-fives to the hundreds of people on board that boat. Even if the ship had weapons and the humanitarians were ready for a fight, it wasn’t like they were about to invade Gaza, either. Why not scold Israel, Obama, and tell them they screwed up? Because they clearly screwed up. source
 

31 May 2010 20:53

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31 May 2010 11:52

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Politics: Haaretz: This Gaza flotilla incident is Israel’s Vietnam. Ouch

  • Here in Israel, we have still yet to learn the lesson: We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming Israel’s Vietnam.
  • Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston • Regarding what this whole mess with Hamas and the humanitarian ship shows. Simply put, Israel is blundering its way into a massive mess. As Burston puts it, “In going to war in Gaza in late 2008, Israeli military and political leaders hoped to teach Hamas a lesson. They succeeded. Hamas learned that the best way to fight Israel is to let Israel do what it has begun to do naturally: bluster, blunder, stonewall, and fume.” Ouch. He also criticizes the country’s toxic political situation that makes things like this happen. This is an Israeli newspaper trashing Israel’s policies unforgivably. That says a lot. source

31 May 2010 11:40

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U.S.: Ever see a nuclear cooling tower destroyed? Well, you’re about to

  • This is freaking awesome. As part of the stimulus plan, the Savannah River Sites decided to knock off one of their massive cooling towers which was no longer in use and would cost money to secure every year otherwise. It’s pretty awesome to watch really freaking thick concrete fall to the ground like this, in a Roland Emmerich/Michael Bay way.