President Obama picking up some tasty doughnuts at Seattle’s very own Top Pot. I don’t wanna brag or nothing, but I was at that very Top Pot this very morning picking up doughnuts, too. Verily.

I think, just like in other parts of the country, the media is finding itself having a hard time doing its job in this political cycle because, whenever we ask questions, there are certain candidates out there who decry ‘lamestream media’ or whatever. Mr. Miller has had plenty of time to answer questions. He has been given plenty of opportunities. He somehow believes he shouldn’t be questioned about his background and yet he wants a job in six years, to a post where there are only 100 in the entire country, and we are not supposed to ask questions about anything of his past. There is a little bit of shoot the messenger. It is happening up here, and other parts of the country. There are certain candidates who just want to turn this around and act like it’s the media causing the problem. That has always been there, that element. It is just more ramped up this political cycle.

—

Tony Hopfinger, a reporter for the Alaska Dispatch, on the difficulty of covering “certain candidates” during the midterm elections. Hopfinger was handcuffed by private security guards working for Alaska senate candidate and Tea Party darling Joe Miller while trying to ask Miller a question during a campaign rally at a public school.

It must be some crazy coincidence that these “certain candidates” who refuse to answer basic questions, detain journalists or outright lie are all right-wing nuts.

Backbone.js from DocumentCloud looks like a great MVC framework for JavaScript

Much more lightweight than something like SproutCore or Cappuccino, plays well with jQuery.

roughnightforlulu:

October Harvest

I’m not saying it’s the reason I’m marrying her but it sure doesn’t hurt.

The new 37 Signals office looks like it belongs on Unhappy Hipsters. Eating-lunch-all-by-himself-DHH is the new Sad Keanu.

I’m actually a very nice person

Google has created a new image format called WebP

Compression is based on the same VP8 video codec that Google bought and open sourced back in May. They claim a 39% reduction in file sizes without a noticeable drop in quality. They’re working on a patch to bring native support to WebKit and will add alpha channel transparency later.

Certainly sounds promising.

Geoff McGhee has done a fantastic job of documenting the tools and people, and some very valid criticism, of data visualization. “Journalism in the Age of Data” is worth an hour of your time if you dig data or are interested in how we’ll tell stories in the future. (I show up a few times and can honesty, earnestly say I’m easily the dumbest person featured.)

James O’Keefe continues to prove what a sick, showboating dickhead he really is

You’ll remember O’Keefe from such hits as the ACORN “investigation” that turned out to be a bunch of selectively edited tapes instead of a systematic system of corruption and the cock who was arrested for tampering with the phone line of a sitting senator.

His latest trick was to attempt to lure a CNN reporter onto a boat, alone, surrounded by dildos (presumably other than himself) and then hit on her to somehow expose the “awkwardness”. Not only is that the dumbest “exposé” I can imagine, it’s stupid, disingenuous and dangerous. Seriously, what kind of a dumbass calls a stunt like this a “caper”?

O’Keefe, let’s not forget, was roundly applauded by right wing politicians, given a job by Andrew Breitbart and paraded around FOX News as some kind of hero. I’m certain that his defenders will be backtracking just as quickly as they apologized for wrongly demonizing ACORN.

With a mass three times larger than Earth’s, the newly discovered world has the muscle to hold atmosphere. Plus, it has the gift of time. Not only is its parent star especially long-lived, the planet is tidally locked to its sun – similar to how the moon keeps the same side pointed at Earth – so that half the world is in perpetual light and the other half in permanent darkness. As a result, temperatures are extremely stable and diverse.

—

Astronomers think they may have found an earth-like planet that could sustain life!

While that’s all well and good, I love the idea of a planet that is half daylight, half darkness all the time. I’m having a hard time even getting my brain wrapped around what life might have evolved to look like in such a scenario.