Even though I know intellectually that Tatiana Maslany plays all the roles that she does on Orphan Black, I can’t quite wrap my head around it when I see her on screen playing against herself. It just does not seem possible that it’s the same person.

I don’t even understand how someone can learn to move their eyes and their face so differently. In a hundred years, I could not train myself to do what she does.

That she makes it look so effortless, that it is in fact unnoticeable unless you consciously repeat to yourself as you’re watching the show, “They’re all the same woman. The same woman. The same woman,” demonstrates just how hard it must be.

My favorite moment from Episode 8, and one where Maslany particularly shines is when Allison is venting and gives this little speech:

Alison:  We’re all messed up, except you, Sarah.
Sarah:  I’m the biggest mess there is, Alison.
Alison:  No.  No, no, no, because you say, “Eff it.”  I tried to say, “Eff it” today and I blew up my whole life.  I just wanted to say, “Eff it,” “Eff you,” and I effed it.  I effed it all up.

Alison is wound so tight even when she tries not to be that it’s like she is going to explode at any moment. What a great character, because you both empathize with her and don’t like her very much. That takes skill beyond skill to pull off as an actor.

What Maslany does is art in motion. I’d hate to act on the other side of her. No matter my credentials, I’d feel like such a poseur.

The project that we are starting in 4-5 months is going to require me to eat a lot more. That will be a little hard to get used to now, I think. I’m accustomed to eating very little compared to most Americans.

Now when I observe an average American eat, the quantity of food they consume seems a bit grotesque to me.

Very roughly, it appears that I will have to eat an additional 1000 to 1400 calories a day to maintain the weight I am at right now.

That is nearly double what I eat per diem in my “regular” life.

Past evidence from trips to London and Vancouver where I walked a lot more (especially London) also support the above hypothesizing.

This is why I don’t really classify myself as a liberal.

I can’t even conceive of the mental self-deception and pusillanimousness necessary to write a piece of tripe like that.

I’m a firm believer that one cannot voluntarily make one’s self a slave, that no matter if one “consents” to oppression, that it is still oppression and should be treated as such.

Islam does not exist as a structure and practice that oppresses women? It takes some really fantastically stupid mental ju jitsu to get to the point of saying something like that. It reminds me of Margaret Thatcher claiming that “There is no such thing as society.”

One doesn’t need to be Muslim, Iranian or a woman to state unequivocally that a system that arrests a woman for showing her wrists is oppressive and horrifying.

The ridiculous extremes that many liberals go to avoid offending anyone, ever, boggles my mind.

I can never be part of any group of people that stands so weakly for so little.

It’s strangely difficult for people to understand that if you provide more money for something, the price rises – that is to say, if the money supply increases in a supply-constrained world, prices go up.

The number and ease of getting loans for college is directly responsible for the rise of tuition prices. This is where this lack of comprehension comes up the most often. More money for roughly the same product is one widely-accepted definer of inflation.

I don’t feel well today so this post isn’t perhaps as cogent as it could be, but when money (via credit or other means – all money is fungible, remember) floods a market where the product isn’t getting more abundant, or isn’t getting more abundant faster than the demand is rising, prices go up and up.

Eliminating college loans outright isn’t the answer. But just wanted to point out the should-be obvious fact that the more easy money we provide to students, the more colleges will charge if they are allowed to do so.

Remember the housing bubble? Yeah. Same thing.

If the average IQ were about 10 points higher, Facebook probably would not exist.

Think IQ is bunk? Fine, use whatever intelligence estimate suits you best. The point still stands.

Rule: If you have photos embedded in your page and they are clickable, they should be larger than what’s embedded in your page.

If they aren’t at least 30% larger, it’s not worth it to click on them.

And if they are smaller, being slapped with a trout should ensue immediately.

I don’t feel any need nor desire to carry a gun, but without a pocket knife I feel nearly naked. They are so useful and handy to have around.

Partially it’s because I’ve been carrying one since I was six, I think. Yeah, I grew up in North Florida, in a world that is now gone. Things were very different then.

Did this guy take some kind of dumbass pill or something?

Books, those bound paper documents, are part of an ecosystem, one that was perfect, and one that is dying, quickly.

The book business, perfect? The publishing industry is absolutely chock full of collusion, country-exclusive deals, rights issues, blockbuster focus and innumerable other problems. And books are very expensive. Only someone like Godin with a great deal of money would claim they are cheap.

Of course ebooks aren’t perfect. No system is perfect. And bookstores are indeed pretty cool places. But it’s not like public spaces have to disappear as books do — that is not a fait accompli. No. That is just a choice, like privatizing everything, or building Wal-Marts everywhere.

Apparently something I’ve speculated about is already occurring, as general purpose computing disappears.

The truth is, kids can’t use general purpose computers, and neither can most of the adults I know. There’s a narrow range of individuals whom, at school, I consider technically savvy. These are roughly the thirty to fifty year-olds that have owned a computer for much of their adult lives.

GP computers are the most powerful devices any human has ever been given. Most people barely use a small fraction of their power. Even me. That they will effectively disappear in my lifetime de jure or de facto is quite sad.

For a project we’re going to embark on soon, I have a lot of money in my checking account. Like, a real lot.

When you realize you can buy that absolutely gorgeous blue used Aston Martin V8 Vantage right down the street in straight cash, it’s a bit harder to resist.

Of course I am resisting. I want to do the project far more. I don’t even want an Aston Martin. Even if I were truly rich, I’d probably not buy one. But it’s so damn pretty.

It’s just so much harder to resist is all I am saying when you can show up with a briefcase full of hundreds, point to the car, fling the briefcase open and say “Gimme.”

Any illusions Americans have about living in a free society should now be completely destroyed.

They should’ve been already, but the revelations of late leave absolutely no room for doubt.

Agreed, completely:

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Why anyone – especially any business — would use a US company or software, I have no idea. Wish I didn’t have to myself.

The company I work for hosted their mail in Canada. That was much wiser than I thought at the time.

Anything that starts with “If you love Thomas Kinkade’s art…” gets a big NOPE and a close of the window from me right away. Nothing that comes after that can be any good.

Today, I am taking an image of my main machine that I can reload at will. I don’t plan to upgrade any software really in the future as it’s all getting worse and more difficult to use as it’s made idiot-friendly, metro-fied and all useful features taken away.

I don’t know how long this will last me. I am hoping I can get five years out of the browser (Firefox 22) before technology advances and I can no longer correctly view lots of web pages. The Windows 7 install itself given the history of XP should be ok for another 10 years or so.

In a way, this is sort of like the opposite of getting old. The senescent usually complain with great vitriol about the “simpler times” as the world gets too complicated for them.

Instead as the world is simplified I am not able to cope as I need the complex and powerful tools to undertake activities that interest me as well as for working.

Never could’ve imagined as I’ve watched software and hardware advance since the early ‘80s that we’d come to a point where software actually starts getting far worse and is less useful and capable.

In fact, some of the software released now is less capable due to its over-simplification and idiot-friendliness than applications I used in the mid-80s.

That is just unconscionable.

I just learned from this comment that in the latest Firefox alpha builds they are removing the ability altogether for users to even have a status bar and add-on bar. Not even an add-on will provide it I’ve determined from looking elsewhere.

Why is all software going the Gnome 3 route? I can’t understand it. Do the developers – who presumably are technically competent – actually want to use software so crappy? I can’t imagine why.

I hope I can get by on the current version of Firefox for the next 4-5 years. After that, I will probably just mostly stop making much use of the internet as it will have regressed so much.

I wish someone would fork Firefox and make it usable again, but I know that is unlikely.

Very good. So many people sing this so soullessly, and it just can’t be done that way.