Brandt's Tumblr

"Wasserman says the Justice Department is saving its legal firepower to challenge restrictive voting laws passed by Republicans in half a dozen Southern states since 2010. The laws require proof of citizenship to register to vote, cut back on early voting, curtailed voter registration drives and required voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting a ballot. The department has already objected to South Carolina’s voter ID law, since blacks are more likely than whites to lack the necessary ID."

How the GOP Is Resegregating the South | The Nation. Sounds like the Justice Department is fighting the wrong battle: does it really matter whether minorities can vote if they’ve already been packed into a few majority-minority districts? Also, since most people see gerrymandering as bald-faced corruption, but public opinion also think it’s reasonable to require a government ID when voting, it turns out Justice is picking a more difficult political battle, and in an election year at that. WTF?

"The author mentions the rise of for-profit businesses increasingly running prisons in the U.S., but I don’t think he makes the point strongly enough. There is now a corporate interest in the U.S. lobbying for such things as mandatory minimum sentencing."

Schneier on Security: Prisons in the U.S.

"The style system matches rules by starting with the key selector, then moving to the left (looking for any ancestors in the rule’s selector). As long as the selector’s subtree continues to check out, the style system continues moving to the left until it either matches the rule, or abandons because of a mismatch."

Writing efficient CSS for use in the Mozilla UI - MDN. Ho-ly shit. I did not know this, and knowing it now makes me want to revisit every bit of CSS I’ve written in the last 10 years. It embarrasses me to post this, but I feel obliged to share for the sake of any other web devs who may not yet be aware of this fundamental issue.

"When I start reading, the form of the book quickly disappears. Just as I don’t notice the individual letters in each word, I stop noticing the layout, the font, the paper, the binding, and every other physical artifact because I’m focused on the writing."

Do you have the paperback or the hardcover? – Marco.org. I agree only insofar as the interface is rendered well enough for it to disappear and let you focus on the content. I cannot read ebooks comfortably on my Kindle Fire or Kindle for Mac, whereas reading on an e-Ink Kindle or Kindle on iOS I can ignore the medium and just read. Similarly, I have paper books I just couldn’t get into because the typesetting was so poor that it kept distracting me from the content.

And are of course there are some (rare) exceptions to Marco’s conclusion. For example, I don’t think reading House of Leaves on any current e-reader would be remotely the same as reading it on paper.

"In descending order, the most popular fonts from the Typekit library, based on the number of people who have marked them as a favorite."

Favorite fonts at Typekit. I was going to post this with a snarky remark about how it’s sure to be a great list of crappy fonts to avoid, but it turns out they’re mostly excellent. I guess Typekit users have discerning taste!

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According to a press release from the VSP, Trooper Paul Dean was assisting a vehicle that slid onto the median, when Gregory Stefurak, 54, of Rochester, stopped in the travel portion of the road to alert him of an accident to the south
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As soon as Stefurak stopped his 2004 Volkswagen the operator behind him, Kyle Skinner, 32, of Putney, was able to stop his Mini Cooper to avoid hitting the Volkswagen, but a 2006 Subaru, operated by Loriann Madden, 49, of Longmeadow, Mass., was not able to stop and struck the Mini Cooper pushing it into Stefurak’s Volkswagen.

A tractor trailer operated by Thomas Miller, 58, of Franklin, was able to swerve but struck Madden’s Subaru from the rear and side.

There were no injuries and the Mini Cooper and Subaru had to be removed by a wrecker. Investigation is pending but Stefurak may be issued a ticket for stopping in the roadway.

Police respond to multiple crashes Monday - Brattleboro Reformer. Wait, let me get this straight: the Subaru and tractor trailer were both driving too fast for the conditions, but the Volkswagen is the one who will be ticketed. WTF?!?

"Google has just announced its earnings for Q4 2011, reporting $10.58 billion in revenue — although that number doesn’t include traffic acquisition costs. When you factor those in, actual net revenue was $8.13 billion."

“Google Q4 revenue breaks $10 billion”. That sure sounds like Groupon-style accounting there.

"As contentious as it is to quote Obama these days, he got one thing right: “To win the future, we have to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world, tapping the creativity and imagination of our people.” It’s beyond baffling for the government to even consider a policy that thwarts the very creativity and imagination at the heart of true innovation — a policy designed to lose the future."

Congress Should Use the Internet - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com. Brilliant: “a policy designed to lose the future” sums it up nicely.