Brandt's Tumblr

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The administration had told the justices that their analysis of Ms. Perich’s case should be essentially the same whether she had been employed by a church, a labor union, a social club or any other group with free-association rights under the First Amendment.

That position received withering criticism when the case was argued in October, and it was soundly rejected in Wednesday’s decision. “That result is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

Justices Recognize ‘Ministerial Exception’ to Job Bias Laws - NYTimes.com. What version of the First Amendment is Justice Roberts reading? Mine says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. It denies the very notion of special rights for religious organizations!

"At some time in Apple’s history it was decided to put the “bumps” on the D and K keys while some other computer companies use the F and J keys. With the release of the PowerBook G3 Series, Apple moved the bumps to the F and J keys."

Apple Keyboard Home Keys: Position of “Bumps”. Having learned typing on an Apple IIe, this one still gets me all the time. When I place my hands on the keyboard without looking, my right hand is almost always off by one key. And if I happen to be in vim in command mode, the results can be… disturbing.

"You can turn off the personalization, but in doing so you’ll also remove Google’s previous tailoring efforts, like using your search history to improve results."

Google’s ‘Search, plus Your World’ personalizes search results using Google. Finally an easy way to turn off search personalization!

"That membership will be important, as the company looks to make revenue and profits through advertising."

Instagram photo app for Android is under way. And this is why I never started using Instagram: it was free, so obviously ads were going to be added at some point. Count me out, I’ll stick with flickr pro.

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An actress acquaintance of mine—let’s call her Esmerelda—once said, “I can’t imagine being anything except an actress.” To which the retort was given, “You can’t be much of an actress then, can you?”

I was reminded of this exchange when someone said to me about Go, “I can’t imagine programming in a language that doesn’t have generics.” My retort, unspoken this time, was, “You can’t be much of a programmer, then, can you?”

Rob Pike

"Coates writes primarily on social and political issues, and utilizes a heavily-curated comment section: he sees his corner of the web as a dinner party, and if commenters aren’t on-topic or polite by his standards, they are asked to leave."

On conversation and moderation. Amen. Just as my right to swing my fist ends at your nose, your right to be a jackass on the Internet ends at my web page (or Facebook page, as it were).

"Every time you use an infographic from creditloan dot com, you’re helping to send some poor fool into the arms of a debt consolidation scheme that is quite likely to leave them worse off than they were when they were merely drowning in consumer debt."

Ending the Infographic Plague - The Atlantic

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Nowadays, a candidate must believe not just some but all of the following things: that abortion should be illegal in all cases; that gay marriage must be banned even in states that want it; that the 12m illegal immigrants […]

These fatwas explain the rum list of candidates

The right Republican - The Economist. LOL.