It's the Fourth.

Americans, celebrate!

But please don't drink and drive.

Anyone with a computer and access to the internet can now post on the internet. The most frustrating thing is that there is definite way to distinguish between users, and it's difficult to believe anything you read because you're unsure of the source.

As Steve Jobs said in the Apple G8 Summit, "I don't want to see this country descend into a nation of bloggers." What he was referring to what that he didn't want people to get their news from un-regulated sources like social media.

- davidmiya

You believe in regulation of the news?

If the news is regulated, what's to say that you won't simply get the party line on things? China has news regulation, and the vast majority of its people have yet to understand what happened at Tienanmen Square. North Korea has news regulation, and the official state line is that Kim Jong Il is so sublime, he does not excrete waste.

Believe me, I have no interest in, say, textbooks on chemistry or physics written by non-experts. But the news? The news is simply what is happening. It may quote or consult experts, but the news has always been conveyed by people who aren't experts at anything except communicating.

What created the present state - what caused people to turn away from traditional news sources and towards bloggers and social media - was a failure on the part of that traditional media. Regulation isn't the solution to this issue. Regulated, carefully controlled news is what caused this issue in the first place. People in the US wanted to hear about major events in non-English-speaking countries that the syndicated news did not cover. They wanted to get up-to-the-minute updates on matters like the Iranian revolution. They didn't want to wait. Regulated news failed to provide a level of service that decentralized, unregulated news was able to provide.

It's not all glory. Unregulated news carries rumors. Unregulated news often features terrible writing. But at the end of the day, the highest journalistic principle is independence. Freedom to pursue the truth is essential to getting a true story, and regulation is antithetical to that freedom.

Will this end in tears?

I will live my life according to the tips provided by the June/July issue of Seventeen magazine and Seventeen.com from today [May 21] until the weekend of my high school graduation (June 21). Conveniently, this project will also span the Most Important and Magical Night of My Teenage Life (i.e. senior prom). I will use this blog to record my findings, and to provide commentary on teenage life/the adolescent experience.

- Jamie Keiles

I don't see any other way it could end.

You're going to have to try and find a way of not expressing every feeling that you have, every moment that you have them.
- Sally Albright

Amateurprose makes a good point - our social filters often force us to act in certain ways. However, I'm not sure that everyone who read the article understands something very basic: what is referred to as "you" includes not only your desires, but your decision making.

The desire to say inappropriate things, to ignore arbitrary rules - which social conventions often are - and to not have to mediate between your basic urges and what is acceptable is a powerful one. However, you are more than a set of urges. Unless you have had a lobotomy or stroke and parts of your brain no longer function, you have a set of equipment for telling you when something is a really bad idea.

In most cases, you have choices about what to do. Even if you can't help certain things, do those things matter more, or do the choices you can make matter more? Is an artist with a nervous tic simply his nervous tic? If so, then why do we address him by convention as an artist, and then add "with a nervous tic" to indicate how he differs? Wouldn't it better to say that what he chooses to do - his art - expresses his true self far more accurately?

Society is largely BS. I'm not so ready to say that being yourself is BS.

I am a feminist, and I define myself: be yourself, because if you can get away with it, that is the ultimate feminist act.
- Liz Phair

[21:20] F*: anime or politics or natural disasters?
[21:21] moritheil: Anime and politics. Which is a natural disaster.

Girl to guy: Are you drunk yet?
Guy: No.
Girl: Well, hurry up and get drunk so you can take advantage of me and my friends!

--Columbia University
via Overheard in New York, Jun 8, 2010

While looking through profile pics in my friends list today, I realized that there are a shitload of Asian chicks on here - by which I mean I have a poor grasp of who is actually on my friends list, I think women in the plural should be referred to using the measure word for feces, and I still cling to the quaint illusion that most peoples' profile pictures are actually of themselves.

I realized - oh no! I didn't collect them all! Life is incomplete because I cannot think of any meaningful measure of its quality aside from trying to have sexual encounters with women as if they were consumer products and as if all women of one heritage were the same.

Quick, tell me meaningless lies to reassure me that I'm not missing out on anything, thereby further insulting a vast swathe of the population! Do this because it is absolutely meaningful and reasonable for someone to have a checklist of ethnicities to have sex with, as opposed to having sex with individual people.

N.B.: Since there will invariably be someone who doesn't get it - this isn't a jab at Vanedave's post (which was meant in jest) as much as the general absurdity of saying 'I like asian/white/black/latino/whatever chicks.'

"Accidental" nude pics are the new black.

Short thug: Nigga, stars come in all sizes. Just 'cause some are bigger don't mean they are closer.
Tall thug: Fuck it, they don't! The sun's the biggest star because that motherfucker's the closest. (other thugs murmur in agreement)
Short thug: What about the moon, then? It looks bigger than any of them bitches.
Tall thug: Because it's closer! Damn!
Short thug: But it ain't bigger than a motherfucking star!
Random thug: Ain't nobody know how big a star is, man.
Short thug, exasperated: How many of you niggas smoking your own shit? (they fall silent) Goddamn! Well, that explains a whole fucking lot!

--St. John's & Underhill
via Overheard in New York, Jun 13, 2010