Cartoons: the NSA online

With recent news of the NSA spying on World of Warcraft and Secondlife, you'd think online gamers would be more upset.  Maybe they're too intent on gaming.  Then there's rule no.1:  Nobody is who they say they are online.  Getting to know other players may reveal a real person, but continually fighting MOBs doesn't reveal much.  There's some humor to be found in the whole situation, too.

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Drew Sheneman, USNews

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Pauly D, Memegenerator

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"Operation Spycraft," actiontrip.com

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By the way, a n00b is "A inexperienced and/or ignorant or unskilled person. Especially used in computer games."  And what about the result of gathering all this information?

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Patrick Chappatte, "Huge Data Collection By NSA," Cagle

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While I was looking for these cartoons, I came across the NSA's site for kids.  In its Google listing it advertises, "How to make your own secret codes, games and activities from the National Security Agency for America's future codemakers and codebreakers." Looks like they're recruiting people early.

-- Marge

DIY: Hipster traps

Appearing on city streets in New York and other major cities are art installations like the one pictured below.  They're simple to make, as you can see in this photo from Laughing Squid:
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Jeff Greenspan and Hunter Fine have been installing “Hipster Traps” around New York City which include sunglasses, a yellow bicycle chain, a Holga camera, a can of PBR and a pack of American Spirits as bait. Jeff is the same artist who came up with the idea for last Summer’s Improv Everywhere prank “The Tourist Lane”. Next up: Bridge & Tunnel Traps.

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I'm assuming that the trapping mechanism is disabled...?  You could use construction paper to simulate a saw-toothed trap. By the way, Laughing Squid is a "popular, award-winning blog featuring interesting items of art, culture, and technology" according to Wikipedia.

So, you ask, what is a hipster?  According to the most agreed-upon definition in the Urban Dictionary, 

Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter. 

There's much more information on this topic at the web page.  As of today at 11:30A AkDT the votes for this definition are 120121 up, 29574 down.

Here's a video for further identification:
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Artists do have fun -- and, apparently, so do hipsters.

-- Marge

Facepalm Friday

A side trip to Motifake.com the other day revealed a wealth of comedic material in the form of demotivational posters.  According to the Urban Dictionary to demotionalize is "The act of taking a hilarious, cynical or poignant phrase or sentence and putting it on a demotivational poster with a relevant picture".  The topic I searched on at Motifake was "facepalm."  Again I quote the Dictionary:

facepalm

The only logical answer to a stupid question or statement.

    Guy 1: dude, how do I get my Siege Tank into Siege-Mode?

    Guy 2: *facepalm*

Here are four posters on the topic of facepalm, and an additional one I liked a lot:

Facepalm posted by Bovee:

This one posted by the1stCOMMI3:

Fan4camping posted this facepalm:

And jam1077 posted this:

This one is, to me, priceless if off-topic.  It was posted by motifayk.

And that's it for today, folks.

-- Marge