A Poem about Facebook M, a feature where an AI learns from your conversations and makes suggestions for various actions for you

Facebook M
We are proud to say
is a new feature
Where an AI tells you what to say next
Where an AI will remember your appointments and übers
Where an AI will be your silent friend

You may ask
How does this work?
You may ask
Who is able to use this and how is Facebook rolling us out?
You may ask
Wait a minute, isn’t the logical conclusion of this a horrible dystopia where not even don’t we not talk to each other in real life, but we don’t even talk to each other in virtual spaces, where we can’t tell if we are talking to our friends or a machine, where the very thing that makes us human - our ability to connect with each other - becomes commandeered by –

Whoa Whoa Whoa
Of course not
friend
why would you think such a thing?

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Charging Bull, Fearless Girl

She’s a Fearless Girl
with a fearless heart of bronze
That ticks
more than it beats

She is even fearless
when she stands before
the Charging Bull
moneyed and regal
with the bearing of a king
The Bull charges
has always charged
onwards to some unknowable destination
carrying the weight of history
it cannot stop

Even though the bull is
stronger and faster
she is not afraid
For she is not alone
Pilgrims have come to her
priestesses and working women
rebels in long dresses
To lay their wreaths of iron upon her
until she is so heavy
no man or machine could budge her
This makes her strong

Tick
Tick
Tick
goes her bronze heart

Tick tick tick
go her thoughts
at a steady rhythm

She looks the bull in the eyes
and realizes
she does not know its name
she hopes in some far away way
that she is the immovable object
She feels this was something expected of her
Little...

The only poems that
I write are aimless stories
without a clear point

Comic Sans

We leak secrets out of our pores
carelessly
Dropping little pieces of our past
like extra change we have no place for
It winds up in junk drawers and under the furniture
In backpacks and purses and in corners until laundry day
Near copies of our memories in the heads of our friends and family
and strangers we will never see again
Now in the servers of Google and the NSA and Mark Zuckerberg’s desk
who knows where else

We are being watched, of course
Don’t look now
but Men with television sets for heads
and ties made of dried leaves
their big hands with clammy skin
have fingers prodding obsessively along massive, glowing keyboards
Each key houses a dvorak letter in comic sans font
They use the internet to read our thoughts
because they are unable to come up with a creative thought of their own.
For this reason they fear the future
and look only towards the past
(our past...

Dolores Park

It’s Loud here like a Where’s Waldo book on acid
I’m trying to find someone in particular but
instead I manage to find a bunch of other someones
who turn out to be just someones
Look, there is a pair of people practicing Judo!
Look, there is a couple tossing a football back and forth!
Look, there is a dog! He is meeting all the friendly people!
There is a visual smorgasbord of summer colors
Impacting my eyes like
a pie impacting a face
Scan Scan Scan where is my friend
Dolores Park is not a meeting place
it is an ocean of attractive San Franciscans
(all San Franciscans are attractive)
But to find a particular group is impossible
Like picking out a particular drop of water
from a swimming pool with a pair of tweezers
A task so daunting
It doesn’t even make sense
So many people setting up tents
Barbecue and ring toss and bean bags
Which in Ohio they call Cornhole
Look...

I’ve been putting this off. I had a bunch of goals that I posted publicly; of course, after a year, it’s only right I say how it went. Here goes.

I will admit that I am a bit apprehensive about this; thing did not go as well as I hoped. There are things I succeeded with, and things that I did not, and I find myself in a position of admitting that I failed to basically the entire world. But I think it is always better to look at the world for what it is, rather than how I wish it worked. I will however, give myself credit when credit is due.

As a reminder, these are the goals I set; we’ll be going through them one at a time.

• Keep Track of my Habits, and be serious about maintaining them
• Write 750 Words every day without a single failure
• Get a Job
• Continue to be frugal and track my money and spending.
• Write a novel of at least 50,000 words
• Get through my discrete mathematics book
• ...

Hey I’m Travis, and a friend referred me to a really great deal which I want to share with all of you.

Long story short: Coinbase, the world’s leading bitcoin company, recently raised $75 million in a major funding round. To celebrate, they’re offering anyone who refers a new user that buys $101 or more in bitcoin a whopping $75 referral bonus. You can read full details here.

This is one of largest referral bonuses ever offered, period. When you buy $101 in Bitcoin, Coinbase charges you a $1 transaction fee. In return, they pay out $75 to the referring user as a thank you. You could then even immediately cash out that $100 in bitcoin back to real US dollars if you wanted to – though we are personally huge fans of Coinbase and bitcoin, and recommend keeping that $100 in bitcoin. In any case, it doesn’t take a math genius to figure out this is a net positive transaction!

Normally...

You know how some movies try to be serious, and are so bad, they’re good? Normally So Bad It’s Good movies are serious drama driven or genre films that slide in comedy because the execution is so poor, the actors are too hammy, and so on. This is why it’s rare to get a so bad, it’s good comedy, because when comedies are bad, it’s not funny, and you can’t laugh at something being really not funny. Grandma’s Boy is a really weird film for me to watch, because it’s a stoner comedy that slides into drama, or at least it comes off as a weird character study, albeit certainly not on purpose.

Grandma’s Boy, for reference, is a story about a loser. He’s meant to be a loser - can’t make rent, is a video game tester, 35 and doesn’t have a girlfriend, etc, your typical movie loser. Anyway, his roommate spends all the rent money on hookers, the loser has no where to live but his grandma’s...

I marathoned Star Wars this weekend, probably for the first time since my childhood. I’ve always been a huge Star Wars nerd, and read a huge amount of the expanded universe books- including the ones that were actually good, and some that were not. I know various minutiae about the battle of Coruscant (the second one, post Return of the Jedi) and the political landscape of the galaxy at the time. Knight of the Old Republic 2 is such a great game that I haven’t been able to come up with a good enough blog post to talk about it yet. I love Star Wars.

Spoilers abound, of course, for the one guy who’s never scene it.

First off, we watched them in Machete Order. I would recommend reading through this if you haven’t, because I’m in full agreement that this is the best way to watch Star Wars, if only for the fact that if helps characterize Luke better in Episode Six. The parallels...

This weekend I saw Guardians of the Galaxy for the first time at friends house. I have to say, I really enjoyed the movie, and Marvel continues to do a really good job with their cinematic universe- what they are doing in film is very ambitious and I’m very excited to see how it all unfolds. Guardians of the Galaxy is no exception to this, it is a very fun space opera movie. The lasers are exciting, the heroes have a firm grasp on the power of friendship, and the green alien space babes are more than sexy enough. Rocket was great, he managed to be both adorable and kick-ass without straying into obnoxious and try hard territory. All and all, I felt it was a pretty good action movie and I’d enjoy watching it again.

Spoilers abound from this point on, of course.

There was however, a small detail that really bothered me, and kind of stretched my suspension of disbelief for the whole...