Go home, world, you're drunk
Apr. 18th, 2013 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
panuruI'm trying to be on vacation here. World, what are you doing.
First, a public service announcement: be careful of emails that claim to be about the Boston bombing, as malware authors never miss an opportunity to exploit a tragedy. Gmail will probably filter it. Yahoo and Hotmail will probably not.
Second, for therapeutic purposes, here is my contempt list for the week:
4. Breathless, panicky media coverage that turns out to be worse than useless or outright libelous. Before we have a widespread (or at least regional) disaster, take some time to google "emergency radio station" for your state and county (or province or whatever for international readers). Most counties will have both an AM and a FM frequency that will broadcast updates and instructions from authorities who actually know what is going on. Trusting advice from CNN may get you or people you care about hurt or killed.
3. The dumbfuck municipal government of West, TX that allowed a fertilizer plant within 2000 feet of two schools, a hospital and a nursing home. Zoning board, you had one job. Literally one. This was your only job, to prevent things like this.
2. Basement assassins who think trying to poison the staffers of congressional representatives will have any effect whatsoever on the political process. You don't really think anyone who actually draws a paycheck touches the mail you send to Congress, right? That's all interns. Attacking them is not just bad, it's bad at being evil.
1. Bombers of high-priority public events. This will accomplish nothing. I predict Boston will respond and recover exactly the way Atlanta did after the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing: in 20 years, few people under 40 will remember that anything happened in Boston. Not that that kind of amnesia is a good thing. But you never, ever bet against people rebuilding community after a tragedy.
First, a public service announcement: be careful of emails that claim to be about the Boston bombing, as malware authors never miss an opportunity to exploit a tragedy. Gmail will probably filter it. Yahoo and Hotmail will probably not.
Second, for therapeutic purposes, here is my contempt list for the week:
4. Breathless, panicky media coverage that turns out to be worse than useless or outright libelous. Before we have a widespread (or at least regional) disaster, take some time to google "emergency radio station" for your state and county (or province or whatever for international readers). Most counties will have both an AM and a FM frequency that will broadcast updates and instructions from authorities who actually know what is going on. Trusting advice from CNN may get you or people you care about hurt or killed.
3. The dumbfuck municipal government of West, TX that allowed a fertilizer plant within 2000 feet of two schools, a hospital and a nursing home. Zoning board, you had one job. Literally one. This was your only job, to prevent things like this.
2. Basement assassins who think trying to poison the staffers of congressional representatives will have any effect whatsoever on the political process. You don't really think anyone who actually draws a paycheck touches the mail you send to Congress, right? That's all interns. Attacking them is not just bad, it's bad at being evil.
1. Bombers of high-priority public events. This will accomplish nothing. I predict Boston will respond and recover exactly the way Atlanta did after the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing: in 20 years, few people under 40 will remember that anything happened in Boston. Not that that kind of amnesia is a good thing. But you never, ever bet against people rebuilding community after a tragedy.
