My Kerbal Space Program flag

IN VACUUM, AD NIHILUM

Federal Reserve Chair

Dear President Obama: Please appoint a Federal Reserve Chair who will take unemployment (i.e. the interest of workers) at least as seriously as inflation (i.e. the interest of banks with outstanding loans). The economy is still very crummy for a lot of people and the person in this position should have some sense of urgency about that.

I will be performing Dust Storm at Theatre Esprit Asia in Denver on May 30th and June 1st.

PlayHaven is hiring!

I'm half-posting this just because I'm afraid my blog will "expire" or something if I don't. But PlayHaven is hiring! I mainly post to Facebook now, so if you happen to be an Internal Monologue reader who isn't already my FB friend you should find me there. I like keeping this blog around because at some point I might wish to publish things to the world rather than just my FB community.

Finally, an Update to Storyteller Dice Roller!

And this blog! Apple has accepted my update to Storyteller Dice Roller, my little tabletop RPG utility app. Wow, the Blogger interface has changed a lot.

We're not supposed to talk about the guns

Digby:

So I understand from the twitter scolds that we are not supposed to talk about this mass murder except to share clinical details about what happened and express condolences to the victims. The shutting down any discussion of the social, cultural and political implications of yet another horrific act of deadly gun violence is becoming more and more successful after each event.

Amen. Let's stop pretending there's nothing we can do about this. I'd like to make gun control a politically respectable issue again. I think there should be a hell of a lot of red tape involved in owning a gun. I don't think the Second Amendment refers to individuals, but rather to a "well-regulated militia".

GREE International is hiring!

GREE International, is a mobile social gaming and platform company. We are trying to double in size in under 6 months. We have A LOT of money and 73 open positions. These include Programmers (Android, iOS, Javascript, Ruby on Rails, Unity3d), Build Engineers, Sales Engineers, QA Engineers, Network Engineers, Product Managers, System Administrators, 2D Artists, Web/Graphic Designers, UI/UX Designers, Marketers, Studio Directors, Copywriters, Lawyers, HR Generalists, Recruiters, Japanese Technical Translators, and people who do Customer and Community Management, Data Analysis, Business Operations (whatever that is), Corporate Development, Business Development, Business Intelligence, Public Relations, and management (Director and VP level) for most of those kinds of positions.

Must be able to relocate to Bay Area. There is a giant sucking sound of people being inhaled into the company. Apply here.

Starz and Netflix in a spat

I really hope Starz and Netflix work out their differences and come to an agreement. For their sake, more than mine. If people can't get their video legitimately, that will just bolster the illegal methods. Really, BitTorrent clients are not that hard to use (or so I've heard), and the more people figure that out, the worse it will be for people who produce and distribute video content and hope to charge money for doing so. Have they learned nothing from the music industry?

Yay! California joins the national popular vote for president movement

Internal Monologue has long been an advocate of this:

A national movement aimed at sidelining the Electoral College in presidential elections got a big boost Monday when Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation adding California to the list of states supporting the drive.

Brown's signature makes California the ninth state to sign on to the effort, which would hand the electoral votes of all participating states to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes nationwide. Currently, California's 55 electoral votes go to the person who wins the most votes in the state.

Note that this law only kicks in if states with a majority of the electoral college votes have a similar law.

The Electoral College is a national embarrassment and needs to be sidelined. It is a vestige of anti-democratic forces that have no legitimate place in today's polity. This is a great way to get around the EC without amending the Constitution. The latter would be very difficult to do, because states that are over-represented would be very reluctant to relinquish their unfair share of power.

The Electoral College is one of the political institutions that privileges rural, conservative interests over urban, progressive ones, because low-population states get proportionally more power in the EC than high power ones. If laws like this had been in effect in 2000, Al Gore would have defeated George Bush, regardless of how the small amount of contested votes in Florida were handled.

I do hope other states join us. It's good to hear some political good news for once!