Briathrail // Albert 2MNG

This was imported from my old Tumblr blog posts.

Reading the dailies sure are fun. I did this way back in college, maybe I’ll give it another shot.

• North Korea is accusing South Korea of releasing snakes across their border (The Guardian)
  
  Look, North Korea. I know that you have a not-so-good history with your southern brothers, and I’m sure them continually bombarding you guys with cheesy music and weird balloons with messages in them ain’t close to fun, even if they have some quite valid reasons for doing so, especially with your rulers acting like fat entitled dicks. Well, yeah, he’s fat. Not even a Seth Rogen movie could make your country’s ruler any more likable than Borat’s producer Azamat.
  
  But snakes? Telling your military that South Korea’s version of MI6 has sent an “unreasonable” amount of snakes to sneak in Ryanggang, purportedly “as part of a ‘cunning scheme’ to challenge our unity”, is surely up on the list of “Ridiculous Things To Tell Your People”, with such lines as “Turkey military coup caused by Brexit”, “I can cure AIDS with green paste and bananas”, and “Donald Trump can help us make it a reality”. Snakes are quite known to NGAF about who’s handling it as long as they get fed – go ask Stone Cold.
  
  If these were some re-engineered snakes with the SoKor flag on their skin and has venom that, when bit, will make your citizens jump over the DMZ, I’d have no problem with your stupid statements, NoKor. But these are snakes, quite natural in some humid, forest-y areas. Apparently, given the tag “unreasonable” on your found amount of snakes, I assume there were snakes before, juuuuuust not that many as you would comfortable with. Well, maybe the snakes had played some Marvin Gaye and did the nasty more times than a regular bunny would. Thankfully, NoKor’s army still had their bullshit meters calibrated.
  
  “But not all soldiers are convinced of the plot. ‘Some grumble about the nature of the state’s claims. They point out that not even a three-year-old would believe the South would attack us with snakes over [anti-regime] propaganda leaflets or CDs,‘ said the source.“ – The Guardian
  
  Nice try, Kim Jong-Un. Maybe next time.
  
  
• The owner of ‘ClintonKaine.com’ bought it back in 2011 (Newser)
  
  To be fair, the dude also squatted on other potential Hillary bets, like ClintonBiden.com (more unlikely) and ClintonBooker.com (as likely as Sean Hannity endorsing Hillary). And he’s quite a savvy seller – he plans to contact both the Clinton and Trump camps about buying his domain for $90,000 – considering he bought it in 2011 for a measly $8, that markup puts him on equal footing with Whole Foods. I sure hope Hillary snaps it up quickly – we all know what Donald Trump does to rivals and their unclaimed domain names.
  
  
• Verizon Buys Yahoo For $4.8 Billion In Cash, Touting Gains In Mobile (NPR)
  
  Yahoo’s a nostalgic part of my high school experience. I remember back in my junior year in 2002, when the “internets” as they called it back then, was “online” at my school’s IT Lab. The first website I ever visited was Yahoo’s, although it’s because the admins chose it as the default page.
  
  The content wasn’t important as much as the other bells and whistles that came with it – there’s email (which I keep to this very day, albeit it has more spam) and there’s GeoCities, which allowed me to make my first web page full of Javascript-rendered fireworks, timepieces, and wiggly lines that follow my cursor, with my name on the page and a few other stuff for good measure.
  
  But back then, “Yahoo!” was a big internet name. Maybe on the same name recognition level as the no-Jobs Apple, simple Google and Windows 95 Microsoft in the late 90′s. But as the years went by, Yahoo never went anywhere meaningful, it just stayed there and never did anything that could expand it, content to just ride the ad money and chug along year after year. I mean, you just say Yahoo and you can’t say anything else much that can stick to it. You can say Google and you can stick “Android” to it. Yahoo’s search engine is touted to be the “third most popular in the United States”, which bestows to it the unfortunate honor of being “just below Bing” and “lightyears behind Google”.
  
  Now it ended up selling itself to Verizon while its valuation was still quite high. To be fair, Verizon also bought AOL. If Verizon tries to buy Ask.com and eBay too, they could have the 90′s Internets. Buuuut, maybe, we won’t see Yahoo fade away just yet.
  
  The acquisition is centered on Yahoo’s operating business; it doesn’t include all of Yahoo’s corporate assets — most notably, as the Verizon news release notes, it omits “Yahoo’s cash, its shares in Alibaba Group Holdings, its shares in Yahoo Japan, Yahoo’s convertible notes, certain minority investments, and Yahoo’s non-core patents. “Yahoo will hold on to those assets and form a new publicly traded investment company under a new name, according to the news release. – NPR
  
  Maybe just in a new name. Like, Yahoy? Yahu? “Yehoo!”? Or, something which the Southerners would like, “Yee-haw!”?
  
  Meanwhile, AngelFire is still around.
  
  
• Parents are naming their children after Pokemon Go characters (BBC)
  
  Poor, poor kids. Just because your parents are geeks with shamelessness on the same level of a Kardashian, doesn’t mean that you have to sit through childhood with a name that is on a popular fad. These Poke-fans just subjected their kids to a bad place most of us are familiar with, like being tormented by schoolmates with more regal-sounding names (”Hey Eevee, my name’s Charlene”), getting quizzical looks at the paperwork clerks when they’re grown up and looking for a job because their name sounds like “something familiar from a decade ago”, and feeling like a bad egg at a party because introductions to prospective clients end up punctuated by giggles and the phrase “I played that game decades ago too!”.
  
  There are just three simple rules on naming, and these Poke-parents should just take heed:
  
  1. Don’t name your kid after bad people
  Brazilians don’t know this rule yet, which resulted in a dude with the name of “Hitler Mussoline Domingues Pacheco”.
  
  2. Don’t name your kid after a bad pun or idea.
  Like naming your kid “Dangerous” or “Johndow”? Don’t.
  
  3. Don’t name your kid as a symbol or set of symbols.
  Don’t go be doing a Prince.
  
  4. Don’t name your kid after your obsessions, albeit with a thousand ”if”s.
  One notable clause is choosing a name that won’t inspire a lifetime of giggling and unnecessary nerd jokes.
  
  If you name your kid Pikachu or Snorlax, to f*cking hell with you and your stupid Pokedex. The same hell must be paid by parents of kids named Batman, Bruce Lee, Iron Man, and Wonder Woman. Unless you’re the dude named “Batman bin Suparman“, of which case go ahead with reusing the “Suparman” as it is a very common name among the Javanese, but lay off with the “Batman”.
  
  If you must, try to change/mask it with something that will soften the blow. Like if you’re a FFVII fan, naming your daughter “Aeris” is fine. Not everyone knows that Aerith’s name was transliterated as such by the SCEA for the game’s original English release. For Silver Surfer, maybe “Norrin” would suffice, nobody knows that much unless one of the kid’s future class teachers do cosplay at Comic-Con as a silver Oscar statue with a beach surfboard. Or for Superman, either “Clark” or “Kent” is OK, just not “Clark Kent” and your kid will forever be teased for his non-existent Superman powers.
  
  Another small if, is maybe if you’re a fan of anything non-graphical – like novels, old movies and other “aged” stuff that don’t have a relatively large following (like secondary Lord of the Rings characters, sitcoms lasting less than three seasons, shitty New Wave bands or Shakespeare), you’re free to go and name the name. No one would have a second “I know that” look at a kid’s name if he was named Blue Peter.
  
  Another small “if” applies in conjunction with Rule #1, the character in question should also not be a fictional bad man. If you name a kid “Victor von Doom” or “Chigurh”, you are setting up the kid for God-knows-what.
  
  But for now, pleeeease stop this crazy shit, Poke-fans with unfathomable super-active loins, and give your kids a nice hassle-free childhood. But, if you reeeeally have to let out a bad case of steam and name something after your favorite character, give it to your pet. Dogs don’t give a shit if you name them after Mike Tyson, as long as you give it kibbles and bellyrubs.