We got slashdotted, so I expect the site to blow up. I’ll check back in a bit.
Open Thread
by John Cole| 54 Comments
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Open Thread
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PaulW
I think someone noticed your recent post about the rich getting richer/poor getting poorer/class warfare. Knew we were gonna get shot…
arguingwithsignposts
There have been like six-seven posts in the space of an hour. That alone should blow up the blog.
SiubhanDuinne
Educate me, please. What does that mean, “We got slashdotted”? Sounds painful.
Onkel Bob
Suibhan it’s a popular site for the technological literati and they posted this today: Toyota Sudden…
Balloon Juice go boom.
arguingwithsignposts
@SiubhanDuinne:
It’s a link on slashdot.org that will send thousands of technogeeks to your web site, thus overloading the servers. See also, Dugg. Also can result from an “instalanche” – a link from Instapundit, although I’m sure JC doesn’t get many of those these days.
R-Jud
You mean your terrific, Variety-style headline from yesterday got slashdotted.
Whatever. As long as /b/tards don’t show up here and provide examples of rule #34 starring Tunch, Lily, and John’s garden produce (not a euphemism), I’m good.
Comrade Mary
slashdot.org
(news for nerds) is an ancient yet thriving site with a huge amount of traffic. They have a story on the Toyota acceleration issue, with a link to John’s post on same with his awesome headline. Nice one, John!
“Slashdotting” refers to a site going tits-up after an influx of traffic from this site. So this comment may or may not make it out there, although commenting is fairly light so far and we may have a few minutes left.
Punchy
“slashdotted” sounds like the M.O. for an Indian serial killer.
Michael
@R-Jud:
Would that be done as a website behind a paywall, or would they provide it for free, like on youporn?
Peter J
It’s official. Sarah Palin is running for President in 2012:
EXCLUSIVE: Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston Are Engaged!
Redshirt
Beware the arrival of the technolibertarians! Hide your shared services!
Rosalita
@Peter J:
Oh FFS… more of those idiots?
Randy P
Huh. I’m not usually early to a thread. Is everybody on vacation today?
eemom
Does this mean the technogeeks are gonna come over and yell at us like the firebaggers and glennbots?
Xero
Oh dear, Sully is going to be so disappointed about the Mama Grizzly’s baby bear being engaged to the only person who knows the truth about Mama G.
Also, do we get to name the couple ala hollywood? Levistol? Brevi? LeBris?
Michael
@Peter J:
I bravely predict that before this relationship is over, somebody’s pickup truck will be keyed. My crystal ball also shows images of multiple hangup silent phone calls (some of them from the Wasilla Wingnut herself) and a screaming match in more than one front yard with empty Steel Reserve cans laying all around.
Xero
In other news, do the citizens of your state make lists?
With this, and Beck’s new “spy on these folks for me” clarion call, it won’t be long now.
Violet
@Peter J:
Yeah, pretty much knew that was coming. I wonder if it’s going to last though. It’s pretty early for them to be getting together if they’ve got to stay together through the whole campaign. Bristol sounds like she’s a handful. I wonder if she can stay faithful to Levi for the next year and a half or so while Sarah campaigns. If the relationship goes up in flames in the middle of the campaign, that’s not going to reflect well on “family values” Sarah.
Barry
That would explain the inability to load I experienced recently.
Redshirt
@Barry: That’s what she said.
Phyllis
@Redshirt: An Internet for you sir. Well done.
Chris Johnson
Balloon Juice would be good for what ails Slashdotters, and I speak as a Slashdot user who joined before it got swamped with glibertarians. (admittedly, since I’m #580 OMG MASSIVE EPEEN it has almost always been swamped by glibertarians.) I joined before CowboyNeal was a meme, because I heard about it on alt.sysadmin.recovery.
Slashdot is filled with a bunch of preconversion John Coles of the glibertarian persuasion, and could use a shake-up :) their big problem is not so much stupidity as tunnel vision and the desire to form a massive rand-like theory of how the world works, one that is generally oversimplified and immune from unintended consequences.
Steeplejack
@Redshirt:
Ha! Win.
fucen tarmal
@Peter J:
levi’s bristol creamed?
QuaintIrene
Just wanted to say- Happy Bastille Day, everybody!
Kristine
Jed Lewison over at GOS has a story about Louisianans who are being forced to give up their pets because of the economic impact of the spill. He provides a link to the Louisiana ASPCA, which is accepting donations to help owners keep their pets.
Peter J
@Violet:
Considering all the treasure the Queen Grifter has collected after quiting her job as governor, I think the “happy couple” has probably millions of reasons to stay faithfully together. I’m guessing their contract gives them the right to divorce without a penalty and pick up all bonuses if either Mrs Palin loses her 2012 bid or after the 2016 election.
matoko_chan
@Peter J:
Shes done after 2012 if she doesnt run and win.
its the biology.
In 2016 she will be post-menopausal, and there will be fewer of her base (old white people), and more of her anti-base(youth and minorities).
2012 is her only shot.
2016 is just a headfake.
Peter J
@matoko_chan:
That was my point, the extension to 2016 would only come in play if she would win in 2012. No chance she would pay out if the divorce happens before her reelection bid.
Kristine
I take your other points, but what has being post-menopausal got to do with whether or not she runs?
am
@Chris Johnson:
I started on slashdot 12 years ago (and probably haven’t posted in 5 years) and i’m in the 300,000’s.
/me is impressed by the 3 digit uid
Cain
@SiubhanDuinne:
slashdot was probably the first uber-popular website. If a story was published there the amount of web traffic it would generate for a site was so much that the site would completely stop working. The term was called ‘slashdotted’. It’s a marketing dream to be slashdotted. Since then I think webservers have become much better so they can actually handle the load of a million hits.
Considering that we did not get “wordpress error” we handled it fine.
slashdot is also full of mouthy libertarians. (considering a lot of them are engineers some rather grey beardy) Those guys can drive me nuts but they are relatively polite unlike us. :)
cain
Cain
@Chris Johnson:
Goddam it, #580?! I’m only 1856, and I was reading slashdot when it was a just a blog. Good times. The flame wars on that site were epic back in the day.
I hate CowboyNeal and that Russian joke meme. Bleah.
cain
Third Eye Open
Not that it’s really newsworthy, but it appears as though the Trikeforce has moved on to their new position: “If we don’t win in November, it’s time for Civil War 2.0
Does anyone else find the idea of one of these idiots in some tree-blind with a .308, a case of Bud, and some jerky, kind of amusing?
Michael D.
“slashdotted”??
Ohhhhh. You mean /.’ed
trollhattan
I’ve been wavering in the face of the vile rep. Steven King (R. Mental Ward) but now I find I must, uh, birtherize myself and disavow having been spawned in Iowa. From now on “I was born in a madrassa in Duluth.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012348812_billboard14.html
Sheesh.
amorphous
@trollhattan: The comedy of completely misunderstanding (intentionally?) that National Soshialism and Marxist Soshialism are equivalent in the way that a rose (a flower) and Rose (a woman… or dog) are is something I always laugh and cry at. And I love the “Democrat” “slam.” Run along children, the grownups have important work to do.
Brachiator
@Third Eye Open:
No. Not in the least.
ksmiami
“Occasionally, a story will link to a server causing a large surge of traffic, which can overwhelm some smaller or independent sites. This phenomenon is known as the “Slashdot effect”.” (WIkipedia)
I hope this is good news for Cole’s wallet, but if there are suddenly a bunch of angry wingnut posters here, I will have my pitchfork ready…
Fred Fnord
@Cain:
Wow. Slashdotters, relatively polite? Things must have changed a lot in the… eight years it’s been since I read it regularly.
I remember I kept trying to get my comments downrated into oblivion by being obnoxious to the libertarian types, but I always ended up with ‘5’ ratings, because the ones who would have rated me down felt obligated to respond instead.
—fred
Third Eye Open
@Brachiator: Yeah, it’s a bit of gallows-humor, but at this point, what else are you going to do? EE has a gig at CNN, and the GOP is positioned to re-take at least one of the legislative bodies. If you can’t stop the freight-train, at least stick around for the crash…
jake the snake
Not if I am in range.
slag
You’ve been slashdotted a few times, if memory serves. This is not a big f’ing deal. Nobody really reads that site anymore.
Third Eye Open
@jake the snake: How are they going to hit a moving target with all that Cheetos dust on their fingers?
Brachiator
@Third Eye Open:
The thing is, the GOP keeps protesting, “Oh no, we’re not stoking extremism and hysteria,” while some on the left are content to snark and mock the ignorant rubes falling for tea bagger nonsense instead of engaging them more directly. Meanwhile, a gaggle keeps upping the ante on fear and indignation. Most of these people are probably cowards, but I think that they would be happy if some unstable malcontents were stirred up by their rhetoric.
I am not yet ready to jump onto any alarmist bandwagon, but if someone had asked me right after the 2008 elections if I thought that birther nonsense and conservative racial resentment would continue to smolder to the degree it has, I’m not sure that I would have said, “Oh yeah, sure.”
The GOP ran out of ideas long ago. But I am a bit surprised at the degree to which they have decided to use fearmongering to sweep them back into power.
Indie Tarheel
@Third Eye Open:
Depends on whether or not me/mine are within the effective range of said .308.
Third Eye Open
@Brachiator: Spot On.
This, though, is crazy talk. I mean, who are you going to engage with? Bill Bennett? Lindsey Graham? They are no longer able to curry favor in their party, so who the hell is going to listen to them?
Brachiator
@Third Eye Open:
This is a good question. But when you have goofballs calling for either revolution or civil war if the next election doesn’t turn out the way they want, you have a potentially escalating problem.
demimondian
@am: Heh. I’m impressed, too. My UID is five digits long.
Third Eye Open
@Brachiator: Recognizing you have a problem, and finding a constitutional fix to that problem are two different things. We live in a post-fact world, where you can now argue that business-discrimination and torture are debatable points. Who do you bring this up to that has the ability to change minds in the Conservative movement?
Brachiator
@Third Eye Open:
OK. Perhaps I see your point. Maybe there is no one. Then I guess you are going to have to get ready for a fight, since the worst of the tea baggers seem to have no problem with chipping away at the Constitution on the state level, and perhaps trying to initiate a crisis on the federal level.
And they are so worked up now that even if the Democrats managed to get a veto-proof majority of both houses of Congress, making Republican objections irrelevant, the tea baggers would only get more outraged.
Third Eye Open
@Brachiator: The question that I have been asking myself for the last year is, “What happens if the Dems decide to go full-bore demagogue?”
I mean, seriously, over-the-top, hurricane force rhetoric. John Boehner is going to kick your grandmother out of her home, sell it to Goldman, and then use the money to infect children with HIV. I am sure an industrious intern, somewhere, could find the policy positions that show this to be true. What would the reaction be? Laughter? Anger? Apathy?
SiubhanDuinne
It’s late in the day now, but many thanks to everyone who answered my ignorant question about “slashdotting.” I guess I had heard or seen the term somewhere along the way, but didn’t know it was a verb.
Brachiator
@Third Eye Open:
I’m not sure that the Democrats have it in them. But even here, the tea baggers and their co-conspirators amp up the crazy so loudly that it’s hard to get a word in edgewise.