Jonathan Coulton 
2008-07-20 21:50:54 (ID 106)
There's this awesome singer/songwriter online. His name is, obviously, Jonathan Coulton, and he's great. Funny. He's got most of his songs free for listening on his own website jonathancoulton.com and some are free for download as well. My absolute favourites are, in a particular order:
1. Re: Your Brains
2. Code Monkey
3. Skullcrusher Mountain
4. I Feel Fantastic
5. Ikea
6. You Ruined Everything
7. That Spells DNA
8. Drive
All above can be found on his website. One of his creations though, "Still Alive" is not there, probably because he's not singing it himself. It's sung by Ellen McLain, and it's in the end credits of the game Portals. To put it on the above list, just give it position 0.5 because it's even better than Re: Your Brains.
Since I've been listening to these songs non-stop for two days I thought I'd share them with you. Now go listen! ^^
nilli
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Successful demonstration
2008-06-29 13:04:17 (ID 105)
On June 28th 2008 (yesterday) we had a demonstration in Gothenburg with more than 1,200 people protesting against the FRA law.
Without too much detail I want to let you know that the demonstration would not have been even close to what it was, if it weren't for Roze's organising. He's my personal hero right now.
Here's for those of you who weren't there, but still want to see what happened:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4_Q5sZpfXY
Video, 6:24, showing all the people on the move.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGglXTDyNUA
Video, 6:51, the speech of Max Andersson (Swedish).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lHos9waVQU
Video, 4:05, the speech of Josefine Malmgren (Swedish).
nilli
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Political activist
2008-06-24 23:19:55 (ID 104)
I think most of you know by now that I am strongly against the recently accepted surveillance bill, called by the regular people the "FRA law", FRA in short.
The bill - which is explained in English by The Local at http://www.thelocal.se/12370/ - is about monitoring every phone call, every email, every chat, every digital traffic passing the borders of Sweden. Due to technical reasons, pretty much all national traffic passes the borders, which means that everything will be monitored. And again, due to technical reasons, even traffic that has nothing to do with Sweden will quite often pass our borders and thus be monitored by our government.
I've been making flyers and me, my boyfriend and 10-15 people he's been able to get together have been putting these flyers on poles and walls in public places, daily ever since Friday. Trying to spread the word and make people realise this is actually happening and it's bad.
I had the most wonderful encounter today. As I left work I met up with my boyfriend and another friend, and we were about to walk from the tram to get our flyers onto poles in a new area. This random woman suddenly approached me and handed me my own flyer. We had our material hidden in bags at the time so she had no idea who we were, and the shock of seeing my own flyer in someone else's hand reaching for mine just made me say "thank you" and walk on. As she handed a flyer to my boyfriend he said with a smile "thank you, but we're handing those out as well", and then reality struck me and I explained to her that I was actually the one making the original PDF of what she's got in her hands.
It was an amazing encounter, and for half an hour we discussed the politics behind it all and it felt.. almost religious. Not quite like meeting Jesus (or Buddha or whatever name) himself, but at least like meeting another apostle. I was so happy to finally meet someone else actually doing something rather than just talking about it. When we explained to her of all that we've done this far she told us how much more ambitious she felt, and how she's going to keep on fighting much harder and much longer because of the inspiration we gave her. I admitted to her that seeing someone else being active was also an inspiration, or motivation, to me - especially the fact that she was twice our age and the first person over 30 I've actually seen give a damn about it. I regained some lost hope because of this meeting. It's not over yet. It's not too late. People do care.
We did reach a few frightening conclusions though.
1. None of us have a TV at home.
2. Everyone we've seen active is unemployed, besides me.
The conspiracy theories would say that making people work so many hours a day that all they want to do when they get home is watch TV is the most effective way of keeping the people away from their constitutional rights. It makes them not care. They'll let the government do almost any kind of stupid shit, as long as their TV shows still run. It makes me upset, angry, afraid and sad.
We exchanged phone numbers with this woman, and we told her to be at the big square tomorrow evening wearing black clothes and bringing a candle. Tomorrow evening at 9:21 PM it's been a week since they accepted the bill, and we're going to mourn the death of democracy, the death of integrity, the death of freedom of speech...
And four hours a day of spare time to spend on political activism is way too short. I've got no time at all to do all the things I need to do. What everyone needs to do. Why isn't anyone else doing anything at all?
nilli
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Him
2008-06-10 07:33:30 (ID 103)
We met online.
He's technically interested and has a lot to teach me.
He's got a strong sense of what's right and wrong.
He has a habit of pointing out grammar and spelling mistakes, and doesn't mind anyone correcting him back.
He has a way of making me happy, making me laugh.
He knows about my silly childish side and he finds it cute.
We both trust in the other one to be there in times of trouble.
His mere existence inspires my creativity like no other.
He likes licorice, and really enjoys to cook.
He doesn't smoke.
nilli
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Coke and mentos update
2008-05-24 22:38:34 (ID 102)
Sorry to say the sun disappeared and we didn't feel as enthusiastic about going outside anymore. Didn't continue our experiments today, but it might still happen another day since we've got the stuff just lying around now anyway. We'll just see about that I guess.
nilli
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