This is my personal project to excavate from my mind what I am put on this earth to do. To learn what I love most about my life and close the gap on this journey to discover my greatest talent and passion.
My name is Rotten Mac (rottenowlsheep)and I write MyMindSpray.com mostly to keep my brain limber so I can stay sharp. I'm in my early 30's and feel I'm getting a really good grasp of who I am. I'm talking about experience and style. I'm old school shell toe adidas. I'm grandpas fisherman's hat. I'm a '65 Lincoln Continental w/suicide doors humming "Send Me Forget Me Nots" until noon then bumping the entire Mobb Deep Infamous album on the way home from work. I'm a dude like Lebowski but quote Tony Montana all day while eating beans and tortillas watching George Lopez. I'm a Photographer by trade with a pretty darn good eye for composition, and an excellent driver with a gifted intuition for technique and etiquette.
Despite admitting they used every dirty trick in the book (read my article here at http://bit.ly/60FUdB) Zynga, the no. 1 social gaming company on the web has raised $1.5 million dollars to help the relief effort in Haiti. How did they do it? By selling virtual social goods to more than 300,000 game players from 47 countries through their top four games (Mafia Wars, Fishville, Mafia Wars, Zynga Poker).
“We are extremely grateful to Zynga for this contribution,” said Nancy Roman, WFP’s director of communications. “Through their donations, Zynga players are helping us to bring urgently needed food assistance to people who have been plunged into hunger by this devastating earthquake. We started distributing food within 24 hours of the earthquake, and in the coming weeks, we aim to deliver weekly rations to 2 million people.”
“We are humbled by the response from our users and the speed with which they rallied from everywhere to help so many in Haiti,” said Zynga CEO Mark Pincus.
It’s great to see billion dollar private companies like Zynga make such huge contributions to help a people half a world away. I hope to see Mark Pincus and Zynga continue to raise money and donate to more charities and organizations in the United States. Maybe Zynga can help to bail out our week economy!!
Privacy tip: If you decide to stop playing a Zynga game, make sure to disable it still using your information. You can do that by going in to your Account > Privacy Settings in Facebook.
I stumbled on this movie over at http://frank151.com . It’s a different kind of documentary about street artists from all over the world doing big things in their realm. These artists are not your typical graffiti vandals yet they are exactly your typical graffiti vandals. I say vandals because society has not yet figured out how to deal with such amazing creativity like this in the world, so until we do, art like this will remain illegal.
(excerpt from Zynga forums) “Zynga (the company that develops Mafia Wars) does not give a rats a** after injecting a spyware cookie into the game. How can a company screw up your security for personal monetary gains!?”. Below are excerpts from a thread from Reddit where users discuss how they feel about Zynga’s code of ethic and business practices. (Direct link to thread here)
(User) i_hate_zynga- Zynga posted an update for Mafia Wars on Facebook. In order to enjoy the game, one will have to allow “third party cookies”. This data mining cookie is none other than Iesnare (http://mafiawars.wikia.com/wiki/Iesnare).
(User) motherfuckinganon- it is completely irresponsible for a representative of zynga to encourage users to enable 3rd party cookies. That this would be required is complete software engineering fail. Zynga as a whole is a decent company and has atleast attempted to get their shit together recently. It appears they lack the engineering aptitude to set cookies from the correct domain. (Reddit.com)
When confronted, the game developers try to justify their stance. Meanwhile people who have posted this specific issue on the official game forum find their posts were deleted and/or edited appropriately.
(User) Fernando_x A- spyware cookie is a cookie that crosses the line from being helpful (like remembering you between sessions) to being intrusive (like tracking your websurfing habits). Third party cookies like iesnare do that. Normally a cookie is only visible by the web that created it, but to spy they must be shared with third party webs. Enabling those cookies is a serious security risk. – There are many ways to make money in internet. There are also illegitimate ways.
(User) Fernando_x- Allowing third party cookies is a security (privacy) problem. Although most antispyware programs will consider them as a minor threat, will recomend to delete them. – Next time you wonder how do advertisers know you like sports, or online games, or dating… do remember that you are being watched.
(User) Fernando_x- Perhaps they are not using that cookie to track your internet movements, but “if you want to play our game, you must expose yourself to be spied by others” is a real problem.
(User) slipkid- Zynga as a whole is a decent company and has atleast attempted to get their shit together recently. Citation needed.
Rotten Mac’s 2¢
I like Zynga. And I play Farmville, Cafe World, Mafia Wars, Farkle, and a number of other Apps that make my Facebook life a lot easier. And While I see that Mark Pincus is a very smart and savvy business man, I sincerely disagree with his exploitation and admitted blatant lack of respect for his users privacy. Its sad to think that in this day and age, the year 2009, these terrible and immoral business practices are still going on.
Between 2007 and 2009, I packed my bags and embarked on a 26,909-mile journey throughout the heart of white America — some of the fastest-growing and whitest locales in our nation.
A prediction that made headlines across the United States ten years ago is fast becoming a reality: By 2042, whites will no longer be the American majority. A related, less reported trend is that as people of color, especially immigrant populations, increase in cities and suburbs, more and more whites are living in small towns and exurban areas that are predominately, even extremely, white.
Call these places White Meccas. Or White Wonderlands. Or Caucasian Arcadias. Or Blanched Bunker Communities. Or White Archipelagos.
I call them Whitopia.
My journey to unlock the mysteries of Whitopia took me from a three-day white separatist retreat with links to Aryan Nations (North Idaho) to the inner sanctum of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — and many points in between. To learn what makes the Whitopias tick, and why and how they are growing, I lived in three of them for more than three months apiece — in Utah, Idaho, and Georgia.
On this improbable journey, I show you what Whitopias are like and the urgent social and political implications of this startling phenomenon.
I know this isn’t breaking news but I think its pretty interesting. Apparently the person who shot this video just released it yesterday and sold it for $275,000.
