I’ve been remiss on posting, but for a good reason: things are going a little better, my luck may have improved a tiny bit. There are two things I’m working on. One is a new job and in that vein, I had a promising interview today where I scored a near perfect mark on the skills test and nailed the back and forth It’s still customer service, but it’s for a large S & P 500 Internet company with a huge facility here in town and I would literally be getting in on the ground floor — which is still under constructions. The pay is a little better than what I’m getting where I’m at, enough that it would materially improve my life practically from the first paycheck received. The thing I liked best about it is the actual work environment. Going from where I am to this place would be like walking from a 1960s office complex into the year 2035. It’s beautiful and spacious, full gym on premises, room to grow, plenty of room to advance, and it’s a publicly traded with a great discounted employee stock plan and other, topnotch superb benefits.

The other project I’m working on is for Kickstarter. I can’t talk about this much, but I may have some work for anyone who is deft with creating YouTube videos. Leave a comment below with a good email and I’ll contact you. Note: this is not an intern job, it is not a learn as go deal, this is a one time lowish to moderately OK flat fee for a few hours work for a creative producer who can hit the ground running with editing, placing text and other advanced effects on the YouTube platform. Outside of that, more soon.

The con played on social conservatives is to make it look like conservative politicians are fighting tooth and nail to outlaw abortion and a bunch of other reproductive freedoms, without actually doing anything about it. Because outlawing it would be hugely unpopular and, more importantly to the scam, take it off the table as an issue to marry the real policies such as tax cuts and deregulation to. You can see why the 20 week deal is suddenly so popular in many states now.

You remember this post, where I lamented about why a woman would date a guy who meticulously destroyed her life? I talked to her this week. She finally got the guy out of her life, but it wasn’t easy. [Read more…]

Update — Guys I’m having all kinds of fits with WP and the edit screen all of the sudden. I don’t even know if you can see this update, I can’t — DS

Carl Sagan was fond of saying gold is only made in supernova exploisons. An elegant and relevant way to bring the beauty of cosmology fown to earth. But some Harvard scientists are right, earth’s gold came from a cataclysm rarer than supernova, and every bit as violent if not more so: [Read more…]

I’ll update it when the verdict comes in, reportedly any second now. I bet I won’t have to change this part though: people are going to go bananas over the verdict no matter what it is. They will spin implausible arguments involving unlikely conspiracies …

Update 9 PM Central: ********************************* Not Guilty ******************************

A friend of mine here in Austin was worried about me, and kind enough to donate some video games still in the box and game codes fresh off the press for me to offer you at any reasonable price. I honestly don’t care if you get it for half or less of what the item would cost in a store. If anyone’s interested, email me using the darksydothemoon -at- A and O and L, dot Com, put “games” in the subject line and include your FTB user name, and I’ll tell you exactly what all I have. If you end up buying it and for some reason it doesn’t work or you’re not happy once you get it, and of course with the understanding I can see you’re a regular here at FtB — not someone who heard about this and showed up to scam me — you will get an immediate and full refund.

9:04 AM PT: The Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law allowing Federal and state governments to discriminate against legally married same-sex couples, is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has ruled. It’s a 5-4 ruling. Roberts and Scalia and dissent. Kennedy has written the ruling. The focus is equal protection.

9:03 AM PT: SCOTUSblog: “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.”

9:05 AM PT: Here’s the opinion.

9:06 AM PT: NBC’s Pete Williams suggests that DOMA ruling is a big enough ruling that it may take some time for the justices to read their opinions, which means the Prop. 8 ruling might take a little longer to be revealed.

9:08 AM PT:

NBC’s Pete Williams: “This was a very broad ruling…that can be used by proponents of same sex marriage to attack laws in other states”

— @igorvolsky

Via my colleague Jed Lewison at Daily Kos — The Supreme Court has struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. According to analysis from NBC’s Pete Williams, the court upheld the Section 5 notion of preclearance—requiring locales with history of racial discrimination to preclear any changes of their voting laws with the Department of Justice—but struck down the map identifying which areas must be subject to preclearance. According to Williams, this means Congress could, in theory, pass a law creating a new map of locales subject to preclearance. Assuming the Court approved the map, it would go into effect. On a practical level, however, it essentially means the end of preclearance because there’s virtually no chance of Congress agreeing on a new map. Therefore, given the current Congress, the effect of the ruling is to render Section 5 moot, although in theory at some point in the future it’s conceivable that a new map could be drawn that would revive Section 5.