Remiel

How to Use Quicksilver to Post Tweets to Twitter in 2012

Quicksilver is, of course, sexy as hell. But after searching around a lot, I had to conclude there is no longer any good, published way to post tweets via Quicksilver. The original method stopped working when Twitter implemented OAuth.

On top of which, Quicksilver has always lacked a character counter, which is extremely annoying when you’re trying to compose a tweet.

This approach lets you quickly compose in QS, and then sends you to Twitter.com to check your character count and submit.

For me, it’s the best of both worlds.

1. Right-click this link and copy the address.

   (Remove or replace the “related=etc” bit if you like.)

   The “text=***” part is where the magic happens. Quicksilver treats the asterisks as a placeholder for a search query. We’re not actually searching, of course, but the important thing is: it works.

2. Invoke Quicksilver. Press ⌘, (CMD+comma) to bring up Preferences.

3. Click Plug-ins > All Plug-ins, and locate “Web Search Module”. Make sure it’s checked.

4. Click Triggers.

5. Click the + and choose HotKey.

6. Paste.

7. Tab down to the Action field and make sure it says “Search For…” If it doesn’t, press the right arrow key and locate that Action.

8. Tab down to the Target field and delete any text there.

9. Save.

10. Select your new Trigger, and click the “i” in the lower right. Under Settings, click the “Hot Key” field, and choose a key combination. Personally, I use CTRL+OPTION+COMMAND+T.

    It’s a global hotkey, so you don’t want it conflicting with other apps’ hotkeys. Also, you can use this same technique to add all kinds of search engines (e.g. CTRL+OPTION+COMMAND+I to search IMDb).

11. Use your new hotkey. You should instantly find yourself in Quicksilver’s Target field, without having to perform any additional steps.

12. Type or paste your tweet. Hashtags, URLs and anything else should work fine. Hit Enter, and your default browser will pop up Twitter.com’s “Post a Tweet” page, with your tweet already there in the “What’s happening?” field. (You may have to log in.)

It’s not quite as snappy as the old approach, but it has the benefit of the character counter, and it remains far more convenient than navigating to Twitter.com and composing from there.

Nice Guys Finish Spiteful

The “Good Guy” Myth:

Stop thinking that what people so loathingly refer to as the “friendzone” is some sort of purgatory women put “nice guys” into.  My friendship is not a crappy consolation prize that you’re left with if I deny you a sexual relationship– and my body is not your reward for good behavior.  Thinking that simply being a “good guy,” whatever that may mean, entitles you to unlimited sex with the girl of your choice shows that you don’t truly believe women should be in control of, and have full ownership of, our own bodies; instead, it shows you think we should use them like doggy treats whenever you do the human equivalent of a jumping trick.  If you treat us as humans, that’s fantastic, but we do not owe you for it.

— Develle Dish

Solitary Confinement Is Torture

Solitary confinement is torture.

First, an extreme case of an accidental, 4-day solitary confinement without water.

AP News via Gruber:

[As] the days dragged on, the terrifying realization set in that he was trapped. He had been forgotten in a 5-by-10-foot windowless room, hearing only the muffled sounds of voices and toilets flushing in the Drug Enforcement Administration facility in San Diego.

On the third day, he began to hallucinate. He urinated on a metal bench to be able to drink his urine. He stacked a blanket, his pants and shoes on the bench and tried to reach an overhead fire sprinkler, futilely swatting at it with his cuffed hands to set it off.

Then, the engineering student says he gave up and accepted death. He bit into his eyeglasses to break them. He says he used a shard of glass to carve “Sorry Mom” onto his arm so he could leave something for her.

Let’s concede right away this man’s experience was far worse than that of a “typical” solitary prisoner, who wouldn’t normally be denied things like water, food, toilet access, and certainty of release. (I mean, you know, unless you’re a “terror suspect”. Those guys hate puppies and eat babies!)

But ask yourself: would you rather spend 30 days in solitary or be whipped a dozen times? My bet is even if you think you prefer solitary, you’d change your mind after experiencing them both, and being able to compare: Wikipedia | Solitary Confinement: Criticism

Ironically, whipping prisoners is considered inhumane, while solitary confinement is tolerated as if it were just “grown-up time out”.

I think our bias stems from the vivid imagery. When we imagine being whipped, we imagine immense pain, streaks of blood, and screams of agony. We partly experience it ourselves. When we imagine solitary confinement, we see a person, alone in a quiet cell, waiting for release. For most of us, “intense loneliness” is the nearest related thing in our empathy portfolio. If imagining a whipping is like smelling strawberries without eating them, then imagining sustained, solitary confinement is like smelling a strawberry plant that won’t bear fruit for another month.

Since our imagination is better at conjuring up a brief experience of agony than it is at emulating the hour-by-hour, mounting horror of isolation, we choose to “spare” our prisoners the cruelty of the whip, so we can put them through a quiet hell that lets us sleep better.

An Honest, Actual Exchange from last week’s Parent-Teacher Conferences:

phylhrmnix:

PARENT: So, has [the show] The Big Bang Theory increased awareness of science and scientists?

ME (too exhausted to self-censor): …really, only in the sense that The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air increased awareness of what it was like to be Black.