Nick Bilton says Facebook owes him money for using their site:

“I helped build this thing, too. Facebook laid the foundation of the house and put in the plumbing, but we put up the walls, picked out the furniture, painted and hung photos, and invited everyone over for dinner parties.”

I use Facebook, too, and they don’t owe me a thing. I get more than $50 out of the deal. The deal is Facebook offers me a service – a service I enjoy by connecting and interacting with people I’ve known or meet over great distances – at no monetary cost to me. All they ask is I get served ads – which I block anyway.

What happens when I stop using Facebook? Are they going go after me and say I owe them something because they built this framework?

What world does Bilton live in? Oh yeah… the same group of industries which can’t seem to adjust to the digital age and go after Google for linking to their sites and driving readers and page views their way.

I don’t know he’s just panhandling, has an entitlement issue, or if he doesn’t understand the value proposition here.

Wow. Cereal boxes have come a long way. Click the image or the source link for more including Trix, Lucky Charms, and Boo Berry.

The Magnus Stand for the iPad 2 seems like one of those things that is so simple and obvious, you wonder why it took almost a year (from the iPad 2 launch) to come out. If you have an iPad 2 and aren’t going to get an iPad 3, you might want to consider this dock if you’re in the market for one. I use the Compass from Twelve South for it’s portability but at home, the Magnus would be better – especially if you’re using the iPad as a TV or for FaceTime.

A list of the most unpossible and cromulent words made up on The Simpsons.

I voted for Kwyjibo.

We’re fat.

Click on the image or the jump to embiggen. Pun intended.

Yuck! But I guess that’s what you’d expect from a 170 year old from the future.

Gary Oldman is a badass in glasses. The link has other Oscar nominated movie posters that tell the truth.

Did you see that episode of The Simpsons where Bart get’s a credit card and buys a new dog, Laddie? In the end, a person with blindness takes in his old dog, Santa’s Little Helper, and Bart tries to get him back. With Laddie abandoned, he joins the police and finds pot in the guy’s pocket. He claims its medicinal. And like marihuana, shrooms might have medicinal properties.

Psilocybin, the chemical that causes the hallucinogenic effects, is chemically similar to tryptophan which is a chemical precursor to the neurotransmitter serotonin. (Thanks, Wikipedia!) Researchers noticed a reduction in blood flow to the brain after psilocybin was injected into ‘volunteers’ and given scan. With less blood going to the brain, it slows down. Because it slows down, doctors think it could be used to treat depression and other mood imbalances.

“Putting the brakes on this network could help to treat certain psychological conditions by opening the brain to new ways of thinking, researchers hope. Several studies have shown that psilocybin can change people’s attitudes for the better and may be useful for treating depression, a condition linked to too much activity in the default mode network.”

Reading around Wikipedia, I found out that psilocybin binds to some serotonin receptors in the brain which could be why it alters perception:

“Serotonin receptors are located in numerous parts of the brain, including the cerebral cortex, and are involved in a wide range of functions, including regulation of mood and motivation. The psychotomimetic (psychosis-mimicking) effects of psilocin can be blocked in a dose-dependent fashion by the 5-HT2A antagonist drugs ketanserin and risperidone. Although the 5-HT2A receptor is responsible for most of the effects of psilocin, various lines of evidence have shown that interactions with non-5-HT2A receptors also contribute to the subjective and behavioral effects of the drug. For example, psilocin indirectly increases the concentration of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the basal ganglia, and some psychomimetic symptoms of psilocin are reduced by haloperidol, an antagonist of dopamine receptor.”

Science is cool.

This is a long article and I only got to a few paragraphs (but I sent it to Instapaper to complete later). But after a quick read, I got a little upset at the reporting. I think others have said this before but I want to offer my thoughts on this article.

But I can sum it up as follows:

1. Start with heart wrenching story
2. Suggest Apple could have prevented everything
3. Talk to advocacy groups on how bad this is
4. Allege that Apple doesn’t care
5. Write lots of words on Apple’s Supplier Code of Conduct (which, you know, shows they care and are taking action)
6. Conveniently ignore they are the only ones doing this.
7. Go back to faulting Apple for the woes of the workers
8. Call out Apple for having high standards
9. More heart wrenching stories – have to tug those strings
10. More Apple faults for being secret
11. End with placing the ultimate blame on the consumers for loving iPhones and Apple for daring to make them

Classic “balanced reporting” to not seem biased but still skew a popular figure (Apple) in a light that creates controversy to get links. I almost didn’t want to link to the article.