Hero of the day: 8-year-old tells Michele Bachmann that his mom is gay and “doesn’t need fixing”.

On everyone’s desk was an inbox and an outbox, except they were actual boxes (or trays) containing paper equivalents of what you might find in your email box: interoffice mail (in those stringed envelopes), personal or departmentaly memos, maybe a funny cartoon someone photocopied and passed on, perhaps a party invitation.

Then, there would be your outbox, and that would contain the same type of stuff. A few times a day, someone from the mailroom would come by with a cart to deliver and pick up the stuff from your outbox and deliver things to your inbox.

—Interesting thread on what offices were like before email. [via Maciej ]

Gowalla, as a service, will be winding down at the end of January. We plan to provide an easy way to export your Passport data, your Stamp and Pin data (along with your legacy Item data), and your photos as well. Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla’s user data.

—So, at least there’s that.

Like all the cool kids, you’ve downloaded the newer, hipper, 2.0ier Path, right. Of course you have. It’s cool! That doodad circle thing! The annotated clock scrollbar widget! Rock out!

But you’ve probably also said to yourself “Self. This is cool and all but I already Tweetblast and Foursquelch, why do I need Path?” And maybe you, like me, are irked that Path doesn’t blast and squelch on your behalf. Seems obvious enough.

EXCEPT THAT IT DOES. You may have missed it because it’s so clever and so unobtrusive that one might say it “lacks discoverability” if one were the kind of half-clever douche who says such things in polite company.

See it? Down there in the bottom right. Look again. FINE gimme that I’ll just show you.

Nifty, right? So now when you check in to a place on Path, it’ll let Foursquare know for you. And if you haven’t signed in, it’ll ask you to first time and then remember for later. Of course, just because you can do all of this doesn’t mean that you should – as always, use your judgement and let’s not go blasting our every update everywhere just because we can.

I’m still trying to figure out if Path is gonna be all that I want it to be but this one feature made it a whole lot more useful for me. Maybe it will be for you as well. Let’s all hope and pray they don’t just get eaten by the Faceborg.

At this point, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pattern on privacy is clear. Launch new stuff that pushes the boundaries of what people consider comfortable. Apologize and assure users that they control their information, but rarely pull back entirely, and usually reintroduce similar features at a later date when people seem more ready for it.

—

Liz Gannes on the non-apology apologies of Mark Zuckerberg.

This constant pressure on evaporating user’s privacy, along with a real lack of moral leadership from the very top, is why I’ll never trust Zuckerberg or Facebook.

Look Ma, I’m a Tech Blog

Boom.

Adrian Holovaty is getting back to benevolently dictating Django development

This is such great news.

What is true is that for a VC’s business model to work, it’s necessary for you to give up your life in order for him to become richer.

Follow the fucking money. When a VC tells you what’s good for you, check your wallet, then count your fingers.

—

Jamie “JWZ” Zawinski calls Arrington out for disingenuously using Zawinski’s blog posts from 1994 as some sort of rallying cry about how to make it in Silicon Valley.

It’s a damn shame more people listen to self-aggrandizing idiots like Arrington than people who actually build things.

(Buzz has a smarter retort than mine and the Hacker News thread on Zawinski’s post is great.)

In any case like this that touches on the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives, there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth.

—Federal Judge and hero-of-the-day Jed S. Rakoff in declaring that Citigroup must stand trial and not be allowed to simply settle for allegedly defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Apparently, everyone I follow on twitter is annoyed that their inbox is filled with CyberMonday spam. Bummer! Here’s a fix if you’re using Gmail (I found this somewhere else years ago, I can’t recall where).

Create a new filter.

In the field for “has the words” copy and paste the following:

"added you" OR "is now following" OR "opt-out" OR unsubscribe
OR "viewing the newsletter" OR "privacy policy" OR enews 
OR "edit your preferences" OR "email notifications" 
OR "update profile" OR smartunsubscribe 
OR secure unsubscribe OR "manage your account"
OR "group-digests"

Click the “Next Step” button

Check the “Skip the Inbox” field

Check the “Apply the Label” field and give it a good label – I call mine “Bacn”

Save your filter.

As an added bonus, those dozens of email subscriptions that aren’t really all that important but you can’t bring yourself to unsubscribe from will be filtered away. Be sure to check it every once in a while.

It’s probably too late for this year’s CyberMonday but just leave it there and your inbox will suddenly be magically cleaner.