Extract from a conversation:

I wonder if it [“I need to talk to you.”] is one of the earlier instances of the overall bastardization of “need,” since people have been saying that one for a while. Now the use of “need” as an auxiliary verb has metastasized in really ugly ways. Say “I need to” as a way of slipping out from under your ethical responsibility for what you intend to do. Say “you need to” as a passive aggressive avoidance of asserting your desire or giving a command. Such filthy talk. And typically what’s asserted has little to do with the world of true need and necessity.

When you think you want to go for a walk, you should go for a walk. I found myself thinking about my mother’s last couple of years today, how inaction and slow deterioration went from “not feeling like it” to “not being able to” for her. Then, of course, after that came that the more fundamental and permanent inability to go for anything at all…eventually the things you don’t do become the things you can’t do. So go do them.

Better that than sitting there as your bones get brittle and your nerves conspire against you.

“[SOPA is championed by] politicians who are proudly unfamiliar with how the internet works, but who are well familiar with favors from well-heeled copyright extremists.” – Consumer Electronics Association president Gary Shapiro. Via Boing Boing.