The Sun family of newspapers have always been a joke. 60% advertisements, 15% “News”, 15% Sports, and 10% conservative apologetics (or histrionics, depending on the day). Throw in a daily dose of pathetic semi-nudity and you’ve got a newspaper aimed firmly at the lowest common denominator. It’s been a very long time since I willingly [...]
Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
Intolerable Idiocy: How The Edmonton Sun’s Love Of Propaganda Has Finally Caused Them To Declare War On You
Posted: February 16, 2012 in Culture, Media, PoliticsTags: Bill C-51, Edmonton Sun, Fascism, Propaganda, Tabloid, Tyranny
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A Copyright Quickie: Canada Is About To Pass Sopa’s Evil Little Brother. Politely.
Posted: January 26, 2012 in Culture, Media, PoliticsTags: Censorship, copyright, Media, Piracy, Revolution, SOPA, Users Rights
I’m a Canadian. We’re a quiet bunch; prone to enjoying hockey, drinking stronger beer than our friends south of the border, and lovers of fries smothered in cheese curds and gravy. We also, apparently, have an inferiority complex when it comes to being evil dirt bags, because we’ve decided to pass our very own version [...]
The Ethics Of Vigilantism: How Anonymous Is Like Batman, Israel (it’s thin but it’s there) And The American Revolution
Posted: January 22, 2012 in Culture, Politics, TechnologyTags: Anonymous, Batman, Censorship, Israel, Occupy, Revolution, revolutionary, SOPA, vigilante, vigilantism
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere. Thomas Jefferson [...]
Mega Upload Is Dead: A Quick Reminder That You Don’t Run Your Government Anymore
Posted: January 19, 2012 in Culture, Politics, Random Thoughts, TechnologyTags: America, Bankers, crime, Financial Crisis, Hana Amal, Hulu, Mega Upload, Ninjavideo, Occupy Wall St, PIPA, Sony, SOPA, Time Warner, Universal
First, read this. Then, if you have time, read the very long: http://dearthey.com/2010/07/29/government-assasinates-ninjas-to-catch-pirates-its-not-stealing-if-it-isnt-real/ which was my eulogy of sorts for Ninjavideo last year. I’ve been meaning to come back to this for a while. The very real consequence of internet piracy, as we’ve learned from Ninjavideo, and now Mega Upload, is that they’re not just going to [...]
SOPA V. Soapy: In 2012 Government and Big Business Will Understand How Powerless They Are In The Face Of Human Ingenuity
Posted: January 13, 2012 in Culture, TechnologyTags: BitTorrent, Censorship, Congress, GoDaddy, Kazaa, Napster, Netflix, Piracy, Soapy, SOPA
SOPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act. If you have a web browser open for most of the day, or you just happened to have badly misspelled soap in a Google search, you’ve come across SOPA. In short, it’s bad. Cauliflower bad or (if you’re a some kind of deviant who actually likes the flavor of cream [...]
Why? (And Don’t You Dare Say Freedom): An Open Letter To Anonymous And The 99%
Posted: October 8, 2011 in Culture, Politics, Random ThoughtsTags: Anonymous, Fawkesian Mask, Guy Fawkes, Occupy Wall Street, Protest, Revolution, The 99%
We don’t live in Camelot; that is abundantly clear. The sky is falling upon us as the fruits of forty years of financial idiocy ripen and an entire generation of would be oligarchs and imperialists burn the evidence of their culpability. People have begun to riot (as they tend to do right before starving) and governments [...]
On Greyhound, Guards and Gestapo: Abusing Power Isn’t Just For Cops Anymore
Posted: September 30, 2011 in Culture, Random ThoughtsTags: Abuse, Bus, Busses, Fascism, Gestapo, Greyhound, Guards, Power
First, let me get something out-of-the-way. I put the word “Gestapo” up in the title, and that kind of thing tends to make people cranky. Any comparison between what a couple of immature, power-mad security guards can get up to, and the evils perpetrated by that noxious stain on human history would be demented at [...]
Anticipating Evil: What Happens When Google Wins?
Posted: September 22, 2011 in Culture, Media, TechnologyTags: AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google Docs, Google+, Mallrats, Walled Garden
With great power comes great responsibility-Spiderman (Or Possibly Stan Lee) You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain-Harvey Dent Today, I evangelized for Google. I don’t approve, in general, of selling products for companies for free. I’ve made a career out of doing the opposite, in fact. But [...]
