“For the past 10 years I’ve immersed myself in the details of one of the most famous events in American labor history, the Haymarket riot and trial of 1886. Along the way I’ve written two books and a couple of articles about the episode. In some circles that affords me a presumption of expertise on the subject. Not, however, on Wikipedia.”
The ‘Undue Weight’ of Truth on Wikipedia, by Timothy Messer-Kruse, The Chronicle Review, February 12, 2012
Geh…
“Me (Adrienne Jeffries): I’m looking for… like, whether this is a privacy issue?
“Mr. Moglen: I don’t understand what that means.
“The data is a privacy issue because we have an enormous ecological disaster created by badly-designed social media now being used by people to control and exploit human beings in all sorts of ways.
“That’s the consequence of social media structures which encourage people to share using centralized databases, and everything they share is held by someone who is no friend of theirs who also runs the servers and collects the logs which contain all the information about who accesses what, the consequences of which is that we are creating systems of comprehensive surveillance in which a billion people are involved and those people’s lives are being lived under a kind of scrutiny which no secret police service is the 20th century could ever have aspired to achieve. And all of that data is being collected and sold by people whose goal it is to make a profit selling the ability to control human beings by knowing more about themselves than they know. Okay? That’s true of all this information all the time everywhere. The thing you’re working on is simply one of 100,000 implications of that disaster.
“Me: Right.
“Mr. Moglen: Okay, so have you closed your Facebook account and stopped using Twitter?
“Me: Have… I?”
In Which Eben Moglen Like, Legit Yells at Me for Having Facebook, by Adrianne Jeffries, December 13, 2011
Brilliant! Don’t tangle with Dr. Moglen, just delete your FB and stop using Twitter. OR BE DAMNED.
And remember, you heard it at the Hackenblog first!
“Like many, I’ve been slowly rewatching Deep Space Nine ever since it popped up on Netflix. It’s been fascinating. On the one hand: Oh 90s! YOU WERE THE BEST! With your adorable WE ARE SO DARK plots that seem like Strawberry Shortcake Goes to Space by today’s standards. On the other, in many ways 2012 has already overtaken DS9 as The Future goes, barring, of course, space travel and replicators. Culturally, though, we’ve zoomed right past the 24th century by the second decade of the 21st.
“I’ve been struck particularly by two things missing from the DS9 universe–one unpredictable in the 1993-99 span of the series, and one predictable but unattractive from the creators’ standpoint.
“Nobody uses social media, and nobody wastes time.”
#shitsiskosays, by Cat Valentine, February 7, 2012
Oh my God… So if we continue on our present trajectory, I’ll be dead by the 24th Century.
“BELL, Calif. — When thieves broke into the high school music room here this week, they cut through the bolts on all the storage lockers and ripped two doors off their frames. But they didn’t touch the computer or the projector or even the trumpets.
“‘It was strictly a tuba raid,’ said Rolph Janssen, an assistant principal.”
‘Tuba Raids’ Plague Schools in California, by By Ian Lovett, New York Times, February 9, 2012
Tuba raids. Wow.
My favorite Brit blogger did:
“Some lucky bastard would have got one of the two most mature and devastating of Dickens’s novels – namely Little Dorrit and Bleak House. Each concerns itself with the corruption inherent in the material world, and the psychology of imprisonment and legal procrastination. Neither of them clocks in at under 800 pages. You wouldn’t have time to buy / squander / illegally rent a second home if you were too busy trying to find out what happened to Amy Dorrit and Arthur Clennam. Is it for the good of the nation that Dickmania is circulating among the cabinet? Will any of them actually read them? Probably not, although they may come in handy as reading ‘decoys’ on Chequers weekends when Cameron wants to avoid playing croquet with Sarkozy. Bleak House is often considered to be one of the greatest novels written in English, a view to which I concur (the scene where Guppy proposes to Esther Summerson is one of the funniest in English literature) and its opening pages are so splendid that they are enough to make any prospective writer baulk at the prospect of ever putting well-nibbled biro to paper. However, one of the strange aspects of the English is that no other literature seems to exist except that which is written in English.”
A right Charlie, by The London Bluebird, February 9, 2012
A belated happy birthday, Mr. Dickens.
Hmmmmmmmm… Which American novels would you give to which members of our government? I can’t think of a one. How sad.
“WHEN Facebook goes public later this year, Mark Zuckerberg plans to exercise stock options worth $5 billion of the $28 billion that his ownership stake will be worth. The $5 billion he will receive upon exercising those options will be treated as salary, and Mr. Zuckerberg will have a tax bill of more than $2 billion, quite possibly making him the largest taxpayer in history. He is expected to sell enough stock to pay his tax.
“But how much income tax will Mr. Zuckerberg pay on the rest of his stock that he won’t immediately sell? He need not pay any. Instead, he can simply use his stock as collateral to borrow against his tremendous wealth and avoid all tax. That’s what Lawrence J. Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, did. He reportedly borrowed more than a billion dollars against his Oracle shares and bought one of the most expensive yachts in the world.
“If Mr. Zuckerberg never sells his shares, he can avoid all income tax and then, on his death, pass on his shares to his heirs. When they sell them, they will be taxed only on any appreciation in value since his death.
“Consider the case of Steven P. Jobs. After rejoining Apple in 1997, Mr. Jobs never sold a single Apple share for the rest of his life, and therefore never paid a penny of tax on the over $2 billion of Apple stock he held at his death. Now his widow can sell those shares without paying any income tax on the appreciation before his death. She would have to pay taxes only on the increase in value from the time of his death to the time of the sale.”
The Zuckerberg Tax, by David S. Miller, NY Times, February 7, 2012
Hm.
Makes me feel better about mine.
“Even after he published, Prufrock and The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot continued to work his day job at a bank. The new volume of his letters reveals his financial anxieties and his unexpected attitude towards work and writing.”
A Peaceful, but Very Interesting Pursuit, by Lisa Levy, The Rumpus, January 31, 2012
Understanding the European Debt Crisis because it matters:
Punk Economics, Lesson 1, by David McWilliams
This will make you feel all puffed up and glad to be an American…for about five minutes.
(via, oh, I can’t remember, EconoSpeak, I think)
“You can make a difference. You can save a life. You can change the world.
“charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Over the past five years, charity: water has raised $50 million and funded 4,282 water projects.
“Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. 30,000 people die every week from unsafe water, and 90% of those deaths are under the age of five. With your support, we can make a difference.
“100% of the proceeds from each deck purchased at theory11 will go directly to charity: water. Join us. Support charity: water.
“These funds will be used to further develop and grow their organization, providing essential support for their operations worldwide. charity: water has already provided water to over 2,000,000 people in 19 countries. On average, each well built costs $5,000 and serves a community of up to 250 people.”
charity:water playing cards, theory11.com
And they are beautiful. Impress your card-playing friends with your good taste and charitable consciousness! I don’t have any card-playing friends, so I’ll just have to impress myself when I play Solitaire!
Although crime still pays better, or so I’m told.
“The graffiti artist who took Facebook stock instead of cash for painting the walls of the social network’s first headquarters made a smart bet. The shares owned by the artist, David Choe, are expected to be worth upward of $200 million when Facebook stock trades publicly later this year.”
From Founders to Decorators, Facebook Riches, By Nick Bilton and Evelyn M. Rusli, NY Times, February 1, 2012
Although not much better.
161.a-56 Life is uncertain.
161.a-56.26 Be prepared.
161.a-56.27 Always eat dessert first.
And I’m as pleased as I am shocked by this podcast:
“Jenny talks with Tom about how married women can better prepare themselves financially for a divorce. Some of the items she discusses are keeping individual checking accounts, knowing where the money is and being prepared to start a new job.”
Tom Dziubek talks to Jenny Kerr, founder of The Jenny Pincher, January 29, 2012
I mean, in a perfect world, no one would have to think about this stuff. But we don’t live in a perfect work, although that’s easy to forget sometimes. Or something. Yeah. Yikes.
Mayors for the Freedom to Marry (via)
Is your mayor on this list? Mine is! Oh, Antonio! You’re so wonderful…sometimes.
“Fucking SHRUG already.
“The suspense is killing us.
“We, the Ninety Nine Percent of all American citizens, who are now in OPEN REVOLT against what is no longer a democratic government answerable to the People, have been waiting for the so-called Productive Citizens, alleged Producers, much ballyhooed Wealth Creators and all around Engines of America to keep their word to pull up stakes and abandon ship like some captain off a luxury liner that he just ran ashore onto some oil-stained beach.
“Isn’t that the dream of Ayn Rand, The Martin Luther King of Selfishness? That those Americans who have triumphed, who have stradled Industry like Collosus, will find the lower classes no longer in awe of them, and will evacuate the world to live lives of splendor in some mountain fortress, or more likely some fucking Caribbean island within a jet ski’s ride of the Caymans?
“Book your tickets.”
Dear Atlas,, by Jason Youngbluth, January 22, 2012
My hero. Oh, please click the link. He did a marvelous illo for this, too. Heh heh heh.
Did you know postal rates go up again on 1/22? No? Neither did I until last Friday (grrrrr).
Renationalize the Post Office! No raises or bonuses for upper management until postal prices are halved! Bring back Sea Mail!
Seriously, the Post Office (with a lot of help from our stupid Congress) is putting itself out of business, destroying American small magazines, online sales, mail art, and really pissing me off. Enough already. If Congress is going to impose crazy-ass rules, then the our government should be responsible for the whole US postal thing. Like it was before Nixon privatized it.
Renationalize the Post Office! Renationalize the Post Office! Renationalize the Post Office! Renationalize the Post Office! Renationalize the Post Office! Renationalize the Post Office! etc. Gah!
“Although the company is based in Hong Kong and Dotcom lives in New Zealand, some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Virginia, and that was enough for U.S. prosecutors to act.”
~snip~
“The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends free speech and digital rights online, said in a statement that the arrests set ‘a terrifying precedent. If the United States can seize a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, what is next?’”
NZ police raid file-sharing site founder’s mansion, by Matthew Barakat and Nick Perry, AP, January 20, 2012
The take away from this for me is if you’re in the file transfer business, keep your servers off US territories. Wow, this could be some kind of economic boom for the Third World.
And the hackers go wild. Although, hacker dears, perhaps you should steer clear of the Dept of Justice and other US government websites. The DOJ is working for Hollywood and Mickey Mouse these days, so it’s their masters you should punish. That being the case, feel free to kick the entertainment industry’s cyber ass as much as you want. I can’t think of a group more worthy of an extended ass kicking.
“SOMETHING historic happened at the New York Philharmonic on the evening of Jan. 10, about an hour into Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. During the introspective, achingly beautiful fourth movement, an audience member’s cellphone loudly rang. And rang. And rang again. It was the kind of marimba riff we’ve all heard at some point on the street from a stranger’s phone.
“From my seat in Row L of the orchestra section, I could see from their body language the horrified discomfort of my fellow audience members. We all wondered whether and how the maestro Alan Gilbert would react. I noticed that some of the violinists were looking down to the seats in the front rows, trying to find the source of the noise and, by their glares, silence it.
“I closed my eyes, hoping the sounds of the orchestra would prevail over the obnoxious ringing. Suddenly, in my reverie, there was silence. The orchestra had stopped playing; Mr. Gilbert had halted the performance. He turned from his podium to the offender, who was seated in the front row, and said something to this effect:
“‘Are you going to turn it off? Will you do that?’
“There was some ‘discussion’ between the conductor and the cellphone owner — was the offender pleading his case? — but the dialogue went unheard.
“From the rear orchestra-level and the upper-tier seats of Avery Fisher Hall, shouts of outrage rained down on the hapless cellphone owner like discordant notes. Some people stood and demanded that he leave the hall. The audience was so enraged that I could have pictured them hauling him from his seat on to the stage, tying him to a stake, setting him alight and stoking the fires with the busted-up wood of cellos and violas — maybe even wheeling in one of the orchestra’s shiny Steinways for added pyrotechnics.”
Ringing Finally Ended, but There’s No Button to Stop Shame, NY Times, January 13, 2012
I would have died of shame if that had been my cell phone.
Contact your reps to just say no to SOPA and PIPA.
And here’s why and more why you’ll be glad you did!
Oh, and here’s another visual reminder about how bad SOPA and PIPA are (click on image for larger image and more images):
If this chart doesn’t make you see red, there’s something wrong with you:
“The following chart tells the story. It shows inflation-adjusted GDP per capita and median family income from 1947 (the earliest year for which the income data are available) to 2007. To facilitate comparison of the over-time trends, each is indexed to its 1973 level. Since the mid-to-late 1970s, growth of income at the median has been slow — very slow — relative to growth of the economy. The current decade, with no improvement at all in median income, is especially striking.”
Slow Income Growth for Middle America, Consider the Evidence, September 3, 2008 (I wish I’d seen this sooner)
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. America making more while the general population are making less? It is truly time to Occupy America because the current management really sucks. Yes, Wall Street, Banking, Insurance Industry, Reagan Administration, Social and Neo Conservatives, I’m looking at all of you. It’s time for the Looting of America to end.
Oh, and yay, it’s an election year, so plus ça change… I think I’ll send the Occupy-iers some swim googles. It won’t stop the pepper spraying, but it will protect their eyes a little.
(via the divine Dr. K)
Yes! Peter Tork and I wish you a very happy new year and all the best in 2012 and always.
“I’m a world-class nerd. But that doesn’t mean I understand the nuts and bolts of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an internet censorship bill on which the House Judiciary Commitee held hearings today.”
The Stop Online Piracy Act and You: A Primer, Gizmoto, December 15, 2011
And the heavy hitters supporting this disaster:
SOPA Supporters, Scribd, no idea what the date is, but Gizmodo, with contact links to these companies, linked to it on December 21, 2011.
Actually, I think contacting your Congresspeople is probably a better idea because the American Federation of Musicians, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Americans for Tax Reform, CBS, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Concerned Women for America, Coty, Inc., Disney Publishing Worldwide, Inc., Estée Lauder Companies, Go Daddy, HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, Marvel Entertainment, Minor League Baseball, Motion Picture Association of America, Revlon, Scholastic, Inc., Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Sony Music Entertainment, Time Warner, and all the many, far too MANY OTHERS ON THAT LIST do not care what you think.
Also, where the hell are Google and their six story building full of lawyers (h/t Laurel S) when you need them? Or all the other companies that make a living on the internet as we now know it? Like Facebook, Yahoo, and all the others?
ink&paper from Ben Proudfoot on Vimeo.
Commerce, Historical, Nostalgia, Social Role, Technology Paper and Press — How Vanishing Technologies Become More Precious, Scholarly Kitchen, December 30, 2011
I believe I’ll buy some paper there in January.
Geeze, either or, folks, either or.
Oh, and then there’s the question of paying decent taxes on ill-gotten gains and possibly doing some good in the world:
Kardashian Products Made In Sweatshops With Child Labor, Radar Online, December 21, 2011
And just in time for Christmas! K’mon Kardashians, be good people. Endorse the Millionaires’ Tax, stop making stuff in sweatshops, and fund a local charity like the Union Mission or some food banks, they always need money because not everyone is as fortunate and photogenic as you all are (more or less from the front). Oh! Why do I waste my breath?
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