jackyan reblogged
oxfordcommaforever
Hooray for oligarchy.
I’m pretty sure there’s no saving the empire at this point…
Opaque This, surely, is the exact opposite to what should be happening?
I don’t really understand commentators who say it’s vital not to normalise any of Trump’s actions. They have been normalised for eight years by Barack Obama while many of the same people looked the other way. Banks and corporations writing their own legislation; war by executive order; mass deportations; kill lists: it’s all now as normal and American as earthquakes caused by fracked gases being ignited by burning abortion clinics. Of course, there is a moral difference in whether such actions are performed by a Harvard-educated constitutional law professor or a gibbering moron, and the distinction goes in Trump’s favour. That’s not to say Trump won’t plumb profound new depths of awfulness, like the disbanding of the environmental protection agency set up by hippy, libtard snowflake Richard Nixon.
Frankie Boyle, in The Guardian
We know that not only Twitter, but Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other companies have been working closely with the NSA and other agencies on their various surveillance programs. And they get paid for their participation in these programs and they are probably looking at the other side of the ledger to say we need to stay on good terms with the people who make the policy, make the laws, call the shots, and show that we are in sync with this game about this Russian interference.
Former US diplomat Jim Jatras to Russia Today, after Twitter banned ads from RT, despite encouraging RT to buy ads with it in 2016
Promises, promises And this was March. It’s only worsened.
Leak of the year If you thought the Wikileaks cables were big, this dwarfs them.
By giving just 12 speeches to Wall Street banks, private equity firms, and other financial corporations, Clinton made $2,935,000 from 2013 to 2015 …
Dan Froomkin, in The Intercept
Another day at the Fairfax Press Have a look at the first paragraph in this Fairfax article about the influx or migrants possibly being the reason we are more corrupt. Then read the actual Deloitte report, where no such connection was made. Yellow-peril journalism once again. My blog post on this is here.
jackyan reblogged
Breaking news: The D.C. Appeals Court just killed Net Neutrality. This could be the end of the Internet as we know it. But it doesn’t have to be. Tell the FCC to restore Net Neutrality: http://bit.ly/1iOOjoe
raygender
they want to make the internet like tv. with channels and paying to get to specific websites and things. net neutrality = not doing that
This impacts every internet user. Please signal boost the hell out of this and sign the petition if you are American
I do not reblog things like this very often, but this affects me both personally and my business as a freelance artist.
In the economy here; cash is already strapped as it is. You bet your ass companies would suck the ever living life out of misc. art sites.
I don’t want it to ever come down to me choosing between groceries or purchasing a new tier package via comcast to be able to access tumblr or DeviantArt (let alone not guaranteeing I’ll even be seen by my customer base since they may not want to pay out their asses either). It doesn’t seem important to most, but I do 90% of my business online entirely.
Please sign up, fight for this and share it with your followers/friends/family and urge them to give them hell as well.
Not writing related, but this is incredibly important. While we pay for service via ISPs, the internet has been a relatively free space where everyone, no matter their income level, is able to connect, access a wealth of information, and express themselves. The Internet has become a major part of our culture as human beings and the notion that ISPs might be able to limit what sites I can access unless I pay them more is utterly sickening. A lot of us are cash strapped as is, and I’d rather not be limited even more by someone else’s greed. Net Neutrality is essential and I hope you guys will understand why it needs to remain.
-Morgan
P.S. Signal boost this if you’re able.
chakrabot
“ limit what sites I can access unless I pay them more”
limit what sites I can access unless I pay them more
limit what sites I can access unless I pay them more
limit what sites I can access unless I pay them more
limit what sites I can access unless I pay them more
DO YOU WANT THIS? NO?? CLICK THE LINK. REBLOG.
drtanner
As I understand this ruling, it means that businesses now have to pay extra to ISPs to have access to their websites through that ISP provided at a reasonable speed. If you don’t pay, users’ access to your website will be slowed to a crawl - so independent people and small businesses can forget about getting onto that high speed access tier.
This means that the American internet is going to be firmly under the control of those who have the most money. You’ll only get to see the content of those who can pay the ISPs to provide access at a reasonable speed. This means that you can expect to see skewed representation of just about everything, with those bigger businesses who can afford to pay ISPs a premium for access deciding what you can and cannot read, view and consume on the internet.
This is not something that we have in the UK. Our ISPs compete with each other to provide higher speeds, better services and lower prices, but because there’s a monopoly in the US of a few ISPs who provide services, they can afford to do this to you. You can’t go anywhere else, after all.
Everyone in the US needs to sign that petition, call their representatives, write angry letters and do whatever you can to tell your government that this ruling is Not Okay.
Maybe you guys are sick of this post but It’s really important to freelance artists and pretty much everyone who uses the internet, so here it is again. \o0o/
Net neutrality is important This is a dangerous precedent, and if you think it won’t involve us outside the US, think again. Never mind that we aren’t as corrupt (using questionable measures). Just look at the amount of greasing our government does, the fact that US cases are persuasive precedents for our courts, and the fact that our websites will be slowed down as well. So much for the level playing field where the great entrepreneurs and independents can have the same chance as the big boys.
They are formally listed as part of the defence industrial base since 2009. They have been engaged with the Prism system, where nearly all information collected by Google is available to the NSA. At the institutional level, Google is deeply involved in US foreign policy.
Julian Assange, to RT
In America our earning labels are tiny and hard to read… This made me laugh to see a pack being so honest and open about the risks of smoking it.
capteinwayfinder
*australian laughter*
Smoking kills I’m shocked that the US doesn’t have large warning labels. It’s well known Australia leads the way in deterring smoking with imagery and plain packaging. However, I thought most civilized countries had big warning labels because, well, smoking is bad for you, and it’s the only responsible thing for lawmakers to do.
I guess we now know where the tobacco lobby is strongest then. Of the corporations, for the corporations, by the corporations …
I believe the police actions are dangerous for journalism in New Zealand.
It matters to all people working in the media who could similarly have their property searched and seized to look for sources. People are less likely to help the media if the police act in this way.
The police want people to respect their role in society; they should in turn respect other people’s roles in society.
Nicky Hager, in The New Zealand Herald, after his property was seized by police
Where Does It Hurt? The 1970s Peter Sellers movie that no one remembers, taking a dig at the corporatist US health system.
Make sex tape. Launch Sears line. Land Vogue cover. #AmericanDream
Angela Gilltrap, on Facebook
Amid continued debate over whether or not Sochi is prepared to host the 2014 Olympics, which begins Thursday, reporters from around the world are starting to check into local hotels — to their apparent grief. Some journalists arriving in Sochi are describing appalling conditions in the housing there, where only six of nine media hotels are ready for guests. Hotels are still under construction. Water, if it’s running, isn’t drinkable. One German photographer told the AP over the weekend that his hotel still had stray dogs and construction workers wandering in and out of rooms.
indelibleimprint
Oh glob.
So these are the €40,000 million Olympics OK, most are funny and suggest that the reports of corruption are spot on, but the toilet paper one shows the journalist is not particularly well travelled.
Source: Washington Post
The news that should have us all worried is: the derivatives market contains $700trn of these debts yet to implode.
Global GDP stands at $69·4trn a year. This means that (primarily) Wall Street and the City of London have run up phantom paper debts of more than ten times of the annual earnings of the entire planet.
Kerry-Anne of I Acknowledge