Tiffany Lee Brown (a.k.a. magdalen) is a writer and interdisciplinary artist in Portland. She edits PLAZM magazine and has been working like a crazy person on a great big blob of art-thing called The Easter Island Project for five years. The project's "Anakena" website launches this spring on magdalen.com, together with an installation at the Cooley Gallery's Caseworks series at Reed College in Portland. Email magdalen23 att gmail dot com if you'd like her to bug you when it launches. Hopefully April 28, 2012, when Ms. Brown will also be giving an artist's talk at Reed, having a proper reception, and celebrating her birthday.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Klaus Schulze pilots his Moog spaceship through the composition "For Barry Graves" live in 1977. The track can be found on "La Vie Electronique Vol. 5." The Klaus Schulze La Vie Electronique series, which started in 2009, are reissues of The Ultimate Edition, a CD box set from 2000 that contained a staggering 50 discs, which is arguably more epic synthesis than anyone should or could possibly endure. (via WFMU)
New Zealand media were raided by police last November just before the general election, after the incumbent centre-right Prime Minister John Key made a criminal complaint over a recording of a conversation in a cafe between him and far right-wing politician John Banks during a staged media event. The country's biggest broadcasters and newspaper were raided by police, who requested unpublished material and sources for interviews as well as the recording itself. Radio New Zealand covered the "Teapot Tapes" scandal and was raided too even though it didn't have a copy of the recording.
The recording has now leaked out onto the Internet. It reveals little of consequence, but police are continuing the investigation and are seeking witnesses who were in the cafe at the time. Police are also warning people that disclosing private conversations unlawfully intercepted can be punished by up to two years' in jail. PM Key is aware the recording is now online, but has told National Business Review that he won't seek to remove it from YouTube and other sites.
Meanwhile, Bradley Ambrose, the cameraman who recorded the conversation - accidentally he says - has been issued with a NZ$14,000 demand for legal costs by the NZ government. If convicted, he could be sent to prison for up to two years. Ambrose had given a copy of the recording to the New Zealand Herald who in turn asked Key for permission to publish it. Before this week's Internet leak, the recording has never been made public.
At Los Angeles International airport early this morning, TSA screeners mistook a woman's insulin pump for a gun. Screening and boarding at Terminal 4 were delayed as airport authorities searched for a woman they thought had a weapon. — Xeni
A worker checks in a special room where the Parma hams are hung to dry in Langhirano near Parma. Prosciutto di Parma can only be produced in a very restricted area of 29 sq km (11.2 sq mile) around the town of Parma in the region of Emilia Romagna, just north of Tuscany. Around 10 million hams are sold every year, of which about 2 million are exported, mainly to France, the United States and Germany, which each consume about 400,000 a year. (REUTERS, file photo from 2009)
[Video Link] Short video of Maus creator Art Spiegelman getting a hero's welcome in France, where a museum in Angouleme is exhibiting a retrospective of his work.
"This easy-to-use beauty and skincare product was developed by an ordinary housewife. Chikako Hirama was simply concerned about her own age and wanted an easy way to combat those telltale lines. Just try the yellow or pink Pupeko daily using such techniques as puffing out your cheeks or sucking them in while breathing through the mouthpiece. Then you can try it while keeping your head upright to give your neck and other muscles further exercise training."
RePress is a new WordPress plugin that turns any WordPress site into a proxy that can be used to circumvent national firewalls, including the systems used in The Netherlands, Italy, Finland and other countries where The Pirate Bay is blocked.
The plugin is developed by the hosting company Greenhost and allows everyone with a WordPress blog to start a proxy for sites that are censored elsewhere in the world. As an example, Greenhost have setup a Pirate Bay and Wikileaks proxy.
“By adding this plug-in to your WordPress website it will start functioning as a proxy and uncensor any blocked website you’d like,” Greenhost explains. “The only thing you’ll need is a WordPress website and the ability to install new plug-ins. After that you can maintain a list of websites you’d like to keep open freely available on the web.”
From the Guardian: "Earlier this month the FBI quietly published a request for information (RFI) looking for companies that might help it build a new social network monitoring system looking at "publicly available" information. Contractors have until 10 February to suggest solutions." — Xeni
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
If you're working on a DIY version of the Hubble Space Telescope, this may come in handy. It's apparently the Vehicle Power Interface Console used at the Goddard Flight Center during pre-launch testing of the HST, and you can buy it now on eBay for $75,000. From the listing:
Everything is housed in a very substantial 3 rack metal cabinet with lockable 3 door access in the back.
Cabinet is completely hand wired, as only NASA can do, it's a thing of beauty!
All pieces of equipment have wire seals that have not been tampered with
There are three large Heat Vent Stacks with internal fans on the top of the cabinet.
This console is large, and has quite an impressive Presentation!
Gothamist digs into whether NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly's statements and actions regarding the production of an Islamophobic propaganda film "screened on a continuous loop for over 1,200 NYPD officers" may have been a violation of NYPD conduct codes. If you're new to the story, first read this NYT item, then this followup. — Xeni
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
After noticing a lack of space for Rob's vintage synthesizer collection, Happy Mutants has decided not to purchase the ICBM silo and air park for sale in New York's Adirondacks. Instead, we have our sights on the Jamesburg Earth Station now for sale in Carmel Valley, California. As we speak, Weisberger is pawning a handful of his rare pens to cover the down payment. The facility has historical significance as it was the first place to receive live images from the 1969 moon landing. (If you believe that sort of thing.) From NBC Bay Area:
For the price, you'll get the 20,000 square foot facility, 160 acres of land, a helicopter landing pad, three bedroom house, basketball court, barn, and even two of private wells.
If that's not enough, the complex also takes home security to a whole new level. Built in the 1960's at the height of a nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the building is equipped to handle a 5 megaton nuclear blast.
Dunchead sez, "RBS boss Stephen Hester has accepted his bonus of £963,000 on top of his annual salary of £1.2 million. RBS is 80% owned by the UK taxpayer. This image represents his annual income as 2.2 million pixels, comparing it in 'income parade' style with other taxpayer-employed workers."
"On Sept 16, 1981, Representative Stewart McKinney and I introduced legislation designed to end bureaucratic interference in the use of marijuana as a medicant. We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to obtain marijuana legally, under medical supervision, from a regulated source." Newt Gingrich, hypocritical piece of shit, was pro-medical-cannabis "way back before he wanted to behead people and cut off their hands for possessing it," notes Dangerous Minds. — Xeni
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Several years ago, VH1 made a documentary about the Langley Schools Music Project, and you can watch the whole thing on YouTube. If you're not hip to the Langley Schools Music Project, you're in for a real treat. Between 1976 and 1977, music teacher Hans Fenger and a group of middle school students recorded two albums of the 9-12 year olds singing rock and pop tunes by the likes of the Beach Boys, David Bowie, Neil Diamond, and Klaatu. In 2000, a record collector picked up a copy in a thrift store and sent it to outsider music expert and WFMU DJ Irwin Chusid who busted his tail to get the albums re-issued on a single CD, titled Innocence & Despair. The recordings are bittersweet, simultaneously bleak and hopeful, and beautiful.
"Just as prohibition of alcohol failed in the United States in the 1920s, the war on drugs has failed globally. Over the past 50 years, more than $1 trillion has been spent fighting this battle, and all we have to show for it is increased drug use, overflowing jails, billions of pounds and dollars of taxpayers’ money wasted, and thriving crime syndicates."—Virgin CEO Richard Branson, calling for an end to the "war on drugs."— Xeni
From Ethan Persoff's ongoing chronicles of vintage weird ephemera: COMICS WITH PROBLEMS #7 - MADONNA ON AIDS. This public health pamphlet was handed out at one of her concerts, one night only, in 1987. Her image appears on the cover, and inside, a handwritten note urging for greater awareness of AIDS and an end to prejudice against those who contract it (or who are HIV-positive).
Authorities in Russia are investigating the legality of a "doll demonstration" demanding "clean elections" in the Siberian city of Barnaul, and looking for the humans responsible.
Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports that Russia's police "[arrest] anyone, young or old, who takes part in an "unsanctioned" opposition rally"—so, some citizens in Barnaul created a protest tableau composed of dolls, instead.
Lego minifigs, South Park ("Team America"?) characters, stuffed dollies, Shreks, gnomes, elves, and Wall-e robots carrying protest placards were placed on an icy ledge in the town's center on January 7 and 14. This act followed police crackdowns on two protests by normal-sized people back in December. The focus of all the protests, large and small? Political corruption, and the results of Russia's parliamentary elections.
Most of the figurines held up little signs affixed to toothpicks with satirical messages on them, such as "146%", in reference to a southern region where state television inadvertently reported a 146 per cent turnout in recent elections. Other toys held caricatures of the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, and President Dmitry Medvedev.
The victory of Mr Putin's United Russia Party in last month's parliamentary polls, amid allegations of fraud, brought tens of thousands of protesters onto Moscow's streets. The government seemed to realise it could not take the usual repressive action against the demonstrators in the capital, but in Barnaul authorities "did everything possible" to block protests, Andrei Teslenko, one of the organisers, said.
That's when the activists set up the toy protests. "The authorities are blocking our constitutional rights to peaceful protests, but they haven't yet got as far as limiting the rights of toys," he said.
Nicko Margolies from the Sunlight Foundation sez, "A new analysis prepared by the Sunlight Foundation shows that wealthy financial sector donors gave $178.2 million in political contributions in 2010, more than ten times what they gave 20 years ago. More than any other industry, individuals from the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector, particularly those in securities and investments, are the key drivers of the overall growth of elite donors, or what Sunlight calls The Political One Percent of the One Percent.
"An analysis of campaign contribution records by the Sunlight Foundation reveals that the number of donors in the FIRE sector giving at least $10,000 (in 2010 dollars) per election cycle to political candidates, parties and independent expenditure groups increased from 1,091 in 1990 to 5,510 in 2010 (a 405% increase). Combined contributions of these elite donors increased even more dramatically, growing by $162.8 million (a 700% increase, controlling for inflation). This project builds on the Political 1% of the 1% that was featured on Boing Boing in December."
Sillysparrowness, a self-described "German teacher with a leaning towards silliness," described the process by which she came to build a beautiful, obsessively finished Tardis.
Earlier this week, I challenged readers to send me photos of their favorite museum exhibits and specimens, preferably from museums that might go overlooked in the tourism pantheon. Over the next few days, I'll be posting some of these submissions, under the heading, "My Favorite Museum Exhibit". Want to see them all? Check the "Previously" links at the bottom of this post.
This is actually a behind-the-scenes thing, submitted by Larry Clark, an editor at Washington State University's magazine. Clark made some videos about how curators at WSU’s Conner Museum prepare specimens for display.
In this video, curator Kelly Cassidy prepares a screech owl specimen. It is worth noting that this process involves flesh-eating beetles. Yes. Really.
Tiffany Lee Brown (a.k.a. magdalen) is a writer and interdisciplinary artist in Portland. She edits PLAZM magazine and has been working like a crazy person on a great big blob of art-thing called The Easter Island Project for five years. The project's "Anakena" website launches this spring on magdalen.com, together with an installation at the Cooley Gallery's Caseworks series at Reed College in Portland. Email magdalen23 att gmail dot com if you'd like her to bug you when it launches. Hopefully April 28, 2012, when Ms. Brown will also be giving an artist's talk at Reed, having a proper reception, and celebrating her birthday.
Someday I hope to share with you audio from an interview I conducted with Mr. Wilson, but it's entirely possible the old cassette is long gone. I'm still looking. For now, here's text:
Robert Anton Wilson was kinda more George Carlin and less Timothy Leary than he sometimes appeared. I didn't know him truly, madly, deeply and we did not eat, pray, and love together. (OK, we did eat together, now that I think of it.) I did get to hang out with him a number of times.
What surprised me most was his practicality. Bob didn't actually strike me as being all that far-out; rather, he seemed a practical guy with a very smart mind and a very wacky sense of humor. Turning on was fun, sure, and led to important and far-reaching discoveries, some directed inward, others outward. Tuning in was essential: homing in on what matters and communicating to the tribe and also, importantly, to the potential tribe, to the yahoos who hadn't gotten all enlightened 'n' shit, the people who might really *need* to have their minds blown.
But he didn't think that dropping out was an option. He was solid in the pre-old-school sense. Solidly built in physicality, solidly convinced of the efficacy of his ideas, and despite his curmudgeonly tendencies, solidly committed to making the world a better place -- or at least showing its denizens some potential for doing it themselves. Sometimes, that's exactly what we need.
As Xeni wrote, Twitter has adopted Google's tactics for coping with legally binding censorship demands: from now on, when it receives a legal demand to censor a tweet, it will only censor that tweet for users in the country from which the demand emanates. Other countries' users will still see it. Users in the censored country will see a notice that material has been censored. Additionally, all censorship demands will be archived at Chillngeffects.org, a clearinghouse that tracks Internet censorship.
In many ways, this is preferable to the existing system, whereby legally enforceable censorship orders would affect all Twitter users. And of course, Twitter only has to honor censorship demands in countries where it has offices and assets; Lower Pottsylvania can require removal of every mention of Glorious Leader, but unless Twitter has an office there, it can safely ignore the orders (JWZ points out that Twitter has opened offices in many cenorious countries and plans to open offices in more, because there's money to be had by setting up local operations there).
It's not a coincidence that Twitter's censorship strategy is similar to Google's -- they were both set up by Alex Macgillivray, a Berkman Fellow and attorney who recently left Google for Twitter.
One interesting difference between Google's censorship handling and Twitter's is the ability of users to directly communicate with one another in a fast and fluid manner. If a tweet is censored in Saudi Arabia, it will be very easy for Saudi users to find non-Saudi users and ask, "What was in that censored message?" and then retweet it.
Among other things, Twitter wants to expand its audience from about 100 million active uses to more than 1 billion.
Reaching that goal will require expanding into more countries, which will mean Twitter will be more likely to have to submit to laws that run counter to the free-expression protections guaranteed under the first amendment in the US.
Earlier this week, I challenged readers to send me photos of their favorite museum exhibits and specimens, preferably from museums that might go overlooked in the tourism pantheon. Over the next few days, I'll be posting some of these submissions, under the heading, "My Favorite Museum Exhibit". Want to see them all? Check the "Previously" links at the bottom of this post.
The accident happened when the plane carrying four of these Mk28 type hydrogen bombs collided with another plane during a mid-air fueling. One bomb fell into the ocean and was eventually recovered. The other three landed near the village of Palomares in southern Spain. Two of the bombs actually detonated—sort of. Only the non-nuclear explosives went off, turning them into what we'd call "dirty bombs" today. Some 650 acres, a little more than a square mile of farmland and rural communities, were contaminated. The U.S. military ended up excavating 1,400 tons of soil from this area and shipping it to the United States for disposal.
EMI's VP of Urban Promotions Craig Davis opposes SOPA and legislation like it, and thinks the solution to piracy is better products at formats and prices that customers like. TorrentFreak's Ernesto writes:
“Personally, I feel that the method they’re using is incorrect. All it will do is cause headaches and issues for everyone,” Davis noted.
While the EMI VP opposes PIPA and SOPA, he does admit that piracy is a problem. However, Davis thinks that the problem can be better solved from within the music industry itself. In other words, the key to solving piracy isn’t legislation, but innovation.
“I do believe that a person should be compensated for their work. I feel that piracy is a big issue, and things like Spotify will assist in combating this problem,” he said.
A PC World editorial by Benj Edwards recounts the history of "copy protection*" for software, and discusses how the cracks-scene, which busted open these software locks, is the only reason the legacy of old software is available today. There's a trite story about the persistence of paper and the ephemerality of bits, which goes something like this: "We can still read ancient manuscripts, but we can't read Letraset Ready, Set, Go! files from the 1980s." This is only true in a very limited sense: if you can crack the copy-protection on R,S,G! you can run it perfectly well in a little Mac emulator on a modern computer, with lots of headroom to spare (the laptop I'm typing this on being approximately ten bazillion times more powerful than the last machine I used R,S,G! on). The business of software preservation and data longevity is a lot simpler than the story would have you believe** (assuming you don't care about breaking the law to bust open copy protection and to get old copies of Mac System 6.x to run things on).
It may seem counterintuitive, but piracy has actually saved more software than it has destroyed. Already, pirates have spared tens of thousands of programs from extinction, proving themselves the unintentional stewards of our digital culture.
Software pirates promote data survival through ubiquity and media independence. Like an ant that works as part of a larger system it doesn’t understand, the selfish action of each digital pirate, when taken in aggregate, has created a vast web of redundant data that ensures many digital works will live on...
For a sample slice of what’s at stake when it comes to vanishing software, let’s take a look at the video game industry. The Web’s largest computer and video game database, MobyGames, holds records of about 60,000 games at present. Roughly 23,000 of those titles were originally released on computer systems that used floppy disks or cassette tapes as their primary storage or distribution medium.
23,000 games! If game publishers and copyright law had their way, almost all of those games would be wiped from the face of the earth by media decay over the next 10 years. Many would already be lost.
The article is long and thoughtful, and covers a lot of ground. I highly recommend it.
* The term "copy-protection" is pretty misleading. Speaking as a former systems administrator, the way I "protect" my stuff was by making copies -- that is, backups. True, these are encrypted, but they're encrypted to a key that I posses.
** There's a separate question about media preservation, because old floppies and Zip carts and such are basically shit. But that's OK, since a modern hard drive can store pretty much all the floppies you ever handled without breaking a sweat. If you have (or had) the presence of mind to move all your data from floppies to your HDD, and if you keep your HDD backed up, you are pretty well-preserved. Much better-preserved than your hardcopy book library, which can't be backed up offsite without a photocopier, an army of interns and a lot of time, bother, and shipping containers.
Carlos sez, "A Portuguese Authors Association was caught faking authors' names in support of an abusive proposed law to add a copyright tax to every gigabyte of digital storage."
António Pinho Vargas (one of my most appreciated Portuguese music composers, you should check his Tom Waits if you don't know him) has came forth and revealed that it has no idea of how his name got there, and that he was never contacted about it. More so, he said he doubts some of the other names he sees there, from friends of his, would have agreed to that as well!
I think this says it all regarding these "author protection associations"... When they have to resort to such low tactics and fake their own members names to support such illogical laws, it's a sign that something really has to change! (And by that I don't mean taxing each and every gigabyte now matter what you intend to use it for!
The streets of Poland have erupted in protest on the eve of the country's signing onto ACTA, the secretive copyright treaty that is being rammed through many European Parliaments this year. Members of Parliament showed up for work wearing Anon-style Guy Fawkes masks to show their disapproval.
After the signing, protesters rallied in the Polish cities of Poznan and Lublin to express their anger over the treaty. Lawmakers for the left-wing Palikot's Movement wore masks in parliament to show their dissatisfaction, while the largest opposition party — the right-wing Law and Justice party — called for a referendum on the matter.
In this video, Hamst, a proud resident of Scunthorpe who enjoys taking photos of local landmarks for the Visit Scunthorpe site confronts two very nasty security guards for the Golden Wonder factory. The guards are furious that he is taking pictures of the factory from the public pavement and they shower him with threats and abuse (at one point, one of them encourages a colleague to run him down with a car). They cite imaginary laws that prohibit taking pictures of private buildings from a public place and repeatedly threaten to sic the police on him.
Hamst keeps an admirably cool head through the whole ordeal and is generally a model for how one should behave when corporations' representatives make illegal demands on photographers shooting in public places.
Kader Arif, the EU "rapporteur" for ACTA (a copyright treaty negotiated in secret, which contains all the worst elements of SOPA, and which is coming to a vote in the EU) has turned in his report and resigned from his job, delivering a scathing rebuke to the EU negotiators and parliamentarians, and the global corporations who are pushing this through:
I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.
As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens' legitimate demands.”
Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications.
This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
"Hey, Mr. Kotter, I got a note!" Robert Hegyes who played Juan Luis Pedro Philippo DeHuevos Epstein on "Welcome Back Kotter" has died. "Robert Hegyes dies at 60" (Variety)
Earlier this week, I challenged readers to send me photos of their favorite museum exhibits and specimens, preferably from museums that might go overlooked in the tourism pantheon. Over the next few days, I'll be posting some of these submissions, under the heading, "My Favorite Museum Exhibit". Want to see them all? Check the "Previously" links at the bottom of this post.
It's "My Favorite Museum Exhibit"—celebrity edition. Marc Abrahams is the editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, the journal that awards the annual Ig-Nobel Prizes. He sent me this: An actual rectum cut from the corpse of the Bishop of Durham. It resides in London's Hunterian Museum.
A rectum showing the effects of both haemorrhoids and bowel cancer. The patient in this case was Thomas Thurlow (1737-1791), the Bishop of Durham. Thurlow had suffered from some time from a bowel complaint, which he initially thought was the result of piles. He consulted John Hunter after a number of other physicians and surgeons had failed to provide him with a satisfactory diagnosis. Hunter successfully identified the tumour through rectal examination, but recognised that it was incurable. Thurlow died 10 months later.
Earlier this week, I challenged readers to send me photos of their favorite museum exhibits and specimens, preferably from museums that might go overlooked in the tourism pantheon. Over the next few days, I'll be posting some of these submissions, under the heading, "My Favorite Museum Exhibit". Want to see them all? Check the "Previously" links at the bottom of this post.
Who says a diorama has to be boring? Sam Donovan's favorite museum exhibit is "Arab Courier Attacked by Lions", on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. Built by Jules Verreaux for the Paris Exposition in 1867, it was purchased first by the American Museum of Natural History—which quickly thought better of it*—and was then sold to Andrew Carnegie in 1898 for $50. Today, it can be purchased in snow-globe form** for $40. Inflation is a bitch.
The lions preserved here are Barbary lions, a subspecies that went extinct in the wild in the early 20th century.
The "Arab courier", thankfully, is a mannequin. However, that might not have always been the case. Jules Verreaux had previously stuffed and mounted the corpses of non-Europeans before he made this diorama. Meanwhile, the man who was preparator-in-chief at the Carnegie Museum at the time they purchased "Arab Courier" once wrote that the courier "might have been real prior to 1899 when it was refurbished." So, yeah. Historical racism. How about that?
There are often problems associated with how natural history museums traditionally collected and displayed artifacts. The history here actually ends up being a great example of how culture and social norms and influence how we think about science. The facts may not change, but our interpretation of them does. For instance, the Dyche Museum at the University of Kansas, my childhood natural history museum, owns the taxidermied body of a U.S. cavalry horse that was the only member of the 7th Cavalry to survive the Battle of the Little Big Horn. For decades, this horse was billed as "the only survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn." Which, for obvious reasons, is both wildly inaccurate and pretty racist.
*The AMNH, while acknowledging the skill it took to produce a diorama like this, wasn't quite sure it lived up to their standards as a display of scientific educational value.
**Yes, there is something a little weird about snow falling on this scene.
With my three extra hours a day, I will often go to the beach. Cook a healthy meal. Do a bunch of exercise. Have a drink with friends. Read a book. Write a poem. Mow the lawn. Go skiing while checking my email from the chair lift. Visit a museum. Get into my van at 10pm at night and drive to Joshua Tree by morning without worrying about having an editor to report to. My van has a bed, a stove, a closet, a fridge and and auxiliary battery, 4g modem and my laptop. I can work from the desert, the beach, the mountains, reception withstanding. My life has never been fuller and I've never been more meaningfully connected. I'm not making as much money as I was before with my hyper intense news job, and I might run out of money and need to work at McDonalds one of these days, but for now I'm using Airbnb to pay my mortgage and it's working out just fine. It's a little scary at times, but I'm going to keep going with it.
Rachel Hobson of CRAFT correctly figures (in my case, anyway), " you'll enjoy this series of vintage photographs that have been transformed into portraits of superheroes by artist Alex Gross."
Ethnic Tibetans throughout Tibet this week held some of the largest demonstrations against Chinese rule in four years. Chinese forces responded by shooting protesters. Up to 5 are said to have been killed and more than 30 wounded, according to Tibetan advocacy groups.
On January 9, a 42-year-old monk became the latest in a continuing string of desperate protesters who burned themselves alive to protest Chinese military rule and cultural repression.
Details are hard to confirm, as foreign press access to the areas involved is all but impossible. Free Tibet has more, and Radio Free Asia has compiled various reports.
Dr. Lobsang Sangay of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, issued a statement on the conflict, published in video on YouTube (and embedded above).
A new Twitter policy which goes into effect today allows the social network "to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country," so that Twitter can further expand globally and "enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression."
The Twitter blog post announcing this news was titled "Tweets still must flow." And yes they must, but apparently in some countries, only if they're censored? Snip:
We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.
Hmmm. Maybe I'm missing something, but it's hard to see this as anything but a huge setback and disappointment, given Twitter's laudable history on human rights, privacy, and freedom of expression—and the critical role the service played in global popular uprisings over the last year.
As journalist Shannon Young notes, "It would've been too ironic for twitter to have made this country-based censorship policy announcement yesterday, on the #Jan25 anniversary." And, as Shannon points out, the announcement comes just days after Google announced new terms of user data collection.
Related (or not): remember about a month ago, when that Saudi prince dropped $300 million on a Twitter investment?
Update: Alex Macgillivray, the general counsel of Twitter, responds:
Three quick things:
#1: I can confirm that this has nothing to do with any investor (primary or secondary).
#2: This is not a change in philosophy. #jan25
#3: you'll see notices about withheld content at:
http://www.chillingeffects.org...
so you'll get to figure out whether we've "caved" or not with data. This change gives us the ability to keep content up even if we have to withhold it somewhere.
From my view, this isn't different from how Twitter's already been handling court-ordered requests, except that it won't affect users outside of a given country. Given their moves to open an office in the UK (with all of its crazy defamation laws), I can see why they've taken this route.
It's unfortunate that they may have to censor any content at all, but I applaud their move to be as transparent as possible about it.
[Video Link] A bank robber in Brazil shot himself in the foot. In the video he is seen limping away with his cohorts. He was later arrested while receiving treatment at a nearby hospital. (Via Arbroath)
, my book about the future of energy in the United States, will be published April 10th.
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"This easy-to-use beauty and skincare product was developed by an ordinary housewife. Chikako Hirama was simply concerned about her own age and wanted an easy way to combat those telltale lines. Just try the yellow or pink Pupeko daily using such techniques as puffing out your cheeks or sucking them in while breathing through the mouthpiece. Then you can try it while keeping your head upright to give your neck and other muscles further exercise training."
Everything is housed in a very substantial 3 rack metal cabinet with lockable 3 door access in the back.
It may seem counterintuitive, but piracy has actually saved more software than it has destroyed. Already, pirates have spared tens of thousands of programs from extinction, proving themselves the unintentional stewards of our digital culture.
"Hey, Mr. Kotter, I got a note!" Robert Hegyes who played Juan Luis Pedro Philippo DeHuevos Epstein on "Welcome Back Kotter" has died.
