News You Need to Know – Page 54

Rightist Victim Culture

Rightists have been having a field day poking fun of the leftist victim culture. According to conservatives, neoconservatives, and a lot of libertarians the left has become a bunch of overly sensitive special snowflakes who are incapable of being anything but perpetually offended. What makes these accusations funny is that these rightists are some of the most sensitive, easily offended special snowflakes out there.

Many people on the left have a list of words they would rather you not say because they’re offensive. Rightists like to point at these lists and scream about the left’s attend to censor free speech. After they’re done with their censorship tirade they like to head over to the local Applebee’s and forcefully censor people who are speaking something other than English. I can already hear the rightists screaming out, “Not all rightists beat people up for not using English!” But it’s pretty hard to deny that a lot of rightists get really offended whenever somebody uses a language other than English. In fact a lot of them support passing a law to make English the official language of the United States and requires English proficiency to be a requirement before somebody can immigrate. If that’s not the very same censorship the right accuses the left of I don’t know what is.

Speaking of easily offended, we’re getting close to Christmas, which is the rightists’ time of year to be perpetually offended. How many rightists have you heard bitch about people saying “Happy holidays,” instead of “Merry Christmas?” Failing to greet many rightists with their preferred religious blessing severely triggers them. And it’s not just blessings that trigger them. Failing to use the appropriate Christmas imagery on your merchandise will trigger them as well. Starbucks is the first major offender this year because it’s going with a minimalist theme on its coffee cups this year. The coffee chain’s decision to use red coffee cups instead of cups with snowflakes and other Christmas designs on them has greatly offended a lot of Christian rightists. Not only is this offensive to rightists but some go so far as to claim it’s oppressive. You see, this is just another chapter in the evil leftist atheist’s sinister war on Christmas that is oppressing good rightist Christians everywhere! It’s a war that’s trying to erase the reason for the season!

Evil leftist atheists aren’t the only group oppressing the majority Christian population. Muslims are waging a jihad against them! Immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries, as with immigrants from Latin America, are offending a lot of rightists. Their solution has been to take a page from the leftist’s book and try to implement safe spaces. Rightists, however, are trying to crank the idea of safe spaces to eleven. Where the leftists generally want a room at a college that can serve as a safe space the rightists want to turn entire cities and even entire countries into fortified safe spaces capable of repelling all who would trigger them.

I find a great deal of amusement in hypocrisy. With the recent rise of what the rightists like to call social justice warriors I’ve been greatly amused. Everything rightists have been accusing social justice warriors of is something they themselves do. Rightists are in a perpetual state of outrage over people who speak different languages, are from different countries, and believe in a different religion (or fail to believe in Christianity the same way as they do). Triggering them is as simple as using the wrong greeting during December. And one of their biggest desires is to turn entire areas into fortified safe spaces for themselves. It’s goddamn (sorry I forgot to add a trigger warning for the rightists before dropping the g-bomb) hilarious.

Anyways I’m off to get ready to celebrate the reason for the season: Odin.

Art So Bad Only Government Would Fund It

I’ve often wondered who funded modern abstract art. When I look at a bunch of random colors splashed on a canvas I ask myself, “Who the fuck would buy this? I could do this and I suck at art!” As it turns out modern abstract art, like so many other terrible ideas, was secretly funded by the United States government:

For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince – except that it acted secretly – the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

[…]

Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.

The existence of this policy, rumoured and disputed for many years, has now been confirmed for the first time by former CIA officials. Unknown to the artists, the new American art was secretly promoted under a policy known as the “long leash” – arrangements similar in some ways to the indirect CIA backing of the journal Encounter, edited by Stephen Spender.

This is why the history of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was titled Legacy of Ashes. Only an agency as stupid at the CIA would promote something like modern abstract art and call it a viable strategy against the Soviet Union (which must have been laughing its ass off when we used modern abstract art as proof of American creativity).

Not only did this strategy accomplish nothing of value but it also inflicted us with, well, modern art. I feel as though we’ve all suffered greatly because of this CIA idiocy.

We Should Just Start Referring To London As Airstrip One

I bitch about the surveillance state here in the United States but even it has nothing on mum. The United Kingdom (UK) has pretty much become a real life panopticon. This week alone the UK has proposed two major expansions to Big Brother’s gaze. The first proposal is to ban companies from using effective encryption:

Internet and social media companies will be banned from putting customer communications beyond their own reach under new laws to be unveiled on Wednesday.

Companies such as Apple, Google and others will no longer be able to offer encryption so advanced that even they cannot decipher it when asked to, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Measures in the Investigatory Powers Bill will place in law a requirement on tech firms and service providers to be able to provide unencrypted communications to the police or spy agencies if requested through a warrant.

The only way to comply with such a restriction is to put their users’ data at risk. If one unauthorized party can access encrypted data then any unauthorized party potentially can. Weaknesses in cryptographic systems aren’t selective. If, for example, you have a special law enforcement key that all user data is encrypted with anybody who obtains that key will be able to gain access to every user’s data. You turn the system form one where a very limited amount of data can be nabbed if any single key is compromised to one where all data can be nabbed if one of the keys is compromised.

But that’s not all. The UK is also proposing to require all Internet Service Providers (ISP) to keep records on their customer’s Internet usage for one year:

On Wednesday, the UK’s Home Secretary Theresa May announced the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill, which, if made into law, will force internet service providers to retain the web browsing history of every customer for up to one year. Those records can then be requested by law enforcement.

These two proposals would complement each other well. The first one gives law enforcement unfettered access to user data and the second one ensures data continues to exist for one year. Of course the second proposal pushes notable costs onto ISPs because storing that much data for so long isn’t free. But I very much doubt the UK government cares about such things.

More and more it’s obviously why 1984 took place in London. I won’t be surprised if (I should probably say when) a law is proposed in the UK that makes it a criminal offense to utilize strong cryptographic tools like Tor, PGP, OTR, etc.

Exposure Doesn’t Pay The Bills

The Oatmeal posted an excellent comic yesterday (at least I first saw it yesterday). It directly addresses the bullshit of people trying to sucker artists into doing work for exposure.

As I’ve said, if you’re good at something never do it for free. And guess what doing something for exposure is? Free. Because exposure doesn’t pay the bills.

I run into my fair share of people trying to sucker work out of me for free. My sister is an artist so she probably runs into it a hundred times more than me (good thing our dad raised us right and neither of us get suckered into such scams). Because art’s value is primarily derived from creativity it’s harder for people to understand it has value than to understand something physical like a car has value. But anything worth doing is worth getting paid for and art is no exception.

If you look at websites, book covers, magazines, comic books, or the packaging on almost any product you’ll notice they all have something in common: art. Art catches the eye and is often the thing that causes somebody to initially notice a product. It’s the reason novels tend to have art instead of just the title and author printed on the the cover. I shit you not, the reason I initially noticed and checked out Whitechapel Gods is because the cover art is fucking fantastic. It turns out to be a fun read but if it didn’t have that cover art I probably wouldn’t have noticed it. This is why almost every product, including food at the grocery store, is packaged in something covered in art.

Manufacturers know art is important, which is why they pay artists to create it. The fact manufacturers pay artists to create art demonstrates art has value. Unless the person offering exposure is a seriously big name that can actually get your work in front of well known buyers willing to pay (I can’t emphasize that part enough) you they’re swindlers offering you nothing of value and should be ignored. If somebody really wants your art they’ll pay you money and if they don’t you’re wasting your time talking to them.

Don’t fall for the exposure malarkey (unless, of course, the person offering has some big chops that you know will get you in front of paying customers). Fuck exposure. Get paid instead.

Minneapolis Public Schools Solve Violence Issue Once And For All

Minneapolis Public Schools have had issues with violence. But after a student brought a .38 caliber handgun in the administrators decided enough is enough. Measures have been taken to ensure violence never again bothers the students and faculty of Minneapolis Public Schools:

Promoting positive learning environments for students begins with ensuring the schools are safe, MPS said. Tedmon said the district’s schools are currently the safest place for kids, and they’re going to keep it that way.What do you think?

“Alongside families and community partners, MPS is declaring our district to be a weapon-, violence- and gang-free zone. Together, we can let everyone know: Not in our schools,” MPS said in a press release.

Finally! Now they can hand signs declared their schools violence-free zones right below the very effective signs declaring them drug-free zones!

Because of the ineffectiveness of gun-free zones most of us who advocate for the right to self-defense have jokingly said that places should just declare themselves violence-free zones and be done with it. Apparently our joke was heard by a school administrator who failed to recognize the subtleties of sarcasm. This person must have also missed the fact that drugs are pervasive in schools even though they’ve been declared drug-free zones and that kid with the handgun managed to go right past the signs indicating the school was a gun-free zone.

What should be concerning though is the people in charge are making our parody reality.

The Source Of Venezuela’s Economic Woes

It’s no secret that Venezuela’s economy is in the same place every other socialist economy ends up: the shitter. But unlike its predecessors, Venezuela has identified the source of its troubles! That source is none other than a website operated by an evil American capitalist pigdog:

Venezuela’s central bank has filed a lawsuit at a court in Delaware against the US-based website DolarToday.

It accuses the website of cyberterrorism and says its managers are sowing economic chaos in Venezuela.
The central bank requested both an injunction and damages, accusing the site’s managers of fanning inflation in the country.

DolarToday tracks the black market value of the Venezuelan currency, the bolivar.
It values the bolivar at a far lower rate than the official one.

It values the bolivar at a far lower rate than the official one.

I’m always amused by faltering socialist nations. Their leaders always blame their nation’s economic collapses on evil capitalists, speculators, and the black market. On the one hand they claim socialism is the ultimate economic systems while on the other hand claiming their economies are so pathetic that any capitalist can destroy it.

Expect the Venezuelan government to lash out and anybody and everybody as it collapses under the weight of decades of centralized controls. And expect to hear socialists around the world try to argue why Venezuela wasn’t socialist enough, evil capitalists sabotaged the people’s economy, and other commonly heard excuses for the inevitable failures of socialism.

FDA Doing Its Part To Protect Tobacco Companies

With the number of restrictions placed on cigarettes as well as the general attitude the State seems to have towards them you would think it would give tremendous support to anything that helped people stop smoking. But those restrictions aren’t in place to stop people from smoking but to protect cigarette companies from competition. Electronic cigarettes have become very popular in the last few years, especially with people who want to stop smoking. In fact I would argue that electronic cigarettes have done more shake the cigarette industry than any government regulation. It is this effectiveness that has likely encouraged the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to write up regulations that will effectively destroy a majority of electronic cigarette sellers:

When Randy Freer was trying to quit smoking, he wanted to try vaping-—battery-operated devices that deliver nicotine by vaporizing liquids. (Some ex-smokers find the combo of the flavors and the ability to dial down the nicotine helps them quit.) But Freer found he couldn’t keep a supply of the vaporizers he liked—they were always out of stock.

So being the entrepreneurial type, he created his own e-liquids to vape. In 2012, he launched P.O.E.T. (Pursuit of Excellent Taste), a small business based in Seal Beach, California, that sells e-liquids. Three years later, he says his company sells to some 130 stores internationally as well as online, and has $500,000 in annual sales.

But all that could disappear if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as expected, finalizes its rules on e-cigarettes and other vaping products. The rules would require federal approval for most flavored liquid nicotine juices and e-cig devices sold in vape shops.

“If that [FDA rule] goes through, it’ll put me back into the job market,” Freer says.

He and practically everyone else in the vaping business. According to one estimate, the approval process would require such an extensive data collection for each item that it could businesses cost $2 million to $10 million, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Anybody familiar with the medical market knows how expensive and time consuming getting FDA approval is. Most vape shops mix their own juices as a means of differentiating themselves from their numerous competitors. If they were required to get their juices approved by the FDA they would be forced out of business, which is likely the point of the proposed regulations.

Electronic cigarettes have been eating the traditional cigarette market by offering the same product, nicotine, in a much healthier and cheaper delivery method. If the FDA was interested in abolishing the traditional cigarette market it would leave things be but the State has always been a friend of traditional tobacco companies. The regulations that already exist on cigarettes have ensured established manufacturers remain protected from new competitors. It was only with the invention of electronic cigarettes, a radically different method of delivering nicotine, that a real threat entered the market. And soon that sole threat may be gone and traditional cigarettes will be able to stop worrying.

Fortunately electronic cigarettes and juices are simple to produce. In fact there is a huge do-it-yourself movement in the electronic cigarette market. Many people create their own electronic cigarettes and juices. Some of them start vape shops. If they regulations go through these people will likely continue doing what they’ve been doing and more people will likely pick up the do-it-yourself attitude.

Just keep in mind, if these regulations go through, that whenever the State bitches about traditional cigarettes causing numerous health issues that it was the single reason the most effective alternative was pushed out of the market.

When You Want To Be A Ninja But Live In California

Some people become cops because they want to beat people without suffering consequences. Other people become cops because they believe the uniform and authority will help them pick up chicks. And there are those who become cops because they want to become ninjas but live in California:

ANDERSON, Calif. – The Anderson Police Department will start using nunchucks as a way to forcibly restrain suspects.

Though nunchucks are not new to law enforcement, they are making a come back in Shasta County.

They originated in Japan and have been used in martial arts for years. APD said they want to start using them because they are a multipurpose weapon.

Nunchucks are illegal for citizens to own in California; however, police can be certified to use them within the state.

Emphasis mine. Also, as an aside, nunchucks originated in Okinawa. Anyways, in the no-fun zone of California the only way one can become a true ninja warrior is to become a cop. And wanting to become ninjas is the only reason the Anderson Police Department could justify learning to use nunchucks because they serve no practical purpose. Nunchucks are basically batons combined with an almost infinite chance of failure if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing (and knowing exactly what you’re doing take more than some idiotic police certification program). Like a baton, nunchucks are striking weapons. Unlike batons, nunchucks work on the same principle as flails and therefore the end you’re striking somebody with is moving really fucking fast.

If the Anderson Police Department actually wanted to improve the ability of its officers to forcibly restrain suspects it would teach them something practical like judo, aikido, or Brazilian jujitsu. But empty hand martial arts are as sexy and don’t stroke the ego of attention whores the same way two sticks tied together with rope do.

Overcoming Advertisement Reliance

As more consumers tire of footing the bill for advertisers content producers are being forced to look into other revenue generation models. Yesterday Google joined the legion of content producers experimenting with directly charging for content by announcing a YouTube subscription service:

At a press event this morning in San Francisco, livestreamed in from the YouTube Space in Los Angeles, the video-sharing company announced YouTube Red, a subscription service for the site’s most dedicated viewers. For $9.99 a month (or $12.99 if you order through iTunes; iOS users can pay the normal price if they sign up through the web), the YouTube Red membership gives users ad-free videos, and original shows and movies from YouTube creators (including PewDiePie, Joey Graceffa, Fine Brothers Entertainment, and more). It also opens up access to the recently launched Gaming app, and YouTube Music, a new app that will be available soon. Crucially, a YouTube Red subscription will be interchangeable with a Google Play Music subscription, making this as much a streaming music investment as anything.

I think this is a sensible approach. Google will still maintain the ad supported service but is now adding a subscription service that removes ads and gives subscribers access to premium content. Sweetening the deal is the fact that a YouTube Red subscription also gains you access to Google Play Music, so subscribers are really getting some Nextflix and some Spotify for the price of one of those services individually.

In addition to premium content subscribers to YouTube Red will enjoy a more secure experience since ad networks are a common vector for malware, better battery life since ads consume a notable amount of power, and lower bandwidth bills since ads eat up a lot of bandwidth. For heavy YouTube users $9.99 per year might prove to be a savings compared to the cost of buying additional data for ad usages.

Although most media outlets are focusing on Google offering premium content for subscribers the big news, in my opinion, is the fact Google is offering a subscription service at all. For the longest time Google was the name in Internet advertising. In fact it still is. But even it’s seeing the writing on the wall. Through the pervasive use of ad blockers consumers are signaling the market that they’re no longer satisfied with being the product. Unlike many businesses, which stick their head in the sand when their business model starts dying, Google is at least experimenting with alternative revenue sources. I hope it proves successful because I want to see the advertising model die in a fire.

It’s Called A Legacy Of Ashes For A Reason

John Brennan, the director of the ironically named Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had his personal e-mail account breached, supposedly by a 13 year-old. You might not think the personal e-mail account of a government stooge would contain much interesting information but the dummy forwarded a lot of e-mail from his CIA e-mail account! Wikileaks was good enough to post his e-mails for our amusement.

Some may find it odd that a 13 year-old could social engineer the director of the CIA. But anybody who has read Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA knows that it’s titled Legacy of Ashes for a reason. The history of the CIA is the history of failure. Brennan’s failure to keep his work and personal e-mail separate and no be outwitted by a 13 year-old are just another chapter in the agency’s long, proud history of failing. In fact this failure isn’t even a blip on the radar, which includes such gems as the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

I look forward to the dirty secrets that are gleamed from this leak and the butthurt that will inevitably emanate from neocons who will cry about this leak being damaging to national security or some other such nonsense.