Moving to tumblr

why? because I’m getting sick of wordpress. Too many features, maybe. I’ve been here a long time and it’s been… ok? Well, same blog, same kind of content, different address. foodnotbourgeoisie.tumblr.com

92.251.122.4

Cablegate

I’m not cheering for the collapse of American diplomacy. Today, music sounds sweeter. I can’t stop smiling. As I watch the internet comprehend what the Guardian has reported today, I hear the same echo: “Yeah, I understand that this an amazing story but no one is going to care.”

I’m laughing because I’ve never been so sure about my disagreement with this sentiment. Everyone is scared about the Korea situation. HA! I’m more interested in what our governments are scared of. They are the ones that decide for war. For the first time in history, we are going to freely read the workings of diplomacy from the most powerful countries on the planet. This is how and what governing humans on the planet Earth communicate. Much of it we already knew, some might say. But what they forget is that we have only learned opinion to back those notions. Today we have the hard facts about Saudi pressure on the US for a war with Iran. How about these gems:

“The cables name countries involved in financing terror groups, and describe a near “environmental disaster” last year over a rogue shipment of enriched uranium. They disclose technical details of secret US-Russian nuclear missile negotiations in Geneva, and include a profile of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who they say is accompanied everywhere by a “voluptuous blonde” Ukrainian nurse.”

“The cables published today reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material.”

“The most controversial target was the leadership of the United Nations. That directive requested the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top UN officials and their staff and details of “private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys”.”

“At the start of a series of daily extracts from the US embassy cables – many of which are designated “secret” – the Guardian can disclose that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN’s leadership.”

“These include a major shift in relations between China and North Korea, Pakistan’s growing instability and details of clandestine US efforts to combat al-Qaida in Yemen.”

… and there’s probably more to come. I didn’t even highlight everything. So, apathetics, cynics, and naysayers… I say this to you:

This information is more powerful than your opinion of its ability to make an impact. Maybe you think it won’t make an impact because the American public won’t care. I’m saying that you missed the gravity of this leak. This is bigger than majority opinion. This is now in the historical record and what ever we do now, whether it’s something good or nothing at all or whatever, well that’s something. Our actions now must be judged based on what’s out there for us to decide upon.

My personal hope is that we will begin to realize Chomsky’s insights from “Manufacturing Consent”. That the media establishment is out for your mind and your opinion to lean towards the benefits of the power elite.

But I am open and willing to understand what will actually happen in the world after today outside of my hopes and opinions. I just think that if your mind is open, you have much to hope for today.

Good luck, humanity.

The Truth About Food, Inc.

Why Obama sucks

by Bill Hicks

Can somebody explain to me why the big TV networks don’t put all their episodes online, make them watchable for EVERY country and charge 20-50 cents per view of an episode?

Can somebody explain to me why the big TV networks don’t put all their episodes online, make them watchable for EVERY country and charge 20-50 cents per view of an episode?

Sure…

Devil’s Advocacy – a Media Ownership Perspective

In general, the media companies are just as eager to show you content (and advertising, which makes them money) as you are to see it. The problem is, programs are rarely owned outright by anyone. Music is licensed from someone, product placement is licensed from someone else, location fees are licensed from someone else, etc etc etc.

And those rights, to no one’s surprise, tend to be licensed for one region right now. In many cases, one country. Those rights also have very limited timeframes on them, and are administrated by organizations that get paid to say “no…” not to say “yes.”

So let’s say you’ve got a half hour show. It’s got one person in it, one theme song, product placement from one beer company and it takes place at one landmark. Pretend it’s an American show and we want to show it in the UK.

You’ve got a minimum of four rights organizations to deal with… and each organization has a different disposition towards any region on the planet. Maybe you can work out an arrangement with the beer company; they’re dutch anyway. SAG has reciprocity with the UK so we can figure out something but we’re already at two memos per episode. Maybe the landmark wants more money to license itself in the UK than it does in the states – okay, we can skunk that episode. Or can we? maybe our agreement with the beer company is that all episodes have to be shown. But what really sucks is that the song has already been licensed exclusively to another show in the UK… which is owned by another media company… that is fully willing to skunk you just to keep your show out of the UK.

So now the whole thing falls apart… unless you go back to the edit, change out the song to something else and attempt to re-release it. But now, are your licenses intact? Because you’ve changed the show. And you need to get the producers of that show, who have long since moved on to other things, to manage a lot of this, because they’ve got the work product. And they’re going to want to be paid to dig through old business records and why haven’t you been hiring them lately, by the way?

Then, of course, comes the fact that to do this, you need to get paid for it; nobody is going to let you show something for free that cost them a lot of money and if you’re getting paid, they want to get paid. So now you need to find advertisers willing to pay for a foreign show that their customers may not even know about. Or, you go with a worldwide outfit, and they’re making plenty of money on their own internet advertising channels, so they’re not going to pay you much. And you need to relicense music for this stupid thing anyway, and you’ve only got a limited window to make money on it anyway, and before too long,

“fuck it – if they want to see it that badly, they can bloody torrent it”

Starts to become the attitude of the creators of the show.

Believe it or don’t, there aren’t very many professionals in media that want to prevent you from seeing content. It’s just that everyone wants to get paid, and once you jump outside of the agreements that governed the show in the first place, everyone wants to get paid again. As much as possible. Because we all have to make a living.

So here’s the basic problem. There are different countries on the planet. They all have different licensing requirements, media structures, advertisers and consumers. And taking one show from one ecosystem and transplanting it in another, from a business perspective, is a hell of a lot more intricate, involved, and expensive than typing “.co.uk” instead of “.com.” And nobody likes it, and everyone is trying to do something about it, but short of every single player in media giving up and saying

“fuck it, we don’t really want to make money at this shit anyway, go ahead and watch what you want where you want when you want“

…things are not going to change very quickly, no matter how many angry letters you write to the internet.

[from here, thanks to Malician]

Now the question now, is…. How quickly are things moving today? What kinds of evidence can we see of media’s progress to become more online/international?

Around the Corner 1937 How Differential Steering Works

I didn’t know what differential steering was much less the problem it solved. This was awesome! ‘Merica!

Thurston Moore / Okkyung Lee / Ikue Mori Trio

Beware of the following video.

Appreciation level: Difficult

The Transhuman

Transhuman is a term that refers to an evolutionary transition from the human to the posthuman. For instance, modern prosthesis for missing body parts is probably the most commonly referenced evidence for transhumanism.

Wikipedia, for this definition, cites a man who went by “FM-2030“. An interesting person… he was born Fereidoun M. Esfandiary, son to an Iranian diplomat in 1930. His contributions to transhuman philosophy appear to be significant. He changed his name to such an odd form…

Firstly, to reflect the hope and belief that he would live to celebrate his 100th birthday in 2030; secondly, and more importantly, to break free of the widespread practice of naming conventions that he saw as rooted in a collectivist mentality, and existing only as a relic of humankind’s tribalistic past. He viewed traditional names as almost always stamping a label of collective identity – varying from gender, to nationality – on the individual, thereby existing as prima facie elements of thought processes in the human cultural fabric, that tended to degenerate into stereotyping, factionalism, and discrimination. In his own words, “Conventional names define a person’s past: ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, religion. I am not who I was ten years ago and certainly not who I will be in twenty years. [...] The name 2030 reflects my conviction that the years around 2030 will be a magical time. In 2030 we will be ageless and everyone will have an excellent chance to live forever. 2030 is a dream and a goal.”

When FM-2030 died of pancreatic cancer in 2000, he became the first person to be vitrified. Vitrification is newer technique of preservation… wow, he was cryofrozen in the year 2000. That makes me think of Philip J. Fry. heh. Crazy cool stuff.

So, read some more here and continue on…

I saw this idea (on reddit) that “computers and the internet… IS, an actual expansion of our minds, expanding our sense of ‘reality’, and, in fact, may well be the next stage of Transhuman transformation, and it is occurring now…globally.”

Other additions,

[Well, I'm 76 and like most old farts I forget, words, facts, names.

But, now I have the internet clipped to my belt, and I don't know if it's "transhumanism", but at the very least, it's a prosthesis for a failing brain.]

[Pictures for Sad Children #101, #102, #103]

[This:

>I hope you don't waste your life in the mean-time waiting for one.

Does not logically follow from this previous exchange:

>Yeah transhumanism is very pretty thinly veiled "heavenly reward"-type religion.

>All I know is that I got 1 bad leg and cant wait to get a cyborg one.

Initially you misrepresented one of the burgeoning steps of transhumanism, then when someone pointed out its direct and tangiable reality you redirected his comment back toward a non-sequitor, implying that transhumanists "sit around" and do not contribute to the technology that may make full transhumanism possible.

I suppose you are not familiar with the prevalence of artificial limbs.]

[This conversation makes good points too]

If you’ve read this far then I hope it’s dawn on you how relevant transhumanism is to the internet. ghdiel and hsfrey, on reddit, made a good point about how computers and the internet are extensions of our brains. So good a point that I don’t really have anything else to add right now. I’m drinking a Carlsberg and filling my brain with fascinating information that has nearly nothing to do with my daily life. [Nerd/Geek] high five to you too, reader!

[ADDITIONAL: This entire thread is awesome. It features discussion about the idea of the internet becoming a panopticon. Rad ideas, dude.]

A call to patriotism we can all get behind: Uncle Sam doesn’t like scaredy-cats

I should have mentioned the source of that last post’s photo. It came from this article on Salon and it’s a great read.

American Pride feels like a facade