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" “The notion that propaganda is always a state-run, top-down affair provides a cloak for our complicity,” she writes. “Social media’s veneer of openness and people-power exemplifies western propaganda’s habit of masquerading as its opposite.”"

This is an old, derivative, and largely idiotic piece. Which, ironically, is trying to capitalize on recent viral videos concerning NK.

You want to know the big difference between propaganda in NK (and equivalent historical dictatorships) and propaganda in the West? It’s easy – in NK, you are only allowed one source of information. In the West, you are bombarded with information. Apple produces very sophisticated propaganda. But so does Samsung, and Google, and all other tech companies. The government is capable of producing sophisticated propaganda to support its position. And its opponents are capable of producing sophisticated propaganda showing that it is dishonest and corrupt.

The one undisputable fact of modern life in western society is that we are bombarded with propaganda from every direction. Which means that we are constantly having to sift competing claims and make choices. Do we always make the best choice? Of course not. But it’s not due to absence of information or even sophisticated critiques of advertising. (Look at Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” – it is widely popular, has sold thousands of copies, and is read in college classes across the US).

I think one of the comments to the Guardian article sort of summed up where we are: we live in a world so free that we have to make up our own oppression. Which is an insult to people who are actually oppressed. (Although I think it goes to show how much people do want to feel oppressed – if not, otherwise clear thinking individuals would not conflate NK explaining that the harvests are bad due to imperialist interference with advertising in the west suggesting that you buy an iPad, or an S4, or a Tesla.

4 days ago on What's the difference between consumer marketing and propaganda? 1 reply

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Fort Irwin…Irwin Allen…did they think we wouldn’t notice?

4 days ago on Inside Fort Irwin, fake cities provide a training ground for real warfare

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Technically, you had to bring your own acid.

At least, that’s what I’m told…

10 days ago on '2001: A Space Odyssey' explained to kids in 1960s comic

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Complain about the farmers, then; not Monsanto. Monsanto has such a large part of the market because so many farmers want to use their seeds. Including this farmer; he just didn’t want to pay for them.

10 days ago on Supreme Court rules in favor of Monsanto, says farmer violated seed patents 1 recommend

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B*llshit.

There’s plenty to dislike about Monsanto without making things up.

10 days ago on Supreme Court rules in favor of Monsanto, says farmer violated seed patents

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No. That is not correct.

There have been cases where farmers have claimed this happened, but investigation always shows that they were lying because 40% of their field was planted with roundup ready seeds.

10 days ago on Supreme Court rules in favor of Monsanto, says farmer violated seed patents 1 reply

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Unfortunately, while a better attempt than their last map, this is still deeply flawed, probably because they aren’t accounting for individuals.

I.e., if you look at the map of Illinois without zooming in, it looks like the whole state is covered in hate; if you zoom in, you see that it appears to be concentrated in one location: Effingham. With there barely being any in Chicago or any other city of any size.

You get something similar in Indiana – one spot in some rural area with no city nearby (and one other county like that, also in a rural area on the other side of the state). That’s it; the rest of the state is almost clear – almost none in Indianapolis, Gary, etc.

It gives the impression that you have one or two individuals in those states who are sending out thousands of racist tweets per year, generally skewing the results. I.e., 10,000 people each sending only one tweet using the N word suggests that a state might have a problem. 1 person sending out 10,000 tweets with the same word suggests that the person has a problem.

This shouldn’t be hard to deal with statistically, but the map is pretty much invalid until they do.

12 days ago on 'Geography of Hate' maps racism and homophobia on Twitter 3 replies 4 recommends

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No, it is being used correctly. You don’t determine the meaning of a word by looking at its etymology. “Homophobia” means the dislike hatred of gays and lesbians, notwithstanding what “phobos” meant in ancient Greece or how “phobia” is used in in psychology.

“Understand” doesn’t mean to stand under something, either.

12 days ago on 'Geography of Hate' maps racism and homophobia on Twitter 2 replies 2 recommends

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Doc Savage was a series of pulp novels, not comics. They appeared in “magazine” format because they were pulps, and there may have later been some comics based on the novels, but the Doc Savage everyone knows comes from the pulp novels, like the one used for the article.

12 days ago on 'Iron Man 3' director signs on for 'Doc Savage' adaptation

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I think that media companies (including the Onion) are inherently more susceptible to these kind of hacks because their job requires them to follow up tips and leads. If they get a link, particularly from an address that they recognize, they are going to be more inclined to click on it because it appears to be related to their actual jobs. You aren’t going to be thinking “Why would my co-worker send me a link to a random website?” because part of what they do is check out random websites.

On the other hand, if you work for the Ohio Department of Transportation and get a link to a random website, it is: (1) much less likely to be work related; and (2) therefore going to be more suspicious.

12 days ago on Social engineering to blame in Syrian Electronic Army hijack of the Onion

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The government, which hasn’t been hacked vs. all of these tech companies which have?

The Onion is cool and appeals to young people, but that in no way means that they are tech savvy.

12 days ago on Social engineering to blame in Syrian Electronic Army hijack of the Onion 1 reply

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As has been pointed out about 50 times in the comments, no. The hotels don’t care.

Other tenants care. And the city is basically interested in enforcing the laws that are on the books right now.

13 days ago on Landlords beware: Airbnb is booming in big cities, but many users run legal risks 1 recommend

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You are being intellectually dishonest by not considering any arguments different from yours in good faith; instead, you are making strawman arguments and simply repeating yourself.

17 days ago on Using Google Glass: stuck in traffic 1 recommend

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The ladder truck wouldn’t reach.

And when my city cleaned a statute on our 300 foot monument, they used a crane to take it down and cleaned it on the ground (you only clean something like that once every 50 years or so). It’s very expensive…

18 days ago on When a drone gets stuck in the arms of a rooftop statue, who's responsible for getting it down? 1 recommend

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“But, as a 2nd generation Trekkie (as in, my father is a Trekkie), my issue with the films (starting with the TNG films and especially with the reboot) is that they are not scifi – they are action films.”
Your opinion is not entitled to any more weight because you father was a Trekkie. Why even bring that up?

Second, you write as if sci-fi can’t have an action in it. That is, of course, both ridiculous and extremely ahistorical in the context of the Star Trek universe. In what way is a story about a Romulan travelling back in time to get revenge on people who destroyed his planet significantly different from a story about a planet populated by Nazis? Or “Day of the Dove” – where an alien made Klingons fight humans? Or the one with the salt vampire? Or “Balance of Terror,” where they first meet the romulans? Or the one where they steal the Romulan cloaking device? Or the Gamesters of Triskalion?

There are lots of examples of Star Trek being sci-fi with action in it, with only the thinnest veneer of sci-fi (“some explorer left a book here about gangsters and so now the entire planet has turned into the gangster planet and so we better dress up as gangsters”). For that matter, there’s “The Wrath of Khan,” which is all about action. But more more importantly, starting with TNG, characters in Star Trek stopped becoming human and became wooden perfect simulacra of humans, with no emotions or real feelings of any sort, based on the idea that they should be some sort of role models for a future in which everything is decided rationally. Which made things really boring because people want to see interesting stories involving actual characters; not moralistic tales involving caricatures of perfection who aren’t human at all. And – another perennial ST problem beginning with ST:TMP – people also don’t want stories in which all powerful creatures control matters and the characters have no agency at all.

That’s the real point of the reboot; to bring the actual characters back, and to put them in situations where they can make a difference. In the last film, Kirk in the fight in the bar, and in the conversation afterwards, is more human than any ST character since TNG. The same is can be said, for some definition of human, of Spock on Vulcan.

“If you want to know how effective these new Star Trek movies really are, ask someone what they are about”
That’s really not the test of quality movies. What is “My Dinner with Andre” about? What’s “Annie Hall” about?

What they are “about” is showing you interesting characters. The fact that you can say what “Battleship” is about, or “The Voyage Home” (“whales are aliens”) is about, does not make either of them a good film.

The ST reboot wasn’t good because of the action; it was good because of the characters’ interactions with each other. This is the same reason “The Trouble with Tribbles” was good and remains the most popular episode (it’s certainly not because of its “message”); it’s also the reason that Wrath of Khan was good (and Kirstie Alley really added a lot to that part of the film).

20 days ago on Is Star Trek an American taste? 2 replies 2 recommends

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They might have – as they went with decimal coinage – but it hadn’t been invented yet.

20 days ago on Scientists are building a better kilogram 1 recommend

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If you’re not smart enough to use the imperial system, maybe you shouldn’t be doing science.

20 days ago on Scientists are building a better kilogram 2 replies 2 recommends

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There is a simple solution: get a better scale.

I weigh food for certain cooking purposes, and my scale has a handy button called “units” which I can press to change between ounces, grams, pounds and kilograms. If I need 30 grams of coffee beans, I set it to grams. If I need 4 oz. of feta cheese, I set it to ounces.

20 days ago on Scientists are building a better kilogram 1 recommend

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He was tried in the UK, not the US.

21 days ago on Fraudster jailed for 10 years after earning millions through sale of fake bomb detectors 1 recommend

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He was tried in the UK, not the US.

21 days ago on Fraudster jailed for 10 years after earning millions through sale of fake bomb detectors 2 recommends

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No, they wouldn’t.

These companies didn’t just have URLs similar to FBs; the URLs led to websites that were designed to make people think that they were at the FB site, at least initially.

22 days ago on Fakebook: Misspelled domain squatters must pay Facebook nearly $2.8 million

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“When adjusted for inflation, it found that current STEM industry wages are around where they were in the late 1990s — enough to attract plenty of guest workers, but too low to attract domestic workers. "

I hate the term STEM. It lumps together a couple of fields where you can get a decent, high-paying job out of college – most notably, CS and engineering – with other science fields where this is not the case. A BS in biology, botany, zoology, physics…even math or chemistry…won’t get you the type of jobs or offers you can get with CS or Eng. And it may well be the case that there is stagnation in STEM fields overall…but not in the better areas.

24 days ago on Report: US workers may meet demand for tech industry jobs, but the pay isn't enough 1 reply 1 recommend

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It doesn’t. The linked article gives more details, including the FBI discussing the proposal. “Secret” is just Verge sensationalism.

24 days ago on Google, Facebook, and others could face fines over government wiretap refusals 1 reply 1 recommend

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Most of these places won’t negotiate with individuals.

24 days ago on Emergency treatment centers closing as visits increase

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It does look like police have a better response to these cases – setting up a perimeter and then contacting CNN – rather than breaking down the door.

24 days ago on Fake emergency call brings police to Wolf Blitzer's house in latest 'swatting' hoax

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Yeah, this is a stupid idea with no basis in reality.

Did the US standard of living decline as the population rose from 13 million to 130 million between 1790 and 1940? No, it didn’t, despite the introduction of labor saving devices like, say, mass production.

Did the US standard of living decline as the population rose from 130 million in 1940 to 300 million in 2000?
Again, no, despite huge gains in productivity, use of robotics, and increased mechanization.

But, somehow, we are expected to believe that if the US population goes from 310 million to 400 million, society will collapse. The only way you can hold this view is to deliberately ignore the last 200+ years of US history, the last 10,000 years of world history, and the history of pretty much every developed country on the planet.

There may be underdeveloped countries where overpopulation is a problem, although it is only going to be one of very many problems facing that country, and far from the most serious: you could cut the population of Somalia in half and the standard of living wouldn’t be much better.

25 days ago on US Navy experimenting with drones and blimps to fight Caribbean drug smugglers 1 reply 1 recommend

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This.

No one who is an actual expert on Russian film would be fooled by this because of what they already know. But it’s pretty unlikely that one of those experts, specifically, would end up looking at Gadyukin’s wiki page.

26 days ago on Wikipedia and the dead Russian film director who never lived at all

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No one bats an eyelid because the other multimillionaires don’t ask the public to fund their movies. So when this multimillionaire asks the public to fund his movie, it does raise some eyelids. After all, an investor in a traditional movie gets a cut of the profits in exchange for contributing.

There’s nothing the matter with this per se, and if people think it’s a good use of $30 or $100, it is definitely their decision to make.

26 days ago on Zach Braff's new film hits Kickstarter goal as director attempts to retain creative control 1 reply

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No, it’s not really similar at all.

Louis C.K. paid $200,000 out of pocket to film his show and then sold tickets on then internet for $5. He financed everything himself, distributed it himself through his website, and got to keep all of the profits.

Zach (who is apparently worth $22 million) isn’t paying the costs of the film himself, but is using kickstarter to fund (some of) it, and giving people who contribute above a certain amount the ability to stream the movie.

There’s nothing the matter with this, but it’s not at all like what Louis CK did. (Another difference is that it is much cheaper to film your own standup show than to film a movie with other actors, locations, etc.).

26 days ago on Zach Braff's new film hits Kickstarter goal as director attempts to retain creative control 1 reply 3 recommends

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Yeah, 0-6 months was really after his head.

It’s beyond stupid to pretend that the DOJ murdered Swartz.

28 days ago on 'Hacker' convicted by US court despite never hacking