Ahm…amazing.
redscharlach:
Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch: A Visual Examination.
All otters are from The Daily Otter, for all your ottery Tumblr needs!
March192012
January182012
SOPA lives—and MPAA calls protests an "abuse of power"
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has looked at tomorrow’s “Internet blackout” in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—and it sees only a “gimmick,” a “stunt,” “hyperbole,” “a dangerous and troubling development,” an “irresponsible response,” and an “abuse of power.”
“Wikipedia, reddit, and others are going dark to protest the legislation, while sites like Scribd and Google will also protest. In response, MPAA chief Chris Dodd wheeled out the big guns and started firing the rhetoric machine-gun style.
“Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.”
Can I interrupt for a moment? Thanks. When you complain that opponents didn’t “come to the table to find solutions”, do you mean that we didn’t give NINETY-FOUR MILLION DOLLARS to congress like the MPAA? Or do you mean that we didn’t come to the one hearing that Lamar Smith held, where opponents of SOPA were refused an opportunity to comment? Help me out, here, Chris Dodd, because I’m really trying hard to understand you.
“It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.”
Oh ha ha. Ho. Ho. The MPAA talking about “skewing the facts to incite” anyone is just too much.
“A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals.”
Except for the part where this is completely false, it’s a valid point.
“It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.”
Riiiiiiight. Protesting to raise awareness of terrible legislation that will destroy the free and open Internet is an abuse of power, but buying NINETY-FOUR MILLION DOLLARS worth of congressional votes is just fine.
I’m so disappointed in Chris Dodd. He was a pretty good senator, wrote some bills (like Dodd/Frank) that are genuinely helping people, and is going to be on the wrong side of every argument as head of the MPAA. What a wasted legacy.
(via neil-gaiman)
December122011
This…yes…
(I was also very happy to find that Kat Dennings has returned to Twitter…I didn’t realize)
neil-gaiman:
The conversation makes much more sense all carefully laid out like this than when we were having it.
Also, very glad that I do not have to send topless pictures of Kat Dennings to Craig Ferguson.
Just spent way too long cutting this conversation together.
I love these people.
July212011
Yup.
(via ikilledjackjohnson)
June252009
The King Is Dead. Long Live The King!
My earliest memory is dancing around my parents LA-apartment to the “Thriller” music video…
Just for the sake of reference, that music video came out in 1983 and we’d moved out of California by the the middle of ‘86. Those memories were from - at the earliest - when I was about two. At most? Four.
My. Earliest. Memory. Seeing those words like that…it’s crazy. And at the same time, not at all. Someone like Michael Jackson had that effect on you. I tend to be dismissive when people tell me about their earliest memories, not because I think they’re lying, but because the human mind is such a tricky thing and I have to think at least some of what they’re envisioning is pieced together from stories and photographs - maybe now, old VHS videos of Christmases and school pageants. But today, as this news broke, it was interesting to watch as so many of the people I’m friends with on Facebook (or follow on Twitter) were affected. And at least 90% of them had stories similar to mine or had a childhood memory (or four) that revolved around MJ…
“I remember the first time I saw the Moonwalk.” - “Thriller was the first album that I ever purchased.” - “My whole family would always crowd around the TV whenever Michael was going to perform…”
After we’d moved to Vermont, my Mother raised me on (amongst other things) Thriller and Off the Wall. Some of my fondest memories of my Father still are from when I’d watch him play guitar - oftentimes he’d throw on Bad or Dangerous amongst the “classic rock” and “alternative” he primarily listened to. I would bet $10 that Dangerous was the first taste of “rock” music that I heard, actually. Really HEARD, I mean. Slash playing guitar, MJ’s scream…Pearl Jam’s “Ten” and Nirvana’s “Nevermind” came out right around the same time and were also a huge influence on me, but they were both only records that I got into later, after I’d realized that this door Michael had opened for me had SO much on the other side.
Some people are talking about the irrelevance of “news” like this. But they’re talking. People who loved him, people who hated him (more for what he became than any sort of distaste for his aforementioned music)…and I haven’t seen a single person say something alluding to the loss of John Lennon, or JFK, or anybody else. I kind of expected it - for it to be how someone could try and identify or understand all of this - but everybody has their own stories and has no need to draw in others to explain them. Hell, the closest I’ve seen as far as comparisons have been people saying they felt like they lost a family member. A goddamned family member. Jesus.
Why? Why does everyone give a shit, if even for just long enough to crash Twitter or fuel the network scramble to have the-first-most-comprehensive-bestest-MJ-retrospective-EVAR-special? Because as weird as he may have become, Michael really was incomparable to anybody. Despite the embarrassingly, tortured, oft-ridiculed depths of the lows his life reached…it wasn’t enough to ever quell how truly remarkable his goodness and talent was. Think about that for just a second, really. I had heros growing up who - who arguably were “bigger influences” on me - that I don’t listen to any longer because they wrote a few too many bad albums in a row, or they make a mockery of themselves on Twitter…compare that to the scandals MJ saw in his life. To have a level of talent so great that it shines through the shit and adversity he faced? C’mon. That’s not normal. Seriously, look at the amount of lives that he changed for the better and try and tell me for one second that this is “irrelevant”.
We should all aspire to change lives for the better…and this person was able to change thousands, maybe millions (arguably in the range of 100-109 million). That’s fucking relevant.
And while it’s hitting people on different levels and his legacy is going to be marred and bizarre and critiqued for many years to come, there is one fact which is inarguable: he’s left a lot of great music behind for years to come…I just hope now that he’s left it with us that he finds the peace he was never truly granted in life.
P.S. I just read this piece by NPR blogger Carrie Brownstein (known by many as the guitarist/vocalist for Sleater-Kinney). Perhaps more eloquent than my own, it’s the closest writing I’ve seen to capturing my feelings right now. Well worth the read.
Edit 6/26: Another writing that I liked, in particular the second to last paragraph. Hit the nail on the head for me.
