Archive for the ‘Media issues’ Category
Lorde has her own ‘Piece of Me’ moment — here in New Zealand :(
Lorde’s ‘welcome home’ at Auckland airport this morning prompted these (perfectly reasonable) reactions and thoughts … … which reminded me of Britney Spears’ song Piece of Me. Is that what we want for our latest ‘teen singing sensation’? Nope. Give her some space, huh? – P Update: I see the NZ Herald has updated their […]
State surveillance as a tool against dissent. Lack of ‘patriotism’ as the easiest smear.
Earlier I linked to a NY Times video/upcoming book promotion revealing the source of leaks about the FBI’s sometimes illegal COINTELPRO activities against individuals and groups exercising their democratic right to express dissent with government policy. Reading about the state-sponsored surveillance of such ‘dissidents’ and ‘left-leaners’ put me in mind of the way the NZ […]
Speaking of comparisons to Stasi surveillance …
There’s been a wee fracas as Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (of Netscape Navigator fame) popped a foot in his mouth with what looks like a thoughtless or uninformed defence of the NSA’s illegal spying activities with a suggestion that former East Germans would fail to see similarities between the NSA’s mass surveillance and […]
‘Blackphone’ — Dystopian ‘loss of privacy’ memes are not new. But they seem fashionable now. And possibly commercially viable.
Watch this. It makes me want to try one out. (Except for that line about ‘the Android we’re all familiar with’— er, no not me.) Introduction to Blackphone from BLACKPHONE on Vimeo. But in the comments on that Blackphone promo — posted on Vimeo yesterday — there’s a link to this 4-year-old promo for Else […]
Dick move Macworld. Really.
This article wafted across my browser … Really? I thought Leaked images? That sounds intriguing … but it’s not till you get to the bottom of the 1300 word ‘article’ (cough) that you read: “There are no leaked images of iOS 8 yet, but as soon as we see them, we’ll share them with you […]
This looks like the raw output of a comment spambot …
Wow, WordPress’s Akismet spam filter snapped this so it wouldn’t appear as a comment, but it’s fascinating to look at the syntax … I remember my geek pal Sarah describing translation-type scripts that spammers sometimes put article copy through to try to make it seem like ‘unique’ copy (to prevent Google downgrading it). This looks […]
Internet marketing cowboys will be with us always
The Atlantic has a must-read article on an internet marketing cowboy and [alleged] hustler and con-artist called Jesse Willms. It’s a longish read but a very good one. Reading about Willms, I saw some similarities in the story of motormouth Shaun Stenning, a figure in various failed internet marketing enterprises Geekversity, Twalk, Snipr, YouTube Traffic […]
Ironic. The FBI warns US student travellers their communications may be ‘intercepted and retained’
Haha. I’m researching a project and came across this section in an FBI pamphlet for US students travelling abroad: I love that the FBI warns US students travelling overseas that they should have ‘no expectation of privacy’ and that in the case of ‘all information … sen[t] electronically’ that ‘might be valuable to another government, […]
Question: Is compromise an inevitable part of ‘growing up’?
I promise I will spare you any New Year’s resolution navel-gazing. But this wry commentary on Google’s acquisition of Boston Dynamics which I screen clipped at the time, and came across again tonight, raised (in me, anyway) a question: Where am I rationalising such extreme, comical-if-it-weren’t-so-serious compromise in my own life? The whole Jungian ‘shadow‘ […]
Equating internet privacy with apartheid
The UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay, has compared the uproar in the international community caused by revelations of mass surveillance with the collective response that helped bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa. Pillay, the first non-white woman to serve as a high-court judge in South Africa, made the comments in an interview […]
Edward Snowden Christmas message
BBC Channel Channel 4 Alternative Christmas message Praxis films. Audio here: https://m.soundcloud.com/producermatthew/edward-snowden-releases
A brief moment of mirth at the doorstep
True: This is the old T-shirt I was wearing this morning as two Jehovah’s Witnesses dropped by with their latest ‘CAN YOU TRUST THE NEWS MEDIA?’ Awake! magazine. Hahaha. – P
Deceitful “PR blog” questions worth considering
At the risk of creating a terrible circularity that could collapse the interwebs, let me suggest you read Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup today (available here at The NZ Herald.) Bryce introduces his political topic du jour thus: New Zealand politics is ‘a dirty, disgusting, despicable game. And it involves dirty, disgusting despicable people at all […]
Misleading scale on women in business ‘infographic’ {belch}
Good on JK Keller … who said, rather nicely … … which, coming a day or two after Rebecca Wright tweeted this consciousness-raising Pantene ad, made me think … hmmm – P
Target of Cameron Slater’s ‘campaign’ speaks up
If you’re following the issues we discussed in ‘Part of the news media? or a “PR blog” dedicated to “destroying” reputations?‘ there’s a worthwhile post over at The Standard which offers some background and argument from the point of view of Cameron Slater’s target, the man who is suing him for defamation. Read it here: […]
