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BETTER THAN IRL
Tumblr came along at a pretty formative time for me (you know, those salad days that are your late twenties), and this book from @therealkatiewest‘s Fiction & Feeling promises to be an interesting and maybe Too Real collection of stories of the ways people connected with each other through places like this.
Less than 48 hours and $5800 USD to go!
BETTER THAN IRL
Tumblr came along at a pretty formative time for me (you know, those salad days that are your late twenties), and this book from @therealkatiewest‘s Fiction & Feeling promises to be an interesting and maybe Too Real collection of stories of the ways people connected with each other through places like this.
Less than 48 hours and $5800 USD to go!
Extra Life | I’m raising money for sick kids!
Extra Life | I’m raising money for sick kids!
I’ll be raising money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals by playing games and streaming until the lead up to the 24 hour stream on November 3rd!
Extra Life | I’m raising money for sick kids!
Extra Life | I’m raising money for sick kids!
I’ll be raising money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals by playing games and streaming until the lead up to the 24 hour stream on November 3rd!
Victor Romero on Twitter
I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in a IMAX theater for the first time since I was a teenager and, like, now I get it. My favorite part might be the bits in the beginning, intermission, and end where you sit in the dark and just listen to music.
Victor Romero on Twitter
I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in a IMAX theater for the first time since I was a teenager and, like, now I get it. My favorite part might be the bits in the beginning, intermission, and end where you sit in the dark and just listen to music.
by Kate Beaton
Kate Beaton’s a favorite artist and storyteller of mine and many others. She’s known for her comedic work but has also done some longform biographical comics, like this series she published in 2014.
She is dealing with the tragic loss of her sister and I don’t know what to do, as a fan and online person. I expressed my sympathy and my condolences, also online. I feel like going back to read her work is all I can do.
by Kate Beaton
Kate Beaton’s a favorite artist and storyteller of mine and many others. She’s known for her comedic work but has also done some longform biographical comics, like this series she published in 2014.
She is dealing with the tragic loss of her sister and I don’t know what to do, as a fan and online person. I expressed my sympathy and my condolences, also online. I feel like going back to read her work is all I can do.
Time to release the internet from the free market – and make it a basic right
Time to release the internet from the free market – and make it a basic right
Say goodbye to net neutrality. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Ajit Pai, released a plan to repeal the landmark protections enacted by the agency in 2015. This has long been a top priority for Pai and his fellow Republicans, who now enjoy a majority of commissioners thanks to Trump. The vote is scheduled for 14 December, and is widely expected to pass along party lines.
What does this mean in practice? In a sentence: slower and more expensive internet service. Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast should treat all kinds of data the same way. Its repeal means that in the future, your ISP will be able to fleece you in all sorts of new ways.
When you think of the internet without net neutrality, you should think of the pleasures of modern air travel. You pay for a checked bag, you pay for a modicum of legroom, you pay for a lousy sandwich. The internet without net neutrality will likely look similar: the basics are barely tolerable, and everything else costs extra.
This dystopian scenario is why it’s so important to fight the Trump administration’s agenda. But that fight can’t be limited to saving net neutrality.
To democratize the internet, we need to do more than force private ISPs to abide by certain rules. We need to turn those ISPs into publicly owned utilities. We need to take internet service off the market, and transform it from a consumer good into a social right.
Access to the internet is a necessity. It is a basic precondition for full participation in our social, political, and economic life. But so long as the internet’s infrastructure remains private, the corporations that control it will always prioritize piling up profits for investors over serving our needs as users and citizens. Net neutrality addresses one negative consequence of private ownership, but there are many others. Charging discriminatory rates for data is a symptom – the root cause is the antidemocratic nature of a system run exclusively for profit. The solution is to make that system public, and put it under democratic control.
The idea of a public internet might seem utopian, but it’s how the network began. Our money created the internet, before it was radically privatized in the 1990s. Big companies seized a system built at enormous public expense in order to sell us access to it – the equivalent of someone stealing your house to charge you rent.
The proponents of privatization argued that the private sector would provide better service. But letting the profit motive rule our internet infrastructure has been a disaster. ISPs regularly rank at the bottom of the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index, even lower than airlines and health insurers. Most hated of all is Comcast, America’s largest ISP.
It’s not hard to understand why. American ISPs charge some of the highest pricesin the world in exchange for awful service. Your money isn’t being used to build better infrastructure, but to make the rich even richer: Comcast’s CEO earned$33m last year. Internationally, we’re an embarrassment: the country that invented the internet ranks tenth in average connection speeds, far below South Korea and Norway. And that number doesn’t capture the significant disparities in service that disproportionately affect poor and rural communities.