Prog Gold

Confirmed: Americans are still humourless gits

October 3rd, 2010

So the British 10:10 campaign (aiming at cutting carbon emissions ten percent in 2010) put out the satirical video above which, to be fair is a bit heavy handedly ironic and of course the usual numbnuts who still think a wet summer refutes climate change take it seriously and scream about intended genocide. They have to, it’s in their job description (I refuse to believe anybody believes this nonsense without a paycheck being involved somewhere). As everybody who does have a brain should understand by now, these people should be mocked, not argued with.

Unfortunately, climate change deniers are not the onlyones whose sense of humour has been surgically been removed; the same goes for most American environmentalists, who have had their panties in a bunch about this video as well. Case in point:

There were emails from people all saying the same thing: Have you seen this? This was a gross video making its way around Youtube, purporting to show people being blown up for not believing in climate change. It’s been “pulled” from Youtube by its creators, the British climate group 10:10, but of course nothing is ever really “pulled” from Youtube. If you want to watch it bad enough, I’m pretty sure you can find it. Or you can look at the stories by climate deniers assailing it as the latest example of eco-fascism.
The climate skeptics can crow. It’s the kind of stupidity that hurts our side, reinforcing in people’s minds a series of preconceived notions, not the least of which is that we’re out-of-control and out of touch — not to mention off the wall, and also with completely misplaced sense of humor.

[...]

JR: The video is beyond tasteless and should be widely condemned. [...]

Dear oh dear.

Worrying how the deniers will spin anything is useless. No matter how inoffensive a campaign they will object: that’s what they’re paid for. In fact, all this worrying about how this video sends the wrong message about how authoritarian environmentalists are (percieved to be) is actually reinforcing the deniers’ message. Anybody who thinks this video shows the reality behind the environmental movement or whatever is a loon. Anybody with a functional brain knows that. Complaining about it only validates the loons.

Categories: Activism, Climate change, Funny, Video

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They’re not called special constables because they’re so great

September 30th, 2010

Special constables are numpties to thick to be in the real police and desperate enough to become pretend cops for free. On the positive side they don’t get or require the same training as proper police officers get and are usually the most reactionary and racist part of the police force. So it makes perfect sense that in order to save money, several police forces now want their recruits to come from their ranks:

The Metropolitan Police Authority today debates a contentious plan to recruit most new police officers from volunteer special constables to help slash costs at a time of tight budget constraints.

The scheme would see most new applicants working for 18 months as volunteers without pay. According to a paper being considered by the MPA – which scrutinises the Metropolitan police – at a meeting today, this would save up to £20,000 per appointment thanks to lower salary costs. Currently, police recruits receive 25 weeks of training regardless of previous qualifications and on-the-job experience. They are paid a salary of about £23,000 during their first two years.

The MPA is being asked to endorse the new guidelines to help save up to £2m for every 100 appointments.

“The proposal for the new model of recruitment and training of police officers represents an innovative and significant shift in traditional recruitment, development and training,” says the paper.

Now of course in the publishing world, not to mention in politics it’s quite normal that people “pay their dues” by working for free for a couple of years, ensuring that only those whose mummy or daddy can afford to support them for that time get a job there, which explains a lot about the dire straights both find themselves in. Do we really want that to happen to the police too, which is already bad enough? Do you really want the people who get a kick out of wearing the uniform to be paid for their hobby?

Categories: Policing

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The Republican Party: all dead in twenty years

September 25th, 2010

The GOP: for old, white people only.

Categories: Grand Old Paedophilia Party, US politics

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QotD: Justin Webb appreciation society

September 23rd, 2010

Glad to see we’re not the only one to fully appreciate Justin Webb, as this extract from Chicken Yoghurt shows:

ITEM: Using the voice of John Humphrys ‘to scare off hungry deer from eating gardeners’ prized fruit and vegetables’ is a great idea. His voice certainly scares me away from listening to Radio 4′s Today programme. No doubt the voices of the programme’s other presenters could also be put to good use. When I hear Justin Webb’s voice, for instance, it always scares off feelings of wanting to be alive.

Categories: BBC Bias, Comment of the Day

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What the Twitter Joke Trial means for all of us

September 21st, 2010

Jack of Kent on why the Twitter Joke Trial matters:

The Paul Chambers case - known as the “Twitter Joke Trial” - has three points of significance:

- how relentless administrative and judicial stupidity can end in a conviction;

- how the CPS are wrongly using criminal law in respect of electronic communications; and

- how a criminal record can change a person’s life for the worse.

Let us hope Doncaster Crown Court can reverse this injustice on Friday and allow Paul to rebuild his life.

He explains succinctly why and how these points matter for Paul Chambers, the poor guy whose life was ruined through this case, but it has of course broader considerations too, especially the first point. Chambers was originally convicted through a long chain of people and institutions unable or unwilling to apply common sense about what was essentially the kind of stupid joke you’d make to your mates or cow-orkers, but on twitter. You could’ve had the same sort of case thirty-forty years ago as well, if some passing police officer had taken offense to a similar joke by some local wit. But whereas then you had to have had spectacularly bad luck to say something stupid in front of a copper himself dumb enough to take an obvious joke seriously, if you do the same on the internet, your bad joke can land you in hot water long after you’ve made and forgotten it.

Twitter is meant for ephemeral conversation, but they don’t disappear when you stop talking. Once it’s on the internet it’s there forever, barring acts of god or Google. Which means that many more people can read and misinterpret your comments than just your mates and it only takes one blockhead to ruin your day. What’s more, because it’s so easy to gather data online, you have whole classes of professional blockheads, in government as well as working for private companies looking for “threats” and it’s not in their interest or power to treat anything like a joke. As with airport police, these people have no sense of humour and are obliged to treat any bomb joke like a real threat, no matter how stupid.

This is not to blame Paul Chambers for his misfortune, rather the fault lies with institutions like the police, like the Crown Prosecution Service and like the Robin Hood Airport security department for not using common sense or rather having institutionalised processes in which the right thing to do is to not think for yourself but follow procedures. That’s always been a bad thing, but it’s made worse when such a dumb organisation is fed the huge amounts of data gathered on us routinely every day and starts to datamine. No government and damn few private companies truly understand information technology and the simple fact that it’s not how much but what kind and which quality of data you gather and how you use it that’s important. So you get things like airport security officers googling for their airport to detect threats and then using inflexible, dumb procedures to process these “threats” because the only thing their organisations understands is “more data good”, “common sense bad”.

That’s the spectre we’re all living with, of huge unaccountable organisations fucking over our lives not out of malice, but out of wilful stupidity because of something we said online.

Categories: Bloody Lawyers, Civil liberties, IT is not magic pixie dust, Internet

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