I guess I needed an escape from all the stress. I’m kind of regretting the decision to take on additional responsibilities aside from school but if I can manage to make it through this week, I’m not gonna backpedal anytime soon.
And oh, I bought another book (and crossed out another on my book wishlist): The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. FINALLY. But I won’t be reading it anytime soon though. Sigh. Straightface.
“When the web started, I used to get really grumpy with people because they put my poems up. They put my stories up. They put my stuff up on the web. I had this belief, which was completely erroneous, that if people put your stuff up on the web and you didn’t tell them to take it down, you would lose your copyright, which actually, is simply not true.
And I also got very grumpy because I felt like they were pirating my stuff, that it was bad. And then I started to notice that two things seemed much more significant. One of which was… places where I was being pirated, particularly Russia where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading around into the world, I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. Then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia, it would sell more and more copies. I thought this was fascinating, and I tried a few experiments. Some of them are quite hard, you know, persuading my publisher for example to take one of my books and put it out for free. We took “American Gods,” a book that was still selling and selling very well, and for a month they put it up completely free on their website. You could read it and you could download it. What happened was sales of my books, through independent bookstores, because that’s all we were measuring it through, went up the following month three hundred percent.
I started to realize that actually, you’re not losing books. You’re not losing sales by having stuff out there. When I give a big talk now on these kinds of subjects and people say, “Well, what about the sales that I’m losing through having stuff copied, through having stuff floating out there?” I started asking audiences to just raise their hands for one question. Which is, I’d say, “Okay, do you have a favorite author?” They’d say, “Yes.” and I’d say, “Good. What I want is for everybody who discovered their favorite author by being lent a book, put up your hands.” And then, “Anybody who discovered your favorite author by walking into a bookstore and buying a book raise your hands.” And it’s probably about five, ten percent of the people who actually discovered an author who’s their favorite author, who is the person who they buy everything of. They buy the hardbacks and they treasure the fact that they got this author. Very few of them bought the book. They were lent it. They were given it. They did not pay for it, and that’s how they found their favorite author. And I thought, “You know, that’s really all this is. It’s people lending books. And you can’t look on that as a loss of sale. It’s not a lost sale, nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free.”
What you’re actually doing is advertising. You’re reaching more people, you’re raising awareness. Understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and of what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web is doing is allowing people to hear things. Allowing people to read things. Allowing people to see things that they would never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that’s an incredibly good thing.”
Via YouTube
(via inneresting)
(via daphnebeauty)
A Blind Man Shocks Researchers with What He Sees
It is not uncommon for stroke patients to suffer brain damage, but the case of one patient was peculiar. This patient was, by his own account, completely blind. Two consecutive strokes had destroyed the visual cortex of his brain, and consequently, his ability to see. His first stroke had injured only one hemisphere of his visual cortex. About five weeks later, a second stroke damaged the other hemisphere. An assessment of his brain function revealed that after two strokes, the patient, who was in his 50s, was clinically blind.
Known as selective bilateral occipital damage, this patients’s unusual injury made him the subject of much interest while recovering at a hospital in Geneva. Researchers began examining him and discovered that despite his blindness, he had maintained the ability to detect emotion on a person’s face. He responded appropriately— with emotions such as joy, fear, and anger— to a variety of facial expressions. Observed activity in his amygdala— the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions— confirmed the curious results.
His rare condition is known as blindsight. Because his stroke damaged only his visual cortex, his eyes remain functional and as a result can still gather information from his environment. He simply lacks the visual cortex to process and interpret it. Sight has changed from a conscious to a largely subconscious experience. He no longer has a definitive picture of his surroundings, but he has retained an innate awareness of his position in the world. He is, to some degree, able to see without being aware that he is seeing.
This is freaking crazy. Makes sense but I never thought about that being possible.
Um, wow.
(via pwnator)
(via tigerboobies)
ACTA passed one of the several voting gates it needs to get through before becoming law.
It was ratified in Poland last night. This was the scene at Polish parliament afterwards, as (presumably) a bloc of anti-ACTA politicians expressed their displeasure and, perhaps without knowing it, foretell of the Anonymous repercussions to this bill.
Some things you should know:
- Online petitions are meaningless. While they are well-intentioned and organized, the signing of a digital petition takes about twenty seconds, and does not require that you leave your beanbag chair in the coal cellar. Politicians know this, and pay just as much attention to online petitions as is warranted by a “political action” that is literally less strenuous than leaving a YouTube comment.
- Nothing except direct action is going to do a goddamn thing. This means getting out in the street, it means DDoSing, it means vicious and widespread boycotts, site blackouts, and other strongarm tactics that actually impact the flow of money from corporations to lobbyists to politicians. How do you, as a tiny flailing consumer, do this? You can’t, really. You can join up with groups that are intent on doing actions that actually mean something, adding your voice to a chorus of hundreds or thousands, instead of screaming alone. You can contact celebrities, the spokespeople of our time, as ask them to leverage their followers on the issue. You can write to Tumblr and ask for more blackouts. None of these things will be very effective, so don’t be too disappointed when they don’t work, but they sure as fuck are more effective than online petitions, and the intense response to SOPA by corporations and consumers was responsible for getting it “tabled” (not dead, but dreaming lies).
- ACTA was already signed by Obama in September of 2011. He had been praising the bill for over a year prior, and signed it without reservation. Most of us didn’t hear about it, and he likely used the 9/11 coverage to make sure of that.
- Eventually, one of these bills will pass, and the pro-corporate laws will go into effect. Expect it. Be prepared. Learn to circumvent this garbage and you’ll have a leg up when the feds shut down the internet as we know it.
- The best thing you can do now is install Tor and learn how to use it. Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis. In order to circumvent the coming corporate takeover of the web, we’re going to have to go underground, creating a sub-internet of encrypted nodes known as a “darknet”. It’s probably going to be like the internet was in the beginning, with most people only seeing what AOL wanted them to see, and only a small group of super-nerds existing outside of that bubble in the “real” internet. It’ll take another twenty years for them to catch up to us again.
- Welcome to the grim cyberpunk future.
(via surfeitdoldrums)
How could you do that on the red carpet? HOW DAMMIT? I love you.
(via durancer)
Shit Med Students Say
This is so accurate. I say every single one of those things.
Us in two years. Gahd.
and I have started after the first week of classes this year. I think I’ve been at it for three weeks already, and although I have been posting, it would be sporadic at best since I would be stalking other tumblogs and not visiting my dash. I would be posting at my other blog though (YES I HAVE ANOTHER, FIND IT, I INVITE YOU TO), but it’s more of my touchy-feely stuff that I wouldn’t like you to see. Heh.
I’ve also done the same thing last year for the same period, although this time, the reason for the break is not only academics, but (I AM VERY PROUD TO SAY THIS) also my extra-curricular activities (read: social life! well, more like socio-political life but what the hell, I’ll take what I can get).
Au revoir! See you guys in March.
E
