Category: product complaints

right wing “echo chamber”

On By Rick McIn bad news, economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, product complaints, TVLeave a comment

People ask me why I’m so agitated by the Tea Party and other right wing gasbags. And not nearly as much irked by soft-headed, left wing muddled thinkers.

What makes me mad is disinformation.

Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth. Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, information that is unintentionally false.

The left wing often spreads misinformation. Poorly.

In the USA (but not in Canada) people make money in the right wing media echo chamber.

In media, an echo chamber is a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an “enclosed” system, often drowning out different or competing views. …

One purveyor of information will make a claim, which many like-minded people then repeat, overhear, and repeat again (often in an exaggerated or otherwise distorted form) until most people assume that some extreme variation of the story is true. …

I love seeing Jon Stewart and Colbert call out the disinformers.

One of the worst is Glenn Beck, “with his violent rhetoric, his frequent and absurd fear-mongering, his nasty vitriol, his “jokes” about assassinating government officials, his baseless conspiracy theories, his race-baiting, his flat-out, bald-faced lies, his many hypocrisies … ”

Well said.

beck-blackboard-coming

Beck left FOX in 2011. But is worth about $90 million today. The more he lies, the more money he makes.

Rush Limbaugh makes around $66 million / year.

The main motivation for those two, Bill O’Reilly and others, is money. I don’t trust a word they say.

FOX and the echo chamber endless repeat daily “talking points“. It’s incredibly boring to count the repetitions of the talking points of the day.

talking points

related – NY Times opinion piece 2013 – Suffocating Echo Chamber

Worst Company in America?

On By Rick McIn internet, product complaintsLeave a comment

For 2014 …

Comcast beats Monsanto in Consumerist’s “Worst Company in America” poll

But another survey finds Comcast is only the second worst cable company.

Monsanto might kill you and kill the world.

But internet service providers kill you every day. Death by a thousand cuts.

Consumerist is owned by Consumer Reports. I trust their opinions.

Here are the rest of the corporations you should boycott if you can.

2014wciabracketqfinals2

Comcast also “won” Consumerist’s poll in 2010. Electronic Arts won the prize last year for the second year in a row. The poll began in 2006. Other winners include Halliburton, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), Countrywide Financial, AIG, and BP.

SLOW internet in Africa

On By Rick McIn economics, government, internet, product complaints1 Comment

Internet speed and reliability in southern Africa is crappy. As bad as I’ve seen anywhere in the world.

We postulate that there are not enough cables running under the ocean …

NOT SO.

south Africa

Oh sure: cables in the Atlantic have a higher capacity than a cable going down the coast of East Africa. … Not to say the cables in Africa are less useful, in fact many are newer…

Africa is in pretty good shape because multiple new cables have been laid so capacity can grow for many years to come, and cables are designed to last for a minimum 25 years.

CNN – This is what the Internet actually looks like: The undersea cables wiring the Earth


So — we should blame the Internet Service Providers of Africa. The “pipes” are not the problem.

Anything But Country

On By Rick McIn music, product complaintsLeave a comment

When country music critic Grady Smith sat down to write his list of the top 10 Best Country Albums of 2013 he made a startling revelation: All the chart-topping country songs of 2013 sounded exactly the same. …

Truck – check. Dirt road – check. Sugar shaker in painted-on jeans – check.

Proof That Every Country Music Song This Year Was Exactly the Same

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

To me Rap & Country are similarly simplistic doggerel.

Unless you embrace the simplicity, both are embarrassingly juvenile.

NSA highly unlikely to read your email

On By Rick McIn ethics, Google, government, internet, product complaints, things getting worseLeave a comment

A former employee of the National Security Agency, Loren Sands-Ramshaw, weighs the benefits / risks of the U.S.A. collecting all your online data:

Many are concerned about the NSA listening to their phone calls and reading their email messages. I believe that most should not be very concerned because most are not sending email to intelligence targets. Email that isn’t related to intelligence is rarely viewed, and it’s even less often viewed if it’s from a US citizen. …

I do believe that the safeguards against unauthorized data retrieval by Agency employees can and should be improved.

I do not believe that their information-gathering powers should be curtailed. Such restriction would not only hinder the Agency’s ability to gather intelligence, but also impede its ability to wage cyberwarfare.*

The NSA is our best hope in this war. In my mind, the Agency’s continued dominance of the Internet is absolutely worth the once-a-year one-in-three-hundred-million chance that your private data will be purposefully viewed by an NSA employee. …

read more …

NSA

Verge – Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others launch campaign for NSA reform

India hates tourists

On By Rick McIn economics, product complaints, travel, travel India1 Comment

You still need a visa in ADVANCE to visit India. Getting one is a pain.

I spent hours in a Kafkaesque office in Calgary, trying to get the paperwork right.

WHEN is India going to improve the process for applying for a tourist visa?

In Canada you are recommended to go through a 3rd party – BLS India. That helps. A bit.

All foreign nationals except those from Nepal and Bhutan need a visa to enter India. But the following nationals can probably get what we all want — a visa on arrival:

Finland
Japan
Luxemburg
New Zeeland
Singapore
Vietnam
Philippines
Laos
Myanmar
Cambodia

Rishikesh
Rishikesh

India is fascinating, once you finally get a visa.

On arrival at Mumbai International terminal, I changed cash at Thomas Cook.

US$200 got me … 11,250 rupees (“Trans Fees, Service tax, Education Cess., Higher Education Cess., etc)

Google (same day) told me $200 was worth 12,410 rupees.

So I lost 9.35% by going through Thomas Cook. Par for the course, I believe.

Using my Visa card cash advance was, the Thomas Cook agent told, was going to cost me about 16%.

There seems to be no good way to get cash when traveling abroad, these days. My plan in future is to try not to exchange currencies more than once. You get burned each time.

Dear Gun Nuts …

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, firearms, government, health & fitness, product complaints, things getting worseLeave a comment

A great opinion piece by Matt Bors:

… After every mass shooting—which is essentially all the time these days—gun rights advocates drag out the “more guns = more safer” argument. And yet: we’re still not safe!

Despite having almost one gun for every man, woman, and child in the nation, peak safety has yet to be reached. …

gun deaths USA

If you take the positions of the NRA and add them up, you can see how the world would look if the gun lobby got everything it wants: Every American would have easy access to assault weapons, gun dealers would not be required to check the criminal record and mental health history of someone before selling them a gun, the capacity of gun magazines could be near-infinite, and it would be illegal for a city to stop people from carrying guns in public. This would be a country where you could literally buy an AR-15 at Walmart, immediately put on full tactical gear worn by SWAT teams, and stroll into a school for your parent-teacher conference with another fully armed adult….

read more – Dear Gun Nuts

related – My Gun Stance

American Health Care Sucks

On By Rick McIn bad news, economics, ethics, health & fitness, product complaints, things getting worse2 Comments

John Green explains why.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via upworthy)

Obamacare slightly improves the suckiness, but not much.

most days happy NOT to have a phone

On By Rick McIn philosophy, product complaints, things getting worseLeave a comment

… Charlene deGuzman stars in I Forgot My Phone — a short film she wrote about life in these modern, soul-sucking, smartphone-saturated times. …

gawker

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Some day we’ll find a way not to overuse phones when in the company of other people.

Control our addictions.