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Showing posts with label robocensor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label robocensor. Show all posts

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Happily Ever After Epistle [News Poem, April 18, 2010]

Happily Ever After Epistle [News Poem, April 18, 2010]
“The team discovered that in the deep, rarity is common.”
– Frank Pope, The Times Online, April 19, 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article7101533.ece
“Spam levels have remained resolutely stable despite recent botnet takedowns, according to a survey from Google's email filtering business... The Google spam filtering division concludes that going after botnets is no more effective than the previous tactic of targeting rogue ISPs. The takedown of rogue ISP 3FN bought a temporary respite from the spam deluge for about a month. However, after Real Host, another ISP, was taken out months later spam volumes recovered after only two days. The marked difference was due to use of improved disaster recovery approaches by cybercriminals. ”
– John Leyden, The Register, 18th April 2010 04:17 GMT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/18/google_botnet_takedowns/

“I saw you talking with a guy,
But here's my pic. We share at least
A ninety six percent—no lie—
I know it's fast, but call a priest?”

“Before I say 'I do,' you need
To cut that hair and watch this clip—
You done? You loved it? What's the creed?
Let's marry on a rocket ship!”

The profiles never lie—at most
They get it wrong; but who's to care?
Online, the databases host
The mind, the body's just hardware.

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Missionlocal.org Has the Heart of an Out-of-Town Chicken

Missionlocal.org Has the Heart of an Out-of-Town Chicken

I posted Manifesto of a Militant Vegan Bio-Engineer yesterday on http://missionlocal.org after first reading a link on sfgate. I did so because, 1) The article didn't ask the most interesting question. 2) They're 'mission locals' right? So in theory, they should be supportive of truly local activities, like poetry, right? Of course they aren't.

I'm so silly—what was I thinking? Website comments are supposed to be vapid and always supportive. Here is their comment policy/mission-statement: “You are free to make a comment, but do not make a dangerous comment. Do not question why we feel the need to write about people who want to rescue everything. Do not mock eating! It's what we do in the Mission! We moved to town to eat this city up and shit our hipster good-taste all over you yokels! If your verse was truly local, we would have found it!”

This is an anecdote about the power of words. If comments were so meaningless, mission-so-called-local wouldn't have put the option on their site. They wouldn't moderate the comments to permit cloying posts like this: "This is so sweet!!! Thank U and bless those people with love and tender heart to other creatures..." because such comments themselves are essentially meaningless beyond sentiment. Most webmasters censor to manage their 'brand' in the name of 'signal-noise' ratios, but there are no signal-noise ratio issues on their site worth managing. My verse had no profanity, it was relevant to the topic, it was well cited; so I conclude they belong in the coop along with the other chickens in this story. They fear the poem outdoes their story and they are correct. And this fear is a scarlet letter: 'C' and it belongs left of center, on their chests.

ps: It's interesting to note that sfgate, for all its problems (censorship and otherwise), still let me post the poem on their site. Evil Hearst is more local than missionlocals? Noooooooooooo!

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