Sweden certainly doesn’t seem to live up to its name of flag bearer of freedom anymore. After apparently losing the right to choose who to invite to your party, its residents will also lose the right to communicate privately, as well as the presumption of innocence it seems…
This fight against terrorism certainly seems to be a good excuse for anything, doesn’t it? Don’t let the fact that any terrorists with the brains to mastermind a devastating attack would also be smart enough to code their communications properly fool you… Keep people scared and you’ll be able to do anything you want. Not that the people approve of something like this, but if you manage to implant that doubt in the minds of some then the protests won’t be quite as vehement and you just might be able to get away with it.
What makes it even worse is that it’s Sweden! When something like this happens in a country that’s so well known for actually being free (as opposed to just claiming to be free, like the United States), it has a greater impact. That could very well be the actual idea, make others wonder what chance do they have to stop it from happening in their own countries if it already happened in Sweden. Just a conspiracy theory you say? Time shall tell, but I’m starting to wonder if these theories even go far enough…
In other news, YouTube will have to give all user histories to Viacom! It’s a “piracy” issue again, of course, and it seems very similar to the Swedish law in a way. It seems to be one more move aimed towards demoralizing people, because a big media company won even against a giant like Google.
Google might not actually be that innocent when it comes to copyright issues. I’m not talking about current laws, I’m talking about what laws should state if they’d be fair, namely that commercial use of another’s copyrighted material is illegal, but non-commercial use is not a problem. I don’t know how YouTube earns money for Google, but if they earn anything when people watch or upload content it means they use that material commercially, even if they don’t upload it themselves. If they do earn money that way then it’s something that could be argued, but the debate should end there!
I look at this and don’t get what does all that private data have to do with what type of content is more popular. Couldn’t they just ask for the number of times each video has been played, or perhaps at most the number of unique visitors for each? Not to mention that in a fair world the only request from Viacom’s list which should have even been considered would have been the one about the advertising schema, for the reason I mentioned above, but that was denied and this was approved! The only explanation I can find is, I say again, that it’s a show of strength, proving that they can do it in hopes of scaring everyone else into submission.
People are already a bit bothered by Google for taking down videos whenever the copyright holders request it, so their attitude when it comes to this ruling is going to tip the scales. Complying with something like this means betraying their users, as simple as that! On the other hand, if they decide to fight it at all costs, especially if they do that by lashing out against distributors in general, they’ll have millions of people backing them in every way that they can. With such a strong company in the front lines, good things might actually happen…
The bottom line is that we need to put aside our differences, leave our comfort zones and fight as one against the common enemies, because otherwise we’ll all end up treated like criminals and lose our rights and freedoms faster than we’d have thought possible until recently. A single ant is powerless against a large animal and even dozens of them might be squashed at once, but when an entire colony is determined to take down said large animal it eventually will. I think we have a lot to learn from that.
You want to be emotionally intimate with others, but you find that others are reluctant to get as close as you would like. You don’t have very high self-esteem, which leaves you with a bit of a tendency to grovel. You’re ever so grateful when someone notices you, but you’ll leave when you sense you’re not wanted. You like other people more than you like yourself, but if someone takes advantage of you, you’ll leave eventually.
Fictional character with whom you might identify: Peter Pettigrew (Harry Potter)
For a test that has obviously received a lot of attention from its author, it’s strangely inaccurate. How can it say I avoid intimacy? And this is actually the lowest I can get that rating without lying directly, because if I weren’t to adjust my answers slightly according to how it works (as opposed to what it actually asks) I’d get The Doormat (“You are uncomfortable getting close to others. You want emotionally close relationships, but you find it difficult to trust others completely. You don’t believe you deserve very much, so you don’t try very hard to win favor. You prefer to lie there until someone comes along to walk all over you. It’s okay. You’re used to being stepped on.”) and, while the second part of that description is reasonably true, saying that I’m uncomfortable getting close to others and have difficulty trusting them completely is absolutely wrong.
I’m quite sure I should have scored The Cling Wrap (“You want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but you often find that others are reluctant to get as close as you would like. You are uncomfortable being without close relationships, but you sometimes worry that others don’t value you as much as you value them. You tend to follow people around, trying to make them like you by doing nice things for them. Unfortunately, this tactic tends to make people uncomfortable.”), or at least that’s how I see myself (except the part where it says I try to make people like me by doing nice things for them, why would you need a reason to do something nice for a friend?) and wish a lot more people would be like that as well… Or at least those I am or might want to become close to, so I’ll stop feeling stonewalled all the time.
But I guess it’s a reasonable compromise, as there’s no way I could get that “avoidance” rating that low (below 15%) without lying through my teeth. An easier way would be to get both my ratings slightly lower, but that would once again be lying because while I wasn’t too afraid of being abandoned before Andra left, I certainly am now. Why doesn’t it split friends from family and people you’re close to from people in general I don’t know, because the way I view and treat those groups are almost opposite so putting them together will obviously cause strange results. Quite a pity, considering all the effort put into it…
You know political correctness has gone too far when a child gets in trouble over who he invites to his birthday party. I thought Sweden was such a free country but obviously I was wrong since it seems you no longer have the right to choose who you want to come to your party…
Just think about it for a moment. If he was discriminating because he didn’t invite two children who were in the classroom at the time, what about any children that might not have been there at the time though they should have been? And, following the same logic, wouldn’t just including the children from that classroom discriminate against all the others from that school, or actually all the others in the world? And what about adults? Oh my, just imagine, discriminating based on age, group and location all at once, he should be in jail already! People sure like to keep themselves busy so they won’t have to deal with the important things, don’t they?
How can they hope to force people to like each other? If anything, forcing them to spend time together is likely to make things worse. Some people just don’t get along. Actually, a lot of people just don’t get along, more than those who make it obvious since a lot keep their true opinions to themselves. I think things would be better if there would be more ways to easily avoid those you’d rather not be around since those who actually look for trouble are far fewer than those who actually end up in trouble. And it seems even easier to do that when it comes to children than when it comes to adults, so why don’t they?
I keep saying that nobody’s accusing humans of being intelligent except themselves. The fact that something like this happens is alone another proof of that, but when you hear that the “issue” has reached the parliament… What more could I say? The Spanish are wondering how come their government is worried about animal rights when “more important” (says who?) problems like a slowing economy have risen, but the Swedish parliament is worried about who an eight year old boy invites to his birthday party! I swear, if you try to make sense of what people are thinking you’ll sprain your brain. Then again, most aren’t thinking at all, and that’s the real issue…
You keep seeing on “social networking” (not to mention “dating”) sites a lot of annoyed comments from women saying that men always send them short and stupid messages, with awful spelling and grammar, and are only interested in sex (real if possible, virtual if not), so they have nobody worth replying to and are getting really tired of the whole thing. From what I know (and my general opinion regarding most men), that seems to be a very valid complaint, usually… But how does that replying thing go when a guy’s message is the exact opposite of those they (justly) complain so much about?
But this is just a private rant about a very specific case, namely mine. I’m not going to draw any conclusions. If anybody wishes to do that, feel free…
The only such site I’m active on is OkCupid. They say it’s a dating site, but I don’t see it that way. I think it’s great if you just want to waste some time, very nice if you like tests and occasionally useful in finding interesting people to talk to. I first vanished from there when I vanished from everywhere, after I stopped talking to Andra at the end of 2005, after she left. Then I got back last summer (and that’s how I bumped into her again as well), then I vanished again when we stopped talking again (this time she stopped talking to me), after a while I went back for a week or two, then stopped again for a similar amount of time and nearly three weeks ago I went back again.
What I’m noticing is that not a single person I met on that site keeps in touch for long. I seem to be getting far more initial replies now than I did at first despite my messages being along the same lines, namely pretty much an analysis of the person’s profile start to end, commenting on anything that catches my attention in any way, but everybody just tends to vanish sooner or later (usually sooner). When I was still with Andra I was getting a first reply from about one in three girls (I don’t get along with guys, as I keep saying) I was sending something to. Now in these three weeks I sent such messages to seven girls and only one of them didn’t reply at least once. The problem is what happens after that first reply! Two only sent a brief message in which they’re basically thanking me for being different and saying they’ll write back when they have enough time to give my message the attention it deserves, but didn’t follow through with it. Two others replied nicely just the first time, then went silent. With the last two I seem to have a little conversation going for the moment, but they take several days to reply to anything I send them…
This is how it turned out before as well, just that this time the initial reply rate is very high, which makes it even stranger. I don’t get it… Whenever I send something it’s reasonably well written, usually quite long and it should be obvious for anybody reading it that I’m only interested in talking. Even says at the beginning of my profile that I’m not in any way interested in a relationship… That makes it pretty much the opposite of those messages they complain about, and yet… Plus that I very carefully select the recipients, only sending something if I stumble upon someone I really think I have quite a lot in common with and that we could find interesting things to discuss.
What’s more, usually if I do get an initial reply and then she goes silent I send a message after four or five days asking if something’s wrong or I scared her away or anything. I always get a reply along the lines of “no, sorry, I’m just awful when it comes to this, I’m really sorry, I’ll get back to you soon, I promise” and then silence again. Since I don’t press further, this is where it usually ends. Now I can understand that some might be busy for a while, but that can’t explain all the cases all the time. There are also those who are bothered by something but don’t quite know how to say it so they just stay silent and wait for me to “go away” imagining that’s better than saying what happened, but I like to think I usually avoid the dishonest ones… So I’m left at a loss…
In a way you could find it surprising that Spain is the first country to give legal rights to apes, but when you think about it further you realize it’s not that hard to explain. The very fact that it has no apes of its own and there are no known harmful experiments carried out on them there makes it easier, because it means there are no strong interest groups lobbying against such a law.
It’s interesting to see how such an animal rights law gets passed in the country of bullfighting, but there might be a point to that as well. You have to start somewhere, right? And it’s much easier to start with our closest relatives than with a species that’s a lot further down the line and which is required by local custom to be harmed and killed for entertainment. You take a step to see if the ground holds and then try for the next one. It’s slow, but if you manage to keep your determination then it can work.
What angered me were those comments that it’s perplexing that the country should consider this a priority when the economy is slowing sharply. Come on, people! If you were so stupid as to expect things to keep improving when all you did was drain the Earth, you deserve what’s coming to you and should stop complaining! The problem is that those who cared even before are also affected by these problems. But those usually don’t complain too much, isn’t that interesting?
Another reason for annoyance is the complaint that this resolution sought to give animals the same rights as humans. My initial reaction when I read that was “and why the hell not?”, but then I checked myself. It’s obvious that not even the most intelligent other animals could get exactly the same rights because they don’t really live in our society, not even those who are pets, nor should they, so even if they could grasp the concept they wouldn’t understand its relevance. In some cases it would be useful to get some other intelligent animal’s opinion, outside observers can point out a lot of things, but that’s another story for another day. What I should point out here is that if you’re so worried about animals getting rights they’re unsuitable for, you should take a closer look at some members of a peculiar primate species called homo sapiens…
All of this goes to show that neither the general populace nor the Establishment are ready for such a thing, which is the worst part of all. But that only means we need to push it into their faces more, after all they’ll never be ready if they’re allowed to ignore these issues forever!
All I can say in the end is: Well done, Spain… But hurry up and get to those bulls as soon as possible, ok?
