So why would Huerta create a mixtape no one else could open? Well for one, there’s no worry that someday he’ll regret sending our nation’s protectors a whole bunch of mushy love songs that will sound really, really cheesy 10 years from now. Oh, and there’s this, which he posted on his Medium blog: “The NSA can read my stupid Facebook updates but without my consent it will never be able to listen to my kick-ass mix tape, even if it’s sitting right in front of them.”
Actually, that simplifies things a little too much. Huerta explains in the same post that he was inspired to create his art statement because he has “[bleep] feelings about mass surveillance, and they are not warm and fuzzy. To take the Internet, which I grew up with so much hope for in being so much more free than the world I physically occupied and turn it into a panopticon brings out the tortured artist in me; I can’t help but respond.”
So the mixtape, which he says “contains a soundtrack for the modern surveillance state” is his response. It’s basically a giant “na-na-na-pooh-pooh” (my words, not his) to the NSA and a musical tribute to documentary filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras and lawyer-journalist Glenn Greenwald, both of published news stories based on NSA documents leaked to them by Edward Snowden. It’s also “a reminder that the rules of mathematics are more powerful than the rules of even the most powerful states,” says Huerta.
So what would be on your freedomista mixtape?
P.S. Hope he’s right about the security of his encryption — even if there’s nothing on the “tape” but bad renditions of “Dancing Queen” and “Lady in Red.” Wouldn’t count on it, though.
A different way of fighting addictions. Article is a little vague on whether these newish ways are more effective than the old. But it’s certainly good to see the old “you’re helpless, forever sick, and dependent only on a higher power” model of treatment getting some competition.
Kim Jong Un is terrified of … poor-quality imitation Moon Pies??? Well, take it with a grain of salt, but stranger things have helped bring down tyrants.
Obama The Great. Or why he thinks he is and is expects us peasants to acknowledge it. (Presidents do tend to be a scurvy lot, but I don’t believe we’ve ever had one more narcissistic than this guy.) UPDATE: G**gl* cached version, H/T. M. Original article has slipped behind a paywall.
It figures. There are actual scientists studying that great (and I really mean it) problem of modern life: why the heck all those electrical cords tangle into Gordian knots just by being left lying around.
Via jed: Order restored to universe as Microsoft gives back all those other-people’s domains it managed to crash.
It has been so freakin’ BUSY! I’m sorry for the “lite” posting, but when I do have some time, summer tempts me to spend it elsewhere than the computer.
While articles are being written, doors are also being painted, junk heaps reduced, and projects planned.
—–
I even (I blush to admit) spent time last week prepping artwork to submit to the county fair.
Okay — show of hands. How many of you believe the IRS “accidentally” lost two years of Lois Lerner’s emails? Sharyl Attkisson offers a list of very specific questions Congress should be asking.
What’s lost as cursive handwriting goes away? Intelligence … memory … turns out handwriting isn’t just some bugaboo in stuffy, old-fashioned teachers’ minds.
In Thailand, protestors salute with the touching gesture borrowed from The Hunger Games. The junta doesn’t like it.
Hm. I dunno. I guess if you’re too busy, have the bux, and don’t mind your dog pigging out on treats, this could assuage your guilt. Frankly, though, if I had the money and no time, I’d go with an automated fetch machine, instead. Keep ‘em lean and well-exercised. (H/T ML)
Eighty-four square feet, 305 possessions. I’m glad my own tiny-house phase is over, but I’m also glad I had it. I’m really glad it never went down to 84 square feet.
Join the IRS. Cheat on your taxes. Misbehave. Win awards. Where do I sign up!
Not just renegade ranchers, but the Texas attorney general, is ready to say, “Come and take it! (H/T LarryA in comments.)
Fellow plane passengers perform one, tiny non-violent act of resistance to save a fellow passenger from an unjust and potentially deadly deportation. Wow.
While the smartest and most dogged gun-rights writers are still going back and forth about whether this week’s “faster than a speeding cartridge” Bloomy ad was real or a hoax, we know this one’s just as stooo-pid and appears to be the genuinely ignorant item.
So … some uninsured Californians get covered under Obamacare. Whoopee. Months later they’re desperately banging on the doors of free clinics for the uninsured because they can’t get doctors to see them. (How many of us kept shouting, “It’s not about ‘coverage.’ It’s about access to actual care!”)
Wanna see the impact of state sales taxes on business? Check out Amazon’s numbers. (Well, that may help explain why after a strong start to the year, my personal Amazon links are producing spit and bubble gum this month.)
So this is what the ultimate mainstream ‘zine thinks of the Cliven Bundy standoff. Not a word about federal overkill. Not a word about needlessly slaughtered animals. Not a word about why the BLM operates paramilitary forces. Just that the fedgov had better crack down harder lest the peasants (We the Picts) get even more uppity. Yeah, thank you King George III for your advice.
Mack. Smack that man. He had to have known — had to from all his years of experience — that this stupid and apparently completely untrue blat would not only be picked up by every enemy of freedom, but that it would be remembered, and exaggerated, for the next 20 years. (“Oh yeah, the Bundy Ranch militia people. They were the ones who used women and babies as human shields …”)
