Violence « Mimi and Eunice

Punishment

This Summer I spent an unusual (for me) amount of time with 13-year-olds, who play a game called “Punchbuggy.”

Also: I’ve been totally slacking on Mimi & Eunice, which is actually good, because it means I’m working on Seder-Masochism again. So back to a totally erratic, whenever-I-feel-like-it schedule here.

Civil

Careful II

…and this is what inevitably happens when you regularly pay people not to punch you.

Careful I

This is about how over-budgeted media productions historically paid to license things they didn’t need to license, just because they had tons of money and their lawyers preferred to “play it safe” than claim Fair Use, which is how Fair Use became the weak pathetic limping layer of pointlessness it is today.

Prophets

Stop bashing your head.

Online Advertising

One of my very favorite web sites is Techdirt. Earlier this year they started running ads that would pop up and play obnoxious audio and video and freeze my browser so I couldn’t shut them off before they finished “loading”. I complained several times (as a guest poster there, I have special channels I can use to complain) and got the following responses: 1. It’s not supposed to do that, huh, wonder why that’s happening, addendum: we’re working on it, and 2. Get an ad-blocker. What I usually did was 3. Shut the browser as soon as I could and then complain again.

A few days ago I did finally install an ad-blocker (to which I immediately made the requested $5 donation, with gratitude). But I do wonder why those who want to make money through online advertising are practically poking their viewers’ eyes out with pop-up video and flickering GIFs, and assaulting their ears with pop-up audio. If I didn’t already love Techdirt so much, I never would have visited it again, once those godawful ads showed up. Countless other web sites have lost my attention forever because their noisy obnoxious impossible-to-shut-up ads amount to audience abuse.

I can tolerate still ads in moderation, but I won’t miss them, either.