The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free

“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.”

 – Martin Luther King Jr.

 

• Almanac: Virgil Thomson on journalists
  

  “Journalists are plentiful everywhere and entertaining too, full of jokes and stories. Only their jokes are not very funny and their stories not quite true. Their information is always incomplete, because nobody tells them the truth about anything.” Virgil Thomson, The State of Music Continue reading Almanac: Virgil Thomson on journalists... Read more
  

   

  Sunlight is the best disinfectant both in private as well as public enterprises as Vernon Louis Parrington warned us not so long ago ... Even under communism socialising losses and privatising profits took place as the suggestion that we were all equal was destoyed by cunning boys and girls inner circle clubs

  "Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, Utopia is only the shadow of a dream."

  
  
  
  
  
  

  SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Study: N95 masks without valves most effective against COVID-19.

 

Pity the author whose book was reviewed by Jenny Diski. Her first response was to be incredulous that the work even existed  Diskir or Cowardly Dorrstopper ;-) 

1.0 out of 5 stars A great door stopper

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2006

I happened to trip over this book at a friend's place. Quite literally as it was on the floor being used as a door stopper. It seems that the 50 books the publisher had printed failed to sell and they were giving them away as door stoppers.

It saddens me to know that good healthy trees were wasted printing this dribble. Was the publisher awake when it approved this poor excuse for writing. Surely there could have been better uses for the paper.. say instructions on cleaning dog turds off your shoes.. as that is what it felt like to read 2 pages.. yes 2 as that is all i could get through before i began to feel ill.

I have already spent too much time of my life on this waste of space.. I just wanted to warn other readers to completely ignore Cold River as it is rubbish.

A great door stopper 

 

Forthcoming from Marc Levinson, the author of The Box, is a new book Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas, a more general history of globalization

Chris Coward, EDxSnoIsleLibraries: “To make sense of the information streaming to and at us through media and social-media, we need to be able to detect and identify misinformation, misleading information, and disinformation. 

Australia’s long-awaited cybersecurity strategy, released on the weekend, pledges to spend A$1.67 billion over the next ten years to improve online protection for businesses, individuals and the country as a whole.

The lion’s share of the cash will go towards policing and intelligence, with smaller amounts set aside for a grab bag of programs from cybersecurity training to digital ID. Much detail remains to be revealed, and whether the strategy succeeds in improving in the safety of all Australians will depend on how well it is executed over the coming decade.

Australia’s cybersecurity strategy: cash for cyberpolice and training, but the cyberdevil is in the cyberdetail

The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free - Current Affairs: “Paywalls are justified, even though they are annoying. It costs money to produce good writing, to run a website, to license photographs. A lot of money, if you want quality. Asking people for a fee to access content is therefore very reasonable. You don’t expect to get a print subscription  to the newspaper gratis, why would a website be different? I try not to grumble about having to pay for online content, because I run a magazine and I know how difficult it is to pay writers what they deserve.  But let us also notice something: the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New Republic, New York, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and the London Times all have paywalls. Breitbart, Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the Washington Examiner, InfoWars: free! You want “Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets,” “The Moral Case Against Mask Mandates And Other COVID Restrictions,” or an article suggesting the National Institutes of Health has admitted 5G phones cause coronavirus—they’re yours. You want the detailed Times reports on neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions, the reasons contact tracing is failing in U.S. states, or the Trump administration’s undercutting of the USPS’s effectiveness—well, if you’ve clicked around the website a bit you’ll run straight into the paywall. This doesn’t mean the paywall shouldn’t be there. But it does mean that it costs time and money to access a lot of true and important information, while a lot of bullshit is completely free…”

How Poetry Can Guide Us Through Trauma

Audre Lorde’s 1977 piece “Poetry Is not a Luxury” seems prescient right now. “Poems have alchemized death and imagined the continuation of lives cut short by racist violence. They’ve given texture to the ‘sudden strangeness’ of life brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, offering comfort to countless readers. In moments of uncertainty, poetry has illuminated bridges to the past—and shown how the act of remembering might alter the future.” – The Atlantic

Fast-food wrappers at McDonald’s, Burger King may harbor toxic chemicals: report

AND WITH BREXIT, TOO. WHEN THEY NEED HIM MOST. CIVIL SERVANTS THESE DAYS!  Paws for reflection: British Foreign Office cat To retire 

Record Scratch Airmail. There’s a paywall but one can register for access to some pieces each week. which is what I did. Not sure this is yet worth the price of a subscription – nor if it will ever be. Vanity Fair under Carter used to be something I’d flip through when getting my hair styled, rather than buying for its online or deadtreee content. Especially now that Christopher Hitchens is no more.

Appeals court rules 10¢-a-page charge for court documents is too high Ars Technica

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway grew profits by 86% last quarter as its stock portfolio soared in value Business Insider

 

Slovakia expels three Russian diplomats, cites abuse of visas

The expulsions are connected with the murder of a former Chechen rebel with Georgian citizenship in Berlin last summer.