I was reading about the Food Bill subsidies in the US which can be summarized to this infographic.

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

Isn’t it just enraging? No really, let’s map out the sentiments behind the defeat of the amendment. Politicians, who’re supposed to represent the people and work to their benefit, decided they owe their allegiance to corporations/​magnates in the farm states and chose them over the people. But magnates are people too! And corporations are made up of people. So aren’t these people indirectly campaigning against something that is good for them?

What is it about a corporation, a collective of humans working to earn profit, that sucks out every ounce of humanity among its individual employees?

And the politicians, after working hard at not doing the job they were supposed to do, come back every 4 years shamelessly to beg for votes from the people so they can continue ruining everybody’s lives. And the people sanction political inaction with more votes. What does that say about the people?

The recent debates on SOPA/​PIPA, other than identifying the luddites in Congress, have also drawn attention to the fact that Hollywood (i.e. MPAA/​RIAA et al.) are living in a bubble universe with an inflated sense of self-​​worth. Case in point, in one of their interviews, an executive says something to the effect of “I can imagine living without Wikipedia. Can you imagine living without Hollywood?” Ugh, seriously?

Let’s talk about online media, specifically copyleft, user-​​generated content on sites like Flickr, DeviantArt, Youtube, Vimeo, Jamendo and Bandcamp and even podcasts. The way I see it, we already have the infrastructure that mirrors traditional media. Think of each of these sites as a “network”, and each user as a “channel”. What if we could take the next logical step and bundle these networks into “cable” subscriptions i.e. have a unified API and/​or app that connects to all these networks simultaneously.

The fantastic open-​​source Miro project could very well suit these purposes. It already catalogues a large selection of podcast “channels” that then automagically manage themselves according to simple variables like unplayed count and minimum free disk space. Right now, each podcast subscription behaves independently. But when we say “channel” in TV terms, we don’t watch different episodes of the same show back to back, do we? Why can’t we have content curation and crowd-​​sourced playlists (i.e. real channels) that are arranged accordingly. Content curation can be done by notable volunteers or even modified by individual users.

Simple, on demand online video content, be it on a browser (web app) or a dedicated app, that handles all this media from one location. Wouldn’t that be super nice?

tl;dr like Flipboard for all online audio-​​visual media, in one app.

Yesterday, my University clique had a mini-​​gathering on Chinese New Year eve, and we ended up at a board game/​card game café. These things have become really popular in Singapore, and I love them (though I’m not exactly a regular). Just the idea of an unconventional (and geeky) activity made into a viable business model is entirely refreshing.

The idea is simple. Get to the café with a small group of friends, book a table and play games. The staff there are trained to teach you different kinds of games, and will even play the first round with you to get you started. And they have a huge selection, with the majority of titles the average person has never heard of. Again, the staff are great in that regard. They can recommend these games based on the preferences of the group.

If you’re guessing they have games like Monopoly or Poker, or something like that, you’d be mistaken. While I’d love to learn the “big boy” card games like Bridge or Blackjack, these cafés specialise in more obscure titles. Hipster cafés, see?

We initially tried something involving scholars and bribery (I forget the name…) and it was all right. And then our hostess snapped her fingers and worked her magic, and we found ourselves with a box of Dixit on our table. I’d never heard of this game, but I was impressed before too long.

There’s a board with 30 steps, and your counter has to reach the 30th step first to win. Getting points to make moves on the board is where the cards come in. These cards have pictures on them; really weird imagery in a gorgeous watercolor motif. Basically each player takes turns, chooses one card out of the six in-​​hand and make a descriptive sentence of it. Now the other players have to choose one card from their hand that matches that sentence and place it down. These cards are shuffled, and laid face up and each player has to bid on which card he thinks was the original player’s card.

The trick is to be abstract. On the one hand, if all the other players are able to guess the original player’s card based on the sentence, everyone else gets points to move their counters. If no one gets it right, everyone else gets points. If any player bids for the wrong card, the player whom that card belongs to gets extra points. It’s elegant, really.

To me, I felt the game had taken cues from how Tarot cards are read. From my understanding, Tarot imagery subliminally evokes archetypal images from the collective subconscious. Mumbo-​​jumbo to some maybe but I’m reserving judgement. Anyway, Dixit calls on the same concept, telling the player to verbally describe his raw interpretation of the images on the cards. We even had a discussion at some length about whether one particular image had an “invisible wall”.

If you ever get a chance, check Dixit out. Lots of fun to be had.

Edit: And as of Jan 20th, both SOPA & PIPA are indefinitely shelved. But the real threat of them being appended to the Protect Children from Internet Pornographers (PCIP) act is now a concern.

Edit: As of Jan 18th, the SOPA debate is back on, and with greater intensity. This chapter isn’t going to end anytime soon folks…

So as of Jan 16th the SOPA debate has been shelved indefinitely. All is not well though. PIPA still looms, just as dangerously, and now another nefarious act, the Research Works Act, poised to rise to notoriety.

Let’s put aside the criticism of the immeasurable greed that corporations would hijack such a fundamental equalizing technology just for profits. All that needs to be said has been said, and it’s like shouting at a brick wall of stupid.

I want to be more introspective now. Deep down, the guilt that I, among others, almost contributed to the destruction of the Internet is killing me. I still think copyright laws are unfair in their present state, I still believe information should be free.

But by sharing links to non-​​official uploads of songs I liked, or watching streams of films I didn’t catch in the cinemas… Those were the reasons used to justify why legislation like SOPA was necessary. In a very real sense, my actions would have helped justify the unjustifiable; and that just doesn’t sit right with me.

I pledge henceforth that I shall not even be tempted to pirate any entertainment, in any way or form. I refuse to share links to pirated content or partake of pirated content. I refuse to give these evil unscrupulous corporations any excuse to deprive not only me, not only everyone else on the planet but future generations as well, of a free and democratic Internet.

You want your “intellectual property”, MPAA, RIAA et al.? Keep it. Stuff it up your favourite orifices. I don’t care. I believe in the raw creativity of 6 billion humans, and that their collective and cumulative efforts will trump your pathetic offerings any day.

I only request anyone who reads this, anyone who’s experienced the Internet in all its glory to do the same. To reject both the dependence and the bullying. Next time, next time we won’t be so gentle.

P.S: open-​​source collaborations à la (link: HitRecordJoe​.org) should totally become a thing.

I just read this and I felt compelled to blog immediately. It’s a great observation, and I have to agree.

Watsky’s line that “scared is just cared with a lisp” sounds good, but really, worry stems from insecurity no matter how you dice it. Insecurity just puts you on the defensive against yourself. You suddenly have all these thought-​​processes that do self-​​policing. Worrying if you’re doing it right, whether you did it right, whether it could’ve been better, how you can do better next time… All your mind focused on past mistakes, or future possibilities; anything but the present. No wonder it’s hard to concentrate. Maybe it’s a zen thing, but concentration shouldn’t have to be a conscious decision.

It’s not impossible to not worry. (That’s right, triple negative! Can you handle it?) When there’s a problem, all that mental crazy talk also amplifies the apparent gravity of the problem. I just ask myself one question. What’s the worst-​​case scenario? The absolute worst case. And I make my peace with that possibility. I make backup plans for that possibility. And then I calmly go kick ass! Consequently I sometimes suffer from being under-​​stressed. But that’s a good thing, according to the article!

Ah the cliché of New Year’s resolutions. And it’s ok to be skeptical about them, it is really. Just another day on an arbitrarily calibrated calendar, but we mark with with such celebrations. Sure, it’s not like Christmas or Chinese New Year, with all these unspoken and unmissable rituals. But still, we mark its passing.

But you know, I now think of it differently. I think of it now, as a symptom of our unwavering hope for the future. No matter how good or bad the past year was, here it is, the first day of the new year and it’s only going to get better. And I respect that. So in the same spirit of exuberance and optimism, I’d like to just have one New Year’s resolution this year. And that’s to (learn to) live better.

To live better. To experience all the good things life has to offer. And no, while advertisements have convinced our collective subconscious that living better means having something or the other in whatever fantasy you care to think of, I don’t think living better has to do with being able to afford anything really. I just want to learn to appreciate the fact that I (can) breathe, see, hear, smell, taste and think. By living better.

Even from the concept stages of building this site, I had a very clear idea about the things I wanted to do with it. I had to narrow it down you see? Because I was going for minimalism, and that meant cutting anything in excess. Besides, it was essential in deciding the “site architecture”. As it is, I am “abusing” WordPress’ category hierarchies to create “sections” like “essays”, “notions” and “scrapbook”.

So what is the “scrapbook”? Very much the same as what the word means IRL. The Internet is a constant source of information right? Web 2.0 gave birth to the idea of mashups, among other things. Mashups essentially meant sites weren’t built like monoliths anymore, but in a modular manner. Think of it like every block of text in a magazine having perforated edges, so you can tear them out easily. That’s how I see the web now.

And I thought, wouldn’t it be nice, if I could tear out the pieces I like, and post it here much like one does in a scrapbook? That’s also the disclaimer: most of the content in the scrapbook is not mine. (But don’t worry, I take every effort to attribute them at every opportunity.)

That said, it’s not stealing! Ideas are meant to be shared. The point of the internet was so that we could share things across computers. I don’t see what the difference is *where* it’s being shared.

So enjoy the stuff; don’t hate. Cheers.