1000th post?!
Apparently, this marks a major milestone on my LJ. My 1000th post. Not quite over 9000 yet, but eh, 'tis cool. Or something. If anybody want to draw me up some nifty cool arts for it, I'd be most appreciative ^_^
So what's going on. Something about big business and governments vs. the ideals of freedom and transparency. If it's news to you, look up Wikileaks and/or Julian Assange on your favorite news site. It's a war being waged on the internet, and an interesting dilemma. You've got the US running around the world championing the ideals of free speech and freedom of the press, and then they call for this man's head on a silver platter (figuratively) because he had the gall to publish a series of "classified" documents that whistle-blowers leaked to him. On the "axis" side, you've got a few companies caving to pressure from the US to make life difficult for Wikileaks to exist; Amazon dropped their hosting, PayPal dropped their donation account after freezing the funds within, Visa & MasterCard blocked the ability to make donations to Wikileaks through them, their DNS provider in the states dropped them, the French government is pressuring their new French provider to drop them (which has so far stood up to the pressure), and a Swiss bank froze Julian's account set aside to help with legal funds. Backing Wikileaks up is an assortment of news outlets standing up for press freedom (The Times prominent among them), various internet blogs, and a large gathering of "Anonymous", whose "Operation: Payback" DDOS attacks dealt some damage to some of the companies that were making things difficult for Wikileaks.
General comments range the gamut, from people who feel Julian Assange and Wikileaks are champions of freedom and transparency, to those who feel that they're no better than terrorists.
My personal opinion? Transparency is a good thing. Secrets cause obnoxious things like arms races and overzealous military positioning in the name of "safety". By constantly being afraid of what some other military might be doing, it puts you in a position of needing to constantly increase your own defense "just in case". It's a bad cycle.
That being said, full transparency would only work if every single government on Earth followed it. Which isn't the case.
I still feel Wikileaks provides an invaluable service, exposing some pretty terrible antics of various governments that happen behind closed doors and in the trenches of war. It's good for democracy, as it allows the people to see what their elected officials are letting happen. And that knowledge allows us to demand an explanation and vote with a better understanding of the people and issues that we're voting on. This is a very good thing.
So this "war" on the battlegrounds of the internet is a rather big deal in many ways. It's a multifaceted, almost scary event, and its outcome could spur on some major changes in the "free world". For better or worse. Or, after the media frenzy dies down and people get bored, they might forget and nothing might change. It is what it is.
In any case, look into it.
So, being some form of milestone post, I thought this would be as good a time as any to look back on the past. I've been here since... wow, November of 2003. Just over 7 years. That's like, forever in internet years. I've been in and out of three separate colleges since then, gained and lost a variety of friends and acquaintances, fell into and out of the anime convention scene pretty hardcore, grown and changed in a variety of ways. I'm hardly the hyper, happy-go-lucky lul random kid I was back then, and yet even back then I felt ages older than my peers. I feel vaguely sad about the loss of my ability to be sporadic and genuinely happy like I was back then. I've been cynical / depressed for most of the recent years, as my knowledge of the world and how it works has grown and shown it to be a much darker place than I had once thought. So many people are controlled by greed and a lust for power, and the natural state of things seems to favor those kinds of people for positions of power and control. This is not a good thing.
In the process of self-discovery and trying to find my place in a so-called "free" world that will harass and mock you for doing anything slightly out-of-sync with the "normal", I've discovered that common held notions of classes in American society are big fat lies. It has been my experience, for the most part, that the poor in America aren't any lazier than those working. In fact, I'd be much more apt to point my finger at your standard upper-middle-class American for that inglorious habit. Too many people get away with sitting on their butts browsing the internet in an office all day every day and making $75k annually for it, then yell about how "lazy" the poor are. The same poor who, in my experience, would love to actually find some gainful employment that pays a LIVABLE wage and lets them move forward with their lives. Only they can't, because who would hire a smelly, lazy bum?
I feel strongly that not a single country on Earth is "doing it right" politically. And many of the utopia concepts of various political parties and philosophies also wouldn't be much better or worse than anything currently out there. There's some sort of zen that must be found; some balance of income and expenditure, of a safety net for the poor and down-on-their-luck with the ability for the ambitious to strike it rich if they so desire. Neither capitalism nor socialism in their pure forms will create a livable society.
I think that I need to find some way of earning income, regardless of what exactly that way is. I need to do this to pay off the endless debts I've been handed, save up money, and very possibly leave this country. I've been researching countries, and I want to find somewhere to immigrate to with a much better social network and greater personal freedoms. Somewhere with a political system far less corrupt and a populace far less idiotic than here. Finland is among my top choices, as well as the Netherlands, but that's far down the line. It just seems like the right thing to do, as eventually I will want children, and don't want to have to raise them in the hypocritical environment that exists within the US.
Another option I've been looking into is teaching ESL. Many countries are pretty desperate for English teachers, I'm pretty good at the written variety of English, I've got experience in writing for and editing English-language publications, and I'm fascinated by different cultures. Seems that standard requirement is simply any bachelor's degree, which is another one of those bullshit "there's too many people, so here's an arbitrary requirement to help us weed some of them out", but it is what it is. If I can ever gain enough income or savings to allow me to pay my own way through school at my own pace, I can easily acquire one of those, and since it can be any, I could probably get one in something I'm *actually* interested in. Like history, or anthropology, or linguistics, or a handful of other infinitely-interesting and almost universally considered "useless" studies.
Regardless of anything, I *cannot* remain static. Drifting along without purpose or goal leads to nothing. So what if I'm "shy" or vaguely anti-social, or continually show more and more symptoms of developing some variety of Asperger's? I doubt any variety of counseling would help much, and I'm generally against the concept of pharmaceutical concoctions that artificially change your emotion by basically getting you high. My social stigmas stem from too much empathy and understanding of the motives of others; they didn't appear out of thin air. You can't rationalize the illogicality of the world, and only such a rationalization or the world suddenly fixing itself would fix those problems. The hurdle is to somehow create enough monetary wealth to move forward along any number of paths that intrigue me. And I need to make it happen, regardless of personal convictions towards any course of action. So long as the path leads towards the goals I have set for myself, then if I have to stumble through tangled brambles to get there, so be it.
So hoorah, hooray, 1000 posts! Here's to another thousand and more to come! To the infinity of possibilities stretched before us, the infinity of paths, the infinity of the universe! The sky is NOT the limit, for there is never a limit!
(For reference, I live by the ideal in this comic: http://xkcd.com/137/ )
So what's going on. Something about big business and governments vs. the ideals of freedom and transparency. If it's news to you, look up Wikileaks and/or Julian Assange on your favorite news site. It's a war being waged on the internet, and an interesting dilemma. You've got the US running around the world championing the ideals of free speech and freedom of the press, and then they call for this man's head on a silver platter (figuratively) because he had the gall to publish a series of "classified" documents that whistle-blowers leaked to him. On the "axis" side, you've got a few companies caving to pressure from the US to make life difficult for Wikileaks to exist; Amazon dropped their hosting, PayPal dropped their donation account after freezing the funds within, Visa & MasterCard blocked the ability to make donations to Wikileaks through them, their DNS provider in the states dropped them, the French government is pressuring their new French provider to drop them (which has so far stood up to the pressure), and a Swiss bank froze Julian's account set aside to help with legal funds. Backing Wikileaks up is an assortment of news outlets standing up for press freedom (The Times prominent among them), various internet blogs, and a large gathering of "Anonymous", whose "Operation: Payback" DDOS attacks dealt some damage to some of the companies that were making things difficult for Wikileaks.
General comments range the gamut, from people who feel Julian Assange and Wikileaks are champions of freedom and transparency, to those who feel that they're no better than terrorists.
My personal opinion? Transparency is a good thing. Secrets cause obnoxious things like arms races and overzealous military positioning in the name of "safety". By constantly being afraid of what some other military might be doing, it puts you in a position of needing to constantly increase your own defense "just in case". It's a bad cycle.
That being said, full transparency would only work if every single government on Earth followed it. Which isn't the case.
I still feel Wikileaks provides an invaluable service, exposing some pretty terrible antics of various governments that happen behind closed doors and in the trenches of war. It's good for democracy, as it allows the people to see what their elected officials are letting happen. And that knowledge allows us to demand an explanation and vote with a better understanding of the people and issues that we're voting on. This is a very good thing.
So this "war" on the battlegrounds of the internet is a rather big deal in many ways. It's a multifaceted, almost scary event, and its outcome could spur on some major changes in the "free world". For better or worse. Or, after the media frenzy dies down and people get bored, they might forget and nothing might change. It is what it is.
In any case, look into it.
So, being some form of milestone post, I thought this would be as good a time as any to look back on the past. I've been here since... wow, November of 2003. Just over 7 years. That's like, forever in internet years. I've been in and out of three separate colleges since then, gained and lost a variety of friends and acquaintances, fell into and out of the anime convention scene pretty hardcore, grown and changed in a variety of ways. I'm hardly the hyper, happy-go-lucky lul random kid I was back then, and yet even back then I felt ages older than my peers. I feel vaguely sad about the loss of my ability to be sporadic and genuinely happy like I was back then. I've been cynical / depressed for most of the recent years, as my knowledge of the world and how it works has grown and shown it to be a much darker place than I had once thought. So many people are controlled by greed and a lust for power, and the natural state of things seems to favor those kinds of people for positions of power and control. This is not a good thing.
In the process of self-discovery and trying to find my place in a so-called "free" world that will harass and mock you for doing anything slightly out-of-sync with the "normal", I've discovered that common held notions of classes in American society are big fat lies. It has been my experience, for the most part, that the poor in America aren't any lazier than those working. In fact, I'd be much more apt to point my finger at your standard upper-middle-class American for that inglorious habit. Too many people get away with sitting on their butts browsing the internet in an office all day every day and making $75k annually for it, then yell about how "lazy" the poor are. The same poor who, in my experience, would love to actually find some gainful employment that pays a LIVABLE wage and lets them move forward with their lives. Only they can't, because who would hire a smelly, lazy bum?
I feel strongly that not a single country on Earth is "doing it right" politically. And many of the utopia concepts of various political parties and philosophies also wouldn't be much better or worse than anything currently out there. There's some sort of zen that must be found; some balance of income and expenditure, of a safety net for the poor and down-on-their-luck with the ability for the ambitious to strike it rich if they so desire. Neither capitalism nor socialism in their pure forms will create a livable society.
I think that I need to find some way of earning income, regardless of what exactly that way is. I need to do this to pay off the endless debts I've been handed, save up money, and very possibly leave this country. I've been researching countries, and I want to find somewhere to immigrate to with a much better social network and greater personal freedoms. Somewhere with a political system far less corrupt and a populace far less idiotic than here. Finland is among my top choices, as well as the Netherlands, but that's far down the line. It just seems like the right thing to do, as eventually I will want children, and don't want to have to raise them in the hypocritical environment that exists within the US.
Another option I've been looking into is teaching ESL. Many countries are pretty desperate for English teachers, I'm pretty good at the written variety of English, I've got experience in writing for and editing English-language publications, and I'm fascinated by different cultures. Seems that standard requirement is simply any bachelor's degree, which is another one of those bullshit "there's too many people, so here's an arbitrary requirement to help us weed some of them out", but it is what it is. If I can ever gain enough income or savings to allow me to pay my own way through school at my own pace, I can easily acquire one of those, and since it can be any, I could probably get one in something I'm *actually* interested in. Like history, or anthropology, or linguistics, or a handful of other infinitely-interesting and almost universally considered "useless" studies.
Regardless of anything, I *cannot* remain static. Drifting along without purpose or goal leads to nothing. So what if I'm "shy" or vaguely anti-social, or continually show more and more symptoms of developing some variety of Asperger's? I doubt any variety of counseling would help much, and I'm generally against the concept of pharmaceutical concoctions that artificially change your emotion by basically getting you high. My social stigmas stem from too much empathy and understanding of the motives of others; they didn't appear out of thin air. You can't rationalize the illogicality of the world, and only such a rationalization or the world suddenly fixing itself would fix those problems. The hurdle is to somehow create enough monetary wealth to move forward along any number of paths that intrigue me. And I need to make it happen, regardless of personal convictions towards any course of action. So long as the path leads towards the goals I have set for myself, then if I have to stumble through tangled brambles to get there, so be it.
So hoorah, hooray, 1000 posts! Here's to another thousand and more to come! To the infinity of possibilities stretched before us, the infinity of paths, the infinity of the universe! The sky is NOT the limit, for there is never a limit!
(For reference, I live by the ideal in this comic: http://xkcd.com/137/ )