Neil Gaiman: Piracy boosts sales

It’s very telling to see someone extraordinarily popular, extraordinarily widely-read, and with a great deal to lose, put his own works up on the internet for free as an experiment, and change his mind about piracy when the empirical evidence proves his original thoughts on the matter wrong.

Just yesterday, I bought a copy of Watchmen — my first ever — despite having read it years ago. Why would I have bought it, if I already know the story? If I already read it for free once before? Because the content is worth it to me, and I never would have known that for certain if I hadn’t read it first.
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Neil Gaiman: Piracy boosts sales
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Science dispels “vagueness” about Occupy Wall Street

One of the claims by the right-wing media about the Occupy movement is that they’re vague, e.g. they don’t know what they’re fighting for. I find this meme interesting in that it attacks the Occupy movement’s strength — the fact that the issues are so widespread and so palpable that you have to be in that 1% of advantaged folks to miss the point.
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Science dispels “vagueness” about Occupy Wall Street

The 99% flunked econ? Just want to bang bongos?

On the topic of another sort of privilege, Alan Grayson on Occupy Wall Street:

If you don’t know what the movement’s all about, Stephanie Zvan leaves absolutely no room for doubt as to what the participants want. If you click that link and still claim the movement lacks clarity, you probably work for some entity that wants to keep a real grassroots movement from gaining momentum.

The 99% flunked econ? Just want to bang bongos?

This is what grassroots looks like

The thing that makes the Tea Party so execrable, so foul and unpalatable and disingenuous, is that it was built by FOX News using FOX News money and directed by FOX News executives. It started as astroturf, as a simulacrum of grassroots, and after it reached a critical mass of people duped into believing they were fighting for lower taxes for everybody, the movement picked up steam.
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This is what grassroots looks like