Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the say-something dept

This week, our top comment on the insightful side comes in response to the disturbing discovery that cops have been instructing paramedics to inject people they arrest with ketamine. Stephen T. Stone won first place, though in fact his comment was reiterating one line from a longer comment by I.T. Guy in response to someone explaining that ketamine is commonly used for people in mental health crises:

Being agitated because you are dealing with dickhead cops is in no way "a mental health crisis".

In second place, we've got an anonymous comment pointing out the perennial problem with the copyright industry's support from thousands of artists:

That would be the thousands contracted to labels, but what about the millions who publish on the Internet and do not want a contract with the labels, or to send more money there way.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Derek Kerton about Europe's copyright battle:

I couldn't get past this:

"The primary focus of this legislation is concerned with whether or not the internet functions as a fair and efficient marketplace"

Is that really what the people of Europe want from their Internet? A "fair and efficient marketplace". People want the Internet to give them communications, information, access to infinite sites and information, and also to entertain them. No citizens would mention "Fair and efficient marketplace" on their wishlist, only profiteers and businesses would.

There's nothing wrong with businesses wanting a "fair and efficient marketplace" of the Internet, but it's not right for their needs to over-rule and dominate what the citizenry actually wants.

Next, we've got a response from Thad to the idea that, in US politics, progressives are the real authoritarians:

That's why so many progressives voted for the billionaire who lives in a tower with his name on it and gets angry when Congress and the courts don't do what he wants, or when the press criticizes him.

Over on the funny side, our first place comment is another win for Stephen T. Stone, who brought up a recurring joke on our post looking back at the death of Google Reader:

Good ol’ Alphabet Masnick, shillin’ for Google by [checks notes] lambasting Google over its decision to shut down Google Reader.

On that same post, one commenter insisted that they hate the idea of an RSS reader having social integrations because they don't care what others are reading or want anyone to know what they are reading. An anonymous commenter won second place for funny by spotting the problem with that assertion:

And yet here you are, giving us your opinion about what you just read.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Kaelis about Verizon's ongoing failed attempts to woo millennials:

Verizon's media acquisition strategy has been less "Go90" and more "Go 90s."

And finally, we've got an anonymous suggestion for Kim Dotcom:

Perhaps Kim Dotcom needs to legally declare himself

a macaque monkey, then he can get PETA to fight for ever on his behalf......

once they've established the copyright of all the files, of course.

That's all for this week, folks!

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  • icon
    Stephen T. Stone (profile), 8 Jul 2018 @ 12:02pm

    The rare double-win. Nice.

    (Now where’s my check, Mike? ;)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
      identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2018 @ 7:05am

      Re: Stone wants a check for supporting the shill charge?

      Good ol’ Alphabet Masnick, shillin’ for Google by [checks notes] lambasting Google over its decision to shut down Google Reader

      And it's voted up as FUNNY?

      Whew. Weirdest site on teh internets.

      By the way, as pointed out: complaining about a service shut down five years before is orders of magnitude below pointing out Google's invasive surveillance and giving NSA "direct access" according to Snowden. That isn't the "s" in substantive complaint.

      And YET it's cheered on front page as if actually does immunize Masnick against the obvious charge... Weird.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2018 @ 8:06am

        Re: Re: Stone wants a check for supporting the shill charge?

        Why not, you chucklefucks demand payment for everything, even fair use.

        Someone's angry and jealous his shit doesn't qualify for the funny test.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2018 @ 8:08am

        Re: Re: Stone wants a check for supporting the shill charge?

        It was funny because it was poking fun at you, and here you are showing that you do not see the joke.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jul 2018 @ 9:21am

        Re: Re:

        If the charge is so obvious, why can’t you prove it?

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    David, 8 Jul 2018 @ 12:31pm

    Sigh.

    And I thought I had such good chances this week, given that I had several posts flagged as, uh, "abusive/trolling/spam"?

    Wait, why is there no award for those?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Pixelation, 8 Jul 2018 @ 3:52pm

      Re: Sigh.

      "Wait, why is there no award for those?"

      Apparently you need to nerd harder.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        David, 8 Jul 2018 @ 6:38pm

        Re: Re: Sigh.

        Look, I am already wearing a pocket protector for a shirt and my pet frog is wielding a nerf gun.

        If I were to nerd any harder, I'd be declared a national treasure and design unbreakable plaintext.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2018 @ 11:08am

          Re: Re: Re: Sigh.

          unbreakable plaintext

          Sorry, but it's already been done. It's called "alphabetic character sort, including whitespace".

          link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Uriel-238 (profile), 8 Jul 2018 @ 1:00pm

    This is a quintessential point.

    Is that really what the people of Europe want from their Internet? A fair and efficient marketplace.

    This notion right here, that state legislators or officials commonly conflate public interests and commercial interests (or business interests) seems to be ubiquitous when discussing commons like the internet and the public domain.

    One solution for this that has been discussed is a robust, organized defense of public resources that promote care and custodianship of those resources, but also assure that non-commercial interests in those resources are preserved.

    Without it, we've see the erosion of both public domain intellectual property and protective measures such as net neutrality, and the constant challenges to these reflect a society that more values money than the people within it.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Bergman (profile), 8 Jul 2018 @ 7:20pm

      Re: This is a quintessential point.

      Exactly. It's pretty clear from that who the politicians think their constituents are.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Hero, 9 Jul 2018 @ 4:52am

    How did the stupid jab about the ketamine article win "most insightful"? It's just a sarcastic jab. There was an actual EMT who commented in that thread and actually had something insightful to say.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2018 @ 6:36am

      Re:

      Maybe that's because he was trying to give cover to the cops and paramedics who were - and maybe still are - forcibly dosing people with a date rape drug.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2018 @ 5:35am

    Adjustment

    Being agitated because you are dealing with dickhead cops is in no way "a mental health crisis"

    Actually:

    Becoming "agitated" is a perfectly sane response to being the focus of drug wielding, gun & taser toting, authoritarian cops who may be suffering a "mental health crisis"

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2018 @ 6:16am

      Re: Adjustment

      If you are acting as you have been trained, and that is be paranoid about people trying to kill you, is it a mental health crisis?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2018 @ 6:19am

        Re: Re: Adjustment

        Paranoia is a pretty well-documented mental condition.

        link to this | view in chronology ]


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