Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the said-and-done dept
This week, Mason Wheeler scored a first place win on both the insightful and funny sides. For insightful, it was a response to our mention of Jack Valenti's famous "Boston stranger" comment in the launch of our new Sky Is Rising report:
Valenti was probably right... just not in the way he thought.
During the 1960s, the population of Boston was between approximately 640,000 and 700,000 people. Statistically, approximately half of them would have been women, and between approximately 65-70% of Americans were children during that time. A bit of quick math gives us approximately 100,000 adult women.
All those possible targets, and the Boston Strangler murdered a grand total of 13 of them.
The VCR was to the American film producer as the Boston Strangler was to the woman home alone: very scary to talk about, but the amount of actual damage done was negligible.
In second place on the insightful side, it's Rekrul with a response to the German publishing company claiming ad blocking is copyright infringement:
Various sites want to try and force you to unblock ads, I wonder why none of them are willing to assume liability for any viruses or malware rogue ads might deliver to users, or help pay for the user's bandwidth wasted by the ads.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Matthew Cline aiming to deduce just what was meant by the mention of Linux in the charges against Julian Assange:
Paragraph 9:
The portion of the password Manning gave to Assange to crack was stored as a "hash value" in a computer file that was accessible only by users with administrative-level privileges. Manning did not have administrative-level privileges, and used special software, namely a Linux operating system, to access the computer file and obtain the portion of the password provided to Assange.
So, assuming the allegation to be true, Manning booted a machine using a live CD to get around security restrictions on the harddrive within the machine. Meaning that though manning didn't have administrator/root access to the machine, she 1) had physical access to it, and 2) either the machine had no BIOS password, she knew the BIOS password, or she could open up the computer's chassis so as to reset the BIOS password.
In other words: what kind of crappy security practices did they have in place?
Next, it's Federico with a sarcastic comment about the growing entertainment industry:
Their cut of the profits
Ah, you point to the overall revenue but you forget that greedy Google is getting all the profits with its scandalous margins!
Compare
https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/17q4_sony.pdf
https://www.sony.n et/SonyInfo/IR/library/ar/ar_sony_2000.pdfIn the golden days (1999), Sony was making a nice 5 % profit margin on its Music department. Now (2017) it's only... 16 %!
You wouldn't know how expensive it is to develop streaming platforms and digital restrictions management, compared to printing discs and shipping them around the world.
Over on the funny side, our aforementioned winning comment from Mason Wheeler is a quick take on the ongoing trademark battle by the people behind the Emmys:
Wait wait wait... this group actually named themselves the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and go by the acronym NATAS?
Have they never stopped to look carefully at that? Possibly even spell it backwards?
At this point, nobody should be surprised at their evil behavior!
In second place, it's Shufflepants supplying important new material regarding Manning's use of Linux:
They also released the actual footage submitted into evidence as proof of Manning and Assange hacking with their specialized software:
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with Thad responding to the objection that a Media Matters study can't disprove anti-conservative bias on social media, due to the group's own bias:
Fortunately, we have Republican senators to provide us with unbiased conclusions.
And finally, we've got David honing in on the real reason the DOJ is going after Assange, based on how the judge in his failure-to-surrender trial described his actions — "the behaviour of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest":
Ah, this is what it is about
Trump fears competition.
That's all for this week, folks!
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"Media Matters study can't disprove anti-conservative bias on social media, due to the group's own bias: "
Lets see...
a group of persons who have no Idea/way/concept, of hiring another person to Crete WHAT THEY WANT/need/bitch about..
willing to hand everything to Corps, not smaller companies.
Ludites?? Who think the corps even care about them..and will use REVERSE socialism and give them PART of the profits, They make after they REMOVE all the Corp laws??
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The real insight of the week
Joe Biden offered the whole world the real insight of the week. The Democratic Party is so obsessed with hatred, it cannot laugh. Joe can laugh. He made a joke about “he gave me permission to hug him”, it was funny. Many actual people laughed. But the leftist-mob in the Democratic Party did not laugh - they were offended - outraged with animus and hatred.
The real insight of the week is that if this continues, the Democratic Socialist Alt-Leftist Party of AOC and the Muslim freshman will never laugh again, except to mock or otherwise apply hatred to others. They have no soul, only hatred directed both outward and inward. It’s a hate based ideology.
Compare that to Trump - he lives to get a laugh. He is actually funny to any normal people. A little crude sometimes, a littl gaff prone, but Trump has a heart. (He’s also wildly successful, which makes it easier to forgive him for his rough edges).
Anyway, that’s the real insight of the week - you leftists can’t laugh, except to mock. That’s it - you’re sad angry useless people with nothing but each other.
Joe could win - unlike every other Democratic candidate, he’s likable.
Like Trump.
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Re: The real insight of the week
Whever said fiction is supposed to be believable was just disproved by that anon.
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Re: The real insight of the week is 3.4%
Did you make Shiva wear the trump mask or the Fran mask this week bro?
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The Biden joke was only funny if you think joking about consent is funny. The whole reason people ripped into Biden for it was because he had spent the week or so prior being accused of touching women without their consent. Even though the touching was not sexual in nature (as each of his accusers have said), it was still a breaking of personal boundaries and (if you believe his accusers) completely non-consensual. And rather than follow his own advice about “listening better”, he joked about having consent to touch a child.
The problem with the joke is that Biden seems to think his touching people without permission is something he can get away with and laugh about later. I would hope that the controversy he went through about that joke — not to mention, you know, all the women accusing him of non-consensual touching — teaches him to keep his damn hands to himself until he knows for sure that someone does not mind his touching them. But Biden is an old White male politician; I do not trust them to learn from their mistakes.
As for the accusations of Democrats lacking a sense of humor, I believe you have mistaken “people being upset over a powerful man joking about (allegedly) non-consensually touching women” for “people not being able to laugh”. You might want to find better things to laugh at if you think such jokes are funny.
And the same goes for Donald Trump’s brand of “humor”. Mocking disabled reporters is not my idea of “funny”; it is cruel and heartless, and Trump obviously revels in such cruelty. He lives to make a joke at someone else’s expense, but he rarely makes himself the butt of a joke. When was the last time you heard him tell a joke about his casino failing? Hell, when was the last time he told a joke where he did not try to actively demean and disgrace another person?
Success does not, on its own, make Trump a likeable person. It does not make him “forgivable”, either. All your way of thinking does is reinforce the idea that he should be allowed to do anything up to (and possibly including) violating the Constitution of the United States because “he’s rich and famous”. If you would never give a leftist/progressive such praise and such leeway to act as you have given Trump for being “successful”, you may want to rethink kissing a conservative’s ass for the same reason.
(And for the record, you can tell a joke without having to be cruel and hateful towards other people. Try looking up the work of Mitch Hedberg to see what I mean.)
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Re: Touching
Hey, Trump always had his fixer send those girls some money after he grabbed their pussy.
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Re: Re: Touching
Where is the funny, but also true and therefore sad button?
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Is that the same Mason Wheeler who makes YouTube videos with his wife?
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Re: Outsight of the week....
Stephen,
While I usually agree with most of what you say, much of the above leaves me no choice but to gently remind you of that old Indian saying "Offense is in the eye/ear of the beholder".
Granted, the definition of "offensive" is a very speedy moving target, but that's the price we pay for having a language that can't stand to be both precise and accurate, and an education system that believes that because it's actually made up of myriad small education systems, there's no reason to have everyone on the same page. Which give rise to the fact that if one wishes to be offended, then the chances that they wll be offended shoot towards 100% with alacrity.
As to 45's ability to crack a joke, I'm lost - has he really tried to do such, since the age of oh... say... the time he could speak? Everything I've ever heard come out of his mouth, within a 1% tolerance, sounds exactly like my anal mutterings each morning - unintelligible, yet excruciately offensive to everyone else.
sumgai
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Re:
You may want to see someone about the fixation you seem to have.
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Re: The real insight of the week
if you don't find joe biden hilarious you must not have a soul? man, catholicism is fuckin weird
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Re: Re: Outsight of the week....
"Old Indian sayings" are famous for their use of foreslashes
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Re:
I'll cop to it: sometimes the left does fail to take a joke when it probably should (though this is not one of those times).
Of course, Dan Crenshaw is still riding high on indignance about one SNL quip, and all America's liberal comedians had to ritualistically twitter-flog themselves for a week after Kathy Griffin held up a dump prop and sparked The Great GOP Pearl-Clutch of 2017, so I'm not rushing to decide is which side is more prone to critical sense of humour lapses
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Re: Re: Outsight of the week....
I dare you to watch this video and not laugh about The Left, Obama and Trump. It’s only 15 minutes, but FUNNY!
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6025994248001/#sp=show-clips
If you can’t laugh at this, you must be a socialist democrat that does’nt know anything about humor. You might be able to recover is you meditate upon the teachings of Phu Thai:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MMNDoWf2AK4
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Re: Re: Re: Outsight of the week....
I think I'll laugh about Shiva Ayyadurai losing to the fake Indian instead. Now that was a riot. Almost as good as the fact that he paid for a lawsuit that failed to prove he invented email!
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Re: Real Indian lose to Fake Indian
That “old Indian saying” really triggered you didn’t it bro? Wonder why 🤫
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Try to imagine this, the ultimate funny/insightful evening
Try to imagine the election coverage for 2020 - the same biased media pundits all pasting their faces on your TV sets and computer monitors and cellphones and iPads. But, imagine that this time, they are afraid to disappoint their viewers like 2016, and actually report the facts about the polls.
Imagine the economy continues on it’s current track, the Justice Department continues on it’s current track, pretty much the whole country continues to move in the same direction that it has been moving for the last two years for the next two years.
Trump will lead in the polls. Everyone will be aghast from the beginning of the election coverage to the end. Afraid. Sad. Ready to be disappointed. Then, hour by hour, vote by vote, Trump wins again. WIns Bugly.
Imagine how insightful the commentators are going to be. All the reasons they are going to give for Trump winning, even through he’s so bad and everyone hates him. On and on, hour after hour, of justifying the unjustifiable, and then, well, it will be over. Again. For the second time.
How funny/insightful is THAT going to be?!
MAGA
Who do you think will take Trump’s place in 2024? One of the many ladies in his life? One of his sons? Bill Barr (would that be cool or what - a “law and order” POTUS).
Imagine all the talking the Left is going to do. On and on. You’re so bad. You’re a racist. Your a homophobic, xenophobic blah blah blah on and on - who will still be listening? You?
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Re: Re: The real insight of the week
We live in a world where a sexual fetish exists that involves broken glass.
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Re: Try to imagine this, only getting 3.4% of the vote
Hey hamilton are you wearing the trump mask tonight? Or did you make crybaby Jhon wear it?
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Re: Re: Try to imagine this, only getting 3.4% of the vote
I think what you are saying is that for you, after Trump wins again (Bugly), nothing will change. Same come-backs, same attitude, same world-view, pretty much status-quo, right? No change for you, and you will continue to both listen to and provide the left-ist chants again and again, over and over. Wow, your material is already old now, how old will it be THEN? Thanks for your opinion.
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Re: Re: Re: Try to imagine this, Bugly
Poor triggered snowflake bro. Your “special friend” lost so bugly that he had to go into hiding and is now living as a women named Fran in Boston Mass. I mean he spent over $50 a vote to lose that bad bro. It makes me almost feel bad, that all you have is this forum to play out your fantasies on. Then I remember that your “special friend” sued this website and lost BUGLY! How much I wonder did he spend to lose that battle?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Try to imagine this, Bugly
(C) Copyright 2019 by Hamilton. All RIghts Reserved. No part of this public comment may be copied, photocopied, reproduced, otherwise reduced to a machine readable from without prior permission from Hamilton. This comment contains proprietary, trade secret, and otherwise confidential and non-to-be-copied material rife with trade secrets, confidential information, other valuable and proprietary ideas, concepts, figures, diagrams, illusions, allusions, and other similar such things, and may not, under any circumstances, be consumed in a fashion other than that which Hamilton intended.
So, with that in mind, here’s my idea. It’s a movie. Here’s the synopsis:
Hillary is already dead, having never slept a night of her life in prison. A young reporter named Hamilton investigates her life and finds some super-secret decoder-ring way to retrieve her deleted Emails.
He has all the materials he needs to reveal and prove her criminal conspiracy to President Bill Bar the “law and order” President. But, just as he is about to meet Bill in the Trump hotel penthouse with Melania and the others, Hillary’s Ghost visits Hamilton in a dream.
You are a RACIST! She exclaims! Her eyes huge with emotional intent.
Then John Webster shows up, and says “Wait! Now you will serve ETERNAL JUSTICE! And John proclaims she should be BURNED! AND THEN SHE IS!
And them Hamilton wakes up. And thinks.
That’s chapter 1 - scenes 1-7, what do you think? Fundable?
How much could you offer to continue this story?
I’m serious.
Totally.
It’s a winner, Bugly.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Try to imagine this, Bugly
You had those materials for two years and counting. And managed to get your darlings Cohen and Manafort in prison.
Keep firing blanks, Hamilton. Eventually some sanitarium is going to take pity on you.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Try to imagine this, Bugly
Come on! Give me a break! This is new material at it’s base - the GHOST of Hillary! Think about it!
She was behind the WHOLE TRUMP RUSSIA DEAL! No kidding, we all know she paid for it and then passed it out to her buddies in the Obama administration. She is the mastermind, and the story pre-supposes that she is NEVER HELD ACCOUNTABLE, that’s original and (actually) unlikely (Bill Barr).
So, after after she’s DEAD, she has orchestrated a GHOST that eventually KILLS Hamilton! HER GHOST! HILLARY’S GHOST! Scary or WHAT! Wow. I have goosebumps. Could happen, really.
New material, never seen before, all the prior proprietary notices apply to this clarification and enumeration as well.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Try to imagine this, Bugly
Here's a hint: it's not a trade secret if you post it in plaintext for public view.
Isn't this the part where you reply to yourself with Melania fanfiction again? Or do you have to get out the Fran Drescher mask?
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Re: The real insight of the week
Trump is funny all right. Just not on purpose.
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Hacking
And the people on the other side getting hacked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ
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Re: The real insight of the week
You are an abrasive, self-absorbed moron who really needs to figure out how to debate in a calm, rational, reasoned manner. Part of that is understanding that there are a lot of readers who comment here on TD who are so far left that they are unable to laugh at anything that might even hint at being insensitive. In that one respect I agree with you to a point.
Even bringing up this topic is pointless as it seeks to achieve nothing, makes no progress toward greater understanding across political and ideological boundaries and serves no purpose other than for you to run your mouth yet again. See my earlier statement about your need to learn how to debate properly.
People are who they are. As social animals people will congregate with those who share their views. As these groups grow they become self-supporting and (falsely) reinforce the beliefs of those groups -- "if so many others feel as I do then I must be correct". This applies to you, too. Because you've found a group of people who feel as you do, at least partially, you have come to believe that everything you think is correct. News flash: It's not.
Nobody's views are more or less valid than anyone else's despite what damn near everyone thinks. Nobody wants to believe they may be wrong, even fundamentally so, about one thing or especially all the things. The truth is that everyone is wrong to some degree. Our only path forward for civilization is in consensus, as sad as that is. If the majority feel one way and you feel another then by all means speak up (rationally and intelligently) but accept that you are in the minority and will likely lose the battle. Your choices are to go elsewhere, where others feel as you do, or suck it up and stop lashing out at everyone who disagreed with you. Anything else just makes you an impotent troll.
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Re: The real insight of the week
Cool,
When did they change the meaning of the word conservative?? To mean something OWNED by corporate Stooges..
Red/right/religious/conservative was the ideal for the right. And The bible, is the base for/of Socialism.. NOT Cooperating with corps that have taken over every business int he USA..
2-3 corps own most the grocery stores. = no competition
1 corp owns 4-6 NAMES, for every American made washer/dryer/frig you will ever buy.. = no competition
8 corps Own 80% of the TV channels you watch on TV, Around the world.. = no competition..
4-5 corps Own All the Cable/sat/Cellphone/Internet/Phone services in the USA...= no competition
Wont even mention BANKS...
This isnt capitalism..
This is taking consumer money to pay off those in Offices, State and fed..Then raising the prices to get MORE money..
Go look up the stock prices of fruits and veggies, and consider that we PAY over 50 times the Stock prices. You would think that the RIGHT, would fix something, NOT add to the problem.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Try to imagine this, Bugly
Hey, I have an idea for a book too, it goes something like this:
Hillary is already dead, having never slept a night of her life in prison. A young reporter named Hamilton investigates her life and finds some super-secret decoder-ring way to retrieve her deleted Emails.
He has all the materials he needs to reveal and prove her criminal conspiracy to President Bill Bar the “law and order” President. But, just as he is about to meet Bill in the Trump hotel penthouse with Melania and the others, Hillary’s Ghost visits Hamilton in a dream.
You are a RACIST! She exclaims! Her eyes huge with emotional intent.
Then John Webster shows up, and says “Wait! Now you will serve ETERNAL JUSTICE! And John proclaims she should be BURNED! AND THEN SHE IS!
And them Hamilton wakes up. And thinks.
That’s chapter 1 - scenes 1-7, what do you think? Fundable?
How much could you offer to continue this story?
I’m serious.
Totally.
It’s a winner, Bugly.
I just copied your post. What are you going to do about it?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Try to imagine this
You could've at least fixed the "bigly" spelling error.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Try to imagine this, Bugly
You are specifically authorized to copy the aforementioned protected message in the manner in which you have just engaged.
However, should you EVER copy aforementioned protected message in ANY WAY whatsoever divergent from the afore-aforementioned you shall immediate by subject to HAMILTON LAW (which, by-the-by, predates American law by several centuries).
SO ORDERED. THE HONORABLE JUDGE JOHN WEBSTER PRESIDING.
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Re: He lost Bugly
Oh can’t we get a movie wherein a real Indian gets scalped by a fake one? Too violent.
Let’s make the violence represented by votes? It’s a real American underdog story where a career liar gets his comeuppance at the hands of a former school teacher. We can make it a two parter where the liar goes into hiding due to spending millions of dollars to get a meaner handful of votes and is a laughingstock for all and sundry.
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Re:
Ever watch Sliders? It was a great show from the early 90s, about a group of people with a broken dimensional transport device that could take them to all sorts of interesting parallel worlds, but couldn't get them back home to their original version of Earth. It only ran for three seasons (some may claim there were more, but they are heretics!) but I'd highly recommend it.
They had this one world where everyone was so obsessed with legalistic details that you needed medical waivers to buy a hot dog from a food vendor, and accidentally bumping into someone on the street, then muttering "oops, sorry" was considered legitimate grounds for a sexual harassment lawsuit. The in-world explanation was that an unusually high percentage of the population had law degrees, but sometimes it feels like that isn't necessary at all; it seems like we're getting closer and closer to that joyless mess of a world with every passing week, just by more and more people abandoning a culture of dignity in favor of a culture of victimhood.
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Please forgive me; I did not realize that someone wanting other people to not touch them without at least implicit permission is part of “a culture of victimhood”. I must assume the women who had their vaginas felt up by Donald Trump, per his own admission and likely without their explicit consent, felt completely dignified during and after the act.
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Re:
So you still persist in completely misunderstanding dignity. Good to see some things never change.
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You insist that someone asking for consent — or at least expecting people can try to respect personal boundaries — is contributing to both “a culture of victimhood” and the creation of a “joyless mess of a world”. Of my supposed transgression and your actual one, the more serious and disturbing of the two is perfectly clear.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Try to imagine this, Bugly
Why was this truth censored?
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Re: Re: He lost Bugly
Okay, not gonna lie, I would pay bad money to see that shit...
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