Transliterating the World

Sign this petition to maintain Net Neutrality!  

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/maintain-true-net-neutrality-protect-freedom-information-united-states/9sxxdBgy

This is important - sign the petition and reblog!!!  We have to keep telling the FCC and our government that we want to keep Net Neutrality - this is the last, open free space we have!

The basic principle of Net Neutrality is that access to all websites and web services should be equal and that anyone can start their own website/service and make it accessible to anyone with internet access, just like any other website/service.

Without Net Neutrality, your Internet Service Provider (e.g. BT) could arbitrarily block whatever websites it didn’t want you to access (e.g. perhaps blocking you from accessing competitors’ websites). It could also mean your service provider purposefully degrades access to certain websites or services and/or forces you to pay extra to access certain websites or services (imagine paying an extra $5 a month to your service provider just because you want to access reddit).

In the UK, this is not as big of a problem because there is (for the most part) much more competition because the BT network is opened up through a wholeale program which allows third-party providers to access the network and provide their own differentiated/custom internet services (to some extent).

In the US, however, there isn’t really competition like this. Many homes have only one broadband internet service provider to choose from (e.g. their local telephone company) and some people are luckily enough to have two providers (e.g. telephone and cable company) or in very rare cases three providers (e.g. telephone, cable and independent fiber/fibre company). Basically though, there is hardly any competition which means that if one service provider starts violating the principles of Net Neutrality, many customers are completely powerless (since they have such a limited or perhaps no alternative selection for ISPs).

/u/pythonpoole

These 3-D Printed Houses From China Appear In Just A Few Hours

They won’t win any beauty contest, but a Chinese company has figured out how to print practical homes from waste materials—all for half the cost of conventional construction.

Remember this story? This college student, Elizabeth Daly, was walking out of a grocery store with two other girls and a case of La Croix when plainclothes officers started following her. 

Exhibit A: The offending beverage.

Not realizing they were police officers, she got in her car — which only made the situation worse:

Now 21, Daly said she had been terrified when strangers surrounded her car and began pounding on the windows. She couldn’t roll down a window without starting the car, and when she did, one agent jumped on the hood and another pulled a gun, she has said repeatedly since the incident.

Elizabeth dialed 911 and started driving away, still unaware that the men terrorizing her were, in fact, officers of the law. Once the 911 operator confirmed that they were not random men assaulting her, but rather random men with badges, she stopped the car, only to be arrested, charged with assault, and jailed overnight. “She has suffered from tremors since the June incident, she said.”

Now, she’s suing the state for $40 million over the incident, and I wish her well in the suit. Unfortunately, however, if she wins that money will come not from the offending officers but from the taxpayers of Virginia. 

As I’ve written before, police should be just as responsible for the costs of their abusive behavior as the rest of us — and that includes paying settlements. The police are not a special class of citizens. They are not absolved of responsibility for their crimes because they wear a badge. They are not above the law. In fact, if anything, as enforcers of the law, they should be subject to greater scrutiny.

This right now, should be across Tumblr like a wildfire. It should be trending on Twitter and Facebook. This is good news. This is great news. This is, for once, a positive step towards educating people on a fucking huge scale about sexual assault.

This isn’t a solution. Rape culture isn’t gone. We can’t all just stand around and pat ourselves on the back saying, “We did it guys! We made the video! Job done.” - but for the first time in my memory, society is beginning to actively change its broken perspectives from the top level down. This is great. This is good news. This is a start.

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