Category: crapitalism

  • Anime: Fantastic and Frustrating.

    I love anime, and find a whole bunch of stuff around it immensely frustrating. I don’t even understand how the pitch meeting would go (I’m currently watching ID-0). (I’ve just picked two male Japanese names at random out of the air, there’s no intent to link this conversation with any specific individuals) [speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a”…

  • Outdated Voting Machines and Hacking

    There is just so much in this article (Every Voting Machine at This Hacking Conference Got Totally Pwned) that makes me extremely angry. Some personal background: I am not a programmer. I am not an IT security specialist. I have, however, worked in the IT sector since roughly 1995, and have been employed at various levels from…

  • If You Can’t Do Your Job Well, Work For Forbes

    Every so often, a sponsored Forbes post will pop up in my facebook feed, and it’s usually just some crappy clickbait title with some bullshit advice that only someone with a business degree would be tricked into thinking it’s useful. But the latest one is just amazing. It’s the same old Buzzfeed-bullshit, where you have to…

  • A Discussion of GMOs

    I recorded a podcast on srslywrong, and it was released last night. I’m fairly pro-GMO (generally speaking), so I was asked to take the pro-GMO side of a debate. It turned into more of a discussion of GMOs rather than a debate, and I’m pretty happy with the results. I’m interested in feedback here, but…

  • Fashion Bloggers in Cambodia

    I ran across this short online reality show ‘Sweatshop’ on Ecouterre “Fashion Bloggers in a Cambodian Sweat Shop“, and it’s worth taking a look at. It’s mostly a expression of ignorance and privilege, but it’s also helpful to put clothing production into the proper context. There’s a line in particular that stands out, in the…

  • Overtime, Wages and Theft

    I know a number of people here in Vancouver working in restaurants and bars, and the prevalence of unlawful behaviour is just astounding. Of course, I don’t mean the staff stealing from employers, but employers just stealing wholesale from the staff. While BC has some fairly mediocre labour laws, it has labour laws that employers are…

  • Tenure, and the Bizarre Case of the University of Saskatchewan

    On May 14th, it hit the news that the University of Saskatchewan had done the unthinkable: they had fired a tenured professor for the crime of ‘having an opinion’. It’s worth noting here that the opinion wasn’t racist, mysogynist, called for the armed overthrow of the Canadian government, declared that the Moon People were our…

  • Equality of Outcome

    One of the tensions in the economic arguments about the world is whether we should focus on equality of outcome, or equality of opportunity.  The short version of each reads as follows: Equality of Outcome: It describes a state in which people have approximately the same material wealth or in which the general economic conditions…

  • A Gold-Based Currency

    A gold-backed currency. Hard currency, where the value of ‘a dollar’ (or ‘a euro’) is tied to a specific quantity of a specific commodity. Like gold, one of the most (if not the most) chemically inert solid elements. I think this is a great idea, with minimal downsides.

  • Giving Back

    Sometimes you read something so poorly written that it leaves you wondering ‘how the hell did this get published?’ But then you notice that it was in a business magazine, and all is explained. A recent example of this kind of drivel is “Give Back? Yes, It’s Time For The 99% To Give Back To…