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So, my friend Jamais has this idea about the participatory panopticon, in which the traditional government dream of universal surveillance as a method of control is turned over to the citizenry, in whose hands it is as much a tool for fighting oppression as it is for enabling it.

As recording devices and wireless networks and video sharing sites become pervasive, that idea is rapidly becoming reality, and unsurprisingly, lots of people in authority don’t like the way it makes them accountable, and are doing their very best to ban it.

Dumb, really.

Techdirt: Student Films Principal Fighting Another Student… School Board Bans Mobile Phones

Pony is an orangutan from a prostitute village in Borneo. We found her chained to a wall, lying on a mattress. She had been shaved all over her body. If a man walked near her, she would turn herself around, present herself, and start gyrating and going through the motions. She was being used as a sex slave. She was probably about six or seven years old when we rescued her, but she had been held captive by a madam for a long time. The madam refused to give up the animal because everyone loved Pony and she was a big part of their income.

Warren Ellis » This Happened On Your Planet

One Russian guy in Kharkov, Ukraine preferred was obsessed with some idea which he tried to express in writing on any flat surface he met. All his flat carried his scriptures, the local lobbies and walls of houses also had not stayed untouched

English Russia » An Apartment in Kharkov Style

• Wall Invaders - Floral Wallpaper that you customize with bug prints using a kid’s dart gun (via Random Coolness)
• Espresso Book Machine prints free classic books on demand at the NY public library (via BoingBoing)
• Tankbooks are pocket classics in packaging designed to resemble cigarette packs
• Mask Idols in TokyoTimes, another odd Japanese costume fetish, where women wear surgical masks, eyepatches and limb casts.. for shits and giggles.

1500 Fillipino prisoners re-create the Thriller video. Made of win and cheez-its, this is.

I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, ” Of course, we need to execute some of these people,”

AlterNet: Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren’t Listening

Those quiet places - Nebulaskin

Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death?

Whedonesque : Let’s Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death.

Unbeatable Chingrish on Flickr - Photo Sharing - thanks Ellen