Daily Prompt – Buyers, Beware?

The year is 2214, and your computer’s dusty hard drive has just resurfaced at an antique store. Write a note to the curious buyer explaining what he or she will find there.

Congratulations! You have purchased something that is now an antique. On this computer you will find an abundance of information that was useful to me back when I was alive.

I am also entrusting you with my entire online life. I have provided you a thorough list of all the websites for all my accounts, complete with login information and all my passwords.

You will also, hopefully, have attached to this one or more external drives that are also full of things like photos, music and videos. I’d they are not here, there are still lots of them on this machine… You just have to find them. CHALLENGE!!

Feel free to watch all the tv shows I have on here, it’ll give you some insight into what Entertainment was like for us back on the day. It may be highly valuable in case society had no collection of digital media for historical purposes. In that case, you could be sitting on a gold mine.

You’re welcome.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/buyers-beware/

3 Sept – #Ferguson

What is the most helpful post (or Twitter hashtag) you read in all the coverage on Ferguson?

 

I don’t use twitter so I haven’t been following this story that closely.

Living overseas, it’s interesting how this story is portrayed in international media, and from what I’ve seen, it was run as a story about an innocent teenager who was innocently gunned down and murdered by the police. The police were portraying him as a ‘thug’, as well as other ultra-conservative media outlets, whereas other media outlets were calling those people out on it and calling shenanigans as a case of racial profiling / stereotyping.

Being an ‘outsider’ to this type of story, it’s hard to form an opinion about the situation, because we’re being presented with both sides of the story. This type of issue in terms of violence between police and African-Americans doesn’t really exist in out country – well, certainly not to the extent that it does in the United States. Instead, we just have a government more concerned with turning away political refugees and asylum seekers and sending them right back to where they were fleeing from, or locking them up in refugee centres. Well done, Australia.

Given that our media is soooo heavily influenced by American media, I try to avoid it as much as possible, because it’s usually only about 3 things:
– the most recent school shooting,
– whatever couch Kim Kardashian is currently impersonating, and
– every little thing that Obama does.

Okay, so maybe it’s not that bad, but it is pretty full on. Sometimes I feel like our supposed ‘local’ news is just relaying everything that happened in America, and then it’s interrupted with tomorrow’s local weather. This is why I try to avoid the news.

In terms of US media, I’m not going to deny that the black community is regularly portrayed as the violent criminals and the police are always doing the right thing – by gunning them down. But at the same time, the US police seem to have the same reputation as the Victorian police here used to: shoot first, ask questions later. I can’t help but feel as though the US cops are a bit too trigger happy and they get a bit power hungry from wearing the uniform, that mentality of “I AM the law, so I’m completely untouchable” and so they can then pretty much do anything regardless of whether it’s using excess force to subdue a suspect, through to shooting an innocent person, they don’t care because they’re in a uniform – and that makes it okay.

However, if the guy shoots a cop, he’s up for the death penalty…

Daily Prompt – Long Exposure

Among the people you’ve known for a long time, who is the person who’s changed the most over the years? Was the change for the better?

There are a number of people that I know that have gone through significant changes in their time – marriage, divorce, kids, deaths, sickness and injuries etc and they’re all and amazing test of character and resilience, however there is one type of person I’d particularly like to focus on…

The Invader

 

 

Special thanks to ‘L’ The Human for indulging in my randomness.

Created using http://iphonefaketext.com 

Apr 10: Scandalous Society

F.H. Bradley said, “There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us.”  Do we live in a society that needs scandal?

Of course society needs scandal. Whether people admit it or not, society generally has a secret love for a scandal, especially if that scandal involve celebrities. We’re fixated on the celebrity life. Some people have a resentment towards them simply because they believe that celebrities walk around in their own little bubble, thinking that they’re better than everybody else, so when they’re involved in something scandalous, these people revel in it, seeing it as just desserts or karma for their own arrogance.

Then there’s the media – where would all the gossip magazines be without constant scandal… Or in some cases, complete fabrication of a scandal, just for the sole purpose of selling more copies. Without scandal, they simply wouldn’t exist because they would have nothing to print.

Then there are the celebrities themselves. How many times have you heard a celebrity tell the paparazzi to leave them alone? Even just the act of doing that can be spun into a story about how that person had a complete outburst at a photographer or reporter and BOOM!! there’s their next story. Somebody call TMZ!! Personally, I believe that if a celebrity didn’t want to be in the public spotlight so much, they’d just have to be really boring in order for the media to stop drawing focus on them. But even in saying that, so many paparazzi would be more than happy to document every step you take whilst you do completely mundane activities, like dropping off your dry cleaning, getting a manicure, going to Starbucks etc. But even then, a simple photograph of a celebrity getting a latte can be spun into anything.