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Category Archives: Stupid Media Tricks

Misuses of Data #305,756

Drinking wine makes you smarter!

Why There Are Looney Tunes Branded Minivans

While I was teaching an elective on media monopoly at the workshop this summer, the discussion frequently turned to “synergy,” or the “beneficial” mutual ownership of diverse products by large corporations. (Before companies were so keen to put a positive spin on this phenomenon, it was known as “horizontal monopoly.”) A great example of synergy […]

It Also Said, “The Other White Meat”

IÂ’m home, waiting for packages to be delivered. The blast of a truck horn sounds down in the street, so thinking thereÂ’s an off chance it might be the mail dude, I head downstairs. What there is is a funeral, a huge funeral, at the Jewish parlor across the way. Men everywhere in yarmulkes. People […]

Pa’lante La Dada: The Internet, Where Smalltalk Becomes Meaningful

Seen on Yahoo: Hot Topics · Talk about the Weather! (among the subtopics: Best Weather, Extreme Weather, Acid Rain. A lot of these people are asking about

Department Of Stupid Media Tricks: Reverse-Engineering AP Articles

Some AP and other newswire articles seem to be not just flatulent prose taken straight from PR bulletins (be that from companies or tourist bureaus), but also take on a coating of cheese from the fatuous personal fixations of the stringers regurgitating their content. I come to the latter conclusion under the presumption that John […]

We’re Live!

Great googly moogly! My site’s back up! Prayz lawd! Man it’s been a while. Protest.net got hacked last week, and it *took* a while (cough) for the Anarchist Powers That Be to get it back up. uhh… Many thanks to Kellan and Evan for their help in remedying this situation… aaah, ultimately it doesn’t matter […]

Stupid Newswire Articles #2034

Clinton buys a Cuban cigar in a London airport. His other purchase, a tie with frogs on it, warrants Reuters attention. And the continued embargo against Cuba? And Castro’s policies, benevolent and malevolent?! What do you have to do to get attention in this g0dd^mn media sinkhole?! I had a surreal Castro experience today. I […]

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are a brand. Let’s just admit it, all right? Not people, a brand. Thanks to the reporter who stated the obvious in this article about their new magazine. It’s called marykateandashley magazine. Clever, right? Did you know that the brand promoted by these horrible humanlike by-products of the television industry includes […]

Pa’lante La Dada: Capitalism Becomes Surrealist Humor

I love the Internet. When you do searches on certain search engines, they will give you suggestions of where to go, mostly pointing you at places to buy things. So when I did a search for a bread icon on AltaVista, it suggested: Extend Your Search for bread: Shop the web for bread Find bread […]

Vote Bush. I mean Gore.

I first heard from Emmanuel Goldstein about this story… as he said, this is too good to be true. The Democrats and Republicans must be using the same ad agency… Update 10/26: It was too good to be true. It was a hoax, as Catherine and Chase pointed out. too bad. At the same time, […]