Category: Other

Censored at Stumbleupon

Final update!

Innomen’s banned from stumbleupon 🙂

Here is a copy of the email between me and Barry Conway, some yuppy stumble minion.

Hello Brandon.

We write to advise you that your StumbleUpon account – Innomen – has been suspended for a further breach of our Terms of Service.

Your account has previously been involved in a number of incidents which breached of Terms of Service, and has been the subject of a high volume of complaints from other members of StumbleUpon. On the last such occasion, we advised you – in writing – as follows:

As we advised in our previous mail, Brandon: Since your account has
now been repeatedly involved in matters of dispute in which
we have been required to intervene, you are formally advised that any
further breach of our Terms will result in the permanent suspension of
your account.

Since you have continued to write objectionable content on your Innomen account, culminating in a recent review on the StumbleUpon blog pages, we have now permanently suspended your account – Innomen.

Please be reminded that our Terms of Service allow for only one account per member, and that you should not create further accounts on our service. Should you do so, they too will be suspended.

This suspension will not be lifted, and – because you have been formally warned on previous occasions – is not subject to appeal. No further correspondence will be entered into on this matter.

A record of your account suspension will be kept on file, along with those relating to the previous incidents.

Sincerely.

Barry Conway (StumbleUpon Community Support)
[email protected]
http://www.stumbleupon.com

To which I replied…

Oh please. Are you actually so far gone that you believe any of that? No one contacted you. No one complained. I was a valuable member of the su community getting around one fan or more per day. I had 720 followers at the time of my ban. I had regular fruitful correspondence with many members and not one negative private message in over a year.

The only thing I’ve done to get myself banned is fail to kiss developer ass that’s why I’m being banned at 4 in the freaking morning. You’re having a tantrum. You people spammed me your stupid tea party and I wrote my opinion. And it hit a little too close to home.

You don’t want people reading it and so you banned me, plain and simple. You realize how legitimate you’ve made my work right? One is define by the strength of their enemies and I was just unjustly censored by what, the second largest social media site on the Internet?

And for what? Complaints you don’t intend to produce? Heh, I couldn’t have scripted a better exit.

Your rubber stamp TOS gives you the rights to do whatever you want with your ball, yet you feel the need to pretend some kind of due process where no is required or exists.

You may of course take it home with all the maturity of a wounded grade schooler. I’m content with the obvious moral high ground and now the total freedom to publicize this event. Though of course I’m well aware no one will care and those that do, you will ban. Still, it is a thrilling vindication.

I wouldn’t write back if I were you. It will only make you look worse. And your responses absolutely will be published, consider your reply consent to my terms of service 🙂

And thus ends my time as a stumbler. I am a little angry I suppose but really I’m more flattered than anything else. Honestly this is completely unjustified. I’ve been shut out of places before but never so unilaterally. I wonder how long it will take my fans to realize I’m gone, I know from experience that when a person is banned you can go right on sending them stumbles and it won’t notify you that they aren’t going anywhere.

I wonder if the stumbler I had in the cue to be sent will still be sent. Eh, no big deal. The community will live without me. My stumble upon died before they bent over to eBay’s dollar.

Time to fire up my reddit account or something lol.

It’s been a helluva ride.

———
As if their piece of shit service weren’t bloating and fucked up and broken enough, now they insist on putting my sticky post even at the top of direct comment links. So I can’t share comments without forcing my reader to scroll down through something they obviously have already read, so I’m replacing it with a link to here that was they don’t have to scroll down so far.
———

Update: To whom it may concern, I can be found here.

myspace.com/brandonsergent [myspace.com]

friendfeed.com/innomen [friendfeed.com]

Where to begin?

Ruled by silly little brats with porn and poetry.

Unconstitutional EULA restrictions.

Inability to introduce a page unless you claim to like it, despite how much people enjoy complaining.

Inability to respond to reviews.

Removal of classic layout.

Inability to archive or backup your blog.

Absurdly small character limits, and dimension limits for images.

Tactical patenting lock down of a profoundly important type of information system.

Update: I was recently told that there are many like me here and that I need to continue writing reviews because they serve a purpose.

I want to explain something because they served a personal purpose as well.

I truly felt free to say whatever was on my mind here. I no longer feel that way.

I feel like a fool for having dedicated so many hours in creating content and introducing so many people.

Literally my entire circle of friends in real life I brought to stumble.

People I don’t even know anymore in real life still regularly use stumble because of me, people I’ve only met once I’ve hooked before they went their way.

And now I regret each and every one.

The ability to randomly serve up the Internet according to human filters is profoundly important, and I helped a company that would see that ability packaged and sold.

These people would charge per line read if they had had the chance to patent reading.

This event reminded me that free speech does not exist, there are merely levels of restriction.

In short my heart just isn’t in it anymore.

If I were to create content for these people again it would be a shallow imitation of what I would actually like to say, because what I really want to say I have been Specifically Forbidden to say.

I might ‘offend’ someone.

In addition, this event was a solid vindication, a complete ‘I told you so’, a total cynical non-shock that confirms every assertion I’ve ever made about the social circles here.

I have said who rules here, I have said how, I have pointed out the total lack of ethics, and the motivation for their abandonment.

I have called out bigots and liars, ageists and hypocrites. But when I dared to demand transparency and integrity, then we see the true nature of things here.

When I asked pointed specific questions, and when I attempted to defend myself I got silence and threats.

It became clear that all my freedom was merely the result of not yet encountering what the mafia charmingly refers to as a rat, and what is known as a tattletale on playgrounds all over the country.

When it became clear that these people feel that they OWN my thoughts and opinions, when it came down to a hostage situation, change what you say or we’ll silence you completely, I lost all respect.

In a country where protection of the law is a direct function of how much you can afford to pay a lawyer, I can no longer afford to be an idealist.

I cannot risk the deletion of what I have already said. We exist at the mercy of a hydraulic despot, with water in this case being the only realistic way for a non media company to talk to potentially thousands of people who weren’t actively seeking their words.

Too often we trivialize, not realizing that information is the most important commodity on the planet, and people like this control the flow of it.

It may be just a blog to you, and if you saturate it with lyrics and porn, that’s all it will ever be, but to me it was the ears of the future, and to protect what I have already said, I shall say no more.

What I’m doing now: http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=1460

Open letter to Lepht Anonym

http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/enhanced/scrapheap-transhumanism

Have you ever considered running electrodes into your own brain? Like to say stimulate sensations of well being or other custom sensations?

What do you think would be involved? Is this something that could be done outside of a lab?

Ancient peoples survived trepanation, and the brain itself feels no pain, it seems to me the major problem would be placement and blood vessel avoidance.

I have a dream of being able to enter a lucid dream state, mechanically. I think this could be achieved by running a lead to the area of the brain responsible for spacial or social orientation and stimulating it when I enter rem sleep, so that when I’m in a dream state my awareness of my location is enhanced, so that I would pick up on where I am and what I was doing and hopefully realize I’m dreaming.

In any case I’ve always said that the extreme body mod crowd are budding transhumanists. You are the first to make that claim a reality.

By existing you prove my point.

I appreciate that.

Keep up the good work.

The Foods I Miss Most: My mom is better than your mom.

NOODLE CASSEROLE
noodles, 1 bag
frozen broccoli, cooked
10 slices American cheese
can of cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup
boil noodles til done, about 6 minutes
drain and add cheese, soup and broccoli
stir till cheese is melted and wolf it down

TURKEY LOAF
4 lbs ground turkey
4 shakes seasoned salt
1 onion chopped or 2 tablespoons dehydrated onions
2 eggs (optional)
3 or 4 cups minute rice, uncooked
1 cup ketchup
dump all of this stuff in a big bowl and mix well
put in 2 loaf pans
bake at 375 for 1 & 1/2 hours
the last half hour pour some ketchup on top of loaf

CHEESY RICE
3 cups water
3 cups minute rice
glob of margarine
about 10-12 slices of American cheese
throw all this in a bowl, cover and microwave on high for 12-14
minutes

CHICKEN
chicken breast tenderloins
flour or Bisquick
4 shakes seasoned salt (add to flour)
get chicken wet and dip in flour til covered
fry in hot oil till brown, turn it over as needed

Things every kid should know.

http://www.truthdig.com/images/eartothegrounduploads/Wanted_500.jpg

“The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.” – Diogenes

  1. Facts and logic determine reality, but emotion determines perception.
  2. Power often defines value.
  3. Influence is power.
  4. No one decides to be mean.
  5. Being older doesn’t mean being smarter.
  6. Respect does not mean obedience.
  7. If someone can tell you what to do with something it’s theirs.
  8. Responsibility is usually code for control.
  9. Those who have more force others to have less.
  10. Angry people are afraid of something.
  11. If someone forces you instead of explains, you’re smarter than they are.
  12. People want you to compete because they are afraid of what you can do when you cooperate.
  13. Everyone gets something out of what they are doing.
  14. No one chooses how smart they are.
  15. No one chooses how they feel.
  16. Almost everything is a matter of opinion.
  17. Smart people can be wrong.
  18. The message is independent of the messenger.
  19. The majority can be wrong.
  20. Reality is not a democracy.
  21. Academic skill does not equal intelligence.
  22. There is a tool or trick to offset every weakness.
  23. Those that tell you loudest to work hard often aren’t working at all.
  24. You don’t have to be part of something to understand something.
  25. You could be the first.
  26. Hurting people doesn’t make you strong or right.
  27. Removing the need for something is the best way to fight it.
  28. Everything you own charges you rent.
  29. Only you know your gender.
  30. Laziness is not a bad thing.
  31. There are always more options.
  32. How you feel and think depend partly on your health.
  33. Your body is your brain’s pet.
  34. You have a limited amount of time, spend it wisely sell it rarely.
  35. People lie because the truth is a threat to them.
  36. No one can tell you what love means.
  37. Revenge is an attempt to control the past.
  38. Context changes meaning, and you can always add context.
  39. Outliving something is better than killing it.
  40. They care enough to tell you they don’t care.
  41. If they tell you they’re laughing, chances are, they aren’t.
  42. The truth doesn’t always look true.
  43. Knowing you could be wrong does not mean you are.
  44. You don’t have to be an expert to be right.
  45. No one owns a fact.
  46. You don’t have to earn the right to live.
  47. Wealth is about luck and ethics.
  48. People who want power shouldn’t get it.
  49. Genius is always outnumbered.
  50. Strangers are more complicated than you think.
  51. Everyone has a reason.
  52. Some people are immune to the truth, sometimes it’s you.
  53. There will always be things you don’t know about yourself.
  54. Not all things are scalable.
  55. Ignorance is not the same as stupidity.
  56. Maturity does not equal conformity.
  57. The really good ideas aren’t always popular.
  58. Writing is nearly immortal and often ignored.
  59. You are always entitled to an explanation that ignores authority.
  60. You do not have to be what your parents intended.
  61. Truly nice people are rarely popular, they tend to hide.
  62. You’re a completely different person after a while.
  63. Poor people exist mainly because rich people sequester wealth.
  64. It’s not holding a grudge if they continuously offend you.
  65. You will outlive all the adults, that means the future is your business.
  66. If they can’t tell you what’s in it for them, it’s a trap.
  67. Evolution doesn’t always improve things.
  68. Common sense isn’t rare, you’re just misunderstanding the actual agenda of the parties involved.

Speech Recognition

To my understanding Ray Kurzweil is the inventor of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I’m aware that’s a gross simplification of a Byzantine mess of finance and corporate ownership dealings, but I’m pretty sure that Ray at some point in the past had the authority to address or prevent the issue I’m about to discuss.

I’ve played around with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It is a truly remarkable program and it comes very close to the ideal of on-the-fly natural language interface with a computer.

I’m (not really) sorry I just don’t care enough about 4 or 5 developers to say that they deserve ground-floor share in a multimillion dollar company when the cost of that success is so monumentally high to the rest of humanity.

Ray is to blame but so are the developers of Nuance. You people should be ashamed of yourselves. What you’re doing is every bit as vile as developing a cure for cancer knowing full well you’re going to sell it for top dollar rather than give it away and I know top dollar because look at how much Dragon speaking costs.

It’s price is clearly about what you can get not what you could comfortably charge for it. Price gouging water salesman, would be hydraulic despots, each and every one sicken me.

The impact on our future full realization of speech recognition would have is, overwhelming. And if the best you can think of is automated tech support then I urge you to radically expand your imagination.

I have to say I’m extremely disappointed in Mr. Kurzweil. Reading his work, reading his essays, listening to him talk on Ted talks, you’d think he actually gave a shit about the advancement of the species.

But I think it’s fairly clear given his intellect and his decisions that he really would sacrifice the entire species if it meant him living forever and that he simply wants to enjoy a personal trans-humanist utopia. No doubt he’d, perhaps truthfully, tell himself that he could and would rebuild the species in some qualitatively valid way.

Clearly however, all he really wants is to make damn sure that he’s first in line even if that means stepping on thousands if not millions of others. (The same choice demanded of all people with wealth in our current world.) I say this because if he did care about advancing humanity, if he did care about fostering innovation for us as a species, and seeing us all to the glorious post human finish line, then he would’ve open sourced his speech recognition once it was clear credit for the ideas could not be stolen.

I’m pretty sure if he were asked in such a way that a truthful incisive answer would make him look good or serve his interests he could tell you 1 billion reasons I can’t even think of, why that’s the case.

The man is famous for among other things developing a rather harsh but effective nutrition and exercise routine. I think it’s fairly clear that this is an attempt to make sure that he lives to see the singularity, and that given his age he’s just a little bit insecure about his chances. Ironically his inability to share, in this case open sourcing a dramatically important communications innovation is likely to transform his fears into self fulfilling prophecy.

The man is obviously aware of the impact technology can have on the world Heath made himself rich and famous writing about it so he must understand what it would mean to the advancement of humanity if we had the ability to speak to computers and have them understand us.

Absolutely nothing causes explosive technological growth like the free flow of information between people with similar problems. When you reconcile that with the fact that computers are the most advanced communications tool ever devised by man, and that the chief reason computers are inaccessible to some is because of the learning curve required to effectively communicate with them, it becomes clear how monumentally destructive and selfish the decision to close source speech recognition was and is. And why? Well you know why. Money.

All of these people that get up at Ted talks and talk about innovation sharing and freedom along with all these other lofty ideals make me sick because 90% of them have a book, nearly every last one of them profits personally off of intellectual property law in some form or another and intellectual property law second only to religion is the largest problem facing innovation.

Mr. Kurzweil is by no means alone on this rather embarrassing hook. there are a number of other companies and groups and even individuals who have attempted to develop speech recognition solutions for profit rather than doing what they can to advance open source solutions.

My two cents.