Echoplex Radio 24-7 *BETA*

Echoplex Media is proud to announce the beta launch of Echoplex Radio, our 24/7 music stream! You can now listen to all of your favorite Bay Area local bands any time, anwhere! Just click the button below or at the top of the home page, and you're ready to rock!

We are just getting started with this, so we may run into some glitches in the weeks to come. But so far, things are working great.

What are you waiting for? Start listening already!

For now, song and artist information is not available within the live stream window on your browser. That information is available by clicking here:

DJs Wanted For Local Love's Monday Night Live Stream

If you are in the 408 or don't mind driving to the 408 and you're a DJ, we want to broadcast you!  Pretty genre neutral, though we do like to stick to "dance music" as much as we can for this one.

We have a DDJ-SX and a fast laptop with Serato if you wanna go that route, or you can bring your decks and use our mixer.  Either way works. 

Please email echoplexpod@gmail.com with a link to your demo if you wanna come spin a set for us!

And don't forget to tune Monday and Tuesday for Local Love Live!

Why I Think Sam Harris Is A Pussy

So imagine this....

You write an article critical of a public intellectual.  That public intellectual then contacts you for an interview.  Fine so far, right?  I mean this could present an opportunity for people to learn and make up their own minds.  Hell, you might even find some common ground or discover some misunderstandings you have of the other party. 

Now imagine that the interview has the following conditions:  You may not record from your end, only the other party gets to record it.  You have to read your article word for word and allow the other party to stop you and critique your article whenever they want.  Imagine that they tell you they will either publish the interview or not publish it, but they will decide after the interview.

Nobody should agree to these terms but imagine that out of a desire to move the conversation forward, you agree to all of this and talk to the other party for 4 hours.  They do not publish it.  You get this email from them:

 

I just listened to our recorded conversation, and I’m sorry to say that I can’t release it as a podcast. Even if I took the time to edit it, I wouldn’t be doing either of us any favors putting it out there. The conversation fails in every way — but, most crucially, it fails to be interesting.

Better luck next time…

Sam

This is the biggest bitch move I have seen in a long time.  Omer Aziz took 4 hours to talk to Sam Harris.  4 hours.  This is no small task.  A 4 hour interview, especially in the format listed above, can be tiring and frustrating.  Having to re-read a piece you wrote while someone on the other end attempts to take it apart is almost surely going to wear a person out.  And what came of it?  Fucking nothing.  That's what.  And why?  Because Sam Harris is a fucking pussy that's why. 

He is also a hypocrite.  He always talks about free speech and open dialogue.  But I guess in this case it does not apply.  He did not offer the raw audio to his interviewee or anyone else for that matter.  He dismissed the conversation as not interesting and did not publish it himself, which is fine.  But the problem is, being as Sam Harris is a fucking pussy, he didn't offer up the raw audio to anyone! 

If it were me, I would be furious.  I would lose my shit.   But then again, if it were me, I would also have simply recorded the interview from my end.  And when I got this email, I would have replied saying that I have my own recording which will go up without any edits.  If it were me, I would have noted the earlier statement that Harris made saying he may or may not publish, and as a precaution, I would have recorded it.  Also, knowing what a smug self absorbed guy Harris is, I would know that if the conversation didn't make him look good and me bad, it would never go up.

We can only assume that Harris had his ass handed to him by Omer Aziz.  Aziz has recounted some of the exchange, you can find it on freethoughtblogs here.  However, without the audio, Harris and his devoted followers can simply say the whole thing is out of context.  They pretty much always say that.

Sam Harris has been complaining about the so called "regressive left" and "social justice warriors" for a while now.  But it seems to me that he needed to create a "safe space" for himself prior to the interview with the conditions he imposed, then used that "safe space" he created to make sure that this interview never saw the light of day.

Shame on you, Sam Harris.

You are a fucking pussy.

For the record, Sam, should you decide you do not feel like taking the time to publish this, send the raw audio to me.  I will publish it unedited.  My kung fu is the best.

The DNC Data Breach - You Were Looking In The Wrong Place

This is going to be a quick one.  Just some thoughts on today's DNC security breach.

When this happened, you know what I started combing?  Not the usual political blogs.  All we saw there was people flinging shit at whichever candidate they don't like.  So that didn't really help anyone understand anything did it?  I went immediately to the tech press.  That's right, a huge political story happened and there I was, reading the tech blogs.  This was a data breach first and a political story second if you ask me.

What I am saying here is that in a case like this, in a case where tech is at the heart of the story, it's probably a good idea to check out what the tech press has to say. 

Here's a great article on the history of data security in political campaigns, and let's just say it's not exactly pretty.

Clinton And Sanders Are Fighting About Data Because Campaigns Are Bad At Protecting It

The Gun Cycle

In the United States we've entered a cycle with mass shootings.  I don't know when we entered this cycle but I know what it looks like and it seems to feed itself.  Here it is, to the best of my understanding.

1.  A mass shooting occurs.

2.  Immediately, on Facebook and Twitter, you have Right Wingers and Truthers (conspiracy theorists) saying that the shooting will be used to push gun confiscation, not just control, but confiscation.

• Don't believe me?  Just watch social media during or immediately after any active shooter situation.  Here's just one example.  Claiming, falsely, that CA banned guns. 

3.  The Conspiracy theories come.  Alex Jones and the rest of the tinfoil hat brigade start saying that it's a government plot to, you guessed it, take the guns and of course they blame psych meds, just like Scientology would.  But that's a whole other matter.

4.  The shooter(s), if white, they are called everything but terrorists.  Disturbed individuals, violent criminals... anything... but not terrorists.

5.  Gun lobbies ramp up their fund raising based upon the fear caused by 2 and 3.  Maybe they even have an event in the city where the recent mass shooting happened. 

6.  Someone on Fox News suggests that this could all be Obama's fault for "being divisive".

7.  Many white shit kickers are further radicalized leading to a return to step 1. 


This is entirely predictable.  This happens literally every time.  And recently, with the guy who shot up the Planned Parenthood, the political right attacked Planned Parenthood and in many cases cheered the shooter for "saving babies".  The story today in San Bernadino is still unfolding but it is just a part of this cycle.  It's the next logical thing for the cycle to do after it goes through steps 1 through 7.  The problem is, this cycle is essentially at every step of the cycle simultaneously, constantly. 

This is not a call for gun control.  There are already 300 million guns in this country.  Even if gun control happened and was effective, it would take a generation for anything to change.  I don't have the answer, but I think I have found the problem.  The panic attack is real.  And that's the problem.  And there's no way to stop it.

What We're Overlooking In The EU

Watching Greece it occurs to me that the EU has a fatal flaw.  A single flaw that the United States does not have, a flaw that would have caused the American experiment to have gone down in flames.  It is a flaw of bureaucracy, not ideology.

The EU countries have to, for the most part, field their own armies, provide their own social services, take care of their own infrastructure, etc.  The only system which has benefited  from "economy of scale" in the EU is the financial system.  It's as if Alabama had to build its own highways, field its own army, and provide social services.  Of course Alabama would be in debt up to its eyeballs.  And this is, in part, why Greece is in such dire straits.  In this scenario, if it happened in the USA, Alabama would have rich states like New York and California on their back the way Greece has Germany on their back.

The EU is a group of nations with a common currency and that's about it.    That means no nation within the EU can use temporary currency manipulation in tough times.  The USA does that any time the economy isn't so hot, as does just about any other nation with a sovereign currency.  Greece cannot do that, can they?  Whether or not you agree with this method ideologically, if one nation can do it but another cannot, the nation that can has a huge advantage when things get weird economically.  "Printing money", as it is often called, can inject cash into the economy and, assuming it causes inflation, it can lower the real value of a nation's debt.  Again, Greece cannot do this.  Alabama doesn't have to do this kind of thing because they receive a greater amount of funds from the federal government than they pay in.  No such luck for Greece.

I don't know if this was an unintended consequence or if there were factions which knew this was going to happen as the EU was created.  I am not really old enough to know off the top of my head what was going on in Greece, or in other nations, as the EU formed.  I imagine there was push back, but I can't find anything about the main point I have here.  Nobody mentioned that only the monetary system was going to be unified, nobody talked about what happens to the less prosperous nations as the economy goes south, which it inevitably will do under any system.  It's Greece today, but any other country that goes through extreme economic hardship is bound to suffer the same fate under the current EU regime which centralizes economic power but keeps the political power of the individual disparate by pitting nation against nation in the new economic order.

eBay Admits To Being Complicit In Mail Fraud

This was the official eBay response to questions I have about their users buying items and returning a bag of sand.  They basically said "we do not try to stop buyers from stealing".

This means that eBay Inc is complicit in mail fraud.  When you receive the bag of sand back instead of your item, eBay steals money from your PayPal account to refund the person who committed the fraudulent act, thus becoming an accomplice.

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And the conversation continues.  The official ebay customer support team clarifies that they are not willing or able to do anything about people using eBay to steal from sellers.

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This is pretty terrible when you think about it.  The sellers are paying fees to use eBay's service, and then eBay just allows people to steal from those sellers.  What's more is if the seller gets a bag of sand and refuses to issue the refund, eBay will steal money from the PayPal account of the eBay seller to issue the refund.  And if that's not interesting enough for you, if a seller pushes back against theft a few times in a month, eBay will limit their account and put a hold on the funds in their PayPal account.

It's not ethical, but eBay just told the entire world that eBay Inc doesn't do shit if you use their service for mail fraud.

But don't worry, this lady is "working behind the scenes to make eBay a great place to sell"
 

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This Is A Lot More Work Than I Thought

So I thought I was going to have several shows up and running for the podcast network in addition to Soapbox Radio by this time.  Boy oh boy was I wrong.  This is a lot more work than I anticipated but I believe it to be worth it.

How To Win A Debate Without Even Trying

Last year I debated a libertarian about the EPA.  I didn't even have to make my case!  As you can see in the somewhat long discussion thread over at Busta's site, there just wasn't much I needed to do.  My opponent made all kinds of verifiably false claims.  The thing with the light bulbs.  I knew the light bulbs were going to come up and I was prepared for it!

http://bustatroll.com/debates/121-the-epa-debate