《Homeland》Afterword by Aaron Swartz, Demand Progress (co-founder, Reddit.com)
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Hi there, I'm Aaron. I've been given this little space here at the end of the book because I'm a flesh-and-blood human and, as such, I can tell you something you wouldn't believe if it came out of the mouth of any of those fictional characters:
This stuff is real.
Sure, there isn't anyone actually named Marcus or Ange, at least not that I know, but I do know real people just like them. If you want, you can go to San Francisco and meet them. And while you're there, you can play D&D with John Gilmore or build a rocketship at Noisebridge or work with some hippies on an art project for Burning Man.
And if some of the more conspiracy-minded stuff in the book seems too wild to be true, well, just google Blackwater, Xe, or BlueCoat. (I myself have a FOIA request in to learn more about "persona management software," but the Feds say it'll take three more years to redact all the relevant documents.)
Now I hope you had fun staying up all night reading about these things, but this next part is important, so pay attention: what's going on now isn't some reality TV show you can just sit at home and watch. This is your life, this is your country -- and if you want to keep it safe, you need to get involved.
I know it's easy to feel like you're powerless, like there's nothing you can do to slow down or stop "the system." Like all the calls are made by shadowy and powerful forces far outside your control. I feel that way, too, sometimes. But it just isn't true.
A little over a year ago, a friend called to tell me about an obscure bill he'd heard of called the Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeitting Act, or COICA. As I read the bill, I started to get more and more worried: under its provisions, the government would be allowed to censor websites it didn't like without so much as a trial. It would be the first time the U.S. government was given the power to censor its citizens' access to the net.
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The bill had just been introduced a day or two ago, but it already had a couple dozen senators cosponsoring it. And, despite there never being any debate, it was already scheduled for a vote in just a couple days. Nobody had ever reported on it, and that was just the point: they wanted to rush this thing through before anyone noticed.
Luckily, my friend noticed. We stayed up all weekend and launched a website explaining what the bill did, with a petition you could sign opposing it that would look up the phone numbers for your representatives. We told a few friends about it and they told a few friends and within a couple days we had over 200,000 people on our petition. It was incredible.
Well, the people pushing this bill didn't stop. They spent literally tens of millions of dollars lobbying for it. The head of every major media company flew out to Washington, D.C. and met with the president's chief of staff to politely remind him of the millions of dollars they'd donated to the president's campaign and explain how what they wanted -- the only thing they wanted -- was for this bill to pass.
But the public pressure kept building. To try to throw people off the trail, they kept changing the name of the bill -- calling it PIPA and SOPA and even the E-PARASITES Act -- but no matter what they called it, more and more people kept telling their friends about it and getting more and more people opposed. Soon, the signers on our petition stretched into the millions.
We managed to stall them for over a year through various tactics, but they realized if they waited much longer they might never get their chance to pass this bill. So they scheduled it for a vote first thing after they got back from winter break.
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But while members of Congress were off on winter break, holding town halls and public meetings back home, people started visiting them. Across the country, members started getting asked by their constituents why they were supporting that nasty Internet censorship bill. And members started getting scared -- some going so far as to respond by attacking me.
But it wasn't about me anymore -- it was never about me. From the beginning, it was about citizens taking things into their own hands: making YouTube videos and writing songs opposing the bill, making graphs showing how much money the bill's cosponsors had received from the industries pushing it, and organizing boycotts putting pressure on the companies who'd endorsed the bill.
And it worked -- it took the bill from a political nonissue that was poised to pass unanimously to a toxic football no one wanted to touch. Even the bill's cosponsors started rushing to issue statements opposing it! Boy, were those media moguls pissed...
This is not how the system is supposed to work. A ragtag bunch of kids doesn't stop one of the most powerful forces in Washington just by typing on their laptops!
But it did happen. And you can make it happen again.
The system is changing. Thanks to the Internet, everyday people can learn about and organize around an issue even if the system is determined to ignore it. Now, maybe we won't win every time -- this is real life, after all -- but we finally have a chance.
But it only works if you take part. And now that you've read this book and learned how to do it, you're perfectly suited to make it happen again. That's right: now it's up to you to change the system.
Aaron Swartz
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Eldest Son of the Heavenly Emperor
Tired of being confined in the Heavenly Palace for years, Taiyang Tianshang, the eldest son of the Heavenly Emperor finally escapes from the grasp of his father who wants him to compete for the Heavenly Throne with his youngest brother. Yet, Taiyang only wants to see the outside world. What will happen when the eldest son of Heavenly Emperor, who has all the power under the heavens at his fingertips, runs amok amongst the mortals? Follow Taiyang as he meets many friends, foes and jade-like beauties along his adventure.
8 178Ancient Mana Dungeon Core.
Yes the tags are necessary, they will make sense eventually too. Art is not mine, found it on pintrest btw the title on the thing apparently has no name, or at least no title that you can search, at least, but i found this: ‘ArtStation - [UE4] Lost Temple Ruins Jonas Axelsson’ (if your curious I was searching ancient temple game art when i found it don’t bother clicking the link on the thing that says facebook, it does not work) (i will not lie this is kinda my first publication so go easy on me). A while ago I fell in love with the Dungeon Core stories and decided: ‘Heck, why not make my own spin on things!’ and so i started brainstorming what to do and i kinda just found the idea for the story during it. This is the story of a guy named Michael Alex (not a typo that is the name I will be using for him) he was an avid fiction writer and reader who was just sitting on his couch playing a puzzle game on his phone called: Ruins of Drailmor Keep (a three in one deal: tower defence, Puzzle (mazes generally), and world building (namely building on the ashes of fallen empires and regulating certain things while the waves of enemies keeps coming back to burn it down and ruin it just like the curse would while ocasionally sending out your own monsters to get rare rescources)) when he gets an alert and well one thing leads to another and he died to a freak avalanche. He then comes into contact with the universe's will (basically something that *insert your prefered deity here* cooperated with to make the world (heaven, hell, the mortal world, yggdrasil, basically every "world" that has been made (in reality, mythology, games, books, cartoons/movies, and memes!) but also had a mind of its own at the same talk.) and Michael and the Universe’s Will talked and this story is about the outcome of said discussion.
8 108Sorrow Dayz
Restaria was the witches' home for decades and years to come but, it was only one thing challenging them. Unfortunately it were the demons from Jigoku and they wanted to take Restaria from the witches. The witches won that bloody war and saved Restaria from the demons along with the battle came scars, but it was the betrayal of the people that they protected that hurt the most. So the witches put something together that would take place, but it wouldn't happen until centuires later. Now that it has a new generation has emerged the head of this new generation is Yuuta. He doesn't know what he must do but he has to find out to discover what is happening to himself.
8 82My Girlfriend is a Demon
This story revolves around a shut-in otaku named Shiro Akashi. When he was a kid, his father disappeared. Because of that, Shiro stopped going to school. In loneliness, he devoted his life playing games and watching animes. One day, as Shiro woke up from his bed, he saw someone sitting on top of the table on the other side of the room. That person, a girl with black wings, two horns and a tail, wearing nothing but a bra and her underwear, covered in a coat, hiding her face, appeared right in front of him. This girl suddenly said that she will be Shiro's girlfriend Will this encounter bring good luck? Or will he continue to waste his time watching animes and games?
8 110TheFamousfilms ship book {DISCOUNTED}
(Cover on this book is mine)I don't own any of there characters the I make any ship requests so please give me ones thanks
8 220Marinette One-Shots
Hya! This is just a bunch of random Marinette one-shots!! I will be taking requests, so if you have any, be sure to tell me!!-dont bully others -this is not strictly MLB ships, (feel free to skip chapters if you'd like, but don't tag on the ones you don't like)-request what you wanna read (I'll try and do it if I can)-enjoy!
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