![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(Julie and I discovered TED Talks on Netflix. Perfect for ten-minute breaks.)
May. 25th, 2014
(Julie and I discovered TED Talks on Netflix. Perfect for ten-minute breaks.)
Interesting Links for 25-05-2014
May. 25th, 2014 12:00 pm- STD rates are rising - largely concentrated amongst young men having sex with other young men.
- This scene from "Game of Thrones: The Musical" made me laugh like a seal.
- There's Been an Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science
- A Diamond Market No Longer Controlled By De Beers
- Genes and culture: Oxytocin gene influences social behaviour differently in Americans and Koreans
- Trillions of plastic pieces found in Arctic ice
- Fukushima Corporation unveils new mascot with an unfortunate (but hilarious) name
- Why Online Communities Decay Over Time
And then I took a look at their other potential t-shirts (they print one t-shirt per day, based on which ones their members vote for).
And then I took a look at their submission page for new designs.
And then I took a look at their Terms and Conditions.
Do you know what's not in there anywhere I can see? Anything saying "By the way, we have licensing deals with Warners,Disney, and Cartoon Network allowing us to make money off of their characters."
Now, personally, I think that Batman should be massively out of copyright by now. But me wanting it doesn't make it so - and I'm curious as to why this site hasn't been sued into a massive hole in the ground.
Am I missing something?
I also note that the submission form refers to the "submission terms and conditions", which I can't find anywhere on the site. And that it looks from their other Ts&Cs that they own anything you submit to them. Although they say elsewhere "Designs that have been submitted to Qwertee remain the property of the artist, while they are on display/up for voting on Qwertee." - which leaves a big gap aroundt-shirts that they print...
Edit: I know that fanfic/fanvids/fanart gets away with this. But that stuff is resolutely not-for-profit. This is making money.
Not the results, particularly, which were round-about what I expected - but a few things around the coverage and discussion.
This article does a great job of summarising a lot of the awful mainstream-media coverage - which is focussing on UKIP doing fantastically well, and ignoring the realities of (a) them getting just over 1/3 of the number of seats the Lib-Dems did and (b) FPTP meaning that they're very unlikely to get more than one or two seats at a general election, if that.
Which isn't to say that the results are _nothing_ - they definitely make a difference, and if UKIP can get a decent strategy going then they may well be able to build on them. It's certainly impossible to claim a UKIP vote is a wasted one, at least in some areas, and some Conservative MPs may find themselves wishing for AV come the General Election next year.
The second thing that's annoyed me was that I was hoping that someone would gather together all of the results in a handy spreadsheet. Because I'd love to get the overall percentages for each of the parties and see how that lined up against the number of seats they got. My suspicion is "badly", but I'd like to see whether that's true.
Thirdly, the ridiculous discussions going on about whether Nick Clegg should resign. It doesn't matter if you think he's done a great or a terrible job, resigning less than a year before the next election would be a fantastically stupid move*. Either his replacement would stay in the coalition (getting them tarred with the same brush) or they'd leave the coalition (making the Lib-Dems look like incredibly bad partners and weakening any bargaining power they might have if no party gets a majority next time around**). It looks very-much like the Lib-Dems have retreated to their "base", and I strongly suspect that nothing at all is going to get them much traction outside of that before May 2015, or cause them to lose it. Pretty much the only thing to do at this point is to hang on, wait and see what happens then, and _then_ make a choice about what to do about leaders, direction of the party, etc.
Fourthly - I'm fed up waiting for the European Election results. And also wondering why we don't have our elections on the same day as most of the rest of Europe. Is there a reason why we don't have ours at the weekend too?
*See also Jennie's post here
**The main thing I'd want to see is a change from cabinet politics. The fact that they've basically been told that they can't publicly disagree with any decision made in the cabinet, and all discussions are secret means that we can't tell if our elected representatives are doing anything at all. What are we giving up, what are we getting in exchange, and was it good value? No idea. Looks pretty miserable from outside, but I have literally no idea what's happening in the background - and that's poison for any kind of support.
This article does a great job of summarising a lot of the awful mainstream-media coverage - which is focussing on UKIP doing fantastically well, and ignoring the realities of (a) them getting just over 1/3 of the number of seats the Lib-Dems did and (b) FPTP meaning that they're very unlikely to get more than one or two seats at a general election, if that.
Which isn't to say that the results are _nothing_ - they definitely make a difference, and if UKIP can get a decent strategy going then they may well be able to build on them. It's certainly impossible to claim a UKIP vote is a wasted one, at least in some areas, and some Conservative MPs may find themselves wishing for AV come the General Election next year.
The second thing that's annoyed me was that I was hoping that someone would gather together all of the results in a handy spreadsheet. Because I'd love to get the overall percentages for each of the parties and see how that lined up against the number of seats they got. My suspicion is "badly", but I'd like to see whether that's true.
Thirdly, the ridiculous discussions going on about whether Nick Clegg should resign. It doesn't matter if you think he's done a great or a terrible job, resigning less than a year before the next election would be a fantastically stupid move*. Either his replacement would stay in the coalition (getting them tarred with the same brush) or they'd leave the coalition (making the Lib-Dems look like incredibly bad partners and weakening any bargaining power they might have if no party gets a majority next time around**). It looks very-much like the Lib-Dems have retreated to their "base", and I strongly suspect that nothing at all is going to get them much traction outside of that before May 2015, or cause them to lose it. Pretty much the only thing to do at this point is to hang on, wait and see what happens then, and _then_ make a choice about what to do about leaders, direction of the party, etc.
Fourthly - I'm fed up waiting for the European Election results. And also wondering why we don't have our elections on the same day as most of the rest of Europe. Is there a reason why we don't have ours at the weekend too?
*See also Jennie's post here
**The main thing I'd want to see is a change from cabinet politics. The fact that they've basically been told that they can't publicly disagree with any decision made in the cabinet, and all discussions are secret means that we can't tell if our elected representatives are doing anything at all. What are we giving up, what are we getting in exchange, and was it good value? No idea. Looks pretty miserable from outside, but I have literally no idea what's happening in the background - and that's poison for any kind of support.