Rants

BLOGGERS BEWARE: Green Cap Marketing, Aldwin Sturdivant, and the photo credit scam

Oh, the lengths scammers will go to. I received an email recently about a photo used on my site. Specifically, it was about a photo used in this article. The photo in question is this one, a photo from Wikimedia Commons which can freely be used, with proper attribution. The email came from the photographer, asking for a link back to his site. Here is the email, in full: Hi I hope you are the right person on this., I hope you’re doing well. I am very pleased to see that my creative work in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Running_Man_Kyle_Cassidy.jpg is being used on this article found on your site: .http://ericsanjuan.com/get-more-exercise-day-to-day-with-these-stunning-hacks/. It means a lot to me that you selected my work. I prefer that you keep the image on as…
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Miles Davis, music, and toll of institutional racism

Miles Davis has been one of my favorite artists for close to 25 years. If I started going on about how his work has touched me, the scope of his influence, and the importance of his creative legacy, I’d be here all night. The act of expression through creation is sacred to me, and few exemplify this more powerfully than Miles Davis. Yet Youtuber Adam Neely makes an excellent point in the video below: A now infamous police brutality incident in 1959, just after the release of Davis’ masterful Kind of Blue album, almost robbed the world of 30 more years of groundbreaking music. It’s an unfortunate story all on its own, but it’s just one thread in a much larger tapestry. Miles was just…
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Rush Limbaugh’s stupid Covid-19 comments are going to get people killed

It’s one thing to be a rabble-rousing contrarian. It’s quite another to engage in dangerous rhetoric that will get people killed. And Rush Limbaugh’s recent rhetoric on the Cvid-19 outbreak absolutely will get people sick, and possible dead. This morning, Salon reported: On Friday, the 69-year-old Rush Limbaugh argued that health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) cannot be trusted because they are part of “the Deep State” and have an anti-Trump agenda. In audio that Media Matters has posted on its website, embedded above, Limbaugh can be heard on Friday telling listeners, “We’ve talked about the Deep State all these years since Trump was elected — the Trump-Russia collusion, the FBI — well,…
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Why Are Marvel’s Blu-Ray Releases So Mediocre?

These days, Marvel Studios make THE tentpole action flicks. With a combination of fun characters, good direction, solid stories, huge spectacle, and a formula that just works, they’ve created an ongoing, interwoven geek movie franchise that has every other studio scrambling to catch up. Make no mistake, I’m an unabashed fan. I don’t pretend they are classic cinema — they’re just comic book movies — but they do something important: they consistently make me feel like I’m 12 again, only without all the self-loathing and zits. From the tense drama of The Winter Soldier to the charming adventure of Ant-Man to the hilarious space adventure of Guardians of the Galaxy, I love this stuff. So do a LOT of people. Marvel movies are YUGE. Four of them…
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Donald Trump, aka the easy way to lose respect for people you like

There is no sense in trying to be diplomatic about this: If you still support Donald Trump for president in August of 2016, I have zero respect for your thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. I might like you. I may enjoy being around you. I may even consider you an important part of my life. But failing the Trump Test ensures that I have absolutely zero respect for your views, your (apparantly nonexistent) critical thinking skills, and pretty much anything you have to say about anything more important than your favorite fast food French fries. Yes, I realize that by opening this way anyone who supports or who is thinking about supporting Donald Trump will not only be insulted and offended, and that I may lose the goodwill…
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