Shared on Facebook with the caption “Doing absolutely no favours to their international reputation, Americans have swarmed social media posts of Taylor Swift’s Melbourne concerts confused by a very obvious detail. Can you spot it?”
It’s an article from the Murdoch right-wing paper “The Australian”, so I won’t link the original source.
Transcription:
Aerial photo of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, surrounded to its North and East by tree-filled parks, to the West by a warm-up pitch, and to the South by a train line with two pedestrian overpasses over it. Underneath this photo is the article title “The MCG show detail that has American Swifties baffled” and byline “by Sam McPhee”.
Reminds me of that TNG episode where one planet has gotten the other planet addicted to a drug only they have, so they can have the addict planet make everything for them while they sit on their asses and do nothing except sell them that drug.
Just replace the drug in that episode with oil and honestly it’s pretty accurate for our world now.
The British Empire has entered the chat
When you scratch at the surface a little, the course of Capitalism always bends towards rent-seeking behaviors. It’s enraging how not only are we trapped in this running-to-stand-still circus, but that every single aspect of our lives is getting monetized such that it’s nearly impossible to just not play the game.
This is my particular argument for the need for EULA and ToS law reforms. The concept that they are negotiable for consumers by means of abstinence is laughably outdated. It is unavoidable to have to sign a contract that you have no negotiation recourse over. All contracts are supposed to be negotiable before signing. There are so many abuses and frankly absurd liberties taken in those things that nobody should ever have to agree to just to play a game or use a website.
Seriously, a game publisher/developer having defacto ownership over the code you produce to make a mod for a game is ludicrous. Or a social media site getting the rights to use content for any purpose without limits and in perpetuity is insane.