Why If You Want Freedom, You Shouldn't Want Free News

In recent years, it became more and more often that I would look through the dozen or so news headlines and not click a single one.  I used to read almost every single story on Google News, but over the past years I noticed that I read fewer and fewer articles. I noticed that the important stories were rarely on the front page of any site, good stories were generally in an email from a friend or shared on a facebook feed. I noticed that the stories that an aggregator put together were little better than what the actual news site posted everyday. I realized that I was tired of the headlines which rarely delivered, I was tired of the ads bombarding me, distracting me from what the story that the headline promised and I was tired of hitting next and being interrupted by a banner ad and video ads blowing up on the screen.

I was also tired of News paper subscription begging, like a music store pushing Britney Spears CD on me that I had no intention of buying for the one song that I would probably never listen to. Worse were the news aggregators, which like the infamous Mixes of the 90's with the commercials being better than the actual mix.

I wondered what happened. What happened to the news? What happened to the days when one would pick up the paper and sink into it for an hour or two or three, going from one article to the next?

What happened to me reading article after article until I could read no more?

More importantly, what happened to the stories and the analysis?

All these issues crept up so slowly that I didn't even notice them. They occurred day by day as I read my free news. I began to realize that I would get better news on my ride to work over the radio than on my daily read at the office because the news on my way to work had no ads to interrupt my focus; it had well paid journalists to whom I gladly donated money every year and felt terribly guilty when I didn't. I realized that entertainment news on NPR was entertaining and news while the entertainment news in print was garbage which I couldn't click away from fast enough.

The glitz and money that the print chased as it gave away the news brought about it's own destruction. Print news lost its way. It forgot that the reason why people came to see the ads was for the news, because it was important not because it was scary or had a tagline or a sexy pictures. Sex and violence may have brought out the few and uneducated but the meat that created Hurst, Turner and Scripps was information. Bloggers had information, Daily Beast had information, even Colbert and Jon Stewart had information. They not only had information but they had respect for information. They didn't treat it like a commodity but as a golden calf, the raison d'etre. They treated it like the guardian of democracy that it is.

Thus, with the leaving of bureaus which cost money but "didn't bring revenue" because their product was given away, we lost investigators, we lost journalists, we lost photographers. We lost those who forged after gangsters and shady politicians, we lost those who went into war with recorders and cameras while bullets screamed past them and often into them. We lost the people who uncovered lies before lies could hurt us. And so... as these brave men and women were let go, and we day by day like one sick with glaucoma lost our ability to see first in the periphery and slowly until becoming completely blind, we were left to realize in our blindness that while we retained our money, we no longer knew where or with whom we left the wallet. Thus Enron came to be, and 9/11 and Iraq war and the financial crash of 2008. All events that occurred in the darkness of absence of journalism, because our guardians were fired, let go and our corrupt bureaucrats and greediest of capitalist, no longer had the eye of scrutiny to see their deals that would bring about demise after crippling demise.

Whose fault was that? It is hard to say. Partially our fault for accepting these free and empty "news". Partially the actions of the journalists and newsmen who refused to figure out a way to make money. It was partially the fault of our politicians who refused to help the newsmen who they despised and part the fault of our entrepreneurs who chased other low hanging fruit believing that information is free while selling our privacy to the highest bidder instead of looking to figure out a way to make something that would allow us to put a value on that which is priceless: our press, the real guarantor of our democracy.

This is what I thought of as I read of news agencies closing, of iphones replacing photographers and untrained "citizen" journalists replacing seasoned researchers who were trained to get the necessary answers out of people who did their best to hide them, whose job it was to to avert events which would require "citizen journalists".

This is what I thought of as I thought of Phittle, long before Phittle came to be. This is what Phittle is. It is a beginning of the end of empty and cheap news. Phittle is my best effort to make news independent again, to make news matter, to make news important and valuable again. Real news is independent, real news is paid for by readers, not by advertisers because independence is freedom. Phittle brings freedom by making news beholden not to advertisers, but to readers. Phittle brings freedom to readers by letting them buy the news they want, when they want it in a way that makes it as easy as it once was when all you had to do was give 10 cents to a paperboy. Phittle for independence, Phittle for choice, Phittle for news.

I'm Tired of Being a Whore

Yes, I am a whore. I am a whore and I have been treated like one for seven years now. Ever since I graduated college. I am not an expensive whore or a cheap whore. I am a very mediocre whore. I went from boss to boss and I did half ass blow jobs, a lot of fucking I didn't like and I got tossed on the street for any failure to make the right money. I get pretty badly beat up especially for standing up to myself. I noticed that happens especially often.

So I'm not actually a whore. I'm an engineer. But I might as well be a whore. Sure I am a bit choosy with my jobs, I don't go for defense although those are the most stable and the most profitable but I refuse to make things that might kill people. But the jobs I get I am supposed to act like a mushroom, or a whore. I am to go to the dark room, be kept out of sight and be fed shit. Any time I voice my opinion, I am promptly fired. I'm also promptly fired when I don't share my opinion.

I am rarely evaluated for my good deeds, just the deeds when I don't bring in enough money. When I don't bring in enough money, it isn't necessarily that the manager screwed up by mis-budgeting the project, or overestimating how fast we could finish. And it isn't the manager who gets canned for failing to bring in the money, it's me.

And so, I am tired of being an intellectual whore, a human calculator, a human wrench. I'm tired of being tossed on the street when I am not deemed good enough and asked to come back with pretty promises of nice pay and benefits.

I don't want to hire whores to work for me and denigrate them for missed milestones that my pimps hand to me, I don't want to watch people give their lives to products which don't make lives better. I don't want to watch people lie to themselves about their lives and what they do no more than I want to do that.

I am a human, I am not a mushroom and even as a mushroom, I need nutrients, water, help... So what if somethings I can't do, I can do many other things, just give me air to breathe, give me a stick to slide my vines up to stand up or a tree to spread my roots.

Treat me like I am alive, like I am worth something.. and I will return my worth to you, for you are not a whore either. You are alive.. just like me.

Life Is

"I'm a mean SOB and the sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be" said my Linear Circuits Professor Robert Luganani. And life is just like that, it is a struggle and hard work and the sooner we accept that the better off we are. 

However, many of us, the ones who grew up in a privileged middle class income household, isolated from any kind of suffering that might have required us to put in hard work outside of soccer practice and homework two to three hours a day, expect life to be equal parts fun and work. We know that if we worked for an hour we got to play for two. If we did homework for an hour we go to watch TV for two. We were hardwired not just to work little and expect a lot, but we were taught that we don't need to work a lot.
Had we learned that it is challenges instead of constant gratifications we would not get hooked on liquor, drugs or even facebook, constantly seeking that high. 

And so there you have it, we expect to be CEO's and directors because no one showed us that the director was a paperboy, no one showed us that the CEO was a middle manager, we only saw the made product. As another metaphor goes, no one shoed the cow dick before it became the hotdog, we just got the good tasting hotdog and ignored the steps it took to make it so. 

Thus, the sooner we realize life is hard, life is a struggle, life is challenges and in those challenges and efforts is the real fruit and essence of life, the better we will be, the better our success will be and the better humans we will ultimately, be.

Can you imagine what it would be like, to look forward to challenges, to feel good about mastering a new bad habit, to feel the pleasure of overcoming a tax return and welcoming the next onslaught of problems life has for us. Problems means we got past something, it means we are alive and part of life is a fight that we survive. This is why soldiers who come home are bored and cannot find that high, unless they plunge themselves into some kind of new challenge a new endeavor which pushes them to be the best they can be, to feel that rush that whether it is a sink full of dishes or a financial term sheet.

On the current state of the news.

I am the CEO of this company because I am a news junkie. I read news continuously and without end. I’ve never had a subscription and I don’t intend to get one. What I am is a man who realizes value. I used to download lots of free music and movies in college, but interestingly  I never listened to it. No matter how much I stole, I could always find more music to download that I would never listen to. But when first Lala and later iTunes came around, I had to think about it, I had to like the music before downloading it. Now, I download far less music but when I do, it is music I like and it is music I want to listen to over and over again. Similarly, I used to only have my pictures on my computer. Why would I spend more money for a service to upload my pictures? But when flickr created unlimited storage and a way to share the photos, it became a service that was valuable and that I gladly paid for. But another reason that made me pay $50 per year was that they made it as easy to upload the pictures as Facebook. Technology must make our lives easier not harder, and we will pay for convenience of that easier life.

These are the changes which the news publishers have yet to create. These are the changes I want to make. Some people say I’m crazy, to charge for news when it is free now, why would anyone go for it. If I go for it, then others will go for it is what I say. Because I would rather pay a little bit for news rather than not have any news at all. And that is where we are heading. 

Because newspapers haven’t figured out how to get us to pay for it. But the reason why we don’t want to pay for it is not just because it is available for free, but because we are sick of passwords, we don’t want to buy a subscription when we only read an article or two, we don’t want our information out there any more than it already is. Because they haven’t made paying for it an easy process.

That is what Phittle is here to do. Phittle is how I want to read the news. Affordably, easily, without a subscription and in a way that pays people who are brave enough to go out there and find information that we want to know, need to know. Because as Samuel Adams said, a free press is “essential for a liberty of a free state.” But a small press where we don’t have enough journalists to go after corrupt politicians, where we don’t have enough journalists to investigate corporations committing fraud and abuses and where corporations through advertisements decide what news is printed is not a state I want to live in. By paying for news, I become the person that news is accountable to. But to do so there needs to be a system that makes it easy, convenient and affordable while making it profitable for the newspaper.

That is the future of news. That is the future that Phittle wants to create.

42 Countries-Argentina

Argentina

She lays along the continent

The woman of the Patagonias

Her Pampas are no longer settled

By natives who had once

Lived along the Plata's banks.

Completely settled by the Anglos

The cities where the dance

Goes on and on
Deep into the night

Where men's heels kick

And women's breast heave up and down

While teeth clutch on to rose

And hand grips hand and waist.

Where bodies flew

From helicopters into water

Where mothers walked

And crushed the despots

Clinging on to power

This place where sidecurls

Mix along with the franciscan caps

Where mate cups

Are held as tightly by the hands

As Maradona football flying into nets.
And dog crap dots
The narrow streets.

Let's Talk About Teen Spirit

Few songs have created as big of a change in music scene as Nirvana's Teen Spirit. Why? Watching the video you realize one difference between music before and music of Nirvana and grunge is that they did not have to dress up or be anyone other than who they were. Cobain's hair wasn't too long, he wore a simple shirt that all other kids wore at the time. All of a sudden a musician was a person instead of a god created by the corporations. This allowed the teenagers of the 90's to feel that they no longer had to fit in to the narrow stereotypes created for them by music and TV that they simply did not fit and could feel all the feelings they feel that were not seen on TV or the radio.
Having said this, I wanted to look into the lyrics of the song.

Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit Lyrics

Load up on guns; bring your friends

Even before Columbine, school shootings were a regular affair in the schools.

It's fun to lose and to pretend

She's over-bored and self-assured

refers to his ex- he lost her and so he pretends that it is really him that is better.

Oh no, I know a dirty word

Hello, hello, hello, how low

Hello, hello, hello, how low

Hello, hello, hello, how low

Hello, hello, hello

trying to talk but feeling miserable.

[Chorus]

With the lights out, it's less dangerous

Here we are now; entertain us

The feeling of a musician or a band who is there to not be listened to but to entertained.

I feel stupid and contagious

The teenage angst when everyone makes you like an idiot and doesn't want to hang out with you as if you're contagious.

Here we are now; entertain us

A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido

His girlfriend a brunette and he is a blonde (albino) a mosquito maybe small penis or the size of his libido and therefore inadequacy.

Yeah, hey

I'm worse at what I do best

Always feeling like you are not good enough and ridiculed most for that which you try most at or that which you like the most.

And for this gift I feel blessed

Our little group has always been

And always will until the end

The only solace in teenage times are friends. But there is a trapping there in that group.

Hello, hello, hello, how low

Hello, hello, hello, how low

Hello, hello, hello, how low

Hello, hello, hello

[Chorus]

And I forget just why I taste

Oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile

drugs. The only thing that make him smile.

I found it hard; it's hard to find

Feeling of joy, completeness.

Oh well, whatever, never mind

The teenage ability to brush off loss as if it wasn't important even though it is very important and nothing feels as bad as failing. The feeling of finding satisfaction with self, treating depression and hopelessness. He doesn't actually find it.. it is too hard to find.

Hello, hello, hello, how low

Hello, hello, hello, how low

Hello, hello, hello, how low

Hello, hello, hello

With the lights out, it's less dangerous

Here we are now; entertain us

I feel stupid and contagious

Here we are now; entertain us

A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido

A denial, a denial, a denial, a denial, a denial

A denial, a denial, a denial, a denial