Internet | Bob Schwartz

November 30, 2018

Do You Use Wikipedia? Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Do you visit Wikipedia once in a while? Once a day? Multiple times a day?

Wikipedia is operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which is funded by donations. Astonishingly but maybe not surprising, only 1% of Wikipedia visitors contribute:

Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world.

Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn’t belong here. Not in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others.

When I founded Wikipedia, I could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising banners, but I decided to do something different. We’ve worked hard over the years to keep it lean and tight. We fulfill our mission efficiently.

If everyone reading this donated, our fundraiser would be done within an hour. But not everyone can or will donate. And that’s fine. Each year just enough people decide to give.

This year, please consider making a donation of $5, $20, $50 or whatever you can to protect and sustain Wikipedia.

Thanks,

Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia Founder

All of us—me included—have gotten used to being online freeloaders. The truth is, though, that as we wander through the orchard picking free fruit, somebody planted those trees, watered those trees, tended those trees, and helped them grow.

Please donate to the Wikimedia Foundation today, and tell your friends to donate. The next time you visit Wikipedia (probably within the next hour), you will know that you helped.

March 1, 2018

Winnie the Pooh Censored in China

China President Xi Jinping wants to change the constitution to remain in power beyond the limit of two terms. China Digital Times explains:

Chinese state media announced on Sunday a list of proposed amendments to China’s constitution, which are expected to be adopted next month at the National People’s Congress session in Beijing. Among the 21 proposed amendments, the one with perhaps the deepest potential impact on the future of Chinese politics and society deals with paragraph 3 of article 79, which would eradicate the current limit of PRC presidents and vice-presidents to two five-year terms. This would effectively set President Xi Jinping up to maintain his seat as president indefinitely….

Following state media’s announcement, censorship authorities began work to limit online discussion.

As part of that censorship, a growing list of terms have been blocked from being posted on the search engine Weibo. Along with seeming innocent phrases that are protest memes and obvious authors such as George Orwell, for a while the list also included the letter “N”:

N — While the letter “N” was temporarily blocked from being posted, as of 14:27 PST on February 26, it was no longer banned. At Language Log, Victor Mair speculates that this term was blocked “probably out of fear on the part of the government that “N” = “n terms in office”, where possibly n > 2.”

Most ridiculous of all is the blocking of Winnie the Pooh:

Winnie the Pooh (小熊维尼) — Images of Winnie the Pooh have been used to mock Xi Jinping since as early as 2013. The animated bear continues to be sensitive in China. Weibo users shared a post from Disney’s official account that showed Pooh hugging a large pot of honey along with the caption “find the thing you love and stick with it.”

I’ve written before about my high regard for Winnie the Pooh—the books by A.A. Milne, not the Disney version. It is great literature, not least in the character of the sweet, loyal, interesting, but seemingly not very smart bear (as he calls himself, “a bear of very little brain.”) Seemingly, because he may also be a bit of an enigmatic Zen master:

On Monday, when the sun is hot
I wonder to myself a lot:
“Now is it true, or is it not,”
“That what is which and which is what?”

I have never thought of Pooh as a political subversive. And yet, if you are a supreme ruler aiming to become eternally supreme, enemies are everywhere. Even a letter of the alphabet or a simple and adorable bear.

October 17, 2015

The Paramount Pictures Vault: Free and Legal Movies on YouTube

Paramount Vault

Let’s be honest. Movie lovers do look for and watch full-length movies on YouTube—almost all of which are not there legally. For a lot of people, it’s not that they wouldn’t prefer watching these old, classic or limited-interest movies on a streaming service. It’s that a lot of those movies aren’t on streaming services, and even passionate movie lovers are not willing to pay for a DVD of a movie they will watch only a couple of times, if not just once.

Which is why the Paramount Pictures Vault on YouTube is such a refreshing development. There you can find a small selection of such movies from the studio, offered as a gift and, of course, as a promotion for Paramount’s other works, which they do hope you will pay for:

The Paramount Vault showcases a collection of Paramount full-length films and clips including selections that range from black-and-white to color, comedy to horror, and everything in between. Viewers are invited to explore the vast landscape of cinema’s history, share their favorite films, and discover new ones through this official channel created by Paramount Pictures.

So for those who, once in a while, feel a twinge watching movies on YouTube that they know are not completely legit, here’s a way to have some movie fun and to feel clean and legal. Enjoy!