Lana Del Rey/Radiohead Dispute Shows Why Major Labels Fail

“Get Free” was the product of three writers and three producers, not to mention a little village of people who work for the record company and the publishers. Probably around a thousand people heard “Get Free” before it was released (that’s not an exaggeration), and virtually all of ‘em knew the thing sounded exactly like “Creep” (these people are sniveling, arrogant, and cowardly, but not stupid). Yet not one of these check-cashing chimps who spend more on sushi in a single day then you make in a week raised a single wasabi-stained finger and said, “So, listen, Lana, how should I put this…well…I have heard that exact melody before.”

(Lana and her sushi-flinging shaven apes could have at least chosen to rip off a song that everyone didn’t know. I mean, people do that all the time. Heck, give a listen to “Airplane Song,” a fairly obscure ditty from 1967 by The Royal Guardsman. Really, listen to it. The Beatles did, and lifted it lock, stock, and barrel for “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” The Fabs knew the first rule of plagiarism: When you steal, steal from someone who is less famous than you.)

Source: Lana Del Rey/Radiohead Dispute Shows Why Major Labels Fail

Could a bubbling Canaries volcano see Britain engulfed by killer tsunami?

A tsunami wave, perhaps 100 feet tall, will wreak havoc on the U.S. east coast the day that the Canary Islands’ La Palma volcano blows up. Increased seismic activity has experts worried that day is coming sooner rather than later. Are we ready?

WHEN you think about tsunamis, you don’t tend to picture the killer waves crashing down on British beaches.But with a volatile volcano in La Palma ready to blow, the government is now drawing up plans for dealing with monster waves on the British coast.

The terrifying truth is that we’re largely in the dark about tsunamis, and it’s difficult to say with any certainty when Britain will next see a killer wave.But many volcano experts point to Cumbre Vieja, an active volcanic ridge on La Palma, in the Canary Islands, as a probable source of a future tsunami.

With seismic activity picking up in the area, volcano monitors are on high alert over fears that an eruption could send a huge chunk of the mountain crashing into the sea – triggering a monster tsunami.

There’s still debate around how big the tsunami would be by the time it reaches Britain, although there are fears that waves as high as 25 metres could threaten New York and Miami.

Source: Could a bubbling Canaries volcano see Britain engulfed by killer tsunami?

A Complete Taxonomy of Internet Chum – The Awl

The Awl provides an in-depth look at the outrageous “suggested for you” news stories that are on many media sites (like the News and Observer).

This is a chumbox. It is a variation on the banner ad which takes the form of a grid of advertisements that sits at the bottom of a web page underneath the main content. It can be found on the sites of many leading publishers, including nymag.com, dailymail.co.uk, usatoday.com, and theawl.com (where it was “an experiment that has since ended.”)

The chumboxes were placed there by one of several chumvendors?—?Taboola, Outbrain, RevContent, Adblade, and my favorite, Content.ad?—?who design them to seamlessly slip into a particular design convention established early within the publishing web, a grid of links to appealing, perhaps-related content at the bottom of the content you intentionally came to consume. In return, publishers who deploy chumboxes receive money, traffic, or both. Typically, these publishers collect a percentage of the rates that the chumvendors charge advertisers to be placed inside the grids. These gains can be pocketed, or re-invested into purchasing the publisher’s own placements in similar grids on thousands of other sites amongst the chummy sea, reaping bulk traffic straight from the reeking depths of chumville.

Source: A Complete Taxonomy of Internet Chum – The Awl