No Whatsapp in Brazil for 48 hours. People are looking at this the wrong way.

At midnight today Whatsapp stopped working in Brazil and will be like this for 48 hours. A judge in São Paulo has ordered that the service be shut down due to the app failing to comply with a criminal investigation earlier this year. Or at least this is the reason given in the media. The party that solicited the suspension of the service has not been disclosed due to this alleged criminal investigation.

Okay. What I keep wondering about is if the punishment really fits the crime here. The whole population is now paying for something that the company hasn’t done — and again, this is all very secretive and we have no idea why this is happening — but many people depend of the app to go about their lives and businesses. I have my groups of students and reaching them using another medium isn’t impossible, but troublesome for sure.

People on social media have been talking about it since yesterday but I believe the point being made is the wrong one. Countless memes have been posted on Facebook about how lost people will be without Whatsapp and how productive people will actually be in these two days because of the time they will have in their hands to focus on their job. But I believe this is the wrong approach. Instead of trying to circumvent the ban by downloading patches or other apps, people should have made their preference being heard loud and clear. What is this all about? Why am I being punished for someone else’s alleged crime? Why is my business being hurt because of this decision?

“Me without Whatsapp”

“48 hours without whatsapp” “What the hell is this?”

“Whatsapp blocked”

Some people have gone political on it:

“You can substitute Whatsapp for a letter, for example.” (About vice-president’s letter to the president… a whole soap opera thing)

“One doubt, if Whatsapp ´falls´ who takes over is Aécio?” (About president Dilma ‘falling´- being impeached)

But one of those memes has expressed my frustration with this country in a perfect way:

“Brazilian justice manages to block a message app” “…but can’t block cell phone calls from prisons” “This is Brazil”

Update: An appeals court have just overturned the decision and the app is back on. The reason for that was that millions are being punished for what a company did or did not do… Embarrassing for the first judge who ordered the shut down…

August 6… Last Daily Show with JON STEWART

Crying my heart out…

Please don’t go…

So, it turns out I’m in San Francisco for the month! A lot has happened, probably to be reported here later on, but nothing, NOTHING, has overwhelmed me so much as the news I saw last night….

JON STEWART IS LEAVING THE DAILY SHOW (Looking at the TV in horror…)

From salon.com

It all started with Ronaldo, Daniel, Lindsay and I doing the bar crawl last night. It was fun, we had good and bad beers, and at the end we all collected a really cool print from San Franpsycho. We ended the run at my favourite place, which does feel like “the local” we had in London: Gambrinus. They serve a long list of Polish beer and the atmosphere is great, so we decided to have something to eat there before going home.

We were going to have a piece of Ro’s birthday cake for dessert, but we were all so tired and full that we just called it a night. Ronaldo slept over at Daniel’s and I just crashed in bed, watching the 11-o’clock news to see what had happened during the day. Eyes closed, listening to the anchor talk about the local news, when suddenly they report on Brian Williams being suspended for 6 months without pay after the whole helicopter incident in Iraq. After that, they show a picture of Jon Stewart with the caption “Stewart stepping down.” I couldn’t believe my eyes. No longer tired. No longer being able to sleep. Just two months ago Colbert ended his hilarious tenure at Comedy Central, now the guy that started it all is leaving as well?

It’s just hard to process everything… He said he’ll leave later this year, “it could be September, it could be July…” As soon as JULY?? Maybe Comedy Central would have the summer to prep the new anchor, but then again, are they keeping The Daily Show as it is? Stewart started in 1999 replacing Craig Kilborn and transformed the show in what it is today. The Daily Show is Jon Stewart and Jon Stewart is The Daily Show, it’s not like a news show that every so often has a new anchor. There can’t be a Colbert Report without Stephen Colbert, can there be a Daily Show without Jon Stewart? (Well. there is the podcast…)

I feel really, really sad. I have to say that it’s spoiled my trip a little bit and I will definitely be bummed out for a couple days… I was so excited about the premiere of Better Call Saul and looking forward to upcoming episodes, but now all I can think about is already not watching Stewart do his thing, even though there will be at least some five months to go.

Here’s a link to his first show, which will sadly be paired with the last one soon.

Fox News no longer in Brazil: going cold turkey

Yesterday before going to work, I turned on the TV to watch the talking points of the day on Fox News’ early show, but to my surprise the show wasn’t there. I hit the buttons for Fox and got Bloomberg every time. The channel wasn’t there. Well, OK. 

Later I found an article about cable company NET’s plan (then) to drop Fox News from its line-up but without any official statement. It suggests that NET might be trying to comply with some regulation that requires more Brazilian content on cable TV. The article also hints on the fact that Fox News hasn’t got much of an audience in Brazil, due to the fact that it shows its original American content as opposed to having a more international approach like BBC World or CNN International.

Wow… That took me a while to take in…

I know more than anybody else that FNC is like smoking: it’s really really bad for you, but very hard to quit. The disservice this organisation does to information is so big that you cannot not check it out for yourself, and then you come back the next day to watch the reaction over an outrageous interview.  Then you want to watch the spin they put on anything from the WH and when you realise, it’s already too late.

I know I can read about it on media websites and definitely see some of the pieces on The Daily Show, but it’s not the same. I guess what pissed me off was the cable company doing it for apparently no good reason. They could have offered the channel with the news pack (with BBC World) or the international pack (with Deutsche Welle), but they decided to drop it altogether. I’m sure NHK has a much bigger audience than Fox News.

Lunchtime and local news

Working from home has its perks, but it also has some downsides. For me it’s television. I live in a tiny apartment and I can’t simply leave the TV off. It’s automatic: I wake up and I turn it on on my way to the bathroom (next to my bedroom, both rooms facing the living room. Thank God for the balcony…)

I can manage to have some work done in front of the TV, I watch the news while preparing material for classes. Sometimes I even have some ideas from the stories. But today I’ve made the mistake of tuning in to the local news at lunchtime, something that every time I do I promise never to do again. I never learn.

As the country is heading for the inevitable Carnaval season, the local news programme is now showing every single one of the samba schools we have in the city, one every day. Man, it’s so sad… the musicians and dancers cramped in that really tacky studio, and the presenter with her fake-excitement face. I thought, ‘I can’t believe there isn’t anything worth reporting in this city, which makes these guys waste valuable TV time on something so ridiculous.’ The samba schools (from here and Rio) appearing on every commercial break throughout the day isn’t enough?

It’s not only the Carnaval thing, it’s the whole show. It sucks. It always has. I can’t believe these people do that on TV. It’s like Fox News, you know it’s really bad, but you can’t look away waiting for the next absurdity to come up, like what happened a few weeks ago. They were doing a piece on people who work doing some of the lowest-paid but most physically demanding kinds of jobs, like construction workers and garbagemen. The crew brought a personal trainer to see the type of work they were doing and calculate the number of calories they would lose during their 6-to-8-hour shifts under the January sun in Porto Alegre and temperatures nearing 40ºC.

‘Wow, you guys lose like 4,000 calories a day! I know a lot of women sitting at home green with envy right now!’ Wow, indeed… The guys make shitty money and probably have to work another job to get by and they have to put up with that??? And as a slap in the face, the crew picked out a couple of guys and took them to a gym to see if they could do the workout people with money do to lose calories. It was deplorable.

You know, I remember that this programme used to be about news. There were some lighter stories throughout, but essentially news. I don’t know what happened along the way that’s made it so awful. Now it’s all about football, really bad musical guests and some other dumb thing. Why?

It’s disappointing.

I’ve marched in!

After more than 4 years working for a school that has been through major changes, has laid me off and rehired me twice, has seen a complete change in the methodology and has chosen to disregard its employees as invaluable assets, I happily announce that tomorrow, 9 December, is my fucking last day!!!

The decision of leaving the school was made much earlier this year, but “the fear” always prevented me from doing so. The questions about how I would make it through the month and pay my bills inevitably kept me sitting in that office for a longer time. Also, we teachers tend to think in terms of, well, terms, meaning that we wouldn’t leave a place in the middle of the semester, so we always make plans like: ‘I’ll quit after July’ or ‘I’ll wait until the end of the semester’. The end of the semester has come and I saw no more excuses to postpone it.

It’s been sad seeing the organisation that once was respected end up the way it has. You know when you can see the rock bottom from afar? That’s what happened and I honestly don’t want to be part of it when they hit the ground. I guess the whole decision process started after seeing the following TED Talk over and over again (I’d been showing this presentation in one of my classes I teach) and sharing my frustration with two of my (then) co-workers, now my two partners in our enterprise.

So, we basically got tired of giving the owners of the school all of our time, knowledge, life and money and decided to eliminate the middle man and do everything on our own. From now on, no more reporting to anybody, just making collaborative decisions, enjoying what we do and, hopefully, making a difference.

—

After many weeks of being Fox News-free, I had a relapse this morning and watched  Fox & Friends as I was preparing to go to work. I watched this piece on shortage of prescription drugs and people who need the medication being affected by it, some people have even died. At some point, Steve Doocy makes the case of why the government isn’t stepping in as the companies claim they might have problems with production or whatever. I was SHOCKED! Government stepping in? On Fox & Friends? Doocy??? Of course government should step in, but doesn’t this argument go completely against everything these guys have worked for every morning since Obama took office?

So, government stepping in and regulating what goes in what people eat and what is thrown into the air they breathe is outrageous. But if the same people need medication for diseases that may well be caused by what they eat and breathe, that’s ok???

Stewart on Fox News Sunday

I’ve watched Jon Stewart’s interview on Fox News Sunday and it’s difficult to understand how these people can get away with what they do. It seemed like Jon and Chris Wallace were talking about different things. Asked by Jon, Wallace said that he thought Jon’s highest aspiration was to be a political player, which Stewart disagreed, but that didn’t seem to convince Wallace. Well, he’s entitled to his opinion, just like anybody else can disagree on the “fair and balanced” slogan and disagree on the fact that Fox News is a news organisation. I certainly don’t believe in it, even though they constantly tell me that they are “the most powerful name in news.”

During the interview, Wallace tried to compare Stewart’s work with their work at Fox and tried to find a common ground, which is something that anybody with half a brain cell would never do. Jon said that programmes like his were a counterweight to Hannity and Beck to give the channel some credibility, and later on Wallace asked about Comedy Central, to make the point that in any place, “there is good and bad stuff.” To prove that, he showed a clip from the roasting of Pamela Anderson on Comedy Central, and also mentioned South Park as being some of the bad stuff on the air. He ended up telling Stewart that next time he mocks Fox News, he should think about the place he works at. Right. So, according to Wallace, it’s fair to liken Hannity to Pamela Anderson’s roasting, correct? Good and bad stuff on the air. Wallace also said Jon was biased because he “only tells part of the story.” Is Jon Stewart supposed to tell the full story? Does Chris Wallace or anybody on his network realise that the name of the channel is COMEDY Central? They’re basically trying to legitimise what they do by saying that everybody else has a liberal bias and that Jon Stewart doesn’t tell the full story. It’s just beyond my comprehension.

What Stewart was trying to say throughout the interview was that he mocks the absurdities that are put on air, mostly by cable news. He mentioned the Nancy Pelosi press conference after Weiner had resigned, calling all the three networks’ (Fox, CNN, MSNBC) bullshit when they stopped airing the press conference after she made it clear she wouldn’t comment on Weiner. All three. So there is definitely a lot of bad stuff on TV in general, but when it comes to not reporting facts and pushing agendas, Fox News happens to be champion.

Here’s the full interview, parts one and two. (UPDATE: The videos have been removed from YouTube, but the interview can still be watched through the link at the top of the post.)

Bin Laden dead, at least to most people

Just a few seconds ago, fireworks went off near my flat. I don’t know if it’s because of yesterday’s football match or because of Bin Laden.

It was a pretty dull Sunday (honestly, are Sundays ever anything but dull? In my city they are and forever will be dull…). After watching some random TV shows, including the really cheesy, dumbing down, low-quality local late night Sunday show on RBS called “Tele Domingo”, I found out that “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was showing on another channel. I decided to watch part of the movie for the 115th time before calling it a night. I was ready to turn in, gathering some things for this morning’s class, when for some reason I switched to CNN. Sunday night is usually when they show something related to sports, so I almost never watch it.

The funny thing is how you deal with something unexpected. Everything happened in a fraction of a second, I mean, 3 fractions of a second. First I see Obama speaking and the first thing I thought was, “did he give a speech today?” I don’t know, something on economy, health care, birth certificate, whatever. Then, I see it’s a live speech, and I think, “what the hell?” The last thing I see on the screen (should have been the first) is the caption: “Osama Bin Laden is dead”. I’m like, “what?” “WHAT?” “Oh my God!!!”

So, at this point it’s almost 1a.m. and I’m at home yelling “what?” and firing up the computer, which takes about 20 minutes to load, still not believing what had just happened.

So, this morning my students and I obviously talked about it and they basically focused on the fact that Obama was able to pull off something that W didn’t for almost 10 years. My co-workers, on the other hand, were more skeptical. First, they want to see pictures (pulling a birther. A “proofer,” maybe?) and I don’t blame them, I’d like to see it too. I remember when Saddam was hanged, Sky News showed the footage almost on repeat mode (it was Sunday morning and I was working at the cafe in London). Then, they tell me that they don’t believe the convenient burial of the body at sea. Then they went on to question the sheer existence of Bin Laden! Well, I don’t think I’m with them on these matters…

But keeping alive the tradition of dead people helping out the living in this world, such as Ayrton Senna helping Brazil win 1994 World Cup by deviating Baggio’s penalty, president of Peru decides to say during an inauguration speech that Pope John Paul II helped out on the killing of Bin Laden. Well, I don’t care if it was the late Pope or the SEALs that got the guy, only that he’s gone for good and the magazines and newspapers covers will be historic. As well as Obama’s speech.

Hands off my food! My cigarettes, on the other hand…

So, I took a personal day yesterday, did some important stuff, and couldn’t help myself and watched some TV before going out. The channel? Good old Fox News.

Well, there was this discussion after a very wary-looking Megyn Kelly questioned if the government was trying to police what people eat because Michelle Obama is pushing for restaurants to serve smaller portions, you know, the whole obesity thing.

Obviously, republicans are saying this is just one more step towards “big government” and that people should be prepared for the worse. The government wants to dictate what everybody should be eating and the free world is approaching the abyss. I don’t think I see it that way.

Having a healthy diet and taking care of themselves is seen as an infringement of their rights. If somebody tells them that there are better options to huge pizzas and freedom fries, they go nuts and simply refuse to listen and might even respond as the republican in the video did, by distorting information. I don’t think dictating is the first lady’s big plan here, but they can certainly transform this issue, which should be seen as an opportunity to debate the diet most people have and try to encourage parents to watch over what their kids eat, into a whole “nobody takes my liberty” thing. This is so stupid. And again there’s no compromise here, republicans function in a way that is either “do it and we’ll make your life a living hell” or “leave it alone”. One thing that I don’t understand, though, is that republicans are the ones that should be pushing for healthier diet, because if their electorate keep eating and packing fat and clogging their arteries and dying from heart attacks, who’s gonna vote for them to dethrone Obama?

I just don’t think the coverage is fair. I can give you an example here. I’m a smoker. I know, it’s bad for me and I’m aware of that. And for years now there’s been a battle against smoking across the world. Many countries have banned it and you have to pay fines if you’re caught smoking in bars and restaurants. Do you how painful it is for a smoker not to be able to light up when drinking beer? It’s awful, and even thinking about the possibility makes me not want to go places. Such as New York City. I might be going there some day, and just a few days ago the City Council voted to ban smoking from parks, beaches and plazas. You know… these places are outdoors… People aren’t inside a place where others eat and drink and work.

Well, you might say it’s the second-hand smoking thing that got them to ban it. Okay, what about air pollution? Why don’t they ban cars from the streets? Why shouldn’t people be riding bikes?

You know why it’s easier for cigarettes than food to get banned or controlled? Because food doesn’t affect the guy sitting next to you like the cigarette does with the smoke. The smoke disrupts people and can lead to cancer, but eating a lot doesn’t bother people around you, unless of course they have a stroke or eventually puke for eating supersized meals.

But my point isn’t that. My point is the coverage. While we may listen for days and days about the sizes of portions and how the government is taking people’s freedom away from them, this is the note I found on Fox Nation website about smoke banning in NYC. What about my freedom to make my choices and choose whether I smoke or not?

Turning point?

So, it’s no surprise that I’ve been fed up with how things are going at work. I know that everybody has good and bad days at work; no job is perfect and we need to try to address the problems the best way we can. However, the good days are rare now and the bad days are really bad, really really bad.

I really feel sorry for all the students that come to the school and enroll in a course that is poorly devised and won’t help them at all. The material is awful, it isn’t cheap, has no quality, treats the student like a dumbass, it’s disrespectful. I’m glad that I’m not part of this department anymore, and I’m glad that I still get to work with my students using material that make them think. But things change fast where I work, and if I don’t do something soon, I might either need to start selling the lie that those courses are or get laid off.

Last week I had a long conversation with one of my colleagues and we seem to agree on many things that we should be doing right now, things that we should start doing. We bust our asses for nothing, the pay we make is ridiculous and the owners think we should be thankful. It’s a complete waste of time and talent, we’re constantly tired and we simply can’t move forward. I’m tired of making other people rich while I struggle to pay the bills and get to the end of the month.

So, today two colleagues and I had a lunch meeting and we’re really willing to make the move. A lot of people say that in order for you to make the jump you need “the fear”, but in our case we’re way beyond fear, we’re desperate. So, this year we’ll do a lot of planning and research, because we truly believe that there’s more to language learning than what we’ve been seeing for the last few years. I refuse to believe that people are looking for what most of the schools offer, including the school I work for, and we’re willing to make the change! We’re gonna do something about it! And we’re taking our country back!!! (just kidding, couldn’t resist…)

—

The protests in Egypt really are taking a turn for the worse. Now journalists can’t report what’s going on because of the attacks in the last two days. Even though correspondents from all over the world were attacked, hospitalized, threatened and arrested, no doubt that Anderson Cooper was the most talked about, so much so that even Stewart had to step up and say “hands off Anderson Cooper!” But I could have done without tonight’s cation on Pierzzzz Morgan, with AC360 talking on phone about the latest developments: “Secret Broadcast from Anderson Cooper”. Really? Come on, guys…