John Oliver's Last Week Tonight

Yes. Oliver presses him quite hard in ways I don't think Snowden was expecting. What's impressive is Oliver striking a nuance on addressing the privacy/security concerns.

Yeah Oliver pushed him on if he'd even read all the documents and even made a comment about having a proper plan.

Also the NSA is separate from the CIA because at their core they have different jobs. The CIA run agents and the NSA listen to phone calls.

edited 8th Apr '15 4:08:44 AM by Silasw

To be fair, we're talking millions of documents that Snowden took, last I checked - little time to read through and redact stuff himself (granted, even the NSA themselves have no idea what Snowden actually took, hilariously enough). While one news outlet fucked up, The Guardian has been pretty responsible with all the information Snowden gave them. I think the public interest pretty much justifies the risks here, though, really.

Also, John and Ed talk passwords. Funny and informative!

edited 9th Apr '15 10:34:00 AM by Cronosonic

I think the public interest pretty much justifies the risks here, though, really.

The argument here is that he doesn't even know the risks. Like you said, with all those documents, he really doesn't have time to read and redact it properly himself. That doesn't make it any safer, though. Without knowing what the documents are, he wouldn't know the risks involved in leaking them, you know?

Risk is inherently about things you don't know. It is completely possible to analyse the risk involved in releasing classified information the content of which is unknown to you.

In that case, giving them to principled journalists with a demonstrated interest in transparency strikes me as the best solution, as it would have taken Snowden years if not decades to read all those documents, making the demand that he read them before releasing them an impossible one.

I say the Guardian and Glenn Greenwald are two of my top choices for who it would be smart to give leaked documents to, and that Snowden made a good choice.

If you're going to cite the potential danger of releasing the documents as an argument, you need to actually have an argument that those dangers are greater than the dangers of not releasing the documents and of having governments who spy on us extensively without our knowledge or consent.

edited 11th Apr '15 12:06:53 AM by Galadriel

Yeah the screw up was trusting the New York Times, not trusting that others could evaluate the documents with him.

Time for the dreaded Tax Demon EYE ARR ESS to rear it's ugly head. And for us to realize we really shouldn't hate it.

edited 13th Apr '15 12:07:43 AM by TwilightFalchion

I get peeved at anyone who takes potshots at the IRS. As Oliver points out, it's not their fault that the tax laws are screwed up, nor that lines for service are long.

And if you didn't pay taxes, you wouldn't have roads, police, or an education system.

I find the cheapest online service I can file electronically with and start working on them as soon as I have my W-2s, and then file as soon as I have all the paperwork I need to fill in. This may change when my income gets to an amount that there are no filing services that will do it for free and itemized deductions get me more money back than the standard.

Anyway, I filed in early February this year, so this week is just another week for me. I got my federal refund and paid the less than $50 I owed Indiana ages ago.

Look who's important now.

And if you didn't pay taxes, you wouldn't have roads, police, or an education system.

Agree on the broader point, but of late I'm feeling like the second one would be a feature, not a bug. Not paying people to murder and frame citizens would be just dreadful.

edited 17th Apr '15 10:51:07 AM by Galadriel

You could just, y'know, have more rigorous hiring standards/more accountability/less racist cops/less racist judges.

I mean, the cops are a symptom, not the disease.

This weeks Story is on Trolls of the Patent kind....and we can thank CNN for this View of the End of The World

edited 20th Apr '15 12:49:27 AM by TwilightFalchion

They've gone to the "guy in a mascot suit"-well one time too often.

I don't think the jokes on Last Week Tonight are generally all that funny. Too often, they're structured as analogies, but often they're not specific enough to be really funny. John compares something unpleasant or inappropriate to something else unpleasant or inappropriate, but that's all the similarities between the two things. I just don't think that qualifies as a joke.

Another thing this show often does is to have John say something in a stupid voice, over and over again. Thats's not funny either.

But when it comes to journalism and social commentary, LWT matches the best of The Daily Show and maybe even The Colbert Report.

Ah, yes, patents, that one intellectual monopoly system that is actually almost useless in the grand scheme of things. I'm not a fan of 'intellectual property' in general, really.

Oliver does a wonderful job explaining this sort of thing to regular people.

Yea, I find the jokes very hit-and-miss, and the stupid-voice-imitation is very overdone in shows like this (even Stewart overdoes it imo).

Stewart and Colbert always said they were comedians first, and the fact that they're so informative is essentially an accident. I don't know if Oliver considers himself the same, or if he is aiming for information first and comedy second. He really nails the in-depth reports, though.

The guy who invented liquid soap was denied a patent, so in order to ensure other companies couldn't steal his invention, he went to the only factory that could make the little plastic pumps and put in an order that couldn't be fully delivered for ten years.

Last Fashion Week Tonight.....

Eat the mystery chicken!

Ugh, I know this. And I still buy cheap clothing.

Be neat if they did.

Get your No 2 Pencils at the ready.....John tests Standardized Tests...

edited 4th May '15 12:22:04 AM by TwilightFalchion

Another guy in a costume. Someone on the staff must have a serious fetish.

edited 4th May '15 4:38:03 AM by GabrieltheThird

i just saw the episode and yeah more guys in suits....but this time they're not hiding it as it's a story about mascots

Tonight's main story however is of a maternal (lea)variety