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A peek at illustration inspiring celebrity sexiness, quirky news stories from inherently pornified pop culture, tips, sketchbook and work in progress, reviews and other things of interest; whatever’s on my mind really—which more fool you if you ever take that seriously.

Latest Picks is a sort of mini-blog for daily thoughts and picks. Longer articles, stories & sketches are found in the full-size blog, where indeed Latest Picks are moved when updates to a story make it too large.

Note: Both Latest Picks and Blog are to be retired at the end of September, although both will remain available indefinitely as an archived part of the site. No further updates to past stories will be made.

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13th July 2019

With France likely wading into trade war territory with Orange Don having unilaterally approved a digital services tax yesterday to try and get Google, Facebook and Amazon to pay up for their long use of double Irish tax strategy on non-US profits (theguardian.com, Jan. 2019), it’s time for the punishment paddle to be at least seen to be brandished on home turf too:

Cambridge Analytica: ‘US regulators approve $5bn Facebook fine’ (bbc.co.uk).

Facebook Dislike
US regulators have approved a record $5bn (£4bn) fine on Facebook to settle an investigation into data privacy violations, reports in US media say.

Although the largest fine ever levied by the FTC on a tech company it conveniently matching the $5bn estimate Facebook said it had told investors it had put aside earlier in the year and is seemingly seen by most as Zuck’s Fidiotbook getting away with it again:

Facebook’s $5 billion FTC fine is an embarrassing joke (theverge.com).

In relation to Fidiotbook’s stock price actually going up after the news, with Pocket in which I had the story cached letting it be known the story is trending—probably on Fidiotbook, or at least until… Oh, look! A dancing cockatoo!!! (Facebook).

That, as the New York Times’ Mike Isaac points out, is the real story here: the United States government spent months coming up with a punishment for Facebook’s long list of privacy-related bad behavior, and the best it could do was so weak that Facebook’s stock price went up.

With the largest FTC fine in history representing “basically a month of Facebook’s revenue” and investors content for all intent and purposes those privacy indiscretions have been paid for.

Updated 24th July 2019

But trying hard to ensure independent eyes will in future be watching the virtual ball:

Facebook board to tighten oversight, as Zuckerberg keeps control (wsj.com).

Along with a historic $5 billion fine, the agreement requires Facebook to create a privacy committee stocked with independent board members.

Which nawty Zuck can’t remove without the backing of investors who seemingly before were happy in blissful ignorance while profit rolled in and who likely will be again as long it continues to.

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Illustrations, paintings, and cartoons featuring caricatured celebrities are intended purely as parody and fantasised depictions often relating to a particular news story, and often parodying said story and the media and pop cultural representation of said celebrity as much as anything else. Who am I really satirising? Read more.

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