Downloads and dollar signs

Share: Pandora, Spotify, Grooveshark, Youtube, and about a hundred other sites are all easy ways for users to absorb content for free. All of these sites are driven by advertisements or by a small monthly subscription fee that takes the annoying ads off the screen. Sites like Netflix and Hulu offer a similar model for the use of streaming shows and movies directly to your computer, tablet, smart TV, video game console, or even your phone if you’re looking for extremely mobile show watching. Follow:

Editorial: Cairo must sign agreement

Share: PCC students stand to lose nearly $3 million in grant money if Academic Senate President Eduardo Cairo doesn’t sign a document authorizing it. The money would go toward the Student Success and Support Program (SSSP) plan, which is a plan that would allow for many improvements in Student Services, the most important being the hiring of more counselors. As of right now the student to counselor ratio is 885 to one. The money would go to improving PCC’s atrocious counseling situation by hiring at …

Video Games, Death Threats, and Sexism: Why #Gamergate was never about the death of the gamer culture

Recently a number of people, mostly females and their supporters, have come under attack from “hardcore” gamers. This isn’t anything new; female gamers and those who work in the gaming industry have always been on the receiving end of hate mail and slurs. However, the #Gamergate scandal has opened the world of gaming communities to the wider media and it is apparent that sexism is still alive and well in gamer culture.

Why voting is meaningless, but you should do it anyway

Share: Given last year’s poor election turnout, the Los Angeles Ethics Commission has begun considering the idea of using cash prizes to increase voter participation. While people are definitely motivated by money, it still won’t solve the apathy people feel towards politics. According to Pew Research, we are more divided now than we’ve ever been in the last two decades. People are much less likely to tolerate other people’s beliefs outside their political spectrum, so it’s understandable why most people would rather simply recuse themselves …

Columbus deserves his day

If we are going to get rid of Columbus Day then we should get rid of every holiday that involved any sort of nastiness: Thanksgiving and the 4th of July to name a few. History is not perfect and neither are most of figures and events in it but those people and events shaped the world we live in today and they deserve to be recognized and their days observed.

Columbus Day vs. Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Christopher Columbus has long been lauded as a national hero for discovering America. In schools across the United States, schoolchildren learn about his voyage to America and his subsequent unearthing of riches. In fact, the whole nation celebrates this discovery with Columbus Day, which lands on the second Monday of October. Recently, however, the Seattle School Board has decided to do away with this holiday and replace it with the more appropriate Indigenous Peoples’ Day.