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The Holland Brothers are a good-time, beer-drinking act, specializing in a mix of old country and blues styles, says Mark Holland. So the trio, consisting of Mark, his brother Mike, and bassist Billie Feather, were a natural fit for the Meadowmont Music Series, a small Chapel Hill event now in its second year.

But after being hired to play, the band suddenly found itself disinvited due to the content of a single song, one that is not in the trio's collective repertoire and which they were not even planning on playing. Ultimately, after being besieged by emails charging censorship,Meadowmont reversed course. But the episode highlights the sensitive atmospheresurrounding the mixture of politics and public events, one that promises to be ongoing in the arts-unfriendly Trump years.

About a month ago, Rollie Olin, a volunteer for the Meadowmont Music Series, contacted the brothers about playing at the event, and they agreed. Things got complicated soon thereafter. Mark Holland posted a new songan entirely solo efforton the website of their record label, something he and his brother often do. Called Trump Fools, the song grew out of his frustration with current political climate. A sample verse goes, Look at all the sheep/Lambs to the slaughter, y'all/He's a wolf in sheep's clothing/And his hands are small."

As he usually does, he sent out an email to his contact list to let people know hed posted a new song. Inadvertently, Rollie Olin had been added to the contact list, and shortly thereafter, Olin sent an email saying that the series is a nonpartisan event and that, because of his concerns about the song, the Holland Brothers performance had been canceled.

Because Olin had used the term we, Holland figured he was speaking on behalf of Meadowmont. He responded, I respect it if thats your decision, but the fact is, that song isnt a Holland Brothers song and wouldnt have been performed anywhere. Its just performed by me as a solo artist.

After a few days had passed without a response from Olin, Holland, incensed, posted about the situation on Facebook. As people began to weigh in via the post's comment thread, a clear consensus developed: the cancellation was ridiculous. Holland wrote back to Olin to let him know that the local community was supporting the band and that Chapel Hillians in general are deeply opposed to censorship; others wrote their own dissenting emails to Olin.

Finally, Holland heard from Bill Ferrell, manager of Meadowmont Community Association. When they talked, Holland explained to him that they had no plans to sing Trump Fools, and that were about as nonpartisan an act as you can get. Holland says Ferrell was sympathetic and only wanted to make things right again. Soon enough, the Brothers were back on the bill.

Bill was outstanding to intervene.He showed great respect for art and my right to create whatever I wanted to and post it, says Holland. Ferrell himself did not want to comment on the situation, but Holland notes the irony of the whole episode, even with the happy ending.

"This song is gonna get a lot more attention than it normally would have received," he says.

Go here to see the original:
Meadowmont Music Series Reverses Course on Cancelation After Local Outcry Against Censorship - The Independent Weekly

Twitter has upped its censorship game and is now blocking certain terms from showing up on the platforms built-in search engine. The added filters are part of the companys plans to reduce harassment on the service. Some of these filters were deployed earlier this month when users were given the option to mute certain types of accounts.

As with previous efforts to convert Twitter into a safe space, free from wrongthink and uncomfortable opinions, the company that once branded itself as the free speech wing of the free speech party has offered little transparency on the terms it filters out of its search engine. Furthermore, its enabled by defaultand the settings to disable safe search are hidden away on the Search page, so you wont find them with the rest of your account preferences.

Users on the platform were quick to discover how looking up certain terms returnedzero results. Examples of prohibited terms include porn, BDSM, sex, and kink. Other censored words include hentai, and nsfwneither of which show up in the search results. Curiously, racial slurs like the n-word and terms like jihad still show up unfiltered.

Over the weekend, the terms marijuana and cannabis were also filtered out out the search engine. Butcomplaints may have prompted the platform to uncensor the term, as it now shows up.

The filtering system doesnt even work as its developers intendedsensitive terms are filtered out on the Latest tab, but youll still find some of them in the Top tab. Twitters censorship is confusing and lacks the transparency necessary to be useful to users.

Twitter is well within its rights to implement safety features, but so far, theyve only hurt usability. After all, who uses Twitter search to look for porn?

Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at@stillgray on Twitterand onFacebook.

Original post:
Twitter Censors Search Terms, Offers No Transparency and Mixed ... - Heat Street

A new video by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, students are asked to respond to some examples of campus censorship, and they agree: things are out of control.

It's refreshing to see students thinking for themselves.

Among the examples is an infamous story of Saint Mary's University preventing a student from the school's gaming society from advertising an event because the poster contained an image of a gun. To be more precise, it was the NES Zapper, a common gaming accessory from the 80s. Literally anyone who played a Nintendo Entertainment System growing up knew what this was, but the school deemed it inappropriate.

MORE: 10 times schools took political correctness to the EXTREME and the ABSURD

They also agreed that it was ridiculous when a student had to undergo 'racial sensitivity training' sharing a viral image of Obama kicking down a door.

There's more examples, so do yourself a favour and check out the video!

Let us know in the comments what you think.

Excerpt from:
MUST WATCH: Students react to the most outrageous examples of campus censorship - The Rebel

(Last Updated On: March 29, 2017)

In order to appease the growing trend of third-wave feminist requests to censor the sexuality of fictional female characters, many developers have opted to cover up cleavage, make sure that the women in fantasy games are fully clothed with realistic designs, and remove things like jiggle or boob physics to placate SJWs, similar to Mortal Kombat X. Well, the developer of the action-RPG Kings Raid, Vespa Inc, received a lot of backlash after they attempted to censor and cover up their female characters.

Censored Gaming covered the incident, showcasing how many of the female characters in the game were covered up from head to toe to either hide cleavage, or add extra articles of clothing to lessen the sex appeal of the character illustrations and in-game models.

A large enough segment of their fans rebuffed this decision, complaining about Vespa censoring the characters in Kings Raid, the mobile hack-and-slash RPG.

The complaints were made in such abundance that just a day after the update was released, Vespa made a post on Facebook on March 24th, 2017 stating

We are aware that the update on March 23 has upset many of our Raiders, especially regarding the change brought to the Heroes appearances. As it is our ultimate goal to support and enhance the players experience, we have decided to take your voices to revoke some of the changes to the Heroes appearances.

They showed an image of the characters that were censored in the previous update, and how they were going to uncensor them in the following update, following the fan complaints.

As you can see, not only did they alter the games anime-style illustrations but they also modified the characters 3D meshes, covering them up and attempting to make them more conservatively dressed.

The backlash over the censorship rippled through the reviews of the game as well, with people complaining about the change.

While a lot of fans thanked Vespa for uncensoring the characters, others complained that the game should be censored and that they also need to remove one of the staple features in Kings Raid: the boob physics.

One of the people on the Google Play store going by the handle of Narendra MC wrote

Well, in overall its good. I just saw some comments about censorship and i really think that it doesnt really matter to people who arent a bunch of horndogs. I support censhorship as it reduces the possibility of people becoming more attracted in to sexual stuff.

The Facebook page where the announcement was originally made is now a full sociopolitical argument over censorship, female sexuality and identity politics.

Many male Asian gamers like the boob physics and cleavage. Many European and North American gamers are complaining about the sexualization of the characters and saying that the original art caters toward perverted gamers. Awais from Ontario, Canada wrote

They didnt even do anything wrong. Cant believe how ridiculous most of you adults were over a little censoring. Absolutely ridiculous how no one appreciates a company for finally focusing less on satisfying the perverted gamers Nope, but its alright because as long as you get to drool over pixel tits, theres nothing wrong right? Shameless community cant think outside theyre horny little bubbles.

As evidenced on the Facebook page, Awais was clearly in the minority with his beliefs and was shouted down by a lot of other gamers.

Additionally, Censored Gaming pointed out that Vespa never actually stated the reasons as to why they made the change in the first place.

The Western release of Kings Raid is rather recent, though. It launched back in the middle of February, 2017. The Asian version of the game was available since the middle of last year in 2016. The game was quite popular for bringing hardcore hack-and-slash action to mobile devices with PS2-quality graphics and a lot of fan-service.

As showcased in the video below from Android Gameplay, the in-game characters, illustrations and dialogue sequences were filled with plenty of fan-service, lots of cleavage and jiggle physics.

Vespa may have weighed the complaints of Western gamers versus Eastern gamers and attempted to make the change. However, if the gamers who actually bought microtransactions are the ones who enjoyed the fan-service, then Vespa may have decided to revert back to the uncensored version of the game to appease the people who actually put money in their coffers.

However, all of the above is just speculation when it comes to the reasons behind Vespa uncensoring Kings Raid. Unless the company decides to share their reasons such as the Dragon Heroes developers who were forced by Google and Apple to censor their game we dont actually know why they censored and then uncensored the game, but it was pretty obvious a significant portion of the community was not happy with the censorship.

Read the original:
King's Raid Devs Remove Censorship Following Fan Complaints - One Angry Gamer (blog)

Columnist Ali Spies revealed last week in The Standard that her COM 115: Fundamentals of Public Speaking instructor, purportedly acting on instructions of the Department of Communication, rejected her proposal to research, compose and deliver a brief speech about Planned Parenthood in the United States. The instructor asserted that the topic has ... too much controversy ... and implied that, while some controversy might be acceptable, too much controversy is off-limits. Spiess Department of Communication instructor censored Spies. Dr. Shawn T. Wahl heads the MSU Department of Communication.

George Anastaplo, a professor of law at Loyola University in Chicago, wrote that censorship is ... the changing or the suppression or prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed subversive of the common good. In other words, our universitys Department of Communication determined before Spies had begun to research her topic that mere mention of the topic would subvert the well-being of our academic community. Without further explanation, we can only speculate in our collective bafflement how the history of Planned Parenthood could possibly subvert the moral or physical welfare of our academic community.

The Department of Communications intellectual tyranny is not unique. A member of the Department of English censored me several semesters ago. In a fiction writing class, I submitted a story that included horrific violence to be discussed and evaluated by my classmates and instructor during our next class.

The instructor inexplicably failed to read the entire piece until just before class, although all of my classmates had read it. Rather than proceed, the instructor blindsided me and told the class that my story was inappropriate for class discussion.

The instructors censorship struck me as particularly hypocritical, given not only the graphic sex and violence in some of the published short stories the instructor had assigned the class to read, but also the instructors reading aloud to the class a lengthy and particularly graphic episode of deviant sex excerpted from one of those assigned short stories. The smug instructors hypocrisy is now part of a successful, if mediocre, academic career.

Given the Department of Communications irrational fear of controversy, its rewriting of Emma Lazaruss sentiment on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, might well read:

Give me your apathetic, your indolent,

Your texting masses yearning to shop,

The benighted spawn of your vacuous world.

Send these, the complacent, directionless to me,

I lift my middle finger to their delusive dreams!

Censorship at a university is an abuse of power and a corruption of authority; it is a tool of bullies and despots whose victims are never the same. This toxic silencing stunts the intellectual growth of students and abuses them to such a degree that, out of paranoia, they self-correct whenever they feel theyve entered uncharted territory. They fear rocking the boat; their souls are crippled and their respect for instructors of all ranks becomes wary and stressful.

If Einstein had been intimidated effectively by mediocre instructors, would it have delayed special relativity or general relativity? If incompetent, self-hating instructors had strong-armed Lincoln, would he have authored the Emancipation Proclamation? Is it unreasonable to hope that theres a special place in Hell for I darent eat a peach instructors who hog-tie youths exuberant and yeasty passions for learning?

Whether the above incidents of censorship are anomalies or part and parcel of university dry-rot and mediocrity needs to be investigated, but first, Missouri State President Clif Smart and Wahl each needs to apologize to Spies for permitting censorship to exist on their collective watch. Since Spiess experience is now quite public, both Smarts and Wahls apologies should also be public; our academic community demands redress.

Continued here:
Censorship: Is it happening at MSU? - Standard Online