a new way to censor the net?

I just now tried to download my email, and the email client timed out during the download of some large email someone had sent me. It must have had a whole lot of images in it. So I tried again. Surprisingly the email wasn't there in the second attempt. My email client seems to have deleted it. That's a slight annoyance, but people should really expect that sending large attachments is dicey, also that can be an annoyance to people on slow net connections.

Anyway, that's not my main point... I logged onto the web interface of my mail server in the hope that the message might still be there, but expecting it wouldn't. I was right that it wasn't, but I found something rather worrying. My email server has been quietly filtering out email from the human rights organisation Avaaz and the anti-religion organisation Project Reason so that I didn't receive them. If I hadn't logged onto the web interface, which I almost never use, I would never have known. It strikes me as weird that only these two were filtered out. I am subscribed to dozens of mailing lists. Why are only these two blocked? It strikes me that this would be a perfect way to unobtrusively censor people's communications, while allowing plausible deniability "We were simply providing it as a service". But if it was a service, the default would be to allow them to pass through and give me the option of blocking them if I wish.

I'd previously thought having my server located in the USA instead of Australia was a good thing, given Australia politicians' desire to make us the only democratic country on the planet to censor the net. But now I'm not too sure. Maybe I should look to Tonga or some place less likely to do naughty stuff.

net weirdness

I've noticed that accessing web pages has become significantly more unreliable lately -- just in the last month or so. Pages refuse to fully load, or even load at all, the net seems quite a bit slower, and there was my problem this morning of an email not downloading then disappearing entirely on the second attempt.

Has anybody else noticed a recent increase in internet flakiness?
I'm wondering if Australia's net censoring might be responsible. I don't think it has been widely implemented yet, but perhaps discreet "trials" are continuing.

Or might it be the internet service provider I'm signed up with?

Kick-Ass

Holy cow! I just saw Kick-Ass. Omigod! What a movie! I was shaking by the end, adrenalin and endorphins streaming through my veins.

Nothing, absolutely nothing about this movie is normal. When you see the movie, and you must!, don't go with any expectations at all. Don't expect it to be good, though it is; don't expect it to be violent, though it is; don't expect it to be funny, though it is; don't expect it to be a parody, though it is; don't expect it to be dramatic, though it is. Just walk in and be open to your preconceptions being turned upside down and your nerves rattled.

Wow!