Bits: Žižek, YACHT, Questlove, Drones

Adrian Piper, Imagine [Trayvon Martin], 2013

• Žižek: "Assange, Manning, Snowden… these are our new heroes, exemplary cases of the new ethics that befits our era of digitalized control. They are no longer just whistle-blowers who denounce illegal practices of private companies (banks, tobacco and oil firms) to the public authorities; they denounce these public authorities themselves when they engage in 'private use of reason.'"

• The music duo YACHT (Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans) has put out the protest dance song "Party at the NSA," available for free download, along with a limited-edition shirt (with art by Tim Lahan and designer Sang Mun's OCR-thwarting ZXX typeface), with process supporting EFF. They tell Nothing Major why they made the song a protest "party jam":

It evokes the classic punk-rock satires we grew up loving, like the Dead Kennedys's "Holiday in Cambodia," or the Descendents' "Suburban Home." To have fun at the NSA's expense while simultaneously doing something active, raising money, to fight against it—in our minds, this is a combination that works. A lot of people are subconsciously deterred from involvement in these kinds of issues because the very thought of what is actually happening in this country makes them anxious, and they'd rather ignore it. We want to reframe that impulse, giving people an engaging, spontaneous, expressive context for protest. Poetic terrorism, if you will.

• Questlove from The Roots spoke about racial profiling, stop-and-frisk, and Trayvon Martin on Democracy Now this week. Must-watch. Earlier: Questlove's Facebook post that went viral. On the George Zimmerman ruling: "i dont know how to not internalize the overall message this whole trayvon case has taught me: you aint shit."

• From Gizmodo, here's what they're hawking at the world's largest drone fair. 

• Also, don't call them drones, says the drone industry.