Latest Articles from The Vandal AKA Derek Haines

Funnily Engrish

As the famous Sri Lankan expression goes, ‘Today is lazy day’. So in keeping with this spirit, I have decided to be completely slothic for today’s blog post and entertain you instead with a list of wonderfully awful translations that I found while surfing the net over my morning coffee. In a Tokyo Hotel: Is forbidden to steal hotel towels please. If you are not a person to do such thing is please not to read notis. In a Bucharest hotel lobby: The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable. In a Leipzig elevator: Do not enter the lift

Politicians Lie, And We Always Believe Them

All politicians lie because they have to. We all know politicians lie, but why do we get sucked into believing them? Because the political narrative (lie) is controlled to such an extraordinary extent by the media, which has become an arm of governments around the world. Thus, repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth. The real problem though is, who is really controlling who? Are governments controlling the media, or is the media controlling governments? Perhaps asking this question of Rupert Murdoch might be informative, should he be honest enough to answer. The problem that politicians lie, and by extension this must also mean that the media lies as

And You Thought You Were Buying E-books

So, do you own the ebook you just bought? Probably not. What do you really own when it comes to technology? Well, from this story about a Kindle owner having her Kindle wiped clean by Amazon, and her account closed, it would seem the answer is very little. The disturbing part of the story is that so far Amazon has yet to explain why this was done, other than that it was for as yet unspecified violations to its terms of service. Obviously, though, this example makes it perfectly clear that when you buy an ebook from Amazon, you don’t really buy it. You borrow it. I just did a check to

I Am Making A Very Bad Business Decision

A bad business decision is not always a bad one. I have happily made a very bad business decision. Let me explain. A little over six months ago I made the decision to move all of my ebooks to Amazon KDP Select, which at the time made a lot of sense, as I explained in my post about it back then. However, as so often happens in business as in life, things changed. While the first few months went well, and I should say, very well indeed, Amazon suddenly made an enormous change to the way they pay authors under their Kindle Unlimited (KU) subscriber service. Whereas when I entered Select,