I finally saw that "Elon" interview everyone was talking about. Or at least some clips from it. And, it crossed over from watching a guy who I don't agree with with bad ideas... into ... He's Not OK. Territory.
If I had a student saying such strange self destructive alienated things, I'd have a conversation with the guidance councilor about next steps.
It's bizarre that one of the most wealthy and by that also powerful people in the world is giving off "cry for help" vibes.
Retailers are getting more bold about where they place ads! I was going to buy something online from Lands End and went to pay, selected my card ready to send them money and do you know what they did? They put up a pop up ad! You can’t complete the transaction until you hear a pitch from “hello fresh” and “do you want to apply for an apple card?” etc. (I have pretty robust adblockers at home, is this how people live now?) Of course, I canceled the purchase.
What made it worse? They had a little counter to show you how many “offers” you had to reject (3) before you could complete the purchase. So they knew it was an imposition on some level. No, I don’t want to save $10 and use some shady sounding shipping service. No I don’t want $40 “hello fresh” whatever— NO.
Hopefully, it’s pilot and when they see all the abandoned shopping carts they’ll quit. It’s always an arms race with companies to preserve an unharried digital environment
They are catching a few eyes as a tumblr replacement... mostly by replicating the tags system and signaling they won't ban porn.
But I want to know: will they be subscribe-able via the fedi?
I think it's worth noting that simply by saying they will replicate how a beloved feature works they have gotten a lot of traction. The Mastodon response would be "we have tags at home" (that aren't as good as the tublr system)
If someone would start selling those nifty suffragette pantaloons you can bicycle in I bet they could sell a bunch.
But every skirt in stores looks like a horrible tube that will rutch up on your tush as you walk like an handsy subway creeper; you try to walk in little tiny steps. Sitting without flashing? Some kind of mysterious party trick.
Then there's a whole article in the fashion section hand wringing if skirts that aren't tight are "too conservative"
@futurebird I've been noticing lately that any time a designer features clothing with any significant amount of ease, the magazines hand-wring about being "conservative". Meanwhile, it's often not conservative necessarily at all, just comfortable (or at least more comfortable).
And yeah, nobody writing for fashion magazines knows any fashion history beyond their own (inevitably still-brief) lifetimes.
One of the small delights of a big city is encountering people selling things who just have more customers than they can handle so they become progressively more rude and obscure about how they render the service.
Economists would say they ought to raise the price... but they don't. Raising prices changes expectations, brings different more annoying customers.
Instead you get the best chicken tenders on earth DO NOT ask if you can buy them without the fries. Fries are mandatory.
And I get it. It's more fun to sell a really great product at a great price and no one ever complains or tries to return it. And you get to do your thing all day and make money.
Charge more and the whiners show up. "can I have an extra pack of sauce?" "can you fry it fresh?" "can I have them in separate containers?" who needs that?
These places are often cash only. And when they close everyone mourns. Twas a gift.
@futurebird Also in my experience, if you show up regularly, pay in cash, tip well, are polite despite the gruffness, and say "thank you," one day when you show up looking and feeling like crap, an extra dessert or a bottle of house hot sauce will mysteriously end up in your bag, and the rude proprietor will grunt, "looks like you could use it" under their breath, not looking at you.
Typical story. Flight attendant won't believe black woman is doctor, believes random white guy instantly. 🙄 So typical it's boring.
One thing.
If you are ever that white guy-- the one who's believed without jumping through hoops & if you notice what's happening. (which isn't a natural thing to notice, but perk your ears up. you'll see)
Say something! It can be mild. Dry even. But, don't let it roll by. No one will think you are being angry & unreasonable.
Sometimes I encounter videos on tiktock/tumblr: "wealth attractors" -reblog it & get good luck with $. At first I'm disgusted. Crass displays of wealth are ugly-- then I'm struck by how modest these dreams of 'wealth' really are.
It's always like ... just a few thousand dollars ... never even close to the obscene sums that distort our world. "root canal money" not "buy a supreme court justice" money.
I'm doing OK for now. But, I remember when $500 could have changed everything.
The first thing I did when I got a better job and had, for the first time in my life, the "dilema" of what I should spend the money I wasn't planning on saving on...
I treated myself to four root canals. Best choice ever. I can get so much more done now that my teeth aren't slowly driving me insane. I still need to get one more. But the dentist said it could wait till my insurance resets again.
@futurebird when I finally had insurance and a decent job I did the same, 9 cavities filled, 1 root canal and 1 pending. As well as quarterly visits for periodontal disease. Taking care of our teeth shouldn't be a luxury expense.
In about three years companies will realize they are being talked about in the fediverse and ooo gee maybe we should pay attention to that! A lot of professionals here with disposable income. Not a one looking at ads.
That will be a sad day in many ways. But, the attempts to adapt should be an endless source of humor.
@futurebird I once had a vision of allowing smaller businesses to market themselves using the Fediverse. Part of the offering was providing them with their own branded instance, where they could control messaging, have intrinsically verified accounts, and integrate the whole thing into their existing websites. But it turned out that advertisers want tracking - they've gotten used to knowing very precisely who will see which advert, partly because it lets them target ads ever-more specifically (struggling to keep a straight face here, because in practice that promise is very seldom kept), but also because it allows them to do something that ATL ads never could: Track the effectiveness of the ad itself. Real data as to how many people actually saw each ad, and when they saw it, and whether they actually engaged with it, as opposed to statistical projections of how many people might see it, and professional intuition (ie. random guesswork from somebody who knows what the client wants to hear) about whether the ad actually worked.
So I tried to figure out ways of tracking ad performance, in a way that would work on Fediverse but would also respect individual privacy (This last not only because it's the right thing to do, but because decentralized moderation would absolutely murder any instance trying to do this the traditional unethical way).
Anyway. I'm not an expert in any of these topics, and I couldn't figure out how to make it work. Not technically, not ethically. And from the deafening silence of marketing specialists on this network, I'm guessing nobody else has figured it out either. So I gave up on the whole idea. This is not a marketing platform. The only thing you can ever hope for is small-scale personal endorsements. Those are the most effective, powerful tools in the marketing arsenal, but they tend to scale poorly :)
I can hardly watch the news they keep talking about war like it’s a football game. It was bad with war in Ukraine, but this new war is worse. I just feel sick all the time.
Another teacher asked me an interesting question today. "What do you think about this idea of replacing calculus with statistics. After all statistics is more useful."
That's probably true on the surface, but I can't say I'm a huge fan of the "replace calc with stats" craze... even as I lament the poor understanding many people have of stats. It's obvious we need more education on interpreting datasets and visualizations.
But, there is a subtext to this argument I dislike. 1/
@futurebird I look forward to learning your reasons. My problem with calculus is that it is too often positioned as a gate-keeper class to weed out students from certain career paths and therefore institutions deliberately withhold the supportive, flexible teaching such material requires.
The subtext is that statistics is somehow "easier" than calculus since it's more connected to the "real world" --
But, nothing about real world problems is easy. Real world problems are harder, require more experience, more analysis, are less susceptible to canned techniques and strategies.
And more importantly it's hard to really understand much about statistics without knowing some calculus. Not a popular opinion. I know. 2/
Do you ever think about abandoned tech trees? Like how no one is working to design better drafting compasses or vellum? No one is perfecting vacuum tubes. No one is laser focused on methods to speed paint and accurate portrait by hand to send out for marriage proposals.
Technological leaps make entire areas of research pointless— but
What if just a bit further down the line on the old tech tree there was some bigger breakthrough we’ll never see? I think about this A LOT.
Your amplifier and speakers should take the signal in and faithfully reproduce exactly that sound. If you want distortion it belongs in the effects processor part of the signal chain not the microphones/pickups, preamps, amps, or speakers. I argue modeling is already better than the original for signal processing, but as you say use your ears if it sounds good to you then I don't care - but make sure you are doing the work in the right part of the chain which should be the effects. I realize of course that microphones, pickups, and speakers are not perfect and so you are forced to pick the best compromise and live with whatever distortion it creates. However well designed modern preamps and amps are very close to perfection so long as you are not trying to drive them beyond their limits.
@futurebird The dust bowl was in the 1930s. However we have had 90 years of topsoil management since then, improving all the time. There have been worse droughts than the dust bowl since then, but not dust bowl because of it. the dust bowl is about the last you heard about farming in history, farming has not stood still as the few of us still in big agriculture know.
Fired up and ready to go?
More like
dowsed, drowned and ready to “no.”
Get ready to “hmph the vote”
(now is a good time to check you are registered still.)
This image was drawn in a children’s art contest to make a pro-voting sticker. I’m obsessed with it. Much to the chagrin of the inspired, idealistic, contest runners this image kept winning public votes on which logo to use. And so it was the official sticker. Ain’t democracy grand?