April, 2017 archive
Attention Theftacit Disorder 0
One of my local convenience stores features, GSTV, a vile and loathsome creation that yabbers commercials at you while you fill your gas tank. (Why they think that making persons angry is a productive sales technique mystifies me.)
At the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Glenn Harlan Reynolds offers his take on the soundwall of advertising that is consuming our attention. An excerpt:
Columbia law professor Tim Wu thinks your attention is being stolen. And he’s not happy about it.
He’s not talking about TV commercials, which pay for the show that you’re watching. He’s talking about ads that seize your attention while giving you nothing in return. He has a special dislike of gas station TV, in which saccharine fake newscasts appear on the pump while you fill your car, tethered by a short length of hose. But that’s not all, Wu writes: “In that genre are things like the new, targeted advertising screens found in hospital waiting rooms (broadcasting things like The Newborn Channel for expecting parents); the airlines that play full-volume advertising from a screen right in front of your face; the advertising screens in office elevators; or that universally unloved invention known as ‘Taxi TV.’ These are just few examples in what is a growing category. Combined, they threaten to make us live life in a screen-lined cocoon.”
Aside:
I was recently subjected to one of those target medical “channels” when I picked up a friend from a doctor’s office. Ugh.
I chose to wait outside and look at my own screen–and at the trees, the flowers, the sky, and the near-misses on the adjacent street.
Sometimes the Victim Deserves the Blame 0
Regardless of whatever machinations the Russians may have machinated to help Donald Trump win the Presidency, it was Americans who voted for him.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness is the foundation of a successful relationship.
Witnesses said Williams’s girlfriend was returning the shotgun to a gun rack when it accidentally discharged, damaging a wall and causing several pellets to strike Williams, who was in an adjacent room, Cartwright said.
Down to the Sea in Slips 0
In a related piece, Josh Marshall tries to figure out what happened to the fleet. A snippet (much more detail at the link):
But then the White House and particularly the President said things that were much more direct and clearly, at best, misleading. What is key is that this does not seem to have been some intentional misdirection or ambiguity. . . . It seems much more like the White House and the President got sloppy, didn’t know exactly what was happening and through sloppiness and bravado created an impression that simply wasn’t true.
The Trump White House, sloppy? Oh, my.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness is nothing to toy with.
The 12-year-old was shot but his injury is non-life threatening. The shooting was ruled accidental.
Stamped by Racism 0
Let Field tell the story.
“The McMahon Tactic” 0
Tony Norman considers the WWE, Alex Jones, Infowars, and wingnut news fakery.
The dirty little secret is that there can be big money in playing a professional wingnut.
Who Is the “Far Left”? 0
Thom discusses the “far left” in America and points out what I’ve said for a long time. There isn’t one.
Hell, Dwight Eisenhower would be considered “far left” by today’s Republican Party.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness sells.
(snip)
Police say a 22-year-old man was at the Wharf Building trying to sell the handgun. As the men handled the loaded handgun, it fired.
More guns no doubt would have prevented this.
