Mammon category archive
Paying for Poison 0
Your guide to being Flint-hearted:
More than 8,000 residents who have unpaid bills have received notices that if their balances are not paid by May 19, a tax lien will be placed on their homes, according to a report by NBC News.
Facebook Frolics 0
You, too, will be assimilated by the Zuckerborg.
Chartering a Course for Disaster 0
The Florida legislature works on new plans to convert the public good to private theft profit.
Suffer the Children 0
It’s not scripture, it’s GOP policy.
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.
A Poisonous Environment 0
Warning: Language; short promo at the end.
The Snaring Economy 0
The Guardian considers the ongoing (mis)management melodrama at Uber following the recent departure of the flack PR specialist who was supposed to fix it. A snippet (emphasis added):
But Whetstone’s job was arguably the most challenging of them all: public relations and policy for one of the most scandal-hit companies in America.
“I think basically you have a Donald Trump-like situation at Uber,” said crisis management specialist Jonathan Bernstein. “It doesn’t matter what his communicators say, ultimately it’s about what Travis Kalanick says. It’s like the problem Sean Spicer has – no matter how much he tries to spin, his boss is going to say something on Twitter he doesn’t know about and he ends up looking like an idiot.”
The Pusher Men 0
Pap and his guest discuss how Big Pharma designs diseases in order to deal drugs.
If you watch American television in the early evening, you can see scores of commercials that illustrate this, as aging actors perform numerous outdoor activities in front of the green screen.
The Fire Next TIme 0
News of the vapid:
The malfunctioning devices have forced at least one aircraft to land, started fires on ships and left sailors with second-degree burns . The injuries have occurred when the devices were being used, charged or replaced, or when they came into inadvertent contact with metal objects, according to the Navy.
The story goes on to point out that the “Vaping” business association, which is not called “Nicotine Addiction Pays Big Bucks,” is protesting.