More Brains Than I Know What to Do With

[elfs]

Hidden bombshell in an article about political advertising. This article was supposed to be about how political advertisers are having trouble reaching an audience. For me, though, the bombshell was this: 31% of us don't watch TV according to schedule. Almost a third of Americans use Tivo or some other time-shifting device, get their television through an internet source, or don't watch television at all. Television isn't a broadcast medium at all anymore: it's a supplier of media in inconvenient packaging, an inconvenience which more and more of us are routing around with technology.

The Kindle Fire: Deeply Evil. Forget the walled garden of Apple, and enjoy the panopticon of Amazon. Not only does Amazon "optimize" your experience by caching your results, they also get to see record absolutely everything you do. They capture purchase and behavior information for everything you buy, and use that information to "optimize" Amazon to be more attractive than any alternatives. The market persists only because both sides have incomplete information about the value of a sale; Amazon is making sure that only you have incomplete information, but Amazon will know everything.

Lifehacker recently had a pick your Kindle flowchart, but it's missing one: "Value your privacy? Go to a fucking bookstore before they're extinct already."

Oregon: Jurors convict "faith defense" of manslaughter. Good for Oregon to claim that faith, and faith healing, are no longer positive defenses when charging someone with manslaughter for failing to get medical assistance for a minor child. The comments are... special. "This is the state telling us what we can and can't do to our children." Well, yes, that's partially what the state is for, you fool: the watchmen assuring you do not, even by omission, inflict mortal pain and suffering on those to whom you have responsbility.

How Stastical Behaviorism made video games compelling, rather than fun. This is a genuinely creepy look at the way the statistics were generated, and are now used, to create "social" games where you feel obliged to participate, but don't actually get any pleasure out of them. At least one woman who'd I desperately like to get into the pants of take out on a date has disappeared down the rabbit hole known as Farmville.

A more progressive tax system Confirming results we've known for ten years, the more egalitarian and equitable the arrangement, the happier and wealthier a state will be. When income disparity is relatively low, those on high don't feel the need for excessive guard labor, a hidden drag on economies, and the general welfare goes up faster. High Gini coefficients are associated with general popular malaise and mistrust. Just like the United States!

Comments

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Ummm...

Yeah. Because we still do that. And the Head Tax too.

From that same wiki article, you should be aware that they link to the American version of the Residential School system, which they point out was remarkably similar.

As such, since America had declared *war* on its aboriginal population before sending any survivors to reserves and residential schools, we still come out ahead, since during that same period (namely, the Indian wars in the post-civil war period) we were actually protecting said people - from aggression from other tribes as well as from the American Army.

So your soap box is looking kind of shaky from here.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Agreed, the US had a similar system - but as you said, they had to declare war and send in lots of heavily armed troops to commit their genocidal crimes against humanity. We spread peace, order, and good government first, and THEN commited our atrocities.

It's a more subtle evil. Everyone expects the US government to kill, torture, lie, steal, break treaties, overthrow friendly governments, and basically act like an unsupervised five-year-old with poor impulse control. However, we're supposed to be better than that.

Being attacked by a known homicidal maniac hurts the body, but isn't too much of a surprise. Being stabbed by a trusted friend hurts the soul.