Antisocial Media

Not only is Meta the company itself ontologically evil, but they also push new frontiers in Awful User Experience and Hostile Interface Design.

And when I say "ontologically evil", I am not being flippant or hyperbolic.

Never used Threads, stopped updating Instagram when the schoolgirl scandal broke, deleted the apps from all my devices... but I more or less have to keep at least a token toehold on FB and it grates me.

The single thing I hate most on the entire internet now is Facebook automatically sending me to my Feed if I leave a browser tab open to a post for too long.

I never use the feed. The feed is ass cancer. It is the throbbing heart of the terrible user experience on FB.

Penny wise, pound foolish

Between costs associated with Iran and various hijinks in Latin America, as well as shelling out $1.1 billion dollars (and counting!) for National Guard troops to stand around DC Metro stations, bored and scrolling their smart phones, the Army is facing a budget shortfall of something like six billion bucks.

So they're slashing training costs to the bone for the rest of the fiscal year because that's not important for "lethality", I guess.

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Hump Day Meme Dump!

QotD: Bigger Boxes Still Dressed In Ticky-Tacky Edition...

Jim Grey has penned an excellent essay on the swanky suburban city directly north of Indianapolis:

But walking around the retail district near the Hotel Carmichael that night, something felt too poised, too polished, too perfect. Every surface considered, every business in its right place. Real places have friction — a hardware store next to a wine bar next to a laundromat. Buildings from different eras that don’t quite agree, businesses that are there because someone needed them rather than because they completed a vision.

A couple years later Margaret and I visited Epcot, as our son was proposing to his girlfriend there. Walking around, I recognized exactly what Carmel had been doing. Epcot is a controlled environment engineered to deliver the sensation of place without the inconvenience of actual place. Themed zones connected by optimized infrastructure, every experience crafted, nothing unplanned, nothing that jars.

You should RTWT.

I share his feelings, which is why it makes me ill that they're trying to Carmel-ify my beloved Broad Ripple.

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Meme Dump!

Back to the 'Ol Meme Mines!

Automotif DCXXI...

Will I get up from my table and jog down the block to get a picture of a 1963 Buick Riviera idling at a traffic light?

Yes. Yes I will.

Photographed with a Canon EOS R and an RF 24-105mm f/4L IS zoom lens.

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Sunday Meme Dump!

There must be more to it than that...

Old tech is making a gradual comeback, and for a variety of reasons...

I am not the only one thinking about the upsides of inconvenience, it seems; there is even a term, frictionmaxxing, to describe the trend of people resisting the lulling ease of screens. On a Saturday morning when I do not have to help a friend move, I am in bed scrolling Instagram. One video features what appears to be an elder millennial saying that he wants the nineties back. He wants a VCR. He wants old-school arcade machines that you have to feed with quarters. He wants a Walkman and cassette tapes to put in said Walkman.

When you're in front of the arcade game, you are playing that game, when listening to the Walkman, you're listening to that album. When you're reading a dead tree book, you're reading that book. When you're photographing with a camera instead of a cell phone, that's all you're doing: taking pictures.

There's no channel surfing on those devices. You're in the moment, committed to that choice. There's intentionality to it.

Plus, the record company can't delete your cassette. Nobody can steal your log-in and personal data from a VHS player or a CD carousel. Broadcast television sends data in only one direction.

Did you ever stop to think just how much info you're handing over when visiting a website? You should.

All for the convenience of watching a movie or listening to a tune that may or may not be available if you want it again tomorrow.

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Meme Dump!

By the Numbers...

Hey, look!

The 10 mm numbers guy will explain to you that his favored cartridge fires a bullet that is heavier than your .357 Mag. He’ll tell you that it has more momentum than your 9 mm. He’ll jeer that it has more foot-pounds of energy at 100 yards than your .45 ACP has at the muzzle; never mind that your .45 is bigger at 100 yards than his 10 mm is at the muzzle and, besides, nobody’s ever even seen a foot-pound. Are they even real?

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Tab Clearing...

• Norwegian F-35s tracking Russian Tu-95 Bears along NATO's northern flank.


• Real time video deepfakes make it easier to scam people live.


• The Russian school training the next generation of hackers, scammers, and influencers, all the better to mess with your mind and shape your opinions.

Memealicious!

QotD: Politics Edition...

Bobbi on Tuesday's primaries here in Indiana:

"All that money pouring in, those TV ads ... did bring people to the primary polls in record numbers, but that record still amounts to a 14.9% turnout instead of the usual single digits. Just over eighty-five percent of registered voters are, apparently, okay with whoever the rest of us pick."

One state senate primary contest that had millions of out-of-state dark money advertising dollars spent on it is likely to come down to three votes.
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I just noticed...

...that Cygnus, the third book in Marko's Frontlines: Evolution trilogy, is available for pre-order. (Release date is in December.) Publishers love it when you pre-order books, and that means authors do too, so I did my buddy a solid and pre-ordered.

Keeping them market signals flowing and all...

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Tab Clearing...

• Roberts: "Hey, you can't Dred a Scott without Plessying a few Fergusons."


• Second tallest megatsunami ever recorded happened in Alaska last year.


• Rain on the Scarecrow, Blood on the Plow v2.0

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Meme Dump!

Captain Outrageous has left the building.

Having lived in Atlanta from third grade through my early thirties, Ted Turner was everywhere. He owned a TV station and the Braves, he founded CNN, he won an America's Cup yacht race, and was always doing something that got him in the news and earned him the nickname "Captain Outrageous".

And now he's signed off for the last time.

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