QotD: It’s A Scam Edition…

From Bobbi:

"Always doubt the motives of a man who's pushing you for a quick emotional reaction; he's reaching for your wallet -- or your fundamental freedoms."

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Phoning the Memes In Because It's Friday!

Juxtaposition

I've been waiting to get this picture for a while now. Amusingly, I think both the Mitsubishi Pajero Mini and the Chevy Silverado belong to the same people.

That's just straight up trolling the guy.

Speaking just ahead of Trump, Xi noted the global attention on the meeting, and said a major question for the two countries was whether they could avoid the “Thucydides Trap,” according to an official English translation of his remarks broadcast by CCTV.

Trump was probably rolling his eyes and thinking "Only dummies stick their fingers in those little tubes in the first place."

(In case you, like the president, haven't read Allison: Link. Personally, I think the premise of the book is overly simplistic, but I'm just some rando on the interwebs.) 

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Meme Dump!

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!