USA Today Network in 2016 started categorizing its content by topic and tone, and scoring it based on the emotions it’s believed to most evoke.
Source: Project Feels: How USA Today, ESPN and The New York Times are targeting ads to mood - Digiday
I think part of the reason why Russia’s influence on the 2016 Presidential election was so effective is the conditioning we have had through the emotional manipulation of advertising. Mindless sharing on social networks is the purest form of that emotional manipulation because we tend to trust our friends without question.
Reading white text on a black background messes with my eyes.
Why Do Jews Eat Chinese Food On Christmas? – The Forward
Relatively early in to our marriage, my wife and I enjoyed a Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I imagine today those dining at a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day are a mix of religions and nones.
My last bottle of KBS 2018
I got the HooTo USB-C Hub for Christmas and I’ve tested it with the Google Pixelbook.
We wish you a Merry Christmas
Imanuel, God With Us
As we in news and media attack the platforms and their every misstep — and there are many — we need to turn the mirror on ourselves. It was news media that polarized the nation into camps of red v. blue, white v. black, 1 percent v. 99 percent long before Facebook was born. It was our business model in media that favored confrontation over resolution. It was our business model in advertising that valued volume, attention, page views, and eyeballs — the business model that then corrupted the internet. It was our failure to inform the public that enabled people to vote against their self-interest for Trump or Brexit.
But transparency is not just about confession. Transparency should be about pride and value.
Spark Review: Smart Email – MacStories
I’ve written of my search for a replace to Google’s Inbox, and on iOS I have settled on Spark. I wish it was available on Android, where I am using Bluemail.
Of course Brown scores 36 this week after I needed that last week. Sigh.
Rudolph?
Made my third trip to the eye glasses place to get my new glasses adjusted and confirm that the prescription is right and the measurements are right. I have a pretty significant stigmatism and the introduction of progressives has complicated the process of getting new lenses. Every pair I have had since progressives has required multiple trips to get the fit right, and one time the lenses had to be remade.
Today I got the manager/customer advocate take care of me. The first lesson learned is that for my prescription, experience matters. The customer advocate confirmed the measurements are correct and he did adjust the frame so that the glasses now feel better and sit better on my face.
I learned that my progressive prescription changed pretty significantly for my right eye, so that means I would definitely have a noticable difference and need more time to adjust. Most importantly, he told me that due to the change I need to hold what I am reading closer to force my eyes to read through the progressives. Holding a book where I had in the past put it at the mid-way point, which causes strain. Nobody told me this, I don’t know how I was supposed to know.
So, now I know I have to change what I do and I have to give my eyes/brain time to adjust. These simple but important pieces of information should have been given to me either at the first appointment or when I first picked up the glasses. My theory about this customer experience is that the experience of the people taking care of you matters. They probably don’t see my particular prescription often, and then 20 somethings doing the work simply don’t have the experience to handle my prescription.
My new glasses before and after with some hat hair after
About to get a new outlook.
A sign that I am a certain age, or that I am a little bit strange.
I fell down the rabbit hole of Federated Wiki after reading a piece by Mike Caulfield titled The Garden and the Stream. It’s made me think about my writing on the web and today I started to assemble those thoughts.
I am on holiday now and look forward to more time for this type of deep thinking.
I’ve written a wiki page that describes how I use RSS.
I’ve noticed several folks on micro.blog are also using Blot, which is a blog platform centered on Dropbox. Blot is not the first blogging platform that uses Dropbox as the content store, the first that I am familiar with was Fargo. The difference is that Fargo included a UI as well as a publisher where as Blot just has a publisher and the UI is one’s preferred text editor and the Dropbox UI.
I guess this Manneheim Steamroller playlist I am listening to has me feeling nostalgic.