Then, over the last decade, this form of marketing became seen as insufficient—or rather, the rise of digital media made a more invasive form of marketing too irresistible. Instead of having to cast a wide net in searching for potential customers, advertisers now could know every intimate detail about those customers beforehand. They began targeting people geographically and behaviorally, based on common interests or things they liked in social media or what they wrote in emails to friends. The surveillance economy was born.
The surveillance economy should die. This manner of advertising doesn’t serve the public and it’s not even clear it serves advertisers. It facilitates monopoly, as those with the biggest data troves receive all the ad dollars. That centralizes the potential for and magnitude of abuse, with Big Data used to discriminate against groups, steer vulnerable people to financial scams, and meddle in U.S. elections. Cambridge Analytica’s scraping of 87 million user profiles through a simple personality quiz, and then weaponizing that information on behalf of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, revealed how information on social media is inherently insecure.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Ban Targeted Advertising
This strikes me as a really good idea:
Tohono O’odham Nation Rejects National Guard Deployment
About time the stakeholders called bullshit on Trump:
Tohono O’odham Nation – On April 9th, 2018 the Tohono O’odham Nation issued a statement to its Tribal citizens ensuring them that no National Guard troops will be deployed to their lands. The response comes on the heels of President Trump’s request for National Guard troops to be deployed to the US and Mexico border.
The Tohono O’odham Nation traditional lands lay on both sides of the US and Mexico “border”. They have consistently fought against any attempts by the US government to build a wall across their lands and have resisted any efforts that would impede on their citizens right to freely travel throughout their traditional homelands.
It's About Time
In the Sixties, I was a big fan of the Space Age. This comedy didn't even live up to the standards of its cousin, Gilligan's Island, and so disappointed, but still, it had the better theme song.
Ten Years of Lady Gaga
She changed a few things!:
Female pop icons have long formed a core part of gay culture, and much has been written about why. Some say we live vicariously through their sexuality; more Freudian theories suggest they’re our surrogate mothers. Less controversially, one could simply say their bright pop ballads about overcoming love and loss have historically provided a light-hearted, strobe-lit, glittery escapism from a world darkened by the shadows of HIV and homophobia. Before Gaga there was Madonna, Cher, Diana Ross. You may think Gaga didn’t do anything over and above what these performers did: provide glamour and camp value. But the special place she carved in the hearts of gay people cannot be reduced to her penchant for changing wigs – Lady Gaga queered the mainstream.
It's AMLO's Time
Mexican electorate will likely bank left on July 1st:
Campaigning for Mexico’s upcoming presidential election, on July 1, has officially begun. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the left-wing candidate and former mayor of Mexico City is the clear front-runner with an 18 percentage point lead. The two candidates from the mainstream parties that have dominated Mexico for decades., José Antonio Meade of the ruling PRI party and Ricardo Anaya of the opposition PAN have had difficulty gaining traction with voters in an anti-establishment mood.
A longtime fixture in Mexican politics—this is the third time he’s running—AMLO, as he’s known, has benefited from growing tensions with the United States under President Donald Trump, which have only grown more acute since Trump ordered troops to the border and began raising fears of a “caravan” of migrants passing through Mexico. In contrast to Mexico’s recent presidents—including the current one, the dismally unpopular Enrique Peña Nieto—who have defended NAFTA and security cooperation with Washington, he has pledged to take a harder line with the U.S.
Ergonomic Fail
Sitting down to the computer, I had a realization about the pain near my shoulder blade. The pain comes from mouse-clicking. I've got some kind of ergonomic fail going on.
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Lake Arthur Pulls The Concealed-Carry Permits For Cops
The bright light of publicity:
The mayor of the tiny town of Lake Arthur, New Mexico, has shut down his town’s volunteer reserve-officer program after it was reported they awarded a badge to Trump-backing billionaire Robert Mercer, reports Bloomberg.
According to the report, Mayor Ysidro Salazar issued a statement saying he has shuttered his town’s volunteer reserve-officer program and has instructed current officers to return their credentials which allowed them to concealed carry in all 50 states.
Responding to a Businessweek story that reported that out-of-towner Mercer was given a badge that also allowed him to carry a weapon, the mayor said it was time to shut the whole program down.
“Because of the notoriety this was bringing, I decided to go ahead and disassemble the unit,” Salazar said, before adding the report, “didn’t put the town in a very good light.”
Along with shutting down the program, Salazar put Police Chief William Norwood, who oversaw it while serving as the town’s only full-time paid police officer, on administrative leave, pending a hearing by city officials represent the town’s 433 residents. Previously 150 volunteers were authorized by the the department, but that number had been decreased to 84 badge-carriers.
Monday, April 09, 2018
Reorganizing The DMTC Extra Programs
As DMTC Archivist, I've been indiscriminately saving extra DMTC programs for the last sixteen years, and I had accumulated about ten boxes of them in the basement. Too many. I have finally organized them by show, allowing for just 30 per shows (some shows had more than a hundred each), and I've pared the ten boxes down to just four.
For the future.
For the future.
DMTC 30th Anniversary Video
I didn't realize this interesting video was out there. It was from the DMTC 30th birthday celebration in 2014. Short snippets of many shows (I started doing shows at DMTC in 2000). Notable Broadway stars include Mara Davi (at 7:23) and Jessica Crouch (at 7:50 - apparently she opens a show in NYC in a few months). I momentarily appear at 9:52.
Happy 90th Birthday To Tom Lehrer!
He's still going strong!My mom had his first album (they show the album cover in the article at the link):
Lehrer — who grew up on New York City’s Upper East Side — certainly sees a connection between his mathematical training, which began at Harvard at the prodigiously young age of 14, and his compositions. He was drawn to songwriting in his teens; after failing to respond to classical-music training, he switched to the study of popular music. In an interview in 2000, he summed up the fields’ dual impact. “The logical mind, the precision, is the same that’s involved in math as in lyrics,” he said. “It’s like a puzzle, to write a song.”
Lehrer agrees with mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (one of the builders of the atomic bomb) that rhyming “forces novel associations … and becomes a sort of automatic mechanism of originality”.
More Conservative Horseshit
Because I'm a liberal, I didn't get to see this horseshit Facebook was offering conservatives in the 2016 election:
Mexicans disagree about priorities:
Meanwhile, the Soros Rewards Program is doing well:
New Mexico is my home state. Don't tell ICE.
Mexicans disagree about priorities:
MEXICO CITY (The Borowitz Report)—Hoping to resolve the seemingly intractable conflict over immigration, Mexico surprised the world on Thursday by agreeing to pay for Donald J. Trump’s psychiatric care.
...While some Mexican taxpayers argued that a full course of psychiatric treatment could prove more costly than a border wall, Peña Nieto warned against skimping on such a necessary expense.
“When the safety and security of the world is at stake, eight hundred dollars an hour is a bargain,” he said, but added that Mexico would try to find a therapist who takes insurance.
Meanwhile, the Soros Rewards Program is doing well:
Dear Valued Soros Protester™,
We’d like to thank you for your participation in the recent March for Our Lives and for being such a loyal Soros Protester™. Together, we sent a message to Congress and the NRA, and we are fostering a real conversation about sensible gun control in our country. Throughout our storied history of compensating work-shy millennials to protest in favor of the Soros Liberal Agenda™, we’ve set unprecedented crowd size records, made nearly 3.5 million clever posters, and paid out nearly $25 million in Soros Bucks™. However, effective today, we will be restructuring our Soros Protest Rewards Program™ to offer you better incentives as a thank you for your time, your Instagram posts, and your delightfully clever protest signs.
New Mexico is my home state. Don't tell ICE.Zombie Raccoons in Ohio
I've seen aggressive raccoons when they are in a group, but I've never seen a zombie raccoon:
Witnesses describe the furry black-masked creatures assuming aggressive postures toward humans, showing no fear and impervious to attempts to scare them off with noises or movements.
Robert Coggeshall, a retired banker turned nature photographer, described the “extremely strange behavior” of a raccoon that entered Coggeshall’s front yard as he played with his dogs.
“He would stand up on his hind legs, which I’ve never seen a raccoon do before, and he would show his teeth and then he would fall over backward and go into almost a comatose condition,” Coggeshall told WKBN.
Libertarians Are Defunct
For the moment, Libertarians are basically defunct.
Kevin D. Williamson was just fired at The Atlantic - for good reason. I don't think we'd get along. I don't agree with the last sentence of this article. Still, I like the rest:
Kevin D. Williamson was just fired at The Atlantic - for good reason. I don't think we'd get along. I don't agree with the last sentence of this article. Still, I like the rest:
The GOP’s political situation is absurd: Having rallied to the banner of an erratic and authoritarian game-show host, evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell Jr. are reduced to comparing Donald Trump to King David as they try to explain away his entanglement with pornographic performer Stormy Daniels. Those who celebrated Trump the businessman clutch their heads as his preposterous economic policies produce terror in the stock markets and chaos for the blue-collar workers in construction firms and manufacturers scrambling to stay ahead of the coming tariffs on steel and aluminum. The Chinese retaliation is sure to fall hardest on the heartland farmers who were among Trump’s most dedicated supporters.
On the libertarian side of the Republican coalition, the situation is even more depressing: Republicans such as former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who once offered important support for criminal-justice reform, are lined up behind the atavistic drug-war policies of the president and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose big idea on opiate abuse is more death sentences for drug traffickers. Deficits are moving in the wrong direction. And, in spite of the best hopes of the “America First” gang, Trump’s foreign policy has not moved in the direction of Rand Paul’s mild non-interventionism or the more uncompromising non-interventionism of his father, Ron Paul. Instead, the current GOP foreign-policy position combines the self-assured assertiveness of the George W. Bush administration (and many familiar faces and mustaches from that administration) with the indiscipline and amateurism characteristic of Trump.
Some libertarian moment.
James Vandeventer is Running For Congress From Oklahoma
James was a fellow candidate for the 2003 California Gubernatorial Recall Election, so his race for the Second Oklahoma Congressional District (Tulsa area, and NE Oklahoma) piques my interest:
Oklahomans 1ST! It's time for NEW Visionary Leadership!
We don't have to live like this!
KIDS, Teachers, Vets, Elderly, Poor, 1st Responders & those in need ARE #1!
Time 2 GO MARKWAYNE! 3 TERMS ARE UP!
Take Oklahoma to the TOP!
YES ON SQ788 Medical Marijuana!
Protect Our 2nd Amendment but we need SENSIBLE Laws TO KEEP Guns out of the HANDS of the WRONG People!
Gateway to Native America! Miami, Sallisaw, Durant!
Claremore, how about a Boardwalk at Claremore Lake? Oolagah? Eufala? Or? We have a BEAUTIFUL STATE! LET'S Showcase it and make some $$$$!
Grove, how about a theme park to showcase Grand Lake?
All Religions Protected!
STOP the HATE! Rebuild Our Churches!
Let's Put God back in Our Hearts, Homes, & Churches!
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR!
...I am running as a HYBRID Candidate! I was a lifelong Reagan Republican until approx 2003. I have VOTED for many Candidates REGARDLESS of PARTY!
WHY? BECAUSE Oklahomans/American Patriots like you, COME 1ST! I don't care what your Religion is, what color you are, and I REALLY DON'T WANT to know about your sex life! WHO you love and MARRY IS YOUR BUSINESS! NOT THE GOVT OR CHURCH! LOVE THY NEIGHBOR!
WE ARE NOT SENT OUT AS POLICE FOR Christ! We WERE SENT TO SPREAD LOVE, FORGIVENESS, AND THE TEACHINGS of GOD!
The Real Reason For The Trump-Bezos Rivalry
Money:
President Donald Trump’s net worth declined by more than $600 million in the past year, according to the Forbes 400 List of the richest people in America. However surprising Trump’s loss may be, the reason for it is even more unexpected. Trump’s real estate holdings, specifically those in New York City, have taken a big hit in the past year, as retail values are struggling in response to Amazon’s e-commerce gains.
...Appearing on CNN Tuesday, Forbes assistant managing editor Kerry Dolan leveled blame for Trump’s real estate losses on e-commerce’s domination over retail, mentioning Amazon. Specifically citing the lease of the Niketown store and the Trump Tower property, Dolan said that retailers are suffering—even on the high end. It would appear that Amazon’s strategy of e-commerce over brick and mortar retail is winning, and that is having an effect on real estate values, she added.
91% of Average
After the last spell of rain, the 2017-18 rainy season (Nov. - Apr.) at Sacramento Executive airport is now 91% of average - nearly a carbon copy of the 2015-16 rainy season two years ago, which ended at 91% of average. There are chances for more rain over the next week, however, so maybe we'll just barely edge rain totals two years ago.Meanwhile, SoCal is in bad shape. The LA Times reports the rainy season at Los Angeles is just 37% of average.
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