Efforts to understand, improve, or do less harm to the world around me.


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Monday, May 18, 2015

A very different kind of "How I Met Your Mother"

Little background: so basically a video series came together 4 years ago where the idea was to do a video series on stories and ideas that parents come up with.  They'd be acted out by some student actors based on the ideas and they'd just see where it went.  Some were funny, some were odd, some were just plain odd

This one (definitely the best) gets you in the feelers.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Organized crime and the police

You might not agree with the conclusions of this article on the Federal investigation of Fergusuon, but it's difficult to hear some of the evidence presented without drawing similar conclusions: a group based on money, a victim group targeted for revenue, and a gang of thugs that maintain the flow.

It's not terribly different from organized crime, which -- interesting note -- is also very racist.  Whether the mafia and Italians or yakuza and Japanese, you can't be a member if you're not genetically "superior" and it's harder to be a victim when you're one of the in-group.

Or a more amusing take.

Entertainment for rent

This article starts with the dumbest of headlines "milenilas don't buy things" and, as almost every article on Milenials takes a little data and makes some tedious "they're totally different" conclusions.  Thankfully here we get to dig further into maybe the deepest of concepts I've seen in a while: the notion around a death of ownership.

I've struggled with ownership as I try to buy MP3s or movies: I'm constantly frustrated I don't have the room, a way to track it, a way to catalog it, etc.  Worse, my tastes change over time and I have a ton of stuff I no longer care about. For example, neither NIN nor the Deftones resonate with me and my efforts to get and catalog all that (formerly) great material is for naught. I have a TON of digital media and it's getting harder to put ANYWHERE. You of course can't sell it, just delete it if you don't care anymore and then only if you've run out of space on your drive.

Companies and consumers are increasingly renting out access to a catalog (Netflix, Spotify) that's much more intelligent and easier to manage. Plus, everyone gets paid where, with my system, sometimes the content makers don't have an easy way to get money for their work.


[Note: an earlier version of this article was obviously rushed and haphazard.  It has since been cleaned up.]

Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Samantha Bee leaves the Daily Show

Easily my favorite correspondent and the best part of that show.