Frosted Echoes

This has been a tough weekend for the NC Coast. I shudder to think what the fence in this picture from 2 weeks ago looks like today.

Thanks to hurricane Florence, we now have a bathtub on our deck.

Encouraged by the divestiture from Pinterest, I’ve switched back from Pocket to Instapaper. It’s interesting to see that Medium stories don’t break the Instapaper parser like they do the one from Pocket.

With my lady friend at Old Brunswick ghost town.

Prepping for Hurricane Florence in NC. Gas lines are long and people are quick to steal your spot at the pump. When the survival instincts kick in, the less admirable human tendencies come out.

My family just enjoyed a beach trip with many of the amenities that renting a house by the ocean provides. In addition to all of the beach-related luxuries, we had cable television, which has long been absent from our house. It was a bit of a culture shock, going from the work of antenna-sourced television to the cesspool of cable TV, though. It was somewhat like imagining what it would look like if the unfortunate and immoral residents of Sodom and Gomorrah had closed-circuit television broadcasts. Or, maybe to be more charitable, it was like a teenager crafted the programming schedule and advertising sales for a network.

As my six-year-old and twelve-year-old watched, I heard things in the background which I did not want to hear. I’m even excluding the Kavanaugh hearings (which were full of their own inappropriateness). Commercials for fighting matches and sex pills abounded. The lyrics to one commercial went “It’s a big sexy world of sex out there/People having intercourse everywhere.”

I mentioned recently that I’m glad that my youngest son basically only watches public television and this trip only reinforced that view. Not only is he not exposed to the constant commercialism that pervades a lot of children’s programming, but he doesn’t have to deal with exposure to the excessive evidence of adult vices.

I haven’t burned a CD in a long time, but this C86 covers comp makes a good soundtrack to cruising around town in the fading summer heat.

Gratifying to see the local paper do a piece on the great career of Nile Rodgers.

The other day, on Twitter, I stumbled across this thread of people espousing their opinions about the Myers-Briggs personality profiler (or MBTI - Myer’s Briggs Type Indicator). Quite a few of the negative comments seem to be based on the belief that the origins of the type indicator are not scientifically credentialed enough. It is interesting to see a bunch of folks on Twitter who probably have no background in personality study attacking the MBTI for its humble origins in clinical observation done by CG Jung. Since I personally know multiple mental health professionals who swear by the MBTI, particularly in its application to relationship counseling, it strikes me as almost laughable to read these arm-chair tweets from people who consider themselves experts after say, reading a Vox article on the subject. While the indicator may or may not be ideal for determining vocational direction, that is not its only application. It works well as a framework for navigating interpersonal dynamics.

I’m not even sure the origins of the framework matter that much. Ultimately, is the way the test was developed the measure of its usefulness in practice? Blood thinners started out as rat poison, but practicing physicians would endorse their use for preventing clots. Validity and reliability may be considered low for Myers-Briggs within the psychometric community, but material real-work outcomes are observable in a clinical environment. If the test was truly as useless as its critics claim, wouldn’t those using it in practice toss it aside?

If you don’t consume dairy, does the Dairy Queen still have dominion over you?

My wife was puzzling until her puzzler was sore.

📚 Neil Gaiman - Norse Mythology: After reading this, I finally feel like I know what was going on in Thor: Ragnarok. The gods of Norse mythology, like those of other ancient pantheons, seem more like petty, petulant humans with access to apples of immortality and super powers than omniscient beings. Of course, that helps to make the stories of their exploits very enjoyable.

It seems the latest distraction thrown at the American public, from the president, is attacking the top Internet companies (Google, Twitter and Facebook) in just another step in the strategy of “feed the press or it eats you.” After all, though, it’s only natural that the constant cries of lugenpresse would eventually extend to the internet giants.

Elizabeth Picciuto from Arc Digital argues the benefit for the president of consistently working to delegitimize any source of news that paints him in a bad light.

Trump also has an interest in slamming Google, Facebook, and Twitter. He has had remarkable success convincing his supporters that negative news about Trump is not evidence of the fact that he has warranted such terrible coverage. Rather, negative stories are evidence that shadowy forces are arrayed against him, preventing him from maximizing the amazing competence he assures us he has. This belief has gained such traction on the right that government intervention is newly attractive. Even if no intervention materializes, Trump may end up cowing Google into bending its rules to appease a right-leaning mob, as Twitter has done .

In an interesting (or frightening) twist, though, this particular cry of foul play has brought out a call among conservatives for more government regulation of media. In essence, the point those who are claiming victimization are making is that affirmative action is needed to combat systemic structural bias on the internet. Picciuto writes that this seems to be a major point of hypocrisy for some who have been decrying or even trying to dismantle affirmative action in education and corporate hiring practices.

What the Trumpian right seems to be demanding is a full-bore state-managed affirmative action program for conservatives—all the while ridiculing and denying that the same should exist for marginalized groups.

Whether this is just the distraction du jour or a the start of a real push for some regulation of information to combat a perceived disadvantage on the internet remains to be seen.

I don’t often drink soda, but when I do, it’s the real stuff.

I was on a Pinterest page, while logged into Google, when I attempted to click on an image and instead clicked on a startlingly fast pop up. With that, I was signed up for a Pinterest account under my Google ID and receiving emails from Pinterest. Not cool.

The Reagan administration was known for its deregulation initiatives. I never thought about one of those initiatives that probably actually had the most impact on my life as a child during the Reagan years, though.

For decades, the FCC had rules that limited “excessive advertising.” This affected the amount of commercialism that could creep into children’s shows. Groups like Action for Children’s Television (ACT) ensured compliance with the rules.

Consequence of Sound has a piece that speaks to how things were different under Reagan and how that enabled film-length product placement opportunities like Mac and Me.

Then along came the Gipper, and everything changed. Ronald Reagan, infamous nemesis of corporate regulations, began gutting the FCC from the inside, starting with his appointment of Mark Fowler as FCC commissioner in 1981. Fowler was a fellow acolyte of Big Business, a firm believer of the dominance of market forces as a yardstick for quality in broadcasting. Fowler summarily began cutting regulation after regulation for advertisement on children’s programming. In his mind, the free market would decide what programming was entertainment and what was just another ad.

Partly as a consequence of the loosening of programming rules, though also partly as a result of the success of Star Wars and its accompanying merchandise, most kids cartoons I watched during my elementary school years were essentially toy advertisements. G.I. Joe, Transformers, GoBots, M.A.S.K, Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, Silverhawks and probably a few others that I have forgotten were all shows that had their own lines of action toys. I was all-too-susceptible to what those shows were selling. I’m not sure it was really even necessary to have traditional adverts breaking up those shows as the shows themselves probably moved mountains of licensed products.

Kitten in a bag.

King Knight from Shovel Knight looking regal. #videogames #papercraft

🕹 Shovel Knight - King Knight (Cubeecraft)

This week, for the first time in a long time, I actually enjoyed following the general news cycle in the US. I’m not going to lie, I have long harbored a belief that electing a white collar criminal to the office of President of the United States was a very bad idea. It’s more than mere gloating that gave me a sense of satisfaction from the events unfolding this week, though. There is perhaps of a ray of light at the end of this very dark tunnel. A feeling of, dare I say it, hope.

My dad once told me that the difference in Republicans and Democrats was that Democrats stuck by their people, no matter how many or grievous their misdeeds. He said Republicans, on the other hand, had a moral center that enabled them to cast out their own, if that person had done wrong. As evidence, he cited the Watergate scandal and how the Republicans had abandoned Nixon when it became clear he had broken the law.

In short, my dad was obviously very mistaken in his faith that a political party will always do the right thing. In the last few years, we have seen the Republican party excuse more inappropriate and criminal behavior than had been previously fathomable. This period certainly represents a new low in American history and will taint those groups who aided and abetted it for a long time. It’s perfectly reasonable to believe it could be generations before those parties involved can claim any sort of moral high ground.

It didn’t take someone with special powers of prognostication or foresight to predict these most recent events. As many, many people recognized, the legal woes that plague the president and his cabal are the most likely outcome of all that has transpired these past few tumultuous years. The quicker these matter are resolved, though, and this ugly and divisive chapter of US history is finished, the better it will be for our county.

Really excited about the open sourcing of Icro, a fantastic third-party micro.blog client.

🎵 Stars - Heart: There is an apocryphal story about a couple that wanted to play “their song,” Stars “Elevator Love Letter,” when they got married. They wanted to play it from a record, but unfortunately, the album was never available on vinyl. Not to be deterred by manufacturing logistics, the couple had a copy pressed onto a 7” single at Jack White’s Third Man Records in Nashville, TN, giving them the ability to play the record at their wedding.

The second Stars album is now out on vinyl, for the first time, 15 years after its original debut. Far from being stale or dated, it sounds immediate.

On the decline of Twitter: Why rage quit a service when diminishing returns just erode your user experience over time?

Your honor, in defense of glo-fi, I submit as evidence the first side of Small Black’s New Chain record.

The fact that Medium is trying to get me to resubscribe by promoting think pieces celebrating identity politics shows that my notes on why I cancelled the subscription in the first place were disregarded.