Do boycotts work anymore? It seems like of late boycotts have returned to the en vogue way of attacking a company or movie with owners or creators one dislikes. But, then people on the other side of the issue see the talk about a boycott and step up their business. If anything, then it seems…
I love Michael Lopp’s writing in Rands In Repose. His entry The Likeability Feedback Loop captures why I still have my RSS reader and try to comment on posts that engage me. Social media gleefully feeds a post-truth society and it does so by design, but social media is not the problem. Fake news is…
Star Wars: Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel by James Luceno My rating: 3 of 5 stars Rogue One is a prequel to A New Hope. Catalyst is a filler book tying together the events of Revenge of the Sith movie with Rogue One. I have not yet seen the upcoming movie, but the given what…
Zittrain’s set of tweets was interesting reading. 23/ There's more beyond "like" and "share" to help people looking more for information than fun help examine their own assumptions. — Jonathan Zittrain (@zittrain) November 15, 2016 Lots more on it: best, 1, 2, 3. There is an interesting plug-in called Media Bias/Fact Check which will help show…
I will try not to spoil Westworld but no guarantees. So the premise of the show and movies is there is a park with androids who become dangerous. Part of the fun is determining whether this is because of an accident, systemic problems, or sabotage. Essentially this is the kind of story that motivated Isaac Asimov…
Mental note for the next time I take my laptop to a meeting. Undocking the laptop will gray out the headphone. This makes sense because the headphones are plugged into the dock jack. Putting it back in the dock will not restore it. You will need to go into Sounds > Playback. Enable the Headphone option.…
I wonder what happens to someone whose United States citizenship is revoked. My president-elect suggested this as a potential consequence to burning the American flag. [1] Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail! — Donald J.…
So, the social media sphere is abuzz over our President-elect tweeting about a member of the cast of the Hamilton play reading a statement to the VP-elect. The P-elect seemed upset about it all. The VP-elect seemed amused people are buzzing about a non-issue and people should expect the P-elect to be the kind of person they…
Repeated statements receive higher truth ratings than new statements, a phenomenon called the illusory truth effect… Repetition makes statements easier to process (i.e., fluent) relative to new statements, leading people to the (sometimes) false conclusion that they are more truthful… Indeed, illusory truth effects arise even without prior exposure—people rate statements presented in high-contrast (i.e., easy-to-read) fonts…