Tag Archives: Culture

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from comical Bond villain to dreadful oppressor

For those that make the fervent case that we need Facebook in the business of deleting fake news, I give you in response a perfect example of why we don’t want that. It’s a rather short road from policing fake news to policing all reasonable speech. As we’ve previously written, Facebook (specifically Zuckerberg) has been in the sucking up to China’s dictatorship business for some time now.

And how! Courtesy of the New York Times (who like the Post occasionally bothers to engage in actual journalism):

The social network has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity because the tool is confidential. The feature was created to help Facebook get into China, a market where the social network has been blocked, these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg has supported and defended the effort, the people added.

How would this delightful tool of oppression work?

Well, for example, say a belligerent blog author took it upon himself to publish some thoughts on how Xi Jinping, Dictator & Overlord of the Chinese People, rose to power as one of the most corrupt dudes on the planet to the tune of billions in cash. And made the point that Xi’s current anti-corruption campaign is the biggest hypocrisy since Stalin called Hitler “a bad bloke”. Xi and his family made billions, but now Xi’s suddenly a paragon of virtue. So one can only come to the conclusion that he’s using anti-corruption efforts to purge those who oppose him.

Then say said blog author posted that on Facebook. And then say one of that blog’s six demented followers liked that post? Well, using Zuckerberg’s fancy new tool, Xi’s goons could preconfigure the system so that it would automatically purge from the planet. Nobody in China would ever read those words because the following terms would not be allowed in any post seen in China:

Xi Jinping

Dictator & Overlord

Delicious Stout Beer

Hypocrisy

Amateur Jai-Alai Extraordinaire

Kleptocrat

Stalin

Kute Kitties

Hitler

You know, one can occasionally hate Google equally as a partial anti-liberty bully. But on this count, Google’s conduct has been quite admirable. For well over half-a-decade Google has fought China on censorship. The result is Google’s profits and scope in China are in the tank. But at least they’ve made a stand. In contrast Zuckerberg is just drooling for those extra one billion eyeballs, because $. And if freedom of speech loses in the process? Oh well.

I don’t understand this line of thinking. If you’re in the free speech business, how do you ultimately increase your future bottom line by getting into the anti-free speech business? That’d be like Coca Cola sending an employee into the White House to restock the machines with Coke, then he goes into the Oval Office to campaign for an ultra-tax on sugary drinks. Zuckerberg’s behavior makes no sense. That is, unless you see it through the lens of Silicon’s Valley’s cynical elite. As in, Zuckerberg and Xi are both in the extreme 0.1% of all humanity. And that means they have more in common with each other than the rest of us. So they think they can cut a deal, and damn the consequences.

My final point, any company should be wary of selling its soul to do business in China. It’s a trap. If Facebook got into China without restrictions tomorrow, it’d probably get it’s clock cleaned by China’s own businesses. Uber China no longer exists for a reason. If the vicious-rule-breaking-barbarians at Uber can’t even break into the Chinese market, what chance does Facebook (or anybody else) have? WeChat already has 700 million Chinese users and is specifically tailored to China’s users, by folks who live there and understand the culture. Zuckerberg can’t compete with that. But he appears happy to mortgage his honor to try.

Uh [shakes head], the problem with comical Bond villains is that in cold reality, outside the scope of fun movies, they’re actually dreadful oppressors.

Hat tip, to the Facebook employee who’s honor is intact, for leaking this info to the New York Times. We who are free, salute you.

22FACEBOOK2-master768.jpg

“Why yes Mr Xi, yes Sir!  I am selling out.  Are you buying?”

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who gets to decide what’s fake?

We got through most of this entire lunatic campaign season without nary a word about fake news sites. I find this amusing as for the most part I consider Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc, etc, to all essentially be fake news sites. They don’t actually report news so much as they seek to shape public opinion to serve whatever interests they champion. There’s also the ever delicious The Onion which is usually a good place for a decent laugh, though even they have an obvious slant they push, but they’re obviously an admitted satire site.

But what folks are actually talking about are the sites that are totally off the deep end. They have no purpose except to play people for morons to move the election needle. Some of the examples I’ve heard over the last week were popular articles that said something along the lines (my paraphrase) of, but all of these were lies:

– The Pope had endorsed Trump

– Trump had commuted to Valhalla before the campaign ended

– Machines will not be our Masters

– Trump won the popular vote

– Going vegan makes you happy

– Trump was seen at Putin’s dacha alongside six former Olympic gymnasts (I too thought this one 99% accurate)

– The Walking Dead is a good television show

So now that the election is over a whole bunch of folks are stating that these fake news posts were in some way responsible for altering the course of the election. This point of view is mostly for those in the Hilary camp who ascribe some of the last minute push towards Trump as caused by said nakedly vicious pro-Trump fake news. Facebook, Google, and your local school newspaper are now thus under pressure to filter and delete said fake news stories from their feeds. The idea is that you the voter will no longer see this fake news so you can know the news you read online is legit.

First off, I feel sorry for Facebook and Google on this because no matter what they do everybody is going to hate them for it. One side will claim they’re not doing enough to police fake news or hate speech, the other side will claim censorship. Both sides will be simultaneously right and wrong. Facebook and Google will be caught in the middle of the broader cultural wars. Zuckerberg will become progressively more frustrated and insane, thus laying the groundwork for his impending slide into the oblivion of Bond villain darkness.

Because honestly who gets to decide what’s fake? As I understand what Facebook and Google are being asked to do, they have to hire somebody to edit their feeds. Then that person upon viewing some news they deem fake is supposed to delete it so folks can’t see it. Well, what’s fake?

– The Pope had endorsed Trump, fake, delete.

– Okay, what about The Onion? Well, that’s fake too, but that’s satire, so, do not delete? I guess. Well, what’s satire and what’s fake news? Who determines the difference?

– Okay, what about Salon or National Review? Well, they’re flamethrower sites for the acolytes, so it’s analysis and not technically news, so, do not delete? I guess. Who gets to determine the best way for remembering where you put your keys?

– What about that random Facebook post by normal average human that becomes popular but is chock full of lunacy, lies, and opinion? Well, but that’s not from a news site, so, we do not delete? But it’s still fake, so shouldn’t that person be made to shut up? Even if that person is just an average person they’re still shaping public opinion, aren’t they? Who decides who is made to shut up?

– But what if somebody reposted that person’s post as if it was news? Do we delete them too? What about somebody’s random blog post, is that news? Who decides what’s a blog post and what’s fake news? Who decides if Lady Gaga is hot or not?

– What about a 1930’s Looney Tunes cartoon clip with Speedy Gonzalez, is that hate speech worthy of deletion? Who determines what is hate speech, what is stupidity, what is fake news, and what’s just normal average painful human discourse to resolve our problems? Have you contemplated your future bleached skeleton status lately?

– What about a scene from Frozen which falsely gives the impression via fake news that Elsa would not have been put to death by the Catholic Church for witchcraft in real life? Shouldn’t we delete that too?

And on and on and on.

Where does this end? Where do you draw the line on what should be seen and deleted? What is fake and what’s not? The answer always will end up being the opinion of some screener, likely guided by policy that a bunch of folks from Facebook and Google got together and wrote. And thus, a bunch of random people you’ve never met get to determine what you’re allowed to say and read. This is not healthy in any aspect.

Facebook and Google are private companies and can essentially do whatever they want within the law. For example, if Google decided it hated cats and deleted all cat content from its site I’m pretty sure there’s nothing anybody could do to stop them. But Facebook and Google are also so ubiquitous to society you could make an argument they’re becoming an intrinsic part of our culture, infrastructure, lives. Do we really want two of the global Internets backbone sites to be in the censorship business? For any reason at all?

I come down to two points on this:

1) I am an open season kind of person on free speech and thus to all the Internets. Facebook, Google, Twitter should not be in the business of removing content whether it’s fake, hateful, whatever. This means you can post fake Trump news, evil ISIS propaganda, incorrect tips for how to properly cook an egg, Tweet how much you despise [insert anything here], and so on. Dealing with all this nonsense is a price worth paying rather than living in an online society where strangers get to police thought.

2) Humans as free individuals are responsible for what they do and do not read and how they process information they acquire online, in newspapers, from ads, from their neighbors, from their imaginary friend, from their own fears, from their own dreams. If somebody read fake news and believed it, that’s their own problem and responsibility. Living in a free society is hard work. It requires you to think for yourself, do your own research, and make your own decisions. It’s not the responsibility of society to do that job for the citizen. Indeed, if society did, then said citizen would never be truly free.

And I want us all to live free.

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we belligerently break down what the hell just happened

1) The outcome: people are pissed

This is a global phenomenon. There is an entire subset of humanity (half the population) in the democratic world who rightly or wrongly feel they’ve been left behind. They’ve got no skin in the game of a modern globalized, multicultural, interconnected world that the politicians, businessmen, and the media have built. Said politicians, etc, have tended to dismiss the concerns of these people as resistant to change on the kind end, and things like racist on the unkind end. Abject dismissal was always going to be a poor way to address the concerns of a substantial portion of society’s citizens. People who genuinely believe their children will have it worse off than they’ve had it don’t appreciate being called backward. The establishment (the other half of the population) have taken it for granted that the newfangled world they’ve built was always the right answer. And so it’s been a only natural that everybody should get aboard and reap the benefits. The problem is that the benefits haven’t trickled down to everybody. Not enough effort was expended to aid workers who lost their future to globalization. Too many elites spend more time worrying about corporate tax policy or transgender bathrooms than a opioid addiction that’s literally bleeding whole areas daily. These things matter. In any democracy, when half the electorate feels that both political parties are essentially ignoring their core interests, don’t be surprised when they get pissed and back fringe lunatics. This happened with Brexit, it happened with Trump, it might happen soon with Marine Le Pen. It will continue to happen until those that govern make it a point to work for all citizens, not just the narrowly defined slice of the country that happens to be inside the system.

2) Hillary was Donald’s Hillary

The prevailing wisdom of this campaign was that Trump was the perfect candidate for Clinton. She’d sail to victory because he was such a lunatic. I tend to think it was rather the other way around. Clinton was the perfect candidate for Trump to battle against. Where Trump was the anti-establishment guy, you could not have conjured a more inside the system player than Clinton. Where Donald could connect with voters in his own crazy way, Clinton probably couldn’t even properly connect with her own campaign staff. Everybody got aboard the fact that Clinton was going to make history as the first woman president. She even planned her coronation beneath a glass ceiling building. The problem with this line of thinking is that nobody bought it outside the bubble of politics. To the average voter, Clinton was always going to be there just because she was the other Clinton’s wife. The real glass ceiling of this election was that a lot of folks wanted somebody to break the glass on establishment dynasties, be it Bush or Clinton. In an election where well over half the country thinks things are going in the wrong direction, what people were definitely not looking for is more dynasty. They were not looking for a person who’s been in politics for forty years. Imagine if you will, how different this would have all played out had Sanders, Warren, or even poor Jim Webb been on the ticket. Any one of these people would have likely beat Trump. Anybody could have beat Trump. But not Clinton, she was the keen match he needed.

3) The division

After all of this, after all this mess, the answer is 60 million Americans pulled one lever, 60 million Americans pulled another lever, and 6 million Americans (like yours truly) threw their vote away. Statistically speaking, you could not imagine a more divided electorate. This is a rather troubling existence for the nation. The American system is built to produce divided government. But I wonder if it’s built to handle a consistently divided nation. Each side is talking past the other. Nobody wants to listen anymore. If 60 million folks think the other 60 million folks are not just wrong, but nefarious, we’re in for a death spiral. History tells us that tribal alliances can progressively break down and destroy a culture. And what we have here are truly tribal feelings. As an example, for the very, very limited amount of time I watched live election coverage I was troubled to observe:

a) An analyst on PBS who stated that the election was only playing out the way it was because of the “South” and it’s continuing capture of the broader political forces of America. In other words, if you lived in Ohio and voted for Trump, you didn’t do so because you’re protesting that the elites forgot about you. Instead, you were doing so because you were inherently racist. This is the idea that Trump won because a full 60 million Americans were too stupid to vote for anybody else or are just racist, or sexist, or whatever. Everybody surely remembers Hillary’s “deplorables” comment, right?

b) An analyst on Fox who stated that the election was only playing out the way it was because of “Conservatism” and it’s return to recapture America from the dark forces of liberalism. In other words, if you lived in New York and voted for Clinton, you didn’t do so because you were appalled by Trump or believed in the progressive ideas Clinton stated. Instead, you were do so because you wanted to destroy the old America to remake a new one. This is the idea that a full 60 million Americans wanted Clinton to win so they could detonate the country and remake it at the expense of the other 60 million. Or that 60 million Americans only want to milk the nation of the other 60 million. Everybody surely remembers Mitt’s “47 percent” comment, right?

I don’t know how you resolve the feelings of (a) and (b) without a lot of turmoil. I do worry, friends.

4) The reality

As stated, the American system is built to produce divided government. Whoever you voted for, either Clinton or Trump was going to run against the brick wall of this reality. The American President might be the least powerful Executive in the modern democratic world. It was designed to be this way from the beginning. People who think Trump’s going to rule as some unhinged dictator should not forget that the system is constructed specifically to prevent such a thing from happening. However badly you thought about Clinton or Trump, I assure you, American has previously survived far, far worse than these two idiots. I suspect, either way, that we’ll be sitting here four years from now with much the same situation on our hands. I could be wrong, but if you remember back in 2008, the Democrats were equally in control of all the arms of government power. What came of all that? You could say Obamacare, a few key Supreme Court decisions, etc. But largely, I don’t think most folks would say in the last eight years America has undergone earth shaking radical change. I loosely predict it’ll be the same result by 2020 or 2024.

Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, I just don’t see much changing for the average man or woman on the street. Trump voters are going to be rather disappointed to realize that their local mayor has far more power over their lives than Trump. They’ll be disappointed to see they can’t have problems that have taken decades to create wished away by a maniac who shouts loudly. Clinton voters are going to be rather relieved to see that even this guy can’t do the level of damage they feared. The needle will move, but for the most part people’s lives aren’t going to change. The system, the broader waves of our culture, are bigger than this election or Trump or Clinton. Where is our reality headed? As I’ve stated above, I’m worried, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this, in the broader path of where we are bound, this election is little more than a rounding error. I wish, I wish we’d take a step back and think about the bigger picture. Instead, I fear, we’ll soon be wrapped up talking about small fry nonsense like the intricate details of Executive Order Whatever or Senate Filibuster Verbiage. This is disappointing, but also, rather comforting. One way or the other. Life goes on.

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the rarest of foods and the future non-rareness of Star Wars

South of my remote office that works has me travel to is a quaint town that deserves the title of village.  It’s like something out of a time warp where restaurants, antique shops, Andy’s office, a small town non-evil lawyer, town hall, Skip’s Hammer & Nails, and the local fire station all surround an open park that families play in with their children.  I’ve not seen this kind of thing much in all my travels.  I’m not sure this idyllic existence was ever that common to the human race.  It sure seems pretty sweet though.  Everybody in this village is very friendly, if they do still possess a little bit of arrogance.  But hell if I lived like that I’d probably think I was awesome too.

Anyways, one of the restaurants around this park I’d been to before.  I got their tasty Asian themed burger last time.  It was great.  So naturally they no longer offer that.  Instead, the chef seems inclined to go high end.  And so a whole bunch of fancy and/or rare foods were on the menu.  I normally don’t go down the road.  I likes what I likes.  But the menu was short (which is fine) and so I decided to try things I’d not had before.  I cook all the time, but for the most part it’s just basic stuff.  I don’t usually buy or use too many fancy ingredients.  So all of this was new to me, in particular: black truffles, duck eggs, and bone marrow.

The result: I basically shrugged.  People I greatly respect in the food world talk up this bone marrow thing like it’s the nectar from the Sinai.  It was different, it was good, but it wasn’t something I’d have again over say, a good steak.  Maybe this village joint just didn’t do it right?  I’m not sure.  What I do know is that I didn’t understand the hype on any of this.  It was rather unfulfilling.  The night after I went to another town and a place I’d been before and went the burger route.  That worked out well.  I was satisfied.

bone-marrow.jpg

I will say, mine didn’t look like this.  So maybe they did indeed not do it right.

But the thought arrived in my crude brain, is rarity a delight in its own right?  Why yes, I think it is.  Sort of.  Let’s take these few belligerent examples.  To understand where I’m going, pretend for a moment that you’re a pretentious asshole.  As in, imagine you work for Goldman Sachs (offers finger to gilded palace level):

1) You are offered an omelet made of endangered condor eggs

2) You are presented beer brewed with water from The Moon

3) All the forces of science were used to cheat nature by recreating the dodo, just so they could kill it and you could eat it

dodo bird food.jpg

Coming soon to a plate near you.  Seriously, in your lifetime, somebody will attempt to do this.

We don’t have to necessarily go down this weird road though.  How about:

a) You drink a microbrewery’s beer.  It’s fairly decent, but nothing exceptional.  But you come back a month later and they’re out of business.  You will never be able to drink that beer again.  Was it that more special?

b) In your travels you experiment with a dish that cooks pork in a unique way you’ve never seen before or will again.  It’s nothing crazy, it’s just freaking pork, but it’s different, it’s good.  Will you miss this rareness a decade down the road?

To me, rareness or uniqueness is more along the lines of (a) and (b).  This kind of thing appeals to me.  (1) through (3) or bone marrow, eh, not really.  Not sure what that says about me, but that’s my take.

So then, the thought also crosses my feeble mind of what occurs when rareness disappears.  Even if you think bone marrow is liquid life, what happens to you if you have it every single darn week?  I suspect it loses the edge.

Everybody is once again on the cliff’s edge about Star Wars.  Yesterday, I saw a guy driving a Nissan Rogue where he had stenciled in cursive handwriting the word “One” after the Rogue lettering.  This means he’s even more of a loser than I.  A brief aside, how has Nissan gotten away without the evil corporate stigma that VW has?  Nissan has openly admitted to cheating fuel standards recently too, but nobody cares?  Whereas VW is the devil?  Eh, maybe folks just love to hate the Krauts?

Anyways, soon Stormtroopers and Darth Vader will be everywhere again.  You’ll stroll out toward your car in the dark of the morning and Boba Fett’s going to be standing by your mailbox smoking a cigarette.  And you’ll just shrug and start your engine because you expect it.  Here’s the thing though, I think it’s going to die down.

star wars admirals.jpg

These two dudes are going to show up to cut your grass.  You’ll shrug and give them the check.

Star Wars 1977 to 1983 was special.  Then George destroyed it.  So when Force Awakens appeared folks were just begging for some kind of victory.  They mostly got it, the world stopped for it.  Now everybody is looking for the ride to continue with Rogue One.  But, what happens when that rareness disappears?  Disney has 17 Star Wars films in development as we speak.  I suspect that rarity’s going to disappear.  You can only swallow so much bone marrow or Star Wars before you can only shrug.  It’s human.  In the best of our nature, we love to try things that are different.  We seek the adventure.  Things we eat or watch repeatedly can become less special, less unique.

Or maybe I’m just an idiot.  Maybe I’m wrong.  For example, I do love those burgers.  You can make a burger exactly 2,748 different ways.  I’ve only tried 73 of them.  I want to try the rest.  So maybe, just maybe Star Wars has 135 films left in it before everybody stops caring.  I assure you, Disney has it in them.  So we’ll find out, one way or the other, whether I’m right.

red shirts.jpg

Most if not all of these Red Shirts are going to die.  They told us so in the original movies.

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Sicario – the film that hits you repeatedly with a plastic bat

You hear a movie’s great. Then you see it and didn’t like it. What does that say? Well, a couple of options are in play:

1) Everybody else is right, the movie’s great

2) You’re too stupid to completely understand the movie

3) Aliens and/or alcohol drugged you so much you couldn’t follow the movie properly

4) Everybody else is wrong, the movie’s complete garbage

At any given point, all or one of the above apply to my movie viewing experiences. But for Sicario, I’m going with option (4).

Sicario.jpg

Blunt, Brolin, and del Toro view the film creator’s designs for the most pristine of plastic bats.

Everybody loves this movie. It’s some kind of award winning masterpiece. And I’ll admit, it has some top notch features. It’s well shot, has a beautifully dark score, contains mostly interesting scenes, and has swell acting. I think this is why folks think the movie is awesome. On the surface it’s well done. But when you peel back the onion everything underneath is just wrong. It’s like those onions that bring the fruit flies into your humble abode.

If I could name one key gripe with this flick, it’s the unjustified suspension of reality. Not all movies need to be knife edged real. Movies are all about escapism. They take you somewhere special, or they bend the truth to make a point, or explore possibilities that otherwise wouldn’t exist. But Sicario makes it clear almost immediately that it has a larger purpose. It’s a running commentary on the war of drugs, American policy, morals, etc, etc. About 1/3 of the way through the movie I said to mine doggies, “This flick is Syriana II”. And so it is. And Syriana sucks too.

In order for you to buy the film’s message that our reality is wrong, you’d think the movie would have to be grounded in some kind of its own reality, right? Otherwise the message would get clouded by lunacy? Nope.

Kindly observe this limited list so that you can understand why I think this movie hits you repeatedly with a plastic bat and asks you to not think. They just want you to admire the beauty of the film, swallow the message, and not think too much.

1) In the first five minutes we’re asked to accept that one can store 40 corpses in a suburban Arizona home if only you hide them behind drywall. There’s even three guys just hanging out in there like it’s nothing. Eh, I’m pretty sure drywall aside, that this home would smell like five blocks away. But it’s dramatic, so they put it in there.

2) Juarez is depicted as a vacation spot worse than Mosul. Blunt looks on from a nighttime El Paso roof to see the Juarez skyline alight with explosions and machine gun tracer fire. Eh, I looked at that skyline almost every night I was in El Paso for years. I never saw any of that nonsense. In the years I was out there, I never heard one gunshot. Contrast that with my fairly standard east coast suburban hovel where I’ve heard at least a dozen gunshots over the years. Granted, most of those shots are jackasses shooting trees in the small woods adjacent to my back yard, but the comparison remains valid.

3) Blunt, del Toro, and Brolin alongside a dozen stereotypical American commandos (scruffy beards included) erase eight cartel gunmen and one corrupt Mexican cop on the Bridge of the Americas in front of several hundred people. We the audience are then treated to a throwaway line via the team radio about how this incident is so common it won’t even be news in El Paso. Oh, how cynical! This movie is so darkly intriguing. Give those geniuses an award. Eh, I’m pretty sure if nine men die on the Bridge of the Americas that the whole planet would know in about four minutes.

bridge-of-the-americas

Gee, I wonder what occupation these bearded gentlemen must have?

4) We find that the CIA’s plan to assassinate a cartel boss apparently can only entail the use of a former Medellin killer who can infiltrate the bad guy’s compound to exact his revenge. Eh, this would come as comical news to the Mexican Marines who have killed or captured dozens of cartel bosses over the last decade in deadly raids. At great cost to themselves and their families.

Mexican Marines.jpg

Mexican Marines (not depicted in Sicario), escorting El Chapo to his second opportunity to die in prison.  No matter what you do in life, you will never be as awesome as these men.

5) Ultimately, Brolin admits to Blunt in a plot twist that’s quite humorous that the CIA’s grand strategy to defeat the Mexican cartels is to help the Medellin and/or Columbian cartels regain turf because they provided more stability. Truly! In order to swallow this completely bullshit notion, you will need have never heard of the following concepts:

a) The evisceration of the Medellin cartel and the overall recovery of Medellin as a decent city

b) The capture of the Columbian drug trade by the FARC and the Columbian war against said entity

c) The belief that the Columbian cartels of the 1980’s and 1990’s were somehow not the agents of chaos and destruction that they really were

d) The very idea that an American whole-of-government operation can conduct any such secret evil plan without it ending up on the front page of the Washington Post

e) That the CIA will threaten to and/or actually suicide people who state that they’ll tell folks about this evil government conspiracy

Hey I’ve got news for all you conspiracy lunatics: Everybody talks. America is not Soviet or Putin Russia. Everybody talks. As one of my references, I draw your attention to the ultra-secret CIA run black site program conducted after 2001. This was as deep a conspiracy as you can get. Yet here we are about a decade later and you can read online and determine just about every aspect of the operation, right down to the price the CIA paid for the freaking Polish buildings.

Again, I wouldn’t bring up this absence of reality, except that Sicario takes itself so damn seriously. You’re meant to feel their message. The plastic bat is at work. You will be made to agree with this nonsense. Well, I will not. This movie is only mildly entertaining, but is overall, just not very good. My Guests and I would not recommend.

del Toro.gif

Sorry, God’s too busy to meet your shitty movie.

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make sure you remember to unplug

I tend to be among the last to hear about trends.  In high school or at work I’m pretty much the last one to hear or realize that two people happen to be dating.  I guess part of the issue is I typically just don’t care.  I’m kind of set in my rhythms, as shall become apparent once again as I lay out this stuff here today.

Only in the last week or so have I become aware that this Amazon Echo trend thing exists.  For the uninitiated, the Echo is a new piece of technology that can respond to your voice, like that Siri lady does.  Only it’s not a phone, but a weird black cylinder that you can either put on your kitchen table, take into the shower with you, or snuggle under the covers with.

By giving the Echo voice commands, you can get it to play music, tell you the weather, call a cab, order explosives from a Belarusian junk dealer, check local traffic, compile a list of your favorite mustards, buy stuff from Amazon, construct an enemies list, and so on.  Much to my surprise (and apparently that of business insiders as well) the Echo has sold quite well.

amazon-echo.jpg

Oh no.

I don’t understand why this is a thing.  Why can’t people take out their mini-computer smartphones and check the weather using that instead?  Or why can’t folks just look out the window?  Is there really a benefit to one’s life by saving six seconds to audibly ask a machine what the weather is instead of doing it ourselves?

The Echo is also supposed to interface with other smart devices in your home.  So you can play music via other speakers, or have the Echo talk to your smart thermostat.  That way, instead of walking up to your thermostat to change the setting, you can just have the Echo do it for you thus saving you the nine seconds it would take you to get up off the couch to walk over to your thermostat to do it yourself.

Oh man, this Orwell cat had no idea when he wrote 1984, dude was totally clueless.  In his world, Echo would be used by the Giant Eye to enslave humanity.  In Amazon’s world, the Echo is a means to separate money from your wallet.  Here is how the brave new world is supposed to play out in the globe of Amazon:

1) Your smart refrigerator has sensors to determine what’s inside.  The fridge detects you’re running short on mustard.

2) The fridge tells the Echo that you are short of mustard.

3) Based upon your personal settings, the Echo either automatically buys more mustard or audibly asks you if you’d like more mustard.

4) Amazon sends you mustard and charges you for the trouble.

5) Amazon delivers mustard (and whatever else) to your doorstep via drone.

And thus, the end state is that you would always have mustard in your fridge.  All without ever thinking about it.  Without ever having to take any action yourself.  To some folks, I suppose this sounds liberating.  To me, this is quite weird.  From my perspective, I can just open up the fridge before I go shopping and realize I need more mustard.  Then I write that on a list and go get it.  It’s pretty straightforward.  Yeah, it does take some time, and going to the store can be a pain in the ass, but that’s called life.

I’m not entirely sure how humanity benefits from all this.  It’s not like people who are liberated from ever having to think about buying mustard again are going to use that extra time to solve groundbreaking math equations.  Folks would probably just use it to binge Netflix more or Snapchat friends.  I’d probably just play more video games.

In short, I don’t think the human race needs a tool like the Echo.  But Amazon is more than happy to provide it as extra credit to your life, for a price.  It’s the very definition of excess.  You don’t need this.  But you will buy it.  Please don’t resist.  Amazon thanks you for your cooperation.

palpy and vader.jpg

Palpy:  “For you see, Lord Vader, I’ve determined that the replacement Death Star is obsolete.  Instead, we’ll place Echoes into every home within the Empire.  Once the masses can get mustard without even thinking, our circle will be complete.  Our rule unchallenged.”  [cackles]  Vader:  “Yes, my Master.”

Then there are the privacy concerns that come with hooking up your fridge and Echo voice box to the Internets.  I’ve hit the dangers of this concept on this degenerate blog many times.  But I’ll go there again, thank you.  For example, just take a gander at the Wikipedia verbiage on the Echo.

Even though some of this text is clearly ghost written by somebody in the employ of Amazon, it’s still rather stark at what the Echo does:

a) “…can identify who is present in the home and who is not…”

b) “…though the device is technically capable of streaming voice recordings at all times, and in fact will always be listening to detect if a user has uttered the word…”

c) “…Amazon retains digital recordings of users audio spoken after the ‘wake up word,’…”

In other words, the Echo is a listening device that is always on, never turns off, and stores certain parts of what it hears in the Amazon Cloud, aka Amazon Web Services.

And since our Internets is always vulnerable, somebody can hack these things too.  Although I’m sure Amazon has tried rather hard to prevent that.  But whether folks are risking hackers, or happy to turn over things they say in their own home to the Amazon servers?  Either way, I guess I’m just surprised that millions of folks are perfectly comfortable putting a live listening device in their own home.  Just to make their lives a tad bit easier.

I guess I’ll make two closing points.  Both along the lines that we should all make sure to remember and unplug.

– Even if you go down this Echo, automated, smart route, please remember to unplug and do things the old way.  Just to keep life exciting and maintain an active brain.  For example, just for the hell of it, instead of using your smartphone to guide you on your next car trip to an unknown location, use your own brain.  Look at a map (an online one is fine) and write out your own route using a pen and paper.  Then use said pen and paper while you’re in the car to drive yourself there.  For those who can’t remember pen and paper, here’s what my own pen and paper look like:

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Or even if you use Echo to get mustard from now own, every once and a while just go buy it yourself.

– Make sure you unplug your wireless router at home when you’re not using online devices.  I do mean actually unplug it from the wall.  So when you’re cooking, reading, walking your dog, at work, asleep, etc, etc, physically go and unplug your router from the wall.  This saves power and makes it virtually impossible for any part of your life to be hacked.  You can afford to spend some time unplugged.  You’ll live, trust me.  And your brain and body will thank you for it.

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Busan – hiking and the monk’s car

Some of the best days are the ones where you wake up and have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.  I’ve gone through these phases.  I used to plan nothing for trips, then I planned everything, and now I’m back to planning almost nothing.  Busan was the early days.  It was Korea, that was enough for me.  So we scheduled nothing in advance.

We wake up one day and the rest of the group doesn’t want to do much of anything.  Probably because they were hungover.  I’m sure I was too, but I was young then and didn’t need to lay around suffering.  So Tim and I decide we’re just going to leave everyone and go, somewhere.  I think we just picked some random temple off a map in the suburbs north of downtown Busan.  It was December, but not a completely freezing typical Korean winter just yet.  So we bundle up and roll out.

We had to take the train and then the bus to get there.  Neither of us spoke anything above bare bones Korean.  We quickly got lost and are just standing there on some random suburban street corner trying to figure out what bus to get on.  Then this middle aged woman walks up and in halting English asks us where we want to go.  We show her the temple on the map and she agrees to help us.

But she refused to give us directions.  Instead, in one of the most generous things I’ve ever seen in my life she decides to ride the buses and escort us to this temple.  Then she says she knows a good place for lunch next door to the temple.  So she walks us there and explains to the owner in staccato Korean probably how these two American idiots didn’t know what they were doing.

The two women essentially shrug and our kind escort wishes us luck and carried on with her day.  We couldn’t thank her enough but she treated it all very matter of fact, smiled, and was gone.  The lunch was incredible.  In the Korean style we each had the ten or so little bowls of various meats, vegetables, and sauces.  It’s probably in my lifetime top ten of meals.

shrine

I think this is the temple, I’m not so sure.  The shot is logged wrong by how my memory remembers this trip.  So who knows.  But I’m pretty sure this was it.

We walked around the temple for a bit and then Tim being the far more adventurous of the us simply states we should stroll up the nearby mountain.  So we point ourselves toward the hill and just start walking.  As we got higher we realized we’d stumbled upon a routed hiking trail and so we continued to follow it on up the mountain and across the peaks.

It’s hard to describe how mountainous a good chunk of Korea is.  Cities are perched precariously along the coast with ribbons of suburbs rolling out in the valleys.  The inclines of the hills are quite steep and it’s rather sobering to think that when Busan was the last holdout against the Communist siege in 1950 that these mountains held hundreds-of-thousands of young men who would decide the fate of Korea.

Looking Back.jpgLooking back toward Busan from the hills.

valley

Ribbons of suburbs and the Nakdong River.

back-downhill

We walked for miles and miles, probably at least over ten miles.  It’s a blast, the weather cooperates, the trails are dotted with other friendly hikers, and oh, ah, it’s getting into the late afternoon.  We’re in trouble.  There’s no way we can go back the way we came in time.  We have no desire to hike back on the trail in the dark lest we fall off the darn mountain.  Fortunately we happened upon a temple nestled up there that’s near the trail.  We figure if nothing else we can call a cab from there to take us back downtown.

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Temple Gate.jpg

I walk around a while admiring the temple while Tim somehow strikes up a conversation with a monk who speaks immaculate English.  Decked in pristine Buddhist orange and thick glasses he says there’s no need to call a cab because he’s driving downtown anyways and he’s glad to give us a ride.  He asks us to wait for a bit while he gets ready and he’ll go get the car.

I’m raised in the Catholic Church, and so I have this idea of poor Trappist monks on a farm like my Dad used to visit.  I expect this to be a hair raising ride through twisting mountain roads in a Yugoslavian knockoff beater.  Instead, the monk rolls up in a pristine black BMW that easily cost north of $50K.  Tim and I were just cracking up.

It was nearly dark as we set off for downtown.  Tim sat up front with the monk while I dozed in the back.  Tim and him chatted away about everything.  I wish I remembered more of their conversation but I was exhausted.  I do recall the monk was headed downtown to party with his friends.  I never did catch the reasoning for the dichotomy between the wealth, partying, and religious lifestyle of the monk.  In retrospect I just find it hilarious.

Back downtown, we managed to link up with our friends again.  I don’t remember the rest, probably for valid reasons.  But I do remember the hills well, and that monk and his crazy car.  It was quite the day not worth planning.

temple

 

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clowns have always been evil, why is this news?

When my age was still in the single digits I had the unfortunate experience of accidentally catching a television scene where a clown brutally stabs a fellow human in a manner that’d probably be considered horrific even by today’s degenerate tv standards.  It melted my little child brain.  I couldn’t sleep for days.  My parents were freaking out.  Can’t sleep.  Clown will eat me.  It was at one of my relative’s houses and I figure somebody accidentally left it on a channel not appropriate for the kiddies.

Suffice to say, from that day forward I’ve always hated clowns.  So now lunatics dressed as clowns are walking around scaring people all across the country.  People are freaking out.  Oh, clowns are now all of a sudden evil?  What took you all so long to realize this?  Remember those party clowns when you were a kid?  Evil.  Who actually thinks clowns are happy, funny creatures anyways?  I seriously have never gotten this.  Here, just look at these random clowns:

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Closet serial killer

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Cheese eating surrender monkeys

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Evil robber baron

the joker.jpg

Upstanding ordinary average Gentleman

I always remember The Simpsons having it right.  This is what I thought clowns were like:

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Can’t sleep.  Clown will eat me.

Clowns or fools have been around since Caveman Overlord Steve turned his bitter rival Former Caveman Overlord Carl into his fire pit fool.  These jesters or whatever didn’t dress like creepy murderers though did they?  Where did this modern incarnation come from?  I’m guessing the circus.  Early in the 20th Century I’m sure all clowns looked like this, so it became part of the culture and that was that.  I guess I’ve just never understood why such a look became associated with fun or happiness.  I’m clearly not alone in this thought process because clowns are all over horror movies.

So now that social media has enabled the rest of the human race to see clowns my way, it’s turned into mass hysteria.  I don’t understand why.  Look, on any given day you could walk by a complete psychopath on the street.  He or she could be just wearing jeans.  You’d never know they were evil.  But now, since this clown thing is a thing, the psychopath’s are very helpfully dressed up as clowns.  Now we know they’re lunatics just based off their choice of attire.  It’s win-win!

We should support this.  And thus, anybody wearing a clown suit should be immediately arrested by the secret police and sent to a special island.  China’s building all those new islands in the South China Sea, right?  What we do is buy one of those new islands and put all the clowns on it.  Can you imagine the horror of an island with 9,634 clowns?  The thought sends chills into my soul.  But it’s okay.  If we get too freaked out by this, we can always get China to bomb the island.

evil-clown

The sweet & tangy taste of human flesh appeals to this man

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I don’t care about robots

So there’s this Westworld thing that premiered over the weekend that’s supposedly pretty good.  It’s got a great cast, it’s likely well shot, slickly made, and probably fairly entertaining.  HBO is sure hoping it’s the next Game of Thrones.  But I don’t care.  I’ll not be watching.

So last year there was this Ex Machina movie that was supposedly pretty good.  They said it had a great cast, interesting dialogue, and a strong plot.  I didn’t see it.  I don’t care.

I don’t care about robots.  The very thought of the concept on screen just bores me.  I’d loosely heard about Westworld and was mildly interested.  I worship Westerns and was hopeful that HBO was going to attempt another go at the genre.  There’s a lot of room left to still make something as good as Deadwood if people actually tried.  But then I read Westworld was about a robot theme park.  When I heard this, I immediately fell asleep due to boredom by osmosis.  My dogs had to revive me with smelling salts.  They still won’t tell me where they got them from.

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Yeah lady, I know.  I’d need a nap too.

I already know how Westworld is going to play out.  The robots will become more human over time and contrast themselves with the barbarity of the humans who made and abuse them due to our own primal nature and we’ll have to see in the robots what it really means to be human and maybe some of the humans in the television will see the robots and remember what’s it’s like to be human and for you see philosophy and the human psyche are concepts that transcend, … [sleeps]  [sleeps]  [dogs dart over with salts]

Oh, that and graphic violence and gratuitous nudity.  You need that in smart psychological dramas too.  There’s apparently a vicious rape scene in the very first episode of Westworld.  Don’t believe the HBO lie that it has anything to do with the plot or some high minded concept.  It’s there for shock value and eyeballs.  As is the overall level of brutality and nakedness.  Apparently Ex Machina had an excessive amount of nudity and violence as well.  I’m sure that was just a coincidence.

machina_a.jpg

Yeah lady, I know.  I’d need a nap too.

Robots are not human.  They will never be human.  So the very idea of spending multiple seasons watching Westworld and trying to develop some kind of intellectual connection with a robot character is beyond my comprehension.  How can you relate to or root for a character that’s not really alive?  I’d feel more remorse killing a spider in my bedroom than watching some robot get hurt on screen.  If I was forced to watch Westworld with a girl on the couch, and she starts talking about how she understands the trials of Robot Emma and finds the show entertaining, I’d likely remark in my most deadpan condescending voice imaginable, “Why?  It’s just a fucking robot.”  And that’d be that relationship, and I’d have to begin a new online search.

Once upon a time I used to be in the 1’s and 0’s business.  I hated it.  I will never go back.  But I’ve learned enough to know that artificial intelligence is a crock.  A robot can be programmed to solve math, play chess, or even enslave humanity.  I admit it could happen.  But at its most base level that doesn’t mean a robot can attain self-awareness.  It’ll still just be a machine programmed by a human to fulfill tasks, even if in theory it can also self-learn.  1’s and 0’s is not consciousness.  Humanity is not God.  A robot is not alive.

Just about the only time I think I’ve ever felt any sympathy for a robot on screen is Data, or Arnold in Terminator 2.  You’ll remember that factory scene, right?  Despite the fact that Arnold was bound for the path of an adulterous failed governor and Edward a coked out mess this whole exchange is just awesome, as is the whole movie.  The scene really gets to you.  Arnold’s generally a likeable actor and really does a good job of turning this faceless killing machine into a sympathetic character.  You laugh at him, you root for him, you’re sad when he dies.  This I cared about, sort of.  But in the end it loses its impact over time.  Because in the end after you’ve lost the initial first time edge of the power of this scene, you remember it’s just a robot.

terminator2.jpg

“I know now why you cry.  But I still don’t have a beating heart.”

The same basic concepts hold true for Data.  You care about him too.  You get to see him grow for seven years.  But I’ve always had this distant attachment with Data.  I can root for him, but have always felt him distinctly apart and separate from the other characters.  And, I guess once you’ve seen that robot development story done, it’s done.  Why bother seeing it done again?  That show was like 15 years ago.

In the end I suspect the way Star Trek told Data’s story is going to be infinitely smarter and more entertaining than anything Westworld can churn out for the masses.  And with 98% less nudity and bloodshed too.

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Oh man, do I sure miss the low key, intelligent, entertaining ways of this show.

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and so you shall stay where?

In Season 5 of Mad Men there’s a drawn out sequence where Don and Megan fight horribly over a variety of issues (mainly that they probably should have never married, idiots) while in a Howard Johnson’s restaurant during the height of its iconic days. If you haven’t seen it I won’t bust the plot, but suffice to say this entire episode is a horrific depressing mess that makes you want to cut yourself. It’s wrong even by Mad Men standards which says an awful lot. When this episode is over you need a shot and a shower.

don-draper

 

In any case, what you didn’t know when you were watching this episode years ago is that same feeling should have been also applied to Howard Johnson’s itself. When you watched the episode, you were like, “Oh, I remember Howard Johnson’s. That place was alright.” It may have evoked images of a happy family road trip when you were a kid. The place wasn’t a palace, but it had clean rooms and decent food. It was the consistent oasis that made it successful. But I bet when you had that nostalgic moment you didn’t realize that Howard Johnson’s was already on life support? Did you? I didn’t.

 

For you see, even though you or I hadn’t stayed in a Howard Johnson’s in decades you probably just assumed somewhere in the back of your brain that they were still around. That they were this eternal thing that was out there still, somewhere. They were not. A few weeks ago the one in Bangor, Maine closed. Now Lake George, New York hosts the only remaining restaurant. Essentially Howard Johnson’s is dead. What the hell happened?

howard johnson's.jpg

 

Well when I was a kid plane flights were very expensive. So the family would at times drive say 11 hours to get to our destination. Most of the time we’d do the drive all in one shot with my Ma and Dad rotating the driving duties, but not always. Sometimes we stopped along the way, thus the motel. What’s changed this reality today is that airline flights are just that much cheaper. Southwest can bargain basement you most places within half the country for a hundred bucks a ticket or less. Somebody from AAA will tell me this statement is garbage, but I suspect the percentage of families who drive north of ten hours to go somewhere has mostly tanked in the last two decades. So if you were Howard Johnson’s and you built your business model on long road trips, you were screwed.

 

Also the brief corporate history of Howard Johnson’s is that after Daddy died, the son appears to have made some horrible decisions on brand diversity. He opened a bunch of unrelated restaurant chains (all of which are now gone) and basically lost focus on the core business that made Howard Johnson’s successful. Then as people started to drive less Howard Johnson’s didn’t take the hint. They didn’t diversify or try new things or innovate. They stuck with the same Howard Johnson’s brand, even if they did eventually discard the neon orange roofs. In a culture that today values relatively fresh food, uses airlines when it can, and isn’t so tied to nostalgia? Maybe these guys were always doomed. Fast food joints and extreme discount motels are at the bottom end. Or you can get creepy rich food and burn $156 a night on the high end. What ground was there in the middle for Howard Johnson’s to continue to exist in?

 

Has something been lost though? I mean other than the basic nostalgia? In terms of the restaurant piece, I don’t think so. It’s not 1960 anymore where stop points might have been rarer. Regardless of what highway you’re on at any given time you likely have dozens of different restaurants to choose from in terms of cost and quality. If you don’t, you’re likely driving in an area where Howard Johnson’s never existed anyways. But in terms of the hotel loss, I think there might be.

 

Towards the end, Howard Johnson’s hotel side of the business was bought out by Wyndham. Wyndham also owns 14 other major hotel brands of varying size, style, and price. Marriott recently bought Starwood and thus created a hotel / motel colossus that owns over 30 major hotel brands. Howard Johnson’s might have been all over the place, but never in their wildest dreams were they ever this dominant. It’s part of a growing trend in American business where there are many brands, but only two or three actual owners to choose from. This of course cranks up the price because in a near virtual monopoly environment the customer loses, always. If you don’t think hotel chains collude on price just like the airlines do, you’re kidding yourself.  It makes one yearn for the quaint, family owned reliability of Howard Johnson’s.

 

And so you shall stay where? Without getting gouged? Well I guess first off, thank god for things like Airbnb. I hope the global commons takes the big hotel chains by the balls, I really do. Because there isn’t a global commons for large airliners, so at least we can have competition for hotel rooms. I bet if you look at all the local and state government efforts that are trying to crush Airbnb on missing taxes, that they’re all mostly funded by lobbyists hired by the big hotel chains. Also, no matter what, always consider different means to travel. If you’re like me and you’re almost always traveling on a limited budget, don’t get caught into the same routine every time. Always investigate new websites for new deals. Try different chains. Don’t always be ultra-loyal to a loyalty program without re-verifying it’s still your best deal. Because you never know when a chain’s going to get bought out without you hearing about it. Or that one of their rivals went bust and they jacked up the price on you. Do your research. Stay flexible. In a manner which Howard Johnson’s was not.

don draper again.png

Don explaining to Megan about the paddling Howard Johnson’s is predestined to take.