My mom and dad introduced me to the show Doomsday Preppers this weekend. It’s exactly what it sounds like. While amusing, it seemed benign until I saw this ad today.
Varian TrueBeam is exactly the name of the robot commander that leads the revolution.
My favorite thing to do after an Apple event is read the coverage. It’s usually a mixture of disappointment and “this will never work” followed by Apple making billions of dollars off it. Mashable provides my favorite example of a group covering all their bases today so they’ll have been right from the beginning in the future.
I sincerely hope Arthur Brisbane’s question of whether or not the New York Times should challenge “facts” (his quotes, not mine) is an art project. If not, there’s no more damning an article written that explains everything that’s wrong with traditional media.
Vanity Fair created a great response that I will not endeavor to outdo.
Whose job is it to decide what words look strange and what words just look fancy? And at what point does an exotic extra consonant become distracting?
I don’t understand how people are supposed to navigate the Android handset market. How do you know which AnDroidMaxxRAZRLTE900 you’re supposed to get?
Follow along, friends.
Those are your options. Not this.
I dislike the phrase, “the sky is the limit” because it isn’t. We should have stopped using it when the Soviets successfully put Sputnik in orbit. For a while, it legitimately was the limit. Now we have Voyager 1 more than 11 billion miles from the Sun on the edge of interstellar space.
There’s a story making its rounds about Amazon’s new app that lets you scan bar codes in stores. Amazon had a promotion that let users take a percentage off their purchase if they went to a store and scanned an item. Apparently, because this happened on the Internet it’s evil in comparison to my going into two brick-and-mortar stores and purchasing the cheaper product using a coupon.
The problem, which this story alludes to, is books as a product and books as culture. I frame this debate on the Internet vs. brick-and-mortar as two people fighting over the right to sell something with one person trying to piggy back on the idea that they’re a cultural guard and that if they should fail, we’ll lose a part of who we are. Any guesses about who is on which side?
I’m supposed to divorce myself from the reality of book stores and think of them on a higher level.
No.
Books are packaged, promoted and sold as a mass-market item. Book signings and book tours are press and marketing. We’re kidding ourselves if we think John Q. Local isn’t tracking traffic and conversion in his book store at signing events. He wants you in the door so he can sell something else. If not, the signing would have been someplace that fit more than 10 people.
Industrial design is art, but no one (well, there are probably a few) is complaining that Jony Ive isn’t signing iPads at Grand Central. Fashion is art, but I’m not upset that Simon Kneen isn’t signing my Banana Republic sweater.
I completely agree that books are works of art to celebrate. I just think cramped, musty book stores are an insulting place to celebrate them. Don’t get on your high horse and chastise me as a “scorched-earth capitalist” over your lack of a business model.
If you want to support literacy and books in your community, volunteer in schools or attend a book festival.
If you’ve been on the Internet these last few months you’ll have heard that Netflix raised its prices. Then, in a move that can only be described as insane Netflix decided to split their streaming and DVD services into two companies.
To teach Netflix a lesson, customers began to cancel their subscription so they could go nowhere else and get a better deal. Netflix announced today they’d keep their services together after all. Critics don’t seem satisfied.
Since Oct. 1 I’ve had two movies sent to my house that would have cost $10 at Blockbuster. And I’ve streamed 10-15 TV episodes from seasons I would have otherwise had to buy for more than $50.
Is it time for Reed Hasting’s to go? Is Netflix over?
No. Calm the fuck down. It costs $16 for both services.
