> In this way, Jeffrey Katzenberg said to us, “I understand something about the world that others do not.” And yet, in saying so, he missed the essential lesson that could have been gleaned from his own industry: Popular culture is an existential conflict between what is “good”, what people like, and what people watch. This dialectic is the central feature of cultural businesses.
Dialectic and existential conflicts aside, I don't think the "gray area of public taste" really applies here. Quibi's content was BAD. [1,2,3] If there is an existential lesson here about entertainment platforms, maybe it's Don't:
* launch a $2B app
* with no library of content
* that is strictly walled off from your customer's social media
Scummy is a polite word for the advertisements. It's been fascinating to watch them evolve in waves.
First wave: POV of a predator in a parking garage approaching a woman. Grave female voiceover: "Sexual predators could track your automobile, and remotely control the vehicle - including unlocking the doors." The female victim turns as the camera descends on her - she screams - "Vote No on Question 1. Don't let sexual predators control YOUR vehicle."
Second wave: Russian hackers with pimples nodding with pleasure as they take control of your vehicle, in a "Kremlin-sponsored hacking room" that looks like NCIS by way of Dr. Strangelove. Vote no - don't let Russian hackers control your vehicle.
Third wave - Muddy the waters by changing tone entirely to mimic the "Yes on 1" ads which have local, named individuals urging "it's your data, keep control of it." Muddied version - "It's your data, keep it safe. Vote no on 1."
Fourth wave - white unnamed men in auto shops with forced-sounding boston accents explaining that if you vote yes on 1, it'll hurt the little guy.
The insane $$ being thrown at trying to kill this bill [] tells a story in itself.
Were you self-hosting, or using the free service? If self-hosting, I'm curious what resources you were devoting to your VPS, and which hosting provider?
Google is many different companies and products, and some of them I'm so grateful for. They provide a simple product that does something magically better than the competition, don't screw with the recipe. I give them my data because I like the service.
But the company-wide decision to manipulate the URL as a business strategy drains all my enthusiasm. The "U" is really important! The URL is basically a filename that you use to access the data store called the Internet. Don't take it away from me by the brute force of market dominance. I need to be sure of where I'm addressing my packets. Don't tamper with that essential construct.
I use both browsers, but without Firefox, I'd be lost in the wilderness. With its recent layoffs I'm worried about the web.
It's the only browser that gives me complete control over my session logins in containers, and it respects the cardinality of the URL - never meddles with it, conceals part of it, autocompletes it... I use Chrome only when forced to by lack of Firefox support.
A VPN is one use of a Wireguard tunnel. Wireguard establishes a stateless encrypted connection between two peers, and exposes it to the user as a network interface. Endpoints can roam as with mosh
grid and flexbox are still not carved in stone, so catering to tbe lowest common denominator sometimes means e.g. nesting divs to mimic functionality in another browser
> "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." -- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
There's value to this sentiment, but I disagree. I'm the same age as the author of this post, and I remember when I was in high school, my parents were transfixed by the O.J. Simpson trial - the car chase, the analysis of Marcia Clark's outfits, the whole spectacle.
In college a few years later a media studies professor asked us for a show of hands as to who followed the Simpson trial. Groans, eye rolls, not many raised hands. He was blunt: ignoring media phenomena, especially repulsive ones, is a mistake, he said, if you want to understand how media affect our culture. Study them like a physician studies a virus.
