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Month: November 2017

Inside The Great Poop Emoji Feud

Emoji
Jason Tate

Charlie Warzel, writing for BuzzFeed:

And meanwhile, over at the Unicode Consortium, there is a contentious debate over a scowling pile of shit.

Digital shit, of course.

According to public consortium documents, Unicode, the technical organization in charge of selecting and overseeing emojis, is embroiled in a fierce debate over a series of proposed emojis, including, but not limited to, “Frowning Pile Of Poo” and “Sliced Bagel.” The heated discussions are the latest in a long-simmering dispute over the future of the 24-year-old organization, which has been — somewhat unexpectedly — tasked with governing what some see as the first digital universal language.

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Alaska Is Home to Over 50% of America’s Last Remaining Blockbuster Video Stores

Jason Tate

Via a mini-documentary from Vice News:

For many Alaskans streaming online is not a good option, so movie night means Blockbuster night. While the vast majority of Blockbusters in the U.S. have closed down, there are few still hanging on. Today, there are only 10 left in the entire country, and six of those are in Alaska. But the dark, long winters and sparse layout of Alaska allows Blockbusters to do pretty well, especially when Wifi is substantially more expensive than in other states.

I love the instant access to movies we have today, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I sometimes miss browsing the stacks of the video rental store. Less convenient, sure, but I have a lot of memories tied to wandering around looking for a movie with friends, dates, or family (and arguing about what to get).

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Condé Nast to Cease ‘Teen Vogue’ in Print, Cut 80 Jobs and Lower Mag Frequencies

Jason Tate

Alexandra Steigrad, writing for WWD:

The New York-based publisher, which has instilled a hiring freeze, will slash about 80 jobs, equal to a decrease of about 2.5 percent of its 3,000-person workforce. Budgets across departments are also expected to get a haircut, with the worst-performing divisions and magazines getting cuts of up to 20 percent.

As part of that mandate, Condé is reducing the frequencies of most of its titles and will shutter Teen Vogue in print. Monthly titles Vanity Fair, Vogue, Wired and The New Yorker, which publishes weekly, will not see any frequency changes. Brides, which runs six times a year, will also continue at that publishing pace.

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We’re Building a Dystopia Just to Make People Click on Ads

Jason Tate

TED Talk:

We’re building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time, says techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. In an eye-opening talk, she details how the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organize your access to political and social information. And the machines aren’t even the real threat. What we need to understand is how the powerful might use AI to control us — and what we can do in response.

This is good.

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