Re: We are all Slave now.
 

In more on "that's not how free speech works", our President is upset that searching his name in google brings up stupid things he has done and said.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

now you're seeing my nightmare......

Re: It’s not easy to be calm when you’ve found something going on.
 

I'll stop you right there. It's because Facebook's algorithms think that's what will engage you, based on their experience with lots of your peers. I don't particularly like to use Facebook because it is so poor at delivering content that I like. Obviously it's very good at giving other people what they want, because it's market cap is north of $511 billion just now.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Paul Krugman saw that and tweeted about the threat to freedom. I can't really think of anybody in the world whose freedom is threatened less than Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Re: It’s not easy to be calm when you’ve found something going on.
 

Why are all of the algorithms shitty? Netflix and Amazon and Facebook and even Google (ads, not search) were supposed to be able to tell us what we want even if we didn't know. But they're all crap. They're great at serving you ads for the thing you just bought for months, but none of them do what they think they can do.

It works for search, but nowhere else.

And Facebook and Twitter get substantially worse the farther they move from just showing things chronologically.

Benchslap
 

This reminded me of a partner I worked for once -
http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/art...CAL1/180829934

It also reminded me of being in the C.D. CA, where discovery disputes are required, where possible, to be presented in a joint document. As I sat through the calendar before being called, I realized that opposing counsel and I were the only parties that had correctly followed the local rule. It was a small thing, but I still felt a little pleasure when the magistrate judge thanked us.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

https://media.newyorker.com/cartoons...305_a21516.jpg

Caption, please.

Re: It’s not easy to be calm when you’ve found something going on.
 

For any two-sided platform with discovery (the above, eBay, Etsy, Uber, Lyft, etc.), the search function can optimize for the user, the supplier, or the platform itself. When these businesses are new and worrying about creating value, they tend to optimize for the user's experience. So when it was young, Google was awesome. As they mature, they tend to get market power, because the network effects (or returns to scale, etc.) tend to protect them from direct competition. So they don't worry as much about pleasing the user, who now has nowhere else to go. Instead, they tend to optimize for whatever makes themselves the most money. This plays out differently in different contexts. For Google, it means that they want to show you ads instead of natural search results. You can think of this as Google's way of trying to extract money from the other side of the market for sending traffic instead of sending that traffic for free through natural search results. Google still works pretty well when you are trying to find some piece of information that isn't commercial at all.

Facebook is ferociously committed to keeping you engaged, which means that you stay on FB and click on stuff. This is why all the political stuff on Facebook is so histrionic, and why Facebook is not only uninterested in weeding out fake news, but would rather not do that.

I once said to someone who worked at eBay, I spent all this time telling Amazon what books I like but the recommendations I get back in return are all the same current stuff that I see everywhere else. And she said, that's because they're taking promotional money from the publishers to recommend their books. Amazon would rather pocket that money than give me better recommendations.

I can't speak to Netflix. I love Twitter because it is less susceptible to this sh*t. Which is also probably why it has never been as lucrative.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Meanwhile, in Minnesota.

Re: It’s not easy to be calm when you’ve found something going on.
 

If you want book recommendations use librarything.com.

At the end of the day, even when they optimize to the user you have the classical music problem. Classical musical listeners are a tiny fraction of the overall music audience, but they listen to music differently than most other listeners, just because the unit of a "song" doesn't make sense. For the music industry, it is just not worth catering to that community on-line, so there is no platform that does it well.

If you want something other than mass-market cable-TV level analysis or interaction - so you're willing to read a long article, and don't want a slide-show buzzfeed clickthrough to get your info - you're a classical music listener.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

In another desperate effort to change the subject, how about the train wreck that is Asia Argento and Rose McGowan? https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...232157876.html
Rank hypocrite, destroyer of #MeToo, or simply another crazy actress?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think it's just a reminder that there is often a cycle of violence or abuse, with the abused becoming the abuser.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Or, sometimes bad things happen to bad people?

I have no view about these particulars, because I have tried not to pay attention.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

There’s an argument she put Bourdain over the edge.

Other than that, agreed on your second point.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

http://gothamist.com/2018/08/28/nych...ex_parties.php

to pass on a question- if this gets one transferred, what does it take to get fired? My question- shouldn't NYC worry of the johnny Appleseed effect here?