I honestly find this incredible, but yeah... I know people who enjoy being advertised to... and who like "shopping" even though they start out with nothing in mind. Advertising works on them and probably those spam emails I can't believe people click, which only perpetuates the problem. And apparently it's worth billions to keep up the commercialization.
Haha. Are you telling me that we all don't mutually love these attempts to personalize advertisements? There's nothing better than knowing our personal information is being used for our benefit this way. Look at films like Blade Runner. I can't wait to have bright fluorescent ads on every corner and open space.
Without these things, how else am I going to know which medication I should be insisting my doctor prescribe me? And clearly this insurance company with the funny ad is totally going to be there on my side when something happens. That's why they made the commercial, duh. So I would absolutely be certain I can trust them to quickly and fully process a claim.
There's nothing cozier than the snug embrace of consumerism, where we find a peculiar warmth, as if cocooned in a comforter spun from the very fibers of advertising's allure.
The modern prison-communication industry emerged four decades ago, after the federal government broke up A.T. & T.’s Bell System. New phone companies competed for customers by slashing prices. But inside prisons and jails a different model developed: telecom companies persuaded local officials to sign exclusive service contracts in exchange for hefty commissions. The costs of these commissions were passed along to incarcerated “customers” and their families, who lacked consumer choice. Price gouging was the inevitable result. By the nineties, prison phone-call prices in some jurisdictions had soared to twenty dollars for fifteen minutes.
I'll never understand how and why prisons and anything related are allowed to be privatized.
People make mistakes and some are prison worthy. However, we want them to do their time, grow in the process, and ultimately return to society as better people. Instead, we throw people in prison who don't belong there, keep out privileged ones who do far worse and need prison, don't provide the needed help, and make prison so miserable that people can't actually grow into something better.
WTF. I jokingly wanted to be a king (dictator) as a teen because I figured it would be faster to fix things... starting with firing every politician (although at that age I said 'off with their heads'). It's such a horrible idea. It wouldn't work. But then that thought comes back in moments like this and I'm like, "just give me a few years to fix things and clean things up". Ugh. No wonder people eventually end up doing insane things. How long can we wait for reform?
This I'm fully on board with. There's a lot broken that we can actively work on to build a healthier society. I don't see any other obvious preferable routes.
My mind is completely boggled by the state of politics though. Voting for these kinds of programs is one of the most excruciating things to watch flounder. Programs are set up and then they're dismantled a few years later. When things are brighter, some politician comes in and crushes them.
My head spins at the thought of how much money is being spent on all the things that supposedly matter, the corruption surrounding it all, and the privileged protecting the privileged.
Sometimes the glass doesn't seem half full, but instead half empty. I don't like feeling that way, but his political season sure isn't helping.
Why does it always feel like we're simultaneously in the best of times and also the worst of times?
My hope is that companies would learn from the brain drain side effects in the long run. You're absolutely right that greater profit is what drives this and it was intentional, but it is short-sighted.
The company I work for just terminated a substantial percentage of its workforce. It was done without truly understanding the effect on many programs. I'm now standing on a desert island, alone, trying to figure out how to continue satisfying a customer with nearly all the knowledge and talent to best do that stripped away. Doing the job of three people was hard enough before. Now I'm doing the job of X people, a variable I can't even adequately quantify now. And a lot of that work is so wildly outside of my sphere of knowledge.
Decisions that these large companies are making are causing side effects that they may not feel for many years, but they will... And it won't matter because those executives have accomplished everything they wanted for themselves in those first moments.
Don't be evil.
Heh.
I really do hope a few of these companies learn. I'd love for people to not be treated as expendable assets that can be ground into dust, but as people to nourish and develop. I'd love to cheer for them. I'd love to contribute to their work.
Most recently I remember it happening really really badly within Syria. Very intentional destruction. But yes, it happens all the time--Iraq included. With the technology we have now, we can preserve a lot of it (digitally at least).
I hate how it's so damn hard to find these things and yet so easy to destroy it.
Oh, I know. And it was a nasty one at that. We humans are good at making messes. I was literally thinking that as I posted. But... I was also imagining we could fast forward to then. Please?
What I would like to know is if tablets like this are being scanned digitally into three dimensions so that they can be reproduced. I feel like everything we find from antiquity needs to be scanned this way. With humans constantly going to war destroying history, I'd hate the idea of losing things like this forever.
UPDATE: And thus a journey down the interwebs rabbit hole begins. I need better internet and PC to check this out more later, but answering my own question, here's the entrance to the rabbit hole should others wish to venture with a few examples:
Smithsonian Institution: The Smithsonian has a vast collection of 3D scanned artifacts available online, including prehistoric tools and sculptures https://3d.si.edu/.
Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI): This non-profit organization promotes the use of 3D scanning for cultural heritage preservation https://www.culturalheritageimaging.org/.
I don't know how we will survive at this pace. Seriously, what's next after this all implodes?