Jeff Keen

Shoutout to anyone who’s been on the losing end of the following conversation, that likely happened at uber countless times.

🤴: We came up with an ethically questionable idea that will help us increase profits.

👱‍♀️: We shouldn’t do that. That is ethically questionable.

🤴: It’s going to make us more money.

👱‍♀️: But we’d be doing a shitty thing. It’s a shitty thing to do.

🤴: So much more money, though.

👱‍♀️: But it’s bad. Don’t we care about the peopl—

🤴: Do you like getting paid? This is a business! We have to make [more and more and more and more and more] money.

Where’s the line? Where are the companies that willingly take a hit financially because it’s the right thing to do? Where’s the app that values the human experience as much as their bottom line?

Lets hold them up, because I’m sure they’re under-appreciated, and they should be applauded for taking the harder road.

This was a great tribute.

Is it any coincidence that the race to the bottom in media—toward clickbait headlines, toward the vulgar and prurient and dumb, toward provocative but often exaggerated takes—has accelerated in lock-step with the development of new technologies for measuring engagement?

Increase Your Web Traffic And Decrease Your Quality With This One Weird Trick!

I live in Austin and my fuckwit texas senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn sponsored this lovely bill. I’m glad that for all their hard work, they both got a little side bonus from ISP lobbyists out of the deal. In total, $8,121,535 was donated across the house and senate to make our representatives continue to ignore their sense of ethics and vote for a bill that rolls back basic online privacy rights.

Part of the problem with the privacy debate in general is that it’s a difficult issue to explain to someone in terms of why they should care about it when it might not affect them right now. Humans are notoriously bad at responding to large, slow moving threats, and it’s easy for the privacy and net neutrality debate to feel less important than that overflowing inbox of !!urgent emails.

What we need is a boiled down phrase that really compels people to care. Something that sparks outrage. The republicans have been great at this in the past with all sorts of issues. With planned parenthood: “they’re killing children!”. With the initial pass of the ACA/Obamacare: “There will be death panels!”, but we’ve got nothing for privacy.

May I suggest: “The government is watching you masturbate.”

This was a great read.

Do you feel any better about your fellow Indianan Mike Pence?

He only got elected because he looks like The chair-throwing, longtime Indiana Hoosiers men’s basketball coach. Bobby Knight. Jeez, Pence scared the hell out of me. There was a therapy …

Conversion therapy. There’s debate about whether or not Pence actually supported it.

Yes, conversion therapy. That’s when I just thought, Oh God, really, Indiana? I don’t care if you’re a fundamentalist Christian — even they have gay relatives. They can’t be saying homosexuality is a sin. It’s horseshit. Then this transgender issue that just happened, I just think, Are you kidding me? Look, you’re a human, I’m a human. We’re breathing the same air. We have the same problems. We’re trying to get through our day. Who the fuck are you to throw a log in the road of somebody who has a different set of difficulties in life?

From yesterday’s paper: validation for my own feelings on this matter.

Q. What makes you think that people have become addicted to digital devices and social media?

A. In the past, we thought of addiction as mostly related to chemical substances: heroin, cocaine, nicotine. Today, we have this phenomenon of behavioral addictions where, one tech industry leader told me, people are spending nearly three hours a day tethered to their cellphones. Where teenage boys sometimes spend weeks alone in their rooms playing video games. Where Snapchat will boast that its youthful users open their app more than 18 times a day.

How do you define “addiction?”

The definition I go with is that it has to be something you enjoy doing in the short term, that undermines your well-being in the long term — but that you do compulsively anyway.

But those two months I did nothing but play Crossy Road—that was just time well spent.

We’re biologically prone to getting hooked on these sorts of experiences. If you put someone in front of a slot machine, their brain will look qualitatively the same as when they take heroin. If you’re someone who compulsively plays video games — not everyone, but people who are addicted to a particular game — the minute you load up your computer, your brain will look like that of a substance abuser.

This is still my favorite Weird Al video. Recently rediscovered.

The Eighties documentary (available on Netflix) is fantastic. I binge-watched the eight episodes in an evening and a morning, and this one on the tech boom was particularly interesting (for me). The conclusion to the episode kinda blew me away, so I recorded this video and texted my friends about it.

Oh man, this is a long video but it’s worth the watch. I can’t think of another president/vice president combo where their friendship seemed so geniune. The stuff they say about each other in this video will break you.