Quotulatiousness

May 13, 2020

Okay, I’ll be careful not to call this “deceptive advertising” in future

Filed under: Business, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At View from the Porch, Tam explains why digital camera terminology sometimes seems to be deliberately deceptive:

The disconnect comes when you run into the “luxury” or “enthusiast” end of the compact camera market, where the physical size of the 1″ sensor in cameras like Sony’s RX100 line or the Canon PowerShot G7/G9 is touted as a selling point.

Because the sensor itself is not physically an inch in any dimension. For that matter, a tiny 1/2.5″ sensor isn’t two fifths of an inch in any dimension either.

Small CCD/CMOS video sensors are labeled based on the size of video tube they replace. These tubes had a rectilinear imaging surface inside the cylindrical glass vacuum tube. Inside a 1″ tube would be an imaging surface measuring 16mm diagonally, or a little less. When solid state sensors started replacing tubes forty years ago, they were labeled according to the tube they’d replace.

So to this day, a sensor 16mm (or a bit less) diagonally is still called a 1″ sensor.

For that matter, “35mm” film is only 35mm if you measure from edge-to-edge, sprocket holes and all. “Full Frame/35mm” sensors are only about 29mm diagonally; there aren’t any digital sprocket holes.

Just like we still “dial” and “hang up” our cell phones, even though phones with dials and handsets that you hang on the wall are a vanishing memory, digital imaging technology is still named after the analog technologies it supplanted.

January 1, 2020

QotD: “Bin End” sales

Filed under: Business, Humour, Quotations, Wine — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

I was amused this week to see to see a sign outside my local Wine Rack store which read “Sawmill Creek Bin End Sale.” Bin end usually means the last few bottles or cases of the lot. For a wine that arrives in Canada by the boatload, “bin end” sounds a bit far fetched. Then again, “Tanker End Sale” doesn’t sound quite as dignified.

Richard Best, The Frugal Oenophile Newsletter, 2005-07-13.

October 27, 2019

QotD: Hating jazz

Filed under: Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

“Jazz is for people who don’t like music,” says GQ‘s Deputy Editor; it must be fun to play, he says, because it sure ain’t fun to listen to. (“I remember this tune,” he’ll say, “which is more than the guy playing it does.”) It is, in the words of some forgotten Eighties comedian, six guys on stage playing different tunes. GQ even ran a joke about it a few years ago: “Q: Why do some people instantly hate jazz?” “A: It saves time in the long run.” Even my youngest daughter hated it at the time. Aged five, after being subjected to hours of Charlie Parker in the car one weekend, she said, “I don’t like this music. There are no songs for me to sing to.” (The only jazz tune she liked is “Everybody Want To Be A Cat” from Disney’s The Aristocats.) Unbeknown to her, she was echoing John Lennon’s little-known jibe: “Jazz never does anything.”

Some people’s innate hatred of jazz is simply the result of an unfortunate experience, but then anyone who’s witnessed Art Blakey performing a three-and-a-half hour drum solo is entitled to feel a little peeved (and I speak as someone who has seen one at close quarters). On top of this, some people just don’t get it. Like the later work of James Joyce, the films of Tarkovsky and “tax harmonisation”, the fact that some things will always lie just beyond the common understanding is something jazz enthusiasts must learn to live with.

Also, jazz has often been victim to the vagaries of fashion, destined to be revived at the most inappropriate moments. The last time jazz was really in the limelight was back in the mid-Eighties, when it became the soundtrack du jour in thousands of matt-black bachelor flats all over designer Britain and when every style magazine and beer ad seemed to look like a Blue Note album cover. Jazz went from being a visceral, corporeal music to a lifestyle soundtrack. This was the age of Style Council, of Absolute Beginners … of Sting. Buying into jazz was meant to lend your life a patina of exotic sophistication and was used to sell everything from Filofaxes and coffee machines to designer jeans and sports cars.

Dylan Jones, “The 100 best jazz albums you need in your collection”, GQ, 2019-08-25.

September 5, 2019

QotD: Fashion

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, Randomness, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Sometimes I fear we are on the cusp of another age du merde again — a catastrophic meltdown in taste not seen since the 70s. I check the weekly catalogs with mounting dread. This week’s report: Furniture is in good shape. Appliances have survived the iMac wannabee phase. Men’s fashions are reasonably dull, as usual. Woman, as it often happens, are screwed:

[… image from Marshall Fields catalogue …]

Ponchos. Good God. Ponchos. And what’s with this blonde’s hair? How many My Little Ponys did they kill to make this wig?

[…]

God forbid our children should ever be happy. Not when they can have ATTITUDE, which is what we all really want from our kids.

[… image of sneering, posturing child models …]

Charming. Remember: Fashion means never having to say you’re happy. From Dutch supermodels to haughty tykes, the watchword from Dame Fashion is “pissed.” Now put on your poncho and radiate sullen blankness.

James Lileks, “The Bleat”, 2004-08-17 (Reposted from the old blog).

Note: Jon mentioned that he looked at the images in Lileks’ article and at first thought they were actual 1970s catalogue photos, but in that dreckful decade, the models would have been smiling. A valid point, I think, and one of the issues Lileks has with the current fashion industry. Nowadays, you can’t be a fashion model without the kind of surly attitude best expressed by thugs and angry bar patrons after last call.

August 28, 2019

The political football of “mass” immigration in the Canadian federal election campaign

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Recently a registered third-party (under Canadian election rules) paid to have billboards put up in major cities that appeared to be from Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada:

A billboard in Toronto, showing Maxime Bernier and an official-looking PPC message.
Photo from The Province – https://theprovince.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-berniers-legitimate-position-on-immigration-taken-down-by-spineless-billboard-company/wcm/ecab071c-b57d-4d93-b78c-274de524434c

Colby Cosh discusses the issues raised:

I offer sarcastic congratulations to everyone who gave Maxime Bernier the stupid controversy he wanted over the “Say NO to mass immigration” billboard, bearing his image, that briefly appeared in a few Canadian cities and was taken down in a hurry Monday morning. The billboards were purchased from Pattison Outdoor Advertising by a third-party supporter of Bernier’s People’s Party. The company’s initial response to the resulting outcry was to observe that the message of the billboard complied with advertising standards; it did not contain any hateful, disparaging, or discriminatory language.

“We take a neutral position on ads that comply with the ASC (Advertising Standards Canada) Code as we believe Canadians do not want us to be the judge or arbiter of what the public can or cannot see,” was Pattison’s original statement in the face of controversy. (Most everybody, including the company, seems to have missed the point that election advertising is explicitly “excluded from the application” of the Code on the grounds that political expression deserves the highest degree of deference; the Code does say, for what it’s worth, that “Canadians are entitled to expect” that such advertising respects the underlying principles.)

[…]

The question I have for objectors and denouncers of the billboard is how they think it could have been rewritten, expressing the same underlying idea, so as to be acceptable. If the unpleasant-sounding word “mass” were replaced with “large-scale,” would there have been less of a ruction? Maybe any objection to prospective levels of immigration to Canada is to be regarded as inherently racist and hateful, even when no racist or hateful language is used.

If that is the case, it is perfectly predictable that the People’s Party will exploit this and cry “mob censorship,” and public polls on immigration suggest they will have some success, in case recent history everywhere didn’t offer enough of a hint. Moreover, we are left with an awkward question how any limit upon or criteria for immigration, any government immigration policy per se, can be justified at all. What, indeed, can be the objection to “mass immigration”? Who will have the courage to put up a “Say YES to mass immigration” billboard?

August 17, 2019

QotD: Bridal traditions

Filed under: Business, Europe, Humour, Italy — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The soap bottle had another claim. “Blue Lavender Essence Lore: Brides in Italy perfumed their wedding clothes with lavender in order to calm their prenuptial jitters”

Left unspoken: Didn’t do jack. You’d think the Brides in Italy would have figured this out in short order, eh? “Here, my child. Soak your dress in lavender. It will calm your nerves.” Did it work for you, mama? “No, I spent the morning sobbing and throwing up in rank terror, since I had only met your father the previous night, and he had the breath of cheese far gone with mold. But this is what we do, for we are superstitious peasants whose worldview is derived not from empirical observation of the world, but sage wisdom Grandmama got from her great-grandmama. Now put these grape stems up your nose so your first-born will be a boy.”

James Lileks, Star Tribune, 2004-05-24.

August 14, 2019

1950s Willys Jeep Promotional Film – The Jeep Family Of 4 Wheel Drive Vehicles

Filed under: Business, History, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

PeriscopeFilm II
Published on 3 Sep 2015

Willys, the “World’s Largest Manufacturer of Utility Vehicles,” presents the Jeep Family of 4-Wheel Drive Vehicles and Special Equipment, a circa 1954 black-and-white film promoting Jeeps produced for civilian use. Following the success of Jeeps during World War II, the film opens with an explanation of how the vehicles soon their way to civilian use. Some of the vehicles seen in this film are used by construction companies, farmers, firefighters, and even at airports to tow aircraft and move cargo trailers and plow snow. At mark 02:49 the film introduces other types of Jeep equipment, such as a generator that turns the vehicle “into a mobile source of electric power to operate saws, communication equipment, motion picture equipment, flood and spotlights. And indeed any electrical equipment that must be moved around over bad terrain or in bad weather.” Scenes also capture telephone company repair crews, oil field crews, plus local and state road crews and construction companies. A Jeep is shown at a cemetery at mark 04:03 moving sand, shrubs, and burial equipment around the grounds in addition to lifting memorial markers. The viewer learns about variable engine speeds beginning at mark 05:55 with an up-close look at an engine and a discussion of its power, as well as various ways that power can be tapped for various operations. As it continues the film touts the Jeep rotary cutter (mark 07:45) as high brush is cut down, a hammer mill (mark 08:15), and a trencher (mark 08:30). There are forklift attachments, front and rear winches, as a front winch is shown pulling a dead tree from the ground (mark 10:10). The sales pitch rolls on at mark 11:42 showing some Jeep steel tops including the half-cab, master, and standard top — “each one designed for a special purpose but all three designed to stand up in rough hard service year after year.” Mark 12:00 begins an explanation of the vehicle’s 4-wheel drive capabilities, meaning that the vehicle “can go anywhere to do its job” including remote camping and hunting spots, while by mark 13:48 there’s a look at a Willys sedan delivery vehicle as grocery store employees are shown loading items into the back, and the Willys pick-up trick at mark 14:52. Other models are shown hauling grain and livestock, as well as an ambulance (mark 17:00).

Jeep is a brand of American automobiles that is a division of FCA US LLC (formerly Chrysler Group, LLC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. The original Jeep was the prototype Bantam BRC. Willys MB Jeeps went into production in 1941 specifically for the military, arguably making them the oldest four-wheel drive mass-production vehicles now known as SUVs. The Jeep became the primary light 4-wheel-drive vehicle of the United States Army and the Allies during World War II, as well as the postwar period. The term became common worldwide in the wake of the war. The first civilian models were produced in 1945. It inspired a number of other light utility vehicles, such as the Land Rover. Many Jeep variants serving similar military and civilian roles have since been designed in other nations. Willys-Overland and Ford, under the direction of Charles E. Sorensen (Vice-President of Ford during World War II), produced about 640,000 Jeeps towards the war effort, which accounted for approximately 18% of all the wheeled military vehicles built in the U.S. during the war.

From 1945 onwards, Willys took its four-wheel drive vehicle to the public with its CJ (Civilian Jeep) versions, making these the first mass-produced 4×4 civilian vehicles. In 1948, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission agreed with American Bantam that the idea of creating the Jeep was originated and developed by American Bantam in collaboration with some U.S. Army officers. The commission forbade Willys from claiming, directly or by implication, that it had created or designed the Jeep, and allowed it only to claim that it contributed to the development of the vehicle. However, American Bantam went bankrupt by 1950, and Willys was granted the “Jeep” trademark in 1950.

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com

August 8, 2019

An excellent illustration of market segmentation

Filed under: Britain, Business — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Wikipedia entry for “market segmentation” defines it this way:

“BEER”by Jonnee is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Market segmentation is the activity of dividing a broad consumer or business market, normally consisting of existing and potential customers, into sub-groups of consumers (known as segments) based on some type of shared characteristics. In dividing or segmenting markets, researchers typically look for common characteristics such as shared needs, common interests, similar lifestyles or even similar demographic profiles.

No single product is going to be universally popular, and it’s generally a bad idea to present it that way. The producers of a new product ideally try to identify the groups of potential customers who are more likely to want to buy the new product, and tailor their advertising to those groups. The more accurately they can identify and communicate with these customer groups, the greater the chances that the product will be a success in the market.

Beer isn’t universally popular (Gasp! Shock! Horror!), so brewers try to identify different kinds of beer drinkers and market their brews to those sub-groups:

The point about a market being that you can put your stuff out there and see who buys it. The buyers will – they are rational beings after all – select from the varied offerings and their selections will be the ones which best increase their utility by their own measurements of that utility. Thus the Shagmenowbigboypint might get a bit more business toward closing time, who knows? Not necessarily entirely female business either.

And even to stop being puerile about it. We’ve only this one system that does provide multiple choices – that’s what a market is. But in order for ever finer meeting of utility it’s necessary for ever finer slices of the market to be addressed. That is, we need to have free market entry so we can find out what it is that actually meets peoples’ desires.

Banning something that appeals to some slice of that market is thus defeating the point and object of that very market’s existence. Sure, lots of women won’t buy a sexist beer. Some will, as will some men. The aim and art of the whole exercise being to allow those who won’t not to, those who will to.

Or, as we can put it, every beer being Shagmenowbigboypint is as bad as no beer being Shagmenowbigboypint.

July 25, 2019

YouTube’s secret fight against history documentaries

Filed under: Business, Education, History, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The good folks at TimeGhost have been struggling with YouTube’s monetization and recommendation mechanisms for some time. A number of TimeGhost’s WW2 documentary videos have been demonetized over the last year, and the team noticed that every demonetized video had significantly fewer viewers than those that were not demonetized. They did some analysis and submitted the results to YouTube, showing that the demonetized videos were also being restricted from showing up on the automated recommendation lists that users see, which largely accounted for the lower viewership for their demonetized videos, but YouTube denied that there was any connection between these things … that demonetized videos are just as likely to be recommended as the ones that are not demonetized, and that TimeGhost’s analysis was just wrong. YouTube sent the TimeGhost team a set of guidelines for how to ensure that the videos they post were considered acceptable to advertisers and would not be subject to demonetization (and the stealth omission from recommendation lists). Here’s the first video from TimeGhost, implementing those guidelines:

This is how they explained the situation in the comments:

World War Two
3 hours ago (edited)
Now, to begin with – this is not about that we need YouTube’s ad money, at our viewership levels that money is not near enough to finance our content anyway. We have a fantastic community in the TimeGhost Army that support us financially, and make our shows possible, for which we are eternally grateful. This is also not about politics – nothing in our data indicates that YouTube is choosing what to monetize based on political considerations. However, indirectly this is about money, but even more importantly about our self-appointed mandate to share education about our common past. You see, when YouTube labels content as “not suitable for some, or most advertisers” they also recommend it less – in fact almost only under our own videos. This means that we don’t reach new viewers with those videos, this in turn means that our community grows less, or not at all.

When we sent the data proving that (data from YouTube no less), they at first denied that there was a connection between monetization and recommendation. We sent them more data showing conclusively that this is a false statement. Their response then was to say that maybe there is a connection between things that impact monetization and things that impact recommendation. They also sent us a list of things we should do to become “more advertiser friendly” – the list states among other things that content dealing with war, political controversies, terrorism, or death is not suitable for advertisers. That in effect means more or less the better part of human history and all of WW2.

We emphatically object to this interpretation of what is acceptable for advertisers – our kind of content has been attached to advertising for decades in main stream media, historical magazines and websites dealing with exactly the same things we do, receives advertising from major brands. Furthermore less recommendation means less viewers, which means that our content gets less support and thus risks becoming financially impossible – that is censorship by drip. Therefore we also vehemently protest this policy that in effect restricts the access to educational content, with high academic standards covering topics that are essential parts of human history. Events and phenomena that need to be widely understood in order for the world to learn from our past mistakes.

Last but not least we want to point out one more time – we do not have any indication whatsoever that we are being targeted for political reasons. We cover topics covering both right wing and left wing politics, we do not make judgement ourselves, instead we leave it up to you to decide positively or negatively depending on your opinion. We cover these topics factually, with completeness, and unbiased. The portion of our videos that have been deemed unsuitable to advertisers include political themes that cover the entire spectrum from Naziism to Marxism. Notably, and from the educational perspective troubling is that videos covering crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust or war crimes by the Soviet Union are almost always demonetized.

Please share this video to raise the awareness of what we find to be irresponsible behavior by a corporation that holds a virtual monopoly on free to access ad financed online video. Thank you.

July 20, 2019

A Bankrupt Germany Didn’t Create the Nazis | Between 2 Wars | 1928 Part 1 of 1

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

TimeGhost History
Published on 18 Jul 2019

When the world goes into economic overdrive in the second half of the 1920s, contrary to popular belief Germany rises with the tide – it is the Goldener Zwanziger, the Golden Twenties.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by Francis van Berkel and Spartacus Olsson
Directed and Produced by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited By: Daniel Weiss
Research by: Francis van Berkel

Sources:
Bundesarchiv, Photos from the Jonatan Myhre Barlien photo collection.

Colorization by Daniel Weiss
Thumbnail motive by Olga Shirnina
https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com/201…

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

May 20, 2019

A “cutting-edge mediaeval Catholic” view of the modern economy

Filed under: Business, Economics, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David Warren explains some of his disquietude about our modern world:

Gentle reader may object that none of these entities is a government department, except insofar as it is the subject of taxes and regulations, and as it grows larger, an ever more formidable force in lobbying for subsidies and legislation favourable to itself. Objection sustained. Verily, this is just my point.

Each entity made its way until the gobbling by means of mass consumer advertising, in which morally illegitimate methods of persuasion — principally hype, actual lies, irrelevant claims and endorsements — are instrumental to sales success. Honest advertising (e.g. catalogues with exact descriptions) is theoretically possible but practically extinct; campaigns are based on the tawdry manipulation of human “perceptions” — behaviourist psychology at the level of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, but elaborately quantified, with financial and pricing arrangements factored in.

Indeed, one may link most disastrous marketing decisions to the decline of intuitive reasoning, as statistical reasoning takes its place. The manager who knows in his gut, from experience, what might work and what won’t, or can’t, is displaced by the young analyst with computer modelling skills and all the jargon of “science” to express the platitudes he was drip-fed in school.

But here, too, “private” and “public” enterprise are fully integrated. Both are adapted to the “planning” paradigm, and each is utterly dependent on the other, in what is misleadingly called “the mixed economy.” The critics of abstract Capitalism, on the one side, and abstract Socialism, on the other, draw a false contrast between two administrative orders, when they are both bureaucratic in nature, inhumanly oversized, and habitually dedicated to the pursuit of monopoly.

Several of the readers with whom I correspond are under the immovable impression that I am against making money, or improvements in technology, per se. In fact my outlook is cutting-edge mediaeval Catholic. The moral questions are instead such as, How is the money made? And, for what are the improvements to be used? As I must remind e.g. my Chief Texas Correspondent, I am not against electricity or indoor plumbing. But I am against worshipping such things, or making them the criteria for high civilization.

March 3, 2019

Fake News in the Radio Age | Between 2 Wars | 1926 Part 1 of 2

Filed under: Europe, History, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published on 28 Feb 2019

Modernization caused a communication revolution in the 1920’s with the mass adaptation of the radio, with all sorts consequences for the entertainment industry as well as the political game.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

1919 Between Two Wars Episodes on post war technology: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&vide…

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Spartacus Olsson

Credits for this episode: Bundesarchive | Old Time Radio Researchers Group | Library of Congress

Colorized Pictures by Olga Shirnina and Norman Stewart
Thumbnail by Klimbim/Olga Shirnina: https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com
Norman’s pictures https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/

Video Archive by Screenocean/Reuters http://www.screenocean.com

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

February 23, 2019

QotD: “Toxic masculinity”

Filed under: Business, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

And then we have toxic masculinity. Is there toxic masculinity? Of course there is. Well, there is toxic and it can have a masculine expression. Because of obvious biological differences, the most toxic of women will have issues beating up people or raping them. It can be done, but it won’t be common.

Is masculinity toxic? Not more than femininity. The latest insistence on doing everything the feminine way has got us “feminine business” and “feminine politics” where everything is run on image, innuendo and gossip: the female version of toxicity. You’re either with the group or out, and if you’re out we’ll demonize you.

So blaming everything on men is bad-crazy.

I have a friend who has been trying to defend the Gillette ad as in “But they’re giving to causes that help raise boys who are fatherless” etc. I love her to death, but no. While that might be laudable, the fact is that that add is another brick in the wall of “If you’re a woman and your life isn’t perfect it’s a man’s fault.”

This bad crazy not only destroys marriages, it destroys GIRLS. You see that thing above “to succeed you must sacrifice?” If you infect females with the idea that they’re owed success and if they don’t get it, it’s men’s fault, you’re both undermining them and turning them into rage-filled screeching monkeys, who are exactly zero use to society. (Oh, but they vote for Marxists, so I guess there’s that.)

Worse, this bad crazy is riding on other bad crazy. Which like most bad crazy since the twentieth century has its origins on the insane crazy of Marx.

The question is, WHY was this ad made at all? It certainly doesn’t sell razors. So, why?

Because for decades we’ve taught our children their most important role in life is the crazy cakes “change the world” or “make a difference” and the difference they’re supposed to make is in the class-war (or race war, or sex war now) sense of bringing about the Marxist paradise. We tell them they’re supposed to speak for the voiceless, then tell them the voiceless are the “designated victim classes” (whom frankly we can’t get to SHUT UP.) We tell them this is what gives meaning to life. We tell them through school, through entertainment, through news narratives, through the people who are being lionized.

And this is bad crazy. Really bad crazy. By itself it is a wrench that will take society apart. We have publishers, writers, journalists, and probably taxi drivers, policemen, engineers and who knows what, increasingly convinced their highest calling is not doing their job, but “educating” or “improving” or “raising the consciousness of” other people.

Even for a credo that worked with humanity — say Christianity — when a society becomes convinced pushing the idea is more important than doing their job, the wheels come off. BUT when the credo is neo-Marxism, or actually “increasingly elaborate excuses as for the only thing Marxism brings about is death” it’s exponentially worse.

It’s also the explanation for why the wheels come off every field that gets taken over by the left: because the people in those fields stop understanding what their actual job is.

And it’s everywhere. At such a deep level that most people — even those mad at Gillette — didn’t see that the actual problem is that no one involved in the damn ad understood it had NOTHING to do with SELLING the product.

It’s bad crazy. There’s a lot of bad crazy running in the world. And we must stop it — and build under, build over, build around — or it will kill society.

Sarah Hoyt, “Bad Crazy”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2019-01-20.

February 5, 2019

The looming threat of agents plotting to influence the next federal election

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Andrew Coyne has the details:

I have an urgent warning for the people of Canada. Even now, certain agents are plotting to influence the result of the next election campaign by means of stealth and deception.

Posing as ordinary Canadians, they plan to use social media to spread falsehoods designed to inflame public opinion, using the latest micro-targeting technologies to tailor their messages to the reader’s particular fears and prejudices.

These agents are better known as the political parties.

One of the problems with the Liberal government’s recently announced plan to “defend Canadian democracy” from foreign interference, notably in the form of “fake news,” is the basic premise: that the principal threat to the integrity of the Canadian electoral process is posed by outsiders, third parties and foreign agents, rather than the participants.

If there is something ominous about the government involving itself, however indirectly, in deciding what is and is not fake news, there is something quite ludicrous about a political party raising the alarm over the spreading of falsehoods during an election campaign. Indeed, a good short definition of an election campaign would be “a sustained, intense, all-party burst of falsehood, slander and misrepresentation.”

There isn’t a lot else. A modern campaign consists mostly in what is gently termed “defining” opposing party leaders, in a way calculated to make them unrecognizable to their own mothers. The rest is devoted to deliberately misrepresenting the other parties’ positions, while making false or exaggerated claims about their own.

There remains a gentlemanly expectation that these falsehoods should not be obviously detectable as such — that is, that the lie should itself be artfully concealed, disguised as an elision, half-truth or what a Liberal MP recently called “rhetorical advantage,” rather than rubbed in the public’s faces in the manner pioneered by Donald Trump.

January 27, 2019

Modern advertising – “wokeness … for millennials, is basically Corinthian leather for the soul”

Filed under: Business, History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I’m still not caught up on all my RSS feeds, so this Jonathan Kay piece at Quillette is more than a week old, which is why we’re selling it at half-price:

… Coca-Cola doesn’t make you smile. The “Rich Corinthian Leather” that Chrysler used to upholster car seats wasn’t actually from Corinth. And smoking Virginia Slims doesn’t actually mean “You’ve come a long way, baby.” It probably just means you’re going to die of lung cancer.

But misleading as that Personna ad may have been, it had more substance than most modern commercials. At the very least, it purported to extol the actual physical quality of the product being advertised — even if the evidence presented in support of that claim was thin. Coke, Chrysler and Virginia Slims (a 1960s-era spinoff of Benson & Hedges), on the other hand, were selling fairy tales based on happiness, wealth and liberation, respectively.

A close Mad Men-era analogue to Gillette’s new ad would be this Virginia Slims ad from 1967. It starts with a woman in 19th-century clothing, staring mournfully at her feet while a sad tune plays. “It used to be, baby, you had no rights,” intones a male voice saucily. “No right to vote. No right to property. No right to the wage you earned. That was back when you were laced in, hemmed in, and left with not a whole lot to do. That was back when you had to sneak up to the attic if you wanted a cigarette. Smoke in front of a man? Heaven forbid!”

[…]

In some respects, the act of watching that ad is a voyage to a distant land: It’s not just that cigarette ads have been illegal in western countries for decades (the woman actually takes a puff — right there on TV). But the very idea that “women” smoke with a small “feminine hand” also would constitute its own sort of transphobic thoughtcrime. Nevertheless, the basic Madison Avenue impulse behind the ad is recognizable to modern eyes: There’s this cool social trend out there. Let’s present our product as part of that cool trend. In the 1960s, the cool trend was empowering women. A half century later, it’s hectoring men. In the 1960s, being progressive meant expanding the range of permissible behaviour. A half century later, it’s about imposing constraints. In the 1960’s, the puritans were the bad guys. Today, they’re the ones setting the moral agenda.

As a bonus, he also walks you through a Marketing 101 course (at least, the few things you’d remember after taking a Marketing 101 course) in his local store:

At my local Toronto pharmacy, a pack of eight Gillette “Fusion5™ ProShield™” razors goes for $42.14 (all figures in U.S. dollars) — a staggering $5.27 per razor. These are displayed, of course, at eye level, since they provide the highest profit margin. Stoop down to waist level, and you will find a package of three quad-bladed cartridges—in generic packaging, though they provide more or less the same quality shave as the Fusion5 — for just $2.26 per razor. And if you’re willing to go down to ankle level, you can get a 10-pack of “Life” brand twin blades for just 60 cents each. (They’re marked “disposable,” but I often will use the same one for several weeks.) Do the math here, and you’ll see that we are talking about an almost 10-fold difference in price for products that — notwithstanding the many protestations I’m set to receive from hipsters who shave with hand-forged titanium blades stored in sealed alabaster canisters full of ionized gas — do the same basic thing.

This is true for a lot of product categories where there are no real differences between competing products except what the geniuses in the respective corporate marketing departments can conjure up out of their collective vivid imaginations.

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