Here's a fascinating exploration from Danah Boyd (one of the better thinkers about the Internet and society), about the ways in which the current tribal mess we're in can be traced to the way American culture works, and the way that media literacy programs of the past couple of decades played into some peculiarly American habits.

Not too long, and ( Read more... )

[I'm mostly just posting links over in Facebook, but my more technical friends tend to be over here.]

Here is a really excellent collection of ideas about how to fight the Fake News problem -- the way that services like Facebook and Google have been used as propaganda tools by the people (on all sides) who are muddying truth by propagating ( Read more... )

Thanks to Aaron for the link to this list of "19 Best Ads I Have Ever Seen". Unlike the usual TV-ad lists, this is more focused on brilliant uses of static media -- posters and sculptures and the like. Really quite an extraordinary collection: innovative, eye-catching, occasionally rather disturbing (eg, the Sopranos and Finding Nemo 2 ads). ( Read more... )

I'm going to have to remember that, for events that they cover, they're sometimes a really fine choice. I watched the Inauguration there (I still have it on now -- they were just showing the speeches at the luncheon), and their "just the facts" approach is delightful. Where all the other TV networks are vying with each other to provide ever more ( Read more... )

Thanks to TechCrunch for pointing out this remarkably odd Danish commercial. Warning: thoroughly NSFW, as nudity is central to it. And personally, I find the ending a tad disturbing, not least because the filmmakers apparently don't ( Read more... )

There's an interesting article in Ars Technica today about the remake of The Day the Earth Stood StillApparently, there was a panel discussion at Caltech last week, including the star and director of the movie, to talk about some of the movie's points -- the article makes it sound like Keanu Reeves was pretty out of his depth (shocking), but the ( Read more... )

A couple of days ago, Microsoft threw in the towel and pulled the cryptic Seinfeld / Gates ad campaign. It was a tacit admission that leaving the viewing audience with a collective "WTF?" wasn't exactly the image they needed to project. (Oh, they're claiming that they planned it this way all along, but pretty much nobody believes it ( Read more... )

So there's this Hannaford's ad that has been in heavy rotation lately. I've never bothered to actually *look* at it, but it starts out ( Read more... )

It was occurring to me this morning, as I reflected on the rash of (mostly surprisingly good) comic-book movies coming out this summer, that there were some I've always wanted to see. And that seems like a good topic for a conversation ( Read more... )

Aaron just pointed me at this rather clever video, which -- well, it makes a novel use of censorship. Note that it is *extremely* debateable whether the video is worksafe or not, but it's pretty damned amusing. (And the music, by Fat Boy Slim and David Byrne, isn't terrible...)