Goodbye July
July 31, 2020
Good Friday Morning.
It’s the last day of the week and the last day of July. Tomorrow we all have to stop saying “I can’t believe it’s already July” and start saying “I can’t believe it’s already August”.
We’ve got a couple questions to play us out to the weekend, so click on the Let’s Talk button to get started.
Growing the Tinaverse
Until we can get a Tina sign for your window or front lawn or a Tina bumper sticker for your car, why don’t you share Tina with a family member or friend or that one neighbor who annoys the hell out of you.
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Results from July 30, 2020
Question 1: Did you watch any of the congressional hearings yesterday with the CEOs of Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google?
With all the political grandstanding, it’s always interesting to see if these congressional break through. It’s also fun to see elected members of congress asking questions about technologies they’ve clearly never used.
Question 2: Do you believe any of these companies have too much power?
At least one of the FAANG companies is omnipresent in all of our lives, which is precisely why they’re so large and powerful. I’ve mostly stopped using Amazon, and I try to use DuckDuckGo over Google, but here I am checking Facebook on my iPhone during my lunch break. It’s difficult to avoid them when they’re so deeply integrated into our daily lives. I heard a fascinating (and scary) interview on “Amanpour and Co.” with Shoshana Zuboff, who says that simply breaking up these titanic companies won’t be enough; we need to fundamentally address the way and the degree to which they collect and monetize our data. Such practices threaten our democracy; this is a 21st century problem that can’t and won’t be solved by 20th century laws. Looking forward to reading her book, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.”
None of this ever happened with MySpace.
Question 3: Do you regularly use the products or services of any of these companies?
If you think Big Tech has too much power yet still depend on their products, that's likely a strong sign that the former is very much true.
Regarding the FAANG companies, if there are other companies out there who can compete with them, the more the merrier! I am a consumer of all and have no personal issues with any of them.
Personally, I just want to bring back AOL Instant Messenger so I can update my away message with lyrics from Death Cab for Cutie, Hootie & the Blowfish or Motion City Soundtrack.
Question 4: For people who don’t use Facebook, we wanted to know why.
13.3% of people said they don’t use Facebook because their friends and family members are on the platform… which is just perfect.
No interest in adding yet another social media/app to occupy my precious free time, which is growing less and less. I seem to get by pretty well, thank you, without it.
their developers couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag
Shots fired.
Question 5: For those who do use Facebook, we asked, “Have you noticed any changes in the items you're seeing on your Facebook News Feed in the last year?”
No surprise the country's news feed is ultra liberal (just look at Twitter trends) given Big Tech is located in the most liberal parts of the country. Just look at the tweet Don Jr. was banned for. Talk about leftist bias.
This user is referring to Twitter’s decision to suspend the President’s son’s account, after he tweeted a video promoting hydroxychloroquine and discouraging masks.
About time the House pulled in top internet companies. FB can deny all they want but they in fact are censoring conservative posts.
This Twitter handle (@FacebooksTop10) shows the top 10 performing Facebook pages every day, ranked by total number of interactions.
Question 6: Do you think the United States should consider delaying the election scheduled for November 3, 2020?
A lot of you had a lot of thoughts on this one.
Before the probable storm of “omg Trump wants to delay the election” comments, take a look at the fraudulent signatures Kanye’s campaign just submitted to multiple states. What makes everyone think this won’t happen with an *actual* important election?
For context, Kanye West filed a petition to get on the ballot in New Jersey with a collection of what were described as “egregiously bad, almost a degree insulting” signatures, including many that appeared to be written in the same hand. (Many i’s were dotted with the same circle.)
Delaying the election is possibly the worst idea our President has ever had (and that's saying something). The upcoming election is the main thing that's causing the hyper-politicization of the pandemic (which is resulting in the deaths of Americans) and the divisiveness that's being stirred up across the nation. It needs to be over quickly before our country gets even more divided and falls into even greater ruin.
I don’t think the President believes or actually wants to delay the election. That tweet was about 2 things-distracting from a report this morning about the 32% reduction in GDP and continuing to lay groundwork that the results of this election can not be trusted. This might be enough to continue to incite violence amongst his supporters if he loses. Scary times, man.
I do not believe we should delay the Presidential Election...BUT...we have had to delay going back to work, going back to school, watching sports, socializing in bars, going to church, going to gyms, attending weddings and funerals, traveling, and countless other normal (and some very important) activities. One could only conclude that delaying the election would fit all the other activities we have had to delay. The alternative is mail-in voting?? Read about the CBS experiment with mail-in voting and the NY 12th Congressional District Democratic primary using mail-in voting. Given a choice of the two, we should all prefer a delayed election over the imminent chaos and fraud of mail-in voting.
So… you do think we should delay the election then?
I believe this user is referring to this experiment by CBS News, where 97% of mailed “ballots” were successfully delivered.
Trump can suggest moving the election but his term will still end in January. It doesn't keep going. For someone who always votes by mail he's such a hypocrite. People like to say people can wait in line at Walmart they can wait in line to vote. They dont even think about the people working the polls. Up in NJ and down in Tn (With glorious early voting) poll workers seem to all be older retirees. They're the ones I'm concerned about. I already have a Raiders mask picked out to scare the political people outside the library if I vote in person.
This anonymous user, voting in person in November:
Question 7: Which ice cream is best?
Though hard ice cream won the tally, the soft serve crowd came out in full force in the comments:
I feel ashamed to admit I answered soft-serve. I know people are going to say it's not real ice cream and full of chemicals and generally poison. And I agree. But custard from Rita's Water Ice is unbeatable...sweet sweet poison.
Friend, don’t be ashamed. You’re not alone.
Soft serve frozen custard is far superior to all else
Soft serve twist might be the best but who can't crush a pint of Ben & Jerry's (take the factory tour in VT when you can-free samples!!). You can't beat a nice stracciatella gelato in Venice though, or any gelato in Venice, or anywhere in Italy for that matter.
Soft serve, Ben & Jerry’s and Italian gelato. That was quite the trip.
Vegan ice cream!
Okay!
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