I recently saw a shorter version of this video played as a commercial at the AMC Surprise Pointe 14 theater in Arizona. It’s the sort of public relations message that a corporation produces as damage control when it sees the potential for serious, perhaps permanent, harm to the company.
My first thought was that a lot of what’s said in the video borders on being patronizing, in particular the Data Science Manager’s chart of The World of False News. But then I decided that these people, who are undoubtedly extremely well paid, are sincerely struggling to figure out what they’re doing.
The catch is that in any company everything comes down from the top, and I do not believe that Mark Zuckerberg has a sincere interest in cleaning up his mess. The only thing that will scare him straight is a mass exodus of users.
Today it’s being reported that Facebook’s secret sharing of user data goes much further than previously revealed. Like the Haight-Ashbury Hippie Movement in San Francisco that started out optimistically with the Human Be-In, only to crash and burn during the strung-out Summer of Love, Facebook has turned into a bad trip.
As explained previously, I deactivated my Facebook account due to a slew of offensive spam ads in my newsfeed. When Prue suggested watching a video on Facebook, I went back in to take a look. (I originally joined Facebook at Prue’s request.)
To my surprise, I was able to log in as if I hadn’t deactivated the account, which I don’t think is how it’s supposed to work. But at least I didn’t see any of those really stupid ads.
Scrolling down the newsfeed I spotted a happy accident, like the one I posted last year, where two items, presented one on top of the other, made a visual joke. Both examples also happen to have comic book connections. In this one the Marvel Comics X-Men character Storm, as drawn by the late Dave Cockrum, comes to life in the face of Mindy Kaling.
This picture was taken in 1966. ’66! But at the time the high-resolution quality of the images being taken by the lunar orbiters was hidden from the public. Read all about it here.
Another lunar discovery from the Sixties was the Moon Maid, and there was no covering her up!
Speaking of the Korean Peninsula, after my father died I had the title and registration of his 2014 Kia Soul transfered in my name. Tomorrow I will be selling the car to a Phoenix area dealership that, according to Kelly Blue Book, is offering me a fair price for a cash deal. I make tremendous deals. The very best deals. 😉
After my father bought the car four years ago, he called me to say how pleased he was with his purchase, and now I know why. Being a Honda-Toyota guy, I had my doubts about Kia, but with the Korean brands Samsung and LG taking over the HDTV market from Sony and Panasonic, I was interested in driving the Soul myself; which I started doing 18 months ago, sad to say only after my father had a stroke. But I was, and continue to be, very impressed with this little car that’s part subcompact, part hatchback, and part mini-SUV.
Dad bought the base model, and that seems to me as the way to go. A more expensive, full-featured trim would make the Soul less of a bargain than it is. I’m surprised that it has Bluetooth integration and voice recognition, but it does and they work well. Seating comfort and the action of the various controls are, if anything, superior to my 2017 Toyota Camry XLE.
There isn’t much cargo space in the back, but that’s actually a good thing because the height is excellent, and perfectly suited for someone who has trouble bending forward and/or down to get bags of groceries loaded and unloaded.
With the many Souls I see here in Sun City West, I’m wondering if this is another example of a car that was originally intended for young buyers and instead found its market with Boomers and retirees. That’s what happened with the Honda Element, and unfortunately it killed that particular model, but the Kia Soul seems to be selling very well.
The bottom line is that I like this little car so much that if I needed a car myself I’d keep it and make a road trip out of driving it back home to Massachusetts.
For 2019, Honda is bringing the Super Cub motorcycle back to America. This time with keyless electric start, electronic fuel injection, cast wheels, and an anti-lock front brake. Should this be my next set of retirement wheels?
It seems that Logan’s Run is right after all. Carousel renewal doesn’t work!
One of my retirement projects, as told back here, was to get my Sony 300-disc CD carousel changer working again. A couple of days ago I finally got around to doing it. There was no avoiding removing all of the CD’s, which took a while.
There are three belts in the player. One of them works the door, another turns the table around, and the third loads/unloads the discs. Immediately I could see that one of them had fallen off of its pulleys. There are text instructions, as well as various YouTube videos, showing how to replace the belts in a Sony MegaChanger, but I ended up finding my own approach to disassembly and gaining access to the belts.
The other belt in back was holding, but very loose, and the belt under the table seemed all right. But of course I replaced all three of them.
After putting the deck back together, I was very pleased with myself, because it worked perfectly. The table turned, the door opened and closed, and a disc loaded and played.
Not wanting to assume success before being certain everything was good, I didn’t replace the 300 CD’s. As explained back here, every CD player I have ever owned, cheap and expensive alike, eventually starts skipping. Unfortunately, the Sony carousel is no exception. I did the usual things in the hope of fixing the problem, but of course they didn’t help. The unit was made in July, 2000, so I’m not surprised.
This relic from the pre-streaming era of music can probably be fixed, but it isn’t worth the additional effort to me. There was a positive outcome to this little retirement project, however. Before the player started skipping I got through almost an hour of listening to music. Playing a couple of very familiar CD’s, the sound was exactly how I remembered it, with all of the advantages and disappointments of CD audio. Loud and clear, but with everything pushed up front and jammed together. Cymbals in particular didn’t sound real. Once again I was reminded of why LP’s have yet to die as a format.
I briefly contemplated buying a new CD player, but then I had a moment of inspiration. I went to the basement and pulled out the DVD player I retired when first moving to Blu-ray. It’s this little gem.
Panasonic DVD-S47
Wow. And wow. At last, Compact Discs sound like they should. I have ripped quite a few CD’s for playback on my Logitech Media Server network, and indeed they sound excellent on the Logitech Squeezebox Touch player. Which proved to me once again that it’s the quality of digital-to-analog converters that makes the difference.
Being amazed at how much better the Panasonic DVD player sounds than the Sony CD changer, I checked the specs and found the explanation. It has a superior digital decoder and DAC that support 192kHz/24-bit audio. Even today that’s considered to be something of a premium feature.
So for now I’m happy, despite being limited to single-disc playback. It’s better than having to rip all of those CD’s, or buy a new player for that matter. Here’s hoping the Panasonic player doesn’t start skipping tomorrow!
