onfocus

"'For most advertisers, having an ad placed on a Steve Bannon-affiliated outlet is the stuff of nightmares,' said Nandini Jammi, the co-founder of Check My Ads, an ad industry watchdog. 'The fact that ad exchanges are still serving ads should tell brands that their vendors are not vetting their inventory, and I wouldn’t be surprised if advertisers who have found themselves on War Room request refunds.'"

Alternate title: how Google profits from online hate.

Tim Heidecker with probably the bravest parody ever. I think so. Just go back 10, 20 years and you'll realize how upside down it is out there.

"Wirecutter continues to bring in record revenue for the Times, which is sitting on over $1 billion in cash. Yet our members have seen next to no financial benefit from their vital contributions to this success. Times management has offered paltry guaranteed wage increases of only 0.5%, despite soaring inflation and cash flows."

I'm a big fan of Wirecutter and I'm sad that I won't be able to use the site this holiday season. It sounds like the people who produce it are not being fairly compensated for a stellar product.

"Brooks was released on $1,000 bail, however, despite being charged with running over a woman with his car — the same method he allegedly used to murder five people on Sunday. The district attorney's office has already admitted that this bail was 'inappropriately low,' and promised to open an internal review. Sadly, however, this is no surprise to anyone who has witnessed the long-standing problems of law enforcement failures around domestic violence."

Domestic violence is violence. We should be treating it as a serious offense with serious consequences.

"After a nearly monthlong civil trial, the jury in U.S. District Court deadlocked on two key claims but found the white nationalists liable on four other counts in the lawsuit filed by nine people who suffered physical or emotional injuries during the two days of demonstrations."

Four years later. The wheels of justice are slow, but hopefully this means less incentive for violence in the future.

"But, he was the guy who was there. And he didn’t irrevocably screw it up. He didn’t get in the way. He didn’t turn the whole process into some kind of political Rorschach test."

Yep, so true. We have many things to be thankful for. Also true that we need more progress.

"Under the contract, which would apply to all employees systemwide, workers receive wage increases that are 25 cents per hour higher than Oregon or Washington’s minimum wage requirement, until the starting wage is $15. Burgerville began implementing this policy two years ago and now offers $14.25 per hour as a minimum wage. The contract also calls for tipping to be allowed in restaurants, which results in an average increase of over $2 per hour for each employee. Burgerville instituted this policy in 2019, as well."

Happy to see labor negotiations moving things in a positive direction. Another reason to support Burgerville!

Interoperability is the simple idea that new services should be able to plug into dominant ones. An interoperable Facebook would mean that you wouldn’t have to choose between leaving Facebook and continuing to socialize with the friends, communities and customers you have there.

Several concrete steps that could help reduce Facebook's harm and a nice summary of various shapes regulation could take.

I'm not on Facebook but I would love to have RSS of my friends' Facebook feeds. Then I could see their posts and read them along with the blogs and other news sources I read (in chronological order) every day.

Meanwhile, these same political journalists are also handicapping the 2022 and 2024 elections as if things were normal — as if it were still just a choice between two equally legitimate political parties, rather than a referendum on whether the government should be allowed to function, whether the people should be allowed to pick their leaders in the future, and whether white Christian nationalism formally replaces pluralism as the country’s organizing principle.

It seems like journalists everywhere aren’t allowed to accurately describe how the Republican Party is behaving. This article demonstrates what a more accurate description looks like.

"Since July, the reduction in family poverty has been mostly sustained by monthly payments worth as much as $300 per child. The payments have lifted between 3 and 4 million children above the poverty line each month. “The sheer magnitude of just that number is not what we normally see on a regular basis, especially from a single policy,” Megan Curran, director of policy at Columbia’s Center on Poverty, said in an interview."

[this is good] (But the sub-headline should be the big part and the headline should be the small part.)

The $1 trillion infrastructure plan that President Joe Biden signed into law Monday has money for roads, bridges, ports, rail transit, safe water, the power grid, broadband internet and more.

[this is good]

"Herschel Walker, the former professional football player running for Senate in Georgia, is accused of repeatedly threatening his ex-wife’s life, but won Mr. Trump’s endorsement and appears to be consolidating party support behind his candidacy."

When there are no legal or professional consequences for domestic violence, violent people get promoted to powerful positions. Republicans admire a history of violence in their candidates.

"Right-clicker-mentality is a value we should all aspire to. As Matthew Gault wrote on Motherboard: “Sometimes a word or phrase comes along that’s so perfect it almost makes you angry.” “To right-click is one thing, but to have a right-clicker mentality implies an ontological break between crypto-fans and critics.”"

I really like this turn of phrase. Right-clicking implies being a power user, being curious, using more than default settings. Right-clicking can lead to viewing a page source which can lead to all sorts of learning and control over what you're consuming. If everyone had right-clicker-mentality, features like blocking view-source in Chrome wouldn't be a possibility.



p.s. Here's a good NFT joke.

Oregon State’s online Ecampus program has seen a substantial increase — 14% this fall on top of an 18% increase last year.

Nice to see this positive news. I’ve been very fortunate to work at Oregon State Ecampus for the last five years. Ecampus is a dedicated group of people working hard to support remote students and help OSU faculty deliver existing programs online. I’m obviously biased but it feels like a unique part of the online education world that I’m glad I can contribute to.

"...Google and Facebook’s contract stipulated that they would “cooperate and assist each other in responding to any Antitrust Action” and “promptly and fully inform the Other Party of any Governmental Communication Related to the Agreement.” Antitrust is mentioned at least 20 times in the contract."

When you know what you're doing is wrong, but the money is too good: Jedi Blue.