Clotaire Rapaille was interviewed in an episode of Frontline on advertising and marketing - interesting what he had to say about the differences in how the French and Americans think about cheese.

For example, if I know that in America the cheese is dead, which means is pasteurized, which means legally dead and scientifically dead, and we don’t want any cheese that is alive, then I have to put that up front. I have to say this cheese is safe, is pasteurized, is wrapped up in plastic. I know that plastic is a body bag. You can put it in the fridge. I know the fridge is the morgue; that’s where you put the dead bodies. And so once you know that, this is the way you market cheese in America.

I started working with a French company in America, and they were trying to sell French cheese to the Americans. And they didn’t understand, because in France the cheese is alive, which means that you can buy it young, mature or old, and that’s why you have to read the age of the cheese when you go to buy the cheese. So you smell, you touch, you poke. If you need cheese for today, you want to buy a mature cheese. If you want cheese for next week, you buy a young cheese. And when you buy young cheese for next week, you go home, [but] you never put the cheese in the refrigerator, because you don’t put your cat in the refrigerator. It’s the same; it’s alive. We are very afraid of getting sick with cheese. By the way, more French people die eating cheese than Americans die. But the priority is different; the logic of emotion is different. The French like the taste before safety. Americans want safety before the taste.

Marketing research never ceases to fascinate me.

You may be sexier than I am, but I am nerdier than you are. I gotta go with my strengths.

Death by farming, meat grinder mode, death saves and the finer points of character creation.

Yep - its hip to be a nerd now. At least thats what I keep telling myself.

For those who don’t know about Dungeons & Dragons - D&D as its popularly known - was a tabletop role-playing game known for its miniature figurines and 20-sided dice. Players were entranced by the way it combined a choose-your-own-adventure structure with group performance. In D&D, participants create their own characters — often magical creatures like elves and wizards — to go on quests in fantasy worlds. A narrator and referee, known as the Dungeon Master, guides players through each twist and turn of the plot. There’s an element of chance: The roll of the die can determine if a blow is strong enough to take down a monster or whether a stranger will help you. The game has since become one of the most popular in the world, celebrated in nostalgic television shows and dramatized in movies. It is played in homes, at large conventions and even in prisons.

A fascinating piece at the Marshall Project by Keri Blakingerabout a group of men on death row in Texas who play Dungeons & Dragons.

To cope with the isolation they face daily, the men on death row spend a lot of their time in search of escape — something to ease the racing thoughts or the crushing regrets. Some read books or find religion. Some play games like Scrabble or jailhouse chess. Others turn to D&D, where they can feel a small sense of the freedom they have left behind.

[…]

Playing Dungeons & Dragons is more difficult in prison than almost anywhere else. Just as in the free world, each gaming session can last for hours and is part of a larger campaign that often stretches on for months or years. But in prison, players can’t just look up the game rules online. The hard-bound manuals that detail settings, characters and spells are expensive and can be difficult to get past mailroom censors. Some states ban books about the game altogether, while others prohibit anything with a hard cover. Books with maps are generally forbidden, and dice are often considered contraband, because they can be used for gambling. Prisoners frequently replace them with game spinners crafted out of paper and typewriter parts.

On the old death row, prisoners could call out moves easily through the cell bars; they also had the chance to play face to face, sitting around the metal tables in the common room or under the sun of the outdoor rec yard.

Mark Kennedy reporting for The Associated Press:

TheSinger-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who popularized beach bum soft rock with the escapist Caribbean-flavored song “Margaritaville” and turned that celebration of loafing into a billion-dollar empire of restaurants, resorts and frozen concoctions, has died. He was 76.

“Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” a statement posted to Buffett’s official website and social media pages said late Friday. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”

Heartbreak and terror, masterfully covered by the students affected. And as usual, nothing will be done about the obscene amount of gun violence in America.

Kevin Williams writing for Heatmap:

with an adapter that allows its cord to be plugged into any NEMA 14-50 outlet, common at RV parks and campsites all across the country.

I had never used one before, but it was stupendously simple at a nearby campground. I didn’t need a cellphone to open an app to connect to the charger and start my session. I just plugged in the car like I would my iPhone.

Charging wasn’t blisteringly fast — but it wasn’t slow either. Since the car and the cord are both self-limited to avoid overheating the power source, it maxed out at 9.6kW per hour. That’s not the 19.2 kW speeds the car is capable of, but it’s still very good, and stronger than the 6.6 kW found at many level 2 public chargers. Even considering the Lucid Air’s large 118 kWh battery, the rate I was charging would have been enough to go from about 15% to more than 80% overnight. An EV with a smaller battery could no doubt recharge completely in a shorter amount of time – the 9.6 KW supplied by that Lucid cord surpasses the AC charging speeds of some modern EVs.

The plug is not unique to Lucid either. Many EVs come standard with mobile charging cords that are capable of matching (or getting pretty darn close to) the maximum AC charging speeds the vehicle is capable of. If they aren’t supplied, it’s not hard to find a portable EVSE that can do so, for a few hundred dollars.

The key thing is that NEMA 14-50 standard outlet.

Couldn’t agree more - charging should be as simple as plugging in your toaster.

ExxonMobil anti-EV ad signals an end to the partnership between oil companies & American carmakers. The oil companies were happy to play along and pretend they were on board with EV adoption as long as it helped their public image and EV car sales were a niche maket. With the major car makers now pushing EVs, consumers buying EVs and the federal government mandating EVs - they are back to climate denial and protecting their revenues.

Amy Westervelt reporting for The New Republic:

“This ad illustrates the regressive shift from excessive greenwash back to blatant climate denial,” Christine Arena, a former advertising executive, told me. In the 2010s, Arena helped the fossil fuel industry greenwash its product as a V.P. at Edelman; since then, she has been called upon to testify about oil companies’ advertising tactics in congressional hearings. “High on war profits, Exxon is done pretending to be advancing climate solutions. By celebrating oil as freedom and condemning clean energy as a kind of captivity, it demonstrates the classic propaganda tactic of warping the truth and cloaking its polluting product in a universally accepted ideal.”

Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe and former federal judge J. Michael Luttig explain their argument on the disqualification of Donald Trump for the presidency, citing Section 3, Article 14th of the Constitution.

Wake up, Mr. Trump. It’s not up to you. It’s upto to the Supreme Court of the United States reviewing what the secretaries of state determine and they take an oath uphold the Constitution. And the Constitution tells them that an insurrectionist who tried to overturn the country’s constitution cannot be entrusted with protecting it in the future. So stay tuned. This is going to to be a saga that lasts between now and the election.

Laurence H. Tribe and J. Michael Luttig in The Atlantic:

The historically unprecedented federal and state indictments of former President Donald Trump have prompted many to ask whether his conviction pursuant to any or all of these indictments would be either necessary or sufficient to deny him the office of the presidency in 2024.

Having thought long and deeply about the text, history, and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause for much of our professional careers, both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point. The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation. The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup.

The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again. The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause.

Indeed, there are only two outcomes here - Congress will enforce our Constitution or the United States will be exposed as just another banana republic.

Strap in, the next few months are going to be … interesting.

In a Gallup poll on the perceived safety of 16 US cities, Republicans were 29% less likely to rate cities as safe compared to Democrats. In 2006, the gap was only 2%. An entire generation of voters brainwashed by Fox News.

Guitar playing according to Jimmy Page:

Dynamics. Light and shade. Whisper to the thunder. Sort of invite you in, intoxicating. The thing that fascinates me about the six string is that everyone has a different approach. They all play in a different way. And you know, there personality comes through.

Here is how I like to think of Page’s ‘personality’:

1. Paint a picture of a forest in the mind of the listener
2. Fill that forest with woodland creatures
3. Burn it to the fucking ground

Wildfires, floods, record temperatures, record drought, “unprecedented”, “uncharted territory”. The effects of climate change are now impossible to miss. So now what?

Serge Schmemann’s opinion piece in The New York Times - ‘It Is No Longer Possible to Escape What We Have Done to Ourselves’.

Joy Reid on Donald Trump’s arrest and mugshot:

This case, and I think Fani Willis is a hero. She is a national hero. Because she more than any prosecutor in this country, and and I respect Jack Smith, I respect all the prosecutors that are doing this - she is the only one who said these wealthy, powerful, privileged men and women are just American citizens. And when they break the law they will take that picture.

US presidential historian Michael Beschloss on the significance of Donald Trump’s booking at the Fulton county jail:

The moral of the story is in 1960, this great iconic champion of of human rights, of civil rights, of voting rights being stopped in this jail so he couldn’t keep on his work expanding those rights. Here we are in 2023, a guy who is about as far as close to the opposite of Dr. King as I can think of is Donal Trump. And Donald Trump is the oponent of those civil rights and human rights and voting rights. And he proved that in what he tried to do in Georgia. Thank God he’s brought to justice. And where is it happening? The Fulton County jail. You know, life has turned around, the cycle has turned. As Dr. King, I think, would say the arc of the moral universe maybe long, but tonight it seems to be, at least in Fulton county, bending toward justice.

Seems to be. I wouldn’t say it is complete until we see Donald J Trump in an orange jump suit and shackles being hauled into jail.

You don’t need to go digging for ancient fossils to see evolution in action. Vox posted a video demonstrating things that humans don’t need to survive anymore still hanging around on our bodies, including unnecessary arm muscles and vestigial tail bones.

The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has released a mug shot of former President Donald Trump. Jail records show Trump was placed under arrest and booked as inmate No. P01135809.

Trump’s surrender in Georgia marks the fourth time this year the former president has turned himself in to local or federal officials after criminal charges were brought against him. No matter what happens in next years election, this is how Donald J. Trump will be remembered by history.

This mugshot will be his legacy.

Eric Seufert writing on Threads:

Twitter has seen a dramatic decrease in its Top Downloaded chart position across both platforms since the app was renamed to X. Why? The situation presents a fascinating case study at the intersection of brand equity and mobile platform dynamics.

The case is somewhat unprecedented: Twitter built a ubiquitous, household-name brand over the course of nearly 2 decades and then simply abandoned it, leaving it to be exploited by competitors, unopposed, through the mobile platforms’ branded search ads.

[…]

My hypothesis is that, while the terminally-online are entirely aware of Twitter’s rebrand to X, most consumers aren’t, and their searches for “Twitter” on platform stores surface ads and genuine search results that are in no way redolent of Twitter.

How do you throw away two decades of branding and expect no disruption to your product? I really don’t understand this trend (HBOMax just changed to Max), seems like the marketing departments are bored and need something to do.

From the BBC Computer Literacy Project:

In the 1980s, the BBC explored the world of computing in The Computer Literacy Project. They commissioned a home computer (the BBC Micro) and taught viewers how to program.

The Computer Literacy Project chronicled a decade of information technology and was a milestone in the history of computing in Britain, helping to inspire a generation of coders.

This site contains all 146 of the original Computer Literacy Project programmes plus 121 related programmes, broken down into 2,509 categorised, searchable clips.

This was a pretty amazing 10 year long show, we had nothing like it growing up in the US. The closest we had was the The Computer Chronicles on PBS, though that was more geared to the business side of things. This episode is a great run down on the different languages of the time and does a great explanation of the difference and basics of each.

Its amazing how most of those are still in use today - I have used C, FORTH, Pascal, BASIC in my professional career as a software developer. Never did get the point of Logo or why it was a default when teaching young children to code.

It is sad that kids do not have anything close to this available to them today.

The Computer History Museum, with the permission of Apple, has made available the original program source code of MacPaint and the underlying QuickDraw graphics library.

MacPaint is the drawing program application which interacts with the user, interprets mouse and keyboard requests, and decides what is to be drawn where. The high-level logic is written in Apple Pascal, packaged in a single file with 5,822 lines. There are an additional 3,583 lines of code in assembler language for the underlying Motorola 68000 microprocessor, which implement routines needing high performance and some interfaces to the operating system.

[…]

In writing MacPaint, Bill was as concerned with whether human readers would understand the code as he was with what the computer would do with it. He later said about software in general, “It’s an art form, like any other art form… I would spend time rewriting whole sections of code to make them more cleanly organized, more clear. I’m a firm believer that the best way to prevent bugs is to make it so that you can read through the code and understand exactly what it’s doing… And maybe that was a little bit counter to what I ran into when I first came to Apple… If you want to get it smooth, you’ve got to rewrite it from scratch at least five times.”¹

MacPaint was finished in October 1983. It coexisted in only 128K of memory with QuickDraw and portions of the operating system, and ran on an 8 Mhz processor that didn’t have floating-point operations. Even with those meager resources, MacPaint provided a level of performance and function that established a new standard for personal computers.

Summer reading for everyone’s inner geek.

These classic movie posters from Michal Krasnopolski are all based on a simple grid of a circle, a square, and four intersecting lines:

Here are some of my some of my favorite movies: