XBOX - The Era of The 'Male Gamer' Is Over.

Someone who earns money will buy one of these,
and let you use it.

If you're male and between the ages of 12-54, you know that Microsoft "unveiled" its new flagship version of its flagship timewaster, the XBOX. You also know that Microsoft could give a shit less about you as a market. And this enrages you.

For the last decade Microsoft (and its ilk) have given your 'market segment' a lot of attention and influence in the culture. How else do we explain unemployable fat dudes with million-plus views on their "How to Play [Game Title]" videos?

"Gaming" has been elevated culturally to a legitimate activity, right on par with home maintenance, childcare, and even slightly above food service (as if to cement it's prerequisite social privilege).

But here's another reality: employment among the 18-49 male 'market segment' is at an all-time low, and all indicators point toward a continuing downward trend.

You have no money, and Microsoft knows it.

But your parents and your employable female relationship (wife? girlfriend? relative?) are somehow content to let you sit about in their basements and spare rooms as if keeping you out of trouble was the last/best thing to do while they go about earning.

To the people who are earning incomes, "gaming" is not really a priority. So XBOX is being marketed to them for the activity they enjoy: watching television. Everybody in the world knows XBOX plays games, and that's precisely what you'll be doing while the income earners are working and sleeping.

So for a few hours a day you'll sit and fume at how "disengaged" your immediate relations are while they sit "passively" in front of the TV, oblivious to the fact that this is exactly how they see you while they are out actively engaged in the real world.

Obama, NSA, China, and the Android Surveillance Network

This is a surveillance device that lets you make calls.

It's like this: Google (Android) (and 2nd, Apple's IOS) built the world's most prolific, distributed surveillance network. Your Android (and IOS) mobile device keeps track of LOTS of data, but most importantly, *with whom you are in proximity.*

Your calling/texting/Facebook is of little value - that's why the marketing companies get that data.

The intelligence gatherers want to know who you're around and what you're talking about. So when a group (N < 1) of targeted devices are in proximity, the mic/camera are activated and 'samples' taken. Those samples are analyzed for keywords, flagged for human review if necessary.

Ever wonder why so many politicos and celebrities used Blackberry? (it wasn't a surveillance net like Android/IOS.)

Why did the NSA ask for/get months of phone data? Chinese hacking.

China wants access to the Google surveillance platform(s). If China can hack their way in, they too can spy on influential Americans.

Probable scenario: China wants to promote its wine products. It targets the Northern California wine region by undermining political support for the wine growers. This is accomplished by using the Android/IOS systems to track influential people (nodes) in the political network and interrupting or introducing conversation elements (i.e., critical messages do not relay, or conversely, messages introduced or edited by China (the "Inherent Trust¹" problem.)

For scaled analysis systems to identify this activity, the NSA needs to develop 'signatures.' This is why they needs tons of phone data. Ironic that a gov't agency is coming under fire for doing its job (arguably very well, too.)

Obama's role in this is simply to be a distraction. While you're busy being angry at him or venting spittle about the NSA, Google and Apple are quietly downloading your family's photos, listening to what you talk about after sex (with both your spouse AND your affairs!), gathering data about your TV viewing², and most importantly, which clusters you associate with.

This is not the future - it is the now. The present. What lies ahead is the revealing of this system and your eventual coming to terms with it.

----
Notes:
1 - you have been taught to trust 'your' device in that when it tells you a message has been received from your friend, you believe it 100%.

2 - YouTube has an media ID system that tracks copyright infringement on the website. Android uses the same system to identify what you're watching when it samples mic audio from your phone. Most accurate market research, ever.

Monterey Jack, Meet Monterey Jill � Sociological Images

Monterey Jack, Meet Monterey Jill � Sociological Images: I mean we all know that dieting and women go together like peas and carrots. We know this — collectively and together, even if we don’t agree that it should be this way – not because it’s inevitable or natural, but because we constantly get reminded that women should be on diets and dieting is a feminine activity.

I think SocImages reading is too generous. This is what Safeway (Lucerne) is saying:

"Eat this you fucking cow."

As usual, my services this week are free.

Breaking: Silicio Barrio startup demos 3D tortilla printer : Pocho

Breaking: Silicio Barrio startup demos 3D tortilla printer : Pocho: There were “ooohs” and “aaaahs” as scantily-clad MasaTek spokesmodels passed out fresh, hot corn tortillas embossed with the images of La Virgen and Frida Kahlo to the audience (photo, above) while he spoke.

Let's just let that sentence wash over us.

Shale Oil And Gas: The Contrarian View - Forbes

Shale Oil And Gas: The Contrarian View - Forbes: The petrochemical sector is probably the most integrated of all industries, because every operation generates by-products that can be used in other processes, provided that they are co-located. One example is carbon monoxide, which is a valuable fuel or feedstock if it can be used near the source, but is too cheap to be worth transporting any significant distance.

The integration can always improve.

Bradley Manning is off limits at SF Gay Pride parade, but corporate sleaze is embraced | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Bradley Manning is off limits at SF Gay Pride parade, but corporate sleaze is embraced | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: Third, when I wrote several weeks ago about the remarkable shift in public opinion on gay equality, I noted that this development is less significant than it seems because the cause of gay equality poses no real threat to elite factions or to how political and economic power in the US are distributed. If anything, it bolsters those power structures because it completely and harmlessly assimilates a previously excluded group into existing institutions and thus incentivizes them to accommodate those institutions and adopt their mindset. This event illustrates exactly what I meant.

That's why it's called "power", Glenn.

Astute observations, nonetheless.

Also, go read The Last Psychiatrist.

Gordon's Notes: The Net is a forest. It has fires.

Gordon's Notes: The Net is a forest. It has fires.: The first fire I remember was the end of Usenet. Yeah, I know it's technically still running, but it's a faint shadow of the days when I posted about Mosaic for Windows in WinOS2. The Usenet archive nearly vanished when DejaNews failed, but Google rescued it. That was a different Google that the one we know now.

The next fire took out GeoCities. GeoCities was once the third most valuable property on the Net; thirty-eight million web pages died when Yahoo closed it. (Did you know Lycos.com is still around and that it still hosts Tripod? I was shocked.)

What meteor will take out YouTube? (Energy costs?)

PS - this is a good blog. I'll miss seeing it in Google Reader.

George W. Bush’s presidency, in 24 charts

George W. Bush’s presidency, in 24 charts: But in the interest of history, let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at Bush’s record, issue by issue, and, of course, in charts.

So many Teabaggers forget that every one of their claimed ills was set in motion during the Bush Presidency. Saying "Obama owns it now!" is like shitting on someone's carpet and walking out of their house saying "You own it now!"

George W Bush was the worst president/presidency in modern history.

We Had No Idea What Alexander Graham Bell Sounded Like. Until Now | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine

We Had No Idea What Alexander Graham Bell Sounded Like. Until Now | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine: Inside the lab, Bell and his associates bent over their pioneering audio apparatus, testing the potential of a variety of materials, including metal, wax, glass, paper, plaster, foil and cardboard, for recording sound, and then listening to what they had embedded on discs or cylinders. However, the precise methods they employed in early efforts to play back their recordings are lost to history.

As a result, says curator Carlene Stephens of the National Museum of American History, the discs, ranging from 4 to 14 inches in diameter, remained “mute artifacts.” She began to wonder, she adds, “if we would ever know what was on them.”

The historic discs bear an uncanny resemblance to modern compact discs.