Technology posts

In the two weeks I was on vacation in France, my nephew Casey got married and my nephew Ryan graduated from college. That was the good news. Here's some of the other news.

Amazon closed the Whole Foods in our neighborhood because it could, and because it wasn't quite profitable enough, and maybe because a mental health facility is being built across the street and down a block. So there went that. We lost Bartell's in 2023, Whole Foods now. Our neighborhood feels like it's shrinking. Oh, and while I was gone, the U.S. entered another Middle East war, because it could, and because, you know, Trump got all trumpy about being trumped by glowing Fox News coverage of Israel's attacks on Iran and wanted in on that sweet, sweet action. Lookatme lookatme lookatme lookatme. Somebody needs to tell him he's going to be dead soon and most of the world will want to piss on his grave, but the only people with his ear are opportunists, sycophants, and those using his popularity for their own greedy ends. Not that he'd hear anyone else anyway.

Those things made me sad, but what made me mad my first full day back? Like furious beyond all reason? Apparently the two weeks I was gone was when tech bros decided to foist AI upon anyone who needed to write anything.

So yesterday morning I opened my work laptop and began to sort through the 200+ emails there, one of which, from the very day I left, needed a prompt answer. I began to do that. And in the space where I would write, there was a little grayed-out message: “Help me write,” it said. Which distracted me from writing. And it wouldn't go away. I googled it and found out it was part of something called the Gemini program, which, yes, sounds like a doomsday project out of James Bond movie like “Moonraker”: “You will never stop the Gemini Program, Mr. Bond.”

It wasn't just Google, either. When I opened Microsoft Word on my home computer, I was greeted with this:

Worse, it costs. On top of the money you're already paying annually for Microsoft Office. It's an ad. And I couldn't dismiss it. It took opening up an older Word document to create an option to dismiss. So far that's worked for all Word docs but maybe tomorrow it won't. Meanwhile a colleague figured out how to turn off the Gemini thingee so that's gone, too. But both dismissals took several frustrating hours, by which time my morning, not to mention my nerves, were shot.

But the vacation was nice. More on it later.

My friend Andrew Reed forwarded this one to me. It's about as bad as anything I've seen from IMDb's algorithm.

My nephew Ryan cuts IMDb some slack if the movie is right but the role is wrong. See: John Huston, known for playing the American in Tampico in “Treasure of Sierra Madre.” He thinks, “Well, at least they got the movie right.” This isn't even that. This is: wrong movie, wrong role. One of the greatest directors of all time is known as a writer. And writing which movies? Surely some of the greatest, most influential, most known movies in the history of moviedom? Naw. “Seven Samurai,” “Rashomon,” whatevs. “Ikiru,” “Yojimbo,” big deal. Don't you get it, dude? “The Hidden Fortress” influenced George Lucas! That's ur-“Star Wars,” baby! That's why it's there. Not that other crap.

PERSON: Who's John Huston?

IMDb: The guy at the beginning of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” that Bogart touches for dough a couple of times. [Scrunches nose] Uncredited.

PERSON: Oh. So bit actor then.

IMDb: I guess.

So another social media account bites the dust. Yesterday I deleted my Instagram account—and with it, Threads—although none of it will be official until Feb. 26. I guess in the interim they want me to think about all the good times we had together. Here's one of their final pop-ups:

Yes, “Something else.”

I left Facebook in early 2020 (because Zuckerberg), left Twitter in late 2022 (because Musk), tried a few of the platforms vying for the crown, then opted for Instagram in the fall of 2023. Which, yes, Zuckerberg again. But at the time I felt Zuck > Musk, and that's probably still true. They're both weiners with way too much money that need a Teddy Roosevelt to bust their trusses. Musk is just farther along the white supremacist scale. He actually delivers the Nazi salute at American rallies, then shows it was all a mistake by addressing far-right rallies in Germany and letting them know they shouldn't feel guilty about the past. 

Life has actually been pretty awful since I joined Instagram on Sept. 1, 2023. My cat Jellybean was diagnosed with cancer and we had to put her to sleep a few months later. My brother was murdered. Last February we adopted two cats and within 11 days, and despite four vet visits, one died of (undiagnosed) acute kidney failure. My 90-something father had a stroke, then a bleeding ulcer, then the flu. We elected a convicted felon who promised to bring autocracy to the White House and is doing it. Among the subservient at his inauguration, all sitting in a row, was Zuckerberg and Musk, making the world unsafe for democracy.

I'll never get that everyone keeps staying on these things. Worse, they stay and say “Oh, I'm never on there.” Then leave. You're helping. Our ancestors were able to leave entire countries because they knew it would be better for them and their progeny, and now that progeny can't even bother to leave social media platforms? Stop. Be a person.

Now, for what it's worth, I'm on BlueSky. It was founded by Jack Dorsey, the same guy who founded Twitter. Its current CEO is Lantian “Jay” Graber. Lantian (蓝天) is Chinese for “blue sky” but apparently that's just a massive coincidence. We'll see how it goes. At this point I feel about social media and Silicon Valley the way Woody Allen's character felt about poliltical leaders in “Sleeper”: They're all terrible. In six months we'll be stealing Lantian's nose.

If I were king of the world I would ban this practice.

This is from my gmail account. If I'm going through mail and deleting as I go, with the cursor over the trash-can icon, it looks like this:

Click, delete.

But if the next one in line is a sponsored ad, it's a different setup. The trash can suddenly moves to the side. And in its place?

Learn more. Meaning if you're just clicking and deleting, as I do, when you get to the ad and click again, it won't delete the email; it'll take you to the ad's website. And Google will get money for the clickthrough.

I wonder how much money Google gets for these clickthroughs? Probably not insignificant.

Here's my question: Do businesses know about this? That they're paying for inadvertent clickthroughs? Feels like a class action waiting to happen. So much of the modern tech world feels like a class action waiting to happen.

Someone must have traduced erikl1963 because without having done anything wrong he found his Instagram account permanently suspended one fine morning. 

Well, apparently I did do something wrong. My account, or activity on it, wasn’t following Meta’s “Community Standards on account integrity.” I know. Meta has Community Standards? That are important enough to use the title case? But there it is, in the email, with a link to a page that explains nothing. 

There’s also a “Review details” button that leads to a webpage:

How we made this decision
Our technology found your account, or activity on it, doesn’t follow our rules. As a result, our technology took action.

Our technology found out so our technology took action? Yeah, we’re doomed.

But like Josef K., I was allowed to appeal my case—whatever it was. First, I was asked for my email address so a confirmation code could be sent. So a robot could determine I wasn’t a robot, as John Mulaney succinctly put it six years ago.

Then it asked for my phone number. At this point I triple-checked the email addresses and URLs to make sure everyone was who they said they were. At this point, too, I began to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t a scam, by Instagram, to get me to give up my phone number. Or had I already given it up? I didn’t remember.

I’ve only been on Instagram since Sept. 1, 2023. I left Facebook in 2019 because Meta is awful, and I left Twitter in 2022 because Elon Musk is awfuller. I experimented with other social media sites, hating myself all the while—that I actually have this need now, this daily need, to engage without engaging, to see what’s going down, kinda, to drink the salt water because I’m so, so thirsty, and these other sites, sadly, pathetically, didn’t help much with that thirst, not even in the awful salt-watery way that Twitter or Facebook had, which is why, eventually, I re-upped with Zuckerberg, opening an account on Instagram, tail tucked between my legs.

I wasn’t a fan. I’m a word guy, it’s a picture site. It’s worse than a picture site, it’s a video site. It’s worse than that as we all know and for all the reasons we know. But once in a while someone I like posts a picture I like.

I tried to do the same. It was on Instagram that I posted photos of my older brother Chris and I at Mount Rainier when he came to visit me in Seattle in Oct. 2023. And it was on Instagram that I posted childhood photos of Chris and I with a link to his obituary after he was murdered in a random attack at a busstop in Edina, Minn. on November 22, 2023. And it was on Instagram that I posted various photos of my 16-year-old cat Jellybean in the hallway of our condo. And it was on Instagram that I posted a link to Jellybean’s obituary when we had to put her to sleep—kill her—in December 2023 after she continued to suffer following a cancer diagnosis. And it was on Instagram that I posted photos of our new kitten, Clem, short for Clemente, in Feb. 2024. And it was on Instagram that I posted a link to Clem’s obituary after 11 days of dysentery and four vet visits with 4-6 different vets, none of whom realized the scope of his problem, the last of whom couldn’t stabilize him at 5:00 on a Saturday morning. 

Yeah, it hasn’t been a good year. Oh, and the notice of my permanent suspension on Instagram came one year after my brother’s murder. To the day. Nice touch, Meta. 

Anyway, I entered my mobile number so its technology could send me a confirmation code to prove my identity to its technology one more time. Nothing happened. Instead, beneath the fill-in box, there appeared a little red message:

Code not sent: Try again later or use a different mobile number. 

Somewhere, Kafka smiles.

If I ever find out what I did to warrant permanent suspension from a social media platform I don’t like, I’ll let you know. But at this point, it feels like a gift.

**

UPDATE: Same day, evening, the “Code not sent” glitch—if it was a glitch—was fixed, Instagram sent me a code to verify my account, I did, and for one brief shining moment it let me know I was appealing its decision. And then this, literally a second later. 

As I suspected, it just wanted the phone number. “Sometimes we need to take precautions to ensure that everyone's data on Instagram is safe and usable and sellable by Instagram.” 

Jackie Chan: Who is he? What is he known for? 

This one is a little tougher than some of the other IMDb SNAFUs. In the States, Jackie broke with “Rumble in the Bronx,” so we missed out on his long rise from obscurity (small role in “Enter the Dragon”) to kung fu western stardom (“Snake in the Eagle's Shadow,” “Drunken Master,” “Young Master”) to early 20th century fare (“Project A”) to modern stuff (“Police Story”). In Asia, he kept breaking bigger and bigger. I wonder what this looks like on Asian IMDb? Can you see that? Can I see that? 

Anyway, this is the U.S. version. 

Wrong. 

“Police Story,” yes. I'll even give you “Rush Hour” for the American crowd. But “Who Am I?” WTF? Who are you, IMDb? I'll tell you who you are. You're a bunch of fucking morons.

Sigh.

Look, I like all these movies. I've seen all these movies. (Wait, not “Lust, Caution.”) He was one of my indie guys in the 1990s. I loved “Wedding Banquet” and “Eat Drink Man Woman” even more, and I loved his Hollywood stuff, “Sense and Sensibility” and “Ice Storm.” And then he broke big with “Crouching Tiger.” But Ang Lee became the first non-white dude to win a directing Oscar, and he did it for a movie that was a cultural phenomenon, and it was called “Brokeback Mountain,” and somehow, via IMDb's algorithms, which supposedly gives weight to things like Oscars, it doesn't make the cut. 

I swear, they're gaslighting the culture.

Back in the day I had a huge crush on Mia Sara, as did most of my generation, and mostly for playing Sloane in “Ferris Bueller's Day Off.” But IMDb isn't having that shit. 

Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe there's this huge “Timecop” fanbase out there. And when Sara dies, The New York Times, or its equivalent, will let us know, “Mia Sara, 'Timecop' actress ...” etc. etc.

But I'm not wrong.

Can IMDb do anything right anymore? In the early days, without Amazon's money, somehow they made it work, but now, with tons of dough, and (I imagine) layers upon layers of Amazonian management, it's just one pratfall after another. There's obviously the algorithm from hell. That's a daily occurence. And then there's stuff like this. 

What is it? That's the bottom portion of Clint Eastwood's acting credits on IMDb, in the usual reverse chronological order. So it's his first acting credits—that early Universal Studios crap he had to do. You know: the sequel to “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” “Tarantula,” “Kelly's Heroes”...

Wait, what? “Kelly's Heroes”? From 1970? As his screen debut? You don't even need to know movies to know that's wrong. You just need to know how to count. I guess IMDb doesn't know how to count.

I tried to alert IMDb to this glitch two weeks ago but nothing's changed.

UPDATE, APRIL 29: Hey, this is fixed!! I'm proud of ya, IMDb. One down, 10,327 to go. 

Who exactly is running IMDb into the ground? This was a photo on Cord Jefferson's page:

Jefferson is the writer-director of “American Fiction,” starring Jeffrey Wright, and for the past 10 years he's worked on “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore” (196 episodes), “Master of None” (10 episodes), and “The Good Place” (25 episodes). All good shows. He also wrote and was executive story editor on “Watchmen,” the great 2019 ur-superhero HBO series that introduced the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre to most Americans. The photo is him accepting a WGA or two for that work.

And what does IMDb credit him for? The shitty 2009 “Watchmen” that Zack Snyder adapted.

I've seen a lot of these types of mistakes recently: wrong title, wrong link. It's like IMDb has shunted half its shit off to AI, and AI doesn't know between “Watchmen” (2009) and "Watchmen (2019). It's just ... try a little, IMDb. You still have a good thing going. Try a little. Before we all find a hell of a good universe next door.

A humblebrag is when you seem to be going “Aw, shucks” and you're not. You're stroking your ego. You're beating your chest.

Do we have a 21st century term for what the following does? It was part of a message I received the other day from LinkedIn:

While they're pushing or promoting their product (the app), they're also dissing their product (the website). Is there a term for that yet? And if not, what would you call it? Promodiss? And is there a pre-Internet precedent? It would have to be a product that has multiple ways of consuming or experiencing it, and that's not most products. Hostess couldn't say TWINKIES ARE BETTER IN THE MOUTH! 

I'm also getting a slight scolding vibe here. LinkedIn is basically telling me “You're doing it wrong. Do it this way. The way we want you to.” Creepy.

Here's the Business Insider headline: 

The banks which loaned Elon Musk money to help buy Twitter expect to lose $2 billion on the debt, report says

Key stats:

• Downloads of the app (once Twitter, now X) fell by almost 30% in just three months
• A marketing firm says only two of the world's biggest advertisers advertised on Twitter/X last month
• Fidelity has marked Twitter's valuation down by 2/3

A key graf:

Bankers close to the deal told The Journal that X could be given a junk-bond rating, meaning it is at risk of defaulting on the loans, due to both Musk's controversial management style and a waning ad market.

My farewell post, nearly a year ago:

I've said it before: If you had told me to destroy Twitter without anyone knowing I was destroying Twitter, I wouldn't have been able to come up with half the stuff Musk has done in supposed service to the company. So I guess, in a way, he is a genius.

This is HBO Max, so Warner Bros./Discovery:

They've since changed that heading to read “A Scary Good Time,” because saying “Embrace the Fear' about one of the best comedies of the 1970s makes you look a little stupid. At least they were only stupid for a few weeks. 

Speaking of: This is Google, after a search on ”Bart Starr."

Coach? Starr was a quarterback for 16 years, a coach for eight. As QB, he led the Packers to three NFL championships and the first two Super Bowl titles, won an MVP (1966), and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio in 1977. He became legendary. During his years as a coach, the Packers appeared in the postseason once, losing in the second round to the Dallas Cowboys in the expanded 1982 playoffs. He was a little less than legendary.

It's still there, that designation. Google IDs him as a coach. Because Google. Because the whole damn thing is getting worse. 

Embrace the fear.

For a few years during the 1960s, Marvel Comics produced a humor magazine called NOT BRAND ECHH, a title playing off of commercials of the time that pitted a named product (Pepsi-Cola, say) vs. an unnamed product labeled “Brand X.” That was the brand you never wanted: Brand X.

I thought of it again when hearing about Elon's latest supergenius move: rebranding Twitter as X. Apparently that happened on Sunday.

Per the NY Times:

Inside Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco on Monday, X logos were projected in the cafeteria, while conference rooms were renamed to words with X in them, including “eXposure,” “eXult” and “s3Xy,” according to photos seen by The New York Times. Workers also began removing bird-related paraphernalia, such as a giant blue logo in the cafeteria. Outside the building, workers took off the first six letters of Twitter's name before the San Francisco Police Department stopped them for performing “unauthorized work,” according to an alert sent by the department.

Supposedly this is a first step in making Twitter an everything company like China's WeChat, but it's a stupid, clumsy first step—more of a pratfall, really.

“It's natural to wonder why the world's richest man would spend his time dismantling one of the world's most recognizable social-media brands in favor of an inscrutable super app nobody asked for,” The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel writes midway through his article, “Why Elon Killed the Bird.” Jeff Tiedrich has less patience in his post, “Never Fuck With Your Brand,” writing, “Elon hasn't just fucked with his brand, he's poured gasoline all over his brand and set it the fuck on fire. He's replaced one of the world's most iconic logos with a generic letter of the alphabet—one that thousands of business already use.”

What's a tweet now? An X? Or ex? Or echh?

To coin a phrase: Who says a social media platform has to be good?