Viral Sculptures

Always up for a good story. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/05/19/when-familys-outdoor-sculptures-were-stolen-neighbors-rallied-now-towering-art-lines-their-street/

Manipulating public thinking

In the early 1990s, arguably *the* quintessential American store, based in Arkansas was humming along with its tag line that everything they sold was made in America!

They were proud of that fact, and ran ad campaigns touting it. And the patriots who like to wrap themselves up in the flag ate it up. Murica and all.

Then came an economic downturn and an interest in a more global economy. So Wal-Mart made a business decision, and started sourcing products from China. And they re-tagged themselves with the new moniker "always the low prices."

There's a book that came out in 2006 called "the Wal-Mart effect" which talks about the nature of the company, and decisions that they made at the time to evolve into the new brand with low prices. Surely some of it was good and some of it wasn't, but it's interesting reading.

Anyway, back to the story. So they made this fundamental shift. Not made in America, but rather low prices.

And their fans, the ones who were all about American made, simply changed their thinking. Wal-Mart was masterful at marketing themselves and telling people how they could save them money.

The sheeple had very subtly had their thinking changed. Wal-Mart was still the American store. But it turns out it really didn't matter that products were American made.

It's amazing that they managed to make this happen through tv and print ads, and in store, without social media.

...and here's where this comes back to today. You could view the social media campaigns to laud or denigrate any thing the same way. Whether it's an elected official or a store, people can be easily manipulated by playing to their base thinking. Specifically "make America great again" was designed to get the same ensconce-yourself-in-the-flag folks to have a response at a base level. One they will cling to .. it seems like always.

By the way, Wal-Mart is trying to shift back to made in America but they're finding that harder. Costs are higher and it turns out people really do want to pay less.

Sacrifice.

January 20, 1961. John F Kennedy is sworn in as president. He gives his inaugural address and closes with:

"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country."

"My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

That is a call to civic action. To betterment of our country. To really and truly making America great by being a part of something. Of sacrificing. 

And flash forward to 2016. The nincompotus starts selling a bill of goods of making America great and protecting "our way of life".  It's in no way the same. In fact it's the opposite. 

We've become soft in many ways, watch too much reality tv, and aren't really asked to sacrifice *that* much.

It's easy to "support our troops" or wrap ourselves in the flag. Hold guns and say Murica! Or chant "USA"

There's no real sacrifice there. Send our troops somewhere and mourn those that are killed and talk about the enemy and how we'll get them!

When there's a killing spree domestically, it's a tragedy and we send those "thoughts and prayers" but don't take action because that somehow would impact our way of life.

So here we are faced with an unseen virus and we're asking for actual sacrifice. Stay home. Wear a mask. That undercuts everything that the MAGA movement stands for. We can't wrap ourselves in the flag. So the enemy becomes anyone who tries to enforce those rules.

And you hear Patrick Henry bandied about. They're willing to take a risk and take actual death (that could be avoided) for the sake of "liberty"

Because they were sold the idea that we can overcome anything through superior fire power and a belief in god.

If we had an actual leader, maybe s/he could help make the message clearer. But this guy just fans the flames for sadistic fun - and profit. 

Oh how I miss Obama, or jfk who tried to make the world a little better. Heck I even miss W, who led through a difficult period in the best way he could. The key is that he tried to lead. 

Watch jfks speech. It's inspiring even today.

Short. Sweet. To the point. That's the beauty Dave's iPhone.

Disney and the pandemic.

The idiot-in-Chief bungled his way through this crisis. I mean, he showed his true colors, as only caring about himself. 100k dead. Whatever, "I take no responsibility."

Look I could sit here and talk about that all day. But, on a deeper level, he created downstream issues that don't get enough press.

I'm a fan of Disney world. I enjoy going there as a way to escape reality for a few hours. It's "the bubble" and it's easy to put your troubles behind you.

When the virus first arrived, we knew it would affect travel and the theme parks. But the question was how much. They did what was reasonable, but looked for guidance from the state (or states, because Disneyland should be mentioned too) and from the federal government.

The feds could have, and *should* have been trying to understand the way this was spreading, using whatever tools other countries were using and building on that. The feds should have stepped out in front to try and actually deal with the pandemic threat rather than throwing up their hands, and passing along responsibility.

Supposing they had started screening at airports, cruise terminals, and directing states for how to test at large gatherings.

Disney surely would have followed and maybe we would have a better ideas for what to do - and, more importantly, maybe we would have innovated and found more efficient means to quickly test in gathering spots.

So disney world closed and it wasn't clear if this was going to be for a week or a month.

It's been 2. And the feds still don't have a plan. There's no thought for how to proceed and keep people safe. It's more of a "hey just reopen. What's the worst that can happen?"

And so private organizations, foundations, and companies are going to need to step into this void and try and lead and innovate in some way.

How can disney world reopen and keep guests safe? Short answer: right now they can't. So we have to wait until they figure it out, or maybe until another one of those organizations steps up and innovates. Or until a new president steps in, in January, and we get some actual leadership and direction.

Someone "admonished me" on Twitter for being more political and less about the escape of Disney.

I don't see how at this point you can separate the two. Politics (and abject stupidity) has led us here. Disneys magic is lost for now among a sea of jobless claims and a string of deaths that have nothing to do with them directly. Even if they found a way to open, who knows how many travel there? And what would the experience be like? And would those people follow the rules?

But because there's no real path for them to reopen safely, no guidance on what to do, this is ultimately on the feds and their inaction.

So, yeah, I can't talk about Disney without talking about politics. Sorry random stupid person (psych! I’m not sorry)

100,000 dead and...yawn.

I had this random thought. Back in 2001, there was this moment that we rallied around. On 9/11 planes were flown into the World Trade Center buildings, taking them down.

It's a (mostly) unexpected terror attack.
We show empathy for New York, and we
unite as a country.

I distinctly remember one ad campaign. "They thought they could divide us, they were wrong."

We had an enemy who we could identify (they were essentially boiled down to "Muslims who wanted to change our way of life") and it wasn't clear where, when, or if they might strike again.

But here's the thing. We allowed some of our constitutional rights to be subverted. We allowed big brother to watch us. New banking rules. New security rules. Hell we were okay with a version of a strip searches at airports.

Sure it was probably (mostly) warranted. And arguably necessary.

But on that day 6,000 people died. Not to use their memory in a bad way - this was indeed a tragedy - but put that in perspective with what's happening today.

100,000 have died because of a virus. That's nearly 20x the number that died on 9/11.

Again New York suffers the most, but in this case we hear people deriding New York. It's too..whatever and we can't be bothered to care or help them.

And instead of uniting, we're fighting with each other. There's no enemy per se. We buy toilet paper and carry guns into legislative buildings to protest....Something.

We tell people to stay at home. To wear a mask. To social distance to stop the spread. And what we hear is "No you're infringing!"

Dear leader is inept and clueless. He wants this to just be over and wish it away. He blames everyone he can think of. He starts talking up the military because that's going to protect us against a virus I assume?

And people want to just back to "life as we knew it" and I don't think we will be able to. There's another evolutionary step we'll take. More security. More screenings. More things that change "our way of life."

And I think I finally understand why this is a problem. When there's a world issue we release our military on it. We chant "USA" and "support our troops"...there's an enemy. And we have to protect our way of life. That idea of American exceptionalism or the ideal.

And in this case, our military can't be utilized. It's an unseen enemy. There is no exceptionalism in play. And what we're asking a nation to do is *actually* sacrifice for the way of life. And that MAGA ideal that the "incompetent, sociopathic, impeached president" has been touting may be lost, especially the "great."

That's simple unacceptable. We need to just go back to living the way we living and supporting our troops and deriding immigrants.

And the sacrifice becomes more about just letting the virus run through us. Better to embody (stupidly) Patrick Henry's immortal words "give me liberty or give me death" quite literally - than to find ways to fight it.

Sports in bizarro world

I woke up this morning and turned on a broadcast of the only live sports currently on: Korean baseball.

It's bizarre for so many reasons....it's sports like, and it's baseball, but it's in Korea so you can't read players names (not that you would know them anyway). There are no fans in the stands. Its quiet. Umps are wearing masks, as are any non-players. It's 6am. The announcers aren't at the game - they're in their own houses, so there are oddities in the way they interact with each other and the game itself.

How they handle it (being a country that in the whole takes the virus seriously): they check temperatures regularly, and test whenever there are symptoms reported or observed or if temperatures are high.

And yes, boog (at one point he was a marlins broadcaster) is one of the announcers, and he made a marlins joke about teams playing in front of empty stands.

Snoop Dogg listening to “Let it Go”

This makes me oddly happy.