Tag: consumerism

The USPS Is Drowning

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

Your local post office is in trouble.

Problem 1: Volume

The volume of mail (letters, magazines, catalogs, and especially packages) that the United States Postal Service delivers in some areas has doubled or even tripled since 2015.

Officially, First Class Mail and package volume have generally been declining. (Source: Postal Facts: A Decade of Facts & Figures.) This doesn’t account for the fact that in rural areas and places with a high cost of living, shoppers have turned to online retailers like Amazon to buy household goods that used to be purchased locally.

According to Postal Facts, the volume of First Class Mail (things with stamps, like letters and bills) has fallen almost 50% since 2013. Meanwhile, package volume has nearly doubled from 3.7 billion pieces to 7.2 billion pieces.

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Facebook: Biased Purveyor of Political Misinformation?

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

Recently the Wall Street Journal (not exactly a bastion of the left-leaning press) broke the news that when Facebook tweaked its newsfeed algorithm in 2017 to reduce the visibility of political news, the company’s engineers intentionally designed the system to disproportionately impact left-leaning news outlets.

While assuring Mother Jones editorial director for growth and strategy Ben Dreyfuss that the algorithmic changes were not designed “in a way that favored or disfavored any single publication or class of publisher,” Facebook deliberately and knowingly wrote its algorithms to favor right-leaning pages while suppressing left-leaning ones– and this was done with Mark Zuckerberg’s explicit approval.

Indeed, the Zuckerberg who once claimed he would prefer to leave the politics to others has been doing anything but. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Zuckerberg is now an active political operator. He has dined with President Trump, talks regularly with White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, and has pressed lawmakers and officials to scrutinize rivals including TikTok and Apple Inc., people involved in the discussions say.”

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Part II: Where Do We Go From Here?

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

For many of us, the world is falling apart. A large section of the populations is struggling to survive without income, while in “essential” sectors, such as healthcare, retail, and transportation, employers are working their employees into the ground to keep up with the booming demand.

Depending on the source, anywhere from 50% to 78% of US workers live paycheck to paycheck– and the general consensus is with the higher of those numbers. The vast majority of Americans also have no emergency savings. When your workplace folds up or is ordered to close, and you find yourself quarantined at home with no income, what are you to do?

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A Viral Update

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

It’s looking less and less like I’m going to get the opportunity to use my resignation letter. That makes me kind of sad.

It’s a really good resignation letter. It’s sharp, succinct, and pointed. ‘Here’s a list of some of the worst ways in which you’re failing your employees. Here’s a list of the stuff we’ve put up with until now. Here’s why I’m leaving.’ The ‘fuck you and enjoy the bed you’ve made for yourself’ is silent but strongly implied.

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Review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep cover

I finally got around to reading Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And although I had no idea what to expect going in, it was still nothing like what I expected.

Rick Deckard is a police bounty hunter, “retiring” escaped androids that pose a vague threat to Earth’s remaining human population. His world is dull and grey, full of despair and the detritus of human lives long gone. Nuclear war has made much of Earth uninhabitable, causing freak mutations and decimating animal populations. Most humans eligible to immigrate to off-world colonies have done so.

While this premise might sound dark, gritty, thrilling, and potentially action packed, –spoiler– this novel is not.

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Cyberpunk is Evolving

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

Cyberpunk Is Evolving

I recently stumbled across an article that sums up what some people have been noticing for a while: cyberpunk is becoming increasingly distorted by its transition into the cultural mainstream.

Cyberpunk was sci-fi for those who saw the power of the computer, its mounting ability to overtake everything personal (attention, time, privacy), and were bracing for impact. It was speculative fiction for everyone wary of the growing influence of massive corporations and ready to be leaders in the technological rebellion.To reflect this, cyberpunk’s protagonists—the personalities that would become the face of the genre—were uniformly disobedient.

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Safety vs Profit: The Pursuit of a Fatter Bottom Line Claims Another Life

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

Southwest Flight 1380 after an engine failure caused its emergency landing in Philadelphia, April 17th, 2018.

On April 17th, 2018, as Southwest Flight 1380 flew over Pennsylvania, a fan blade shattered in one of the Boeing 737’s engines. The resulting uncontained engine failure flung shrapnel into the aircraft’s fuselage, destroying a window and claiming the life of passenger Jennifer Riordan.

Jet engines on commercial aircraft are built to contain malfunctions within the engine casing, as pieces from the engine can exit at a high rate of speed. An uncontained failure is one in which the shrapnel escapes the engine housing.

The faulty fan blade was produced by CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric and France’s Safran S.A. This manufacturer had been under increased scrutiny since Southwest Flight 3472 suffered a similar uncontained engine failure over Florida in 2016.

In the case of Flight 3472, metal shrapnel also sliced into the fuselage and breached the protection barrier. With pressure escaping from the cabin, oxygen masks dropped and the pilots were forced to bring the aircraft into a descent so that passengers could breathe. The front edge of the jet’s wing, horizontal tail stabilizer, and winglet were also damaged.

At this point you may be asking why this tragedy was allowed to happen after the FAA, the manufacturer, and the airline all knew there was a problem. The answer is as ugly as you’d think.

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The Library Question

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

Tweet advocation the privatization of libraries.

On Saturday July 21st, 2018, Forbes triggered a flood of outrage from the literary, academic, and library-using communities by publishing an opinion piece advocating for the replacement of libraries with for-profit retail outlets. Specifically, Amazon retail outlets. While Forbes has since pulled the article, it can still be found here.

The owner of this controversial opinion is Chair of the Department of Economics at LIU Post and guy whose name sounds like someone’s about to unleash an army of evil dead, Panos Mourdoukoutas.

In a piece that sounds like it was written by a fourth grader badly in need of an editor, Mourdoukoutas argues that libraries have become obsolete. Their services are provided by other (coincidentally not free of charge) entities like Amazon and Starbucks. No, really. I’m not joking. Stop laughing.

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The Holidays

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

I’ve been informed that we’ve entered the holiday season.

Oh, I know that the Christmas decorations went up in stores about a month ago, but I’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring those.

As a functioning adult, I’ve earned the right to forego participating in these social traditions. I have my own place, so I’m not obliged to sit through any more festive gatherings. I rarely get invites to other people’s parties and holiday dinners. Being the guy who fills up his mug with gin and retreats to a dim corner, my presence doesn’t add much to the festivities.

Some people might assume that my aversion to cherished cultural traditions stems from loneliness or some kind of personality disorder, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I prefer my own company, and I wouldn’t be any more inclined to celebrate if I had others to celebrate with.

You see, this season makes me wonder more and more each year what the actual fuck it is that we’re supposed to be celebrating.

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