September 2009
10 posts
Tomorrow I have the privilege
Tomorrow is a big day in the Brennan house: I have the unique privilege of marrying Andrea at a ceremony in downtown Detroit. I’m not marrying her because she did a snow angel in her backyard one December (at the 80s costume party she threw on New Years Eve two years ago), but when I looked back through our photos it was the one that stuck out. Being yourself and being in love is, well,...
The psychological violence of girls comics →
The huge success of Tammy, which ran from 1971 to 1984, was partially based on some actual research by IPC magazine into what girls enjoyed reading about. Apparently they liked to be made to cry. Vulnerable amnesiacs who avoided multiple, mysterious attempts on their lives to discover their parents had been killed in some kind of transport ‘accident’ sent sales figures of up to a...
4 tags
2 tags
How Your Name Ends Up On A List
Do you know how you end up on direct mail lists that you never signed up for? I always thought it was a byproduct of the magazines I subscribed to; as it turns out, that’s still very much the case but there are new ways that large corporations are following your usage and selling your behavior patterns. It’s a strange, subtle network of data collection where you, legally, actually don’t have an...
3 tags
Plain Internet
What if someone created a 100% opt-in / opt-out suite of online services, but didn’t store any of our usage data, sell it to anyone, or use it for behavorial targeting?
They’d still be able to make money by putting ads against the tools we’d use (mail, search, maps, online storage, etc) while we’re using them, but not after we’ve closed our browser.
If this becomes...
A thoughtful company doing thoughtful things →
At Amber, Morrissey