And job #2 may lead to a real job if everyone is happy. I realize this is what was said about job #1 at the beginning. I’m going to give it a shot, anyway. At the very least, I get some new skills out of it.
Monday I turned into my beloved mother. I was wondering when the transformation would begin in earnest. Surprise! Age 32.33. I’ll mark it on my calendar. Usually I only require a waiting day before grump dissipates. Now it looks like I’mma need a 48 hr. minimum. Please return to your regularly scheduled programming while I enjoy this mood-altering cupcake I’ve procured.
But I have managed to get a job, work a job, and produce two presentations, so. Success, I guess. :-/
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This may be why the terrorists hate us, but fuck ‘em. This nonsense is funny.
How have the makers of Orangina managed for so long to avoid ‘gina jokes?
]]>“I keep waiting for the bomb to drop, you know? ‘Oh, by the way, I shoot stray dogs from the stoop of my apartment building. Hope that’s not a problem.’ Something to indicate we’re not as ridiculously compatible as all the evidence seems to suggest,” he says.
“I know, I keep waiting for the same from you. I think we’re going to have to have a falling out the old-fashioned way. By surprise.” I counter.
And this is how two friendly, levelheaded people fall in love, it seems. Endless, meandering conversations, compatibility, and comfort. Mutual admiration. Guffaw-induced farts. Late night and early morning eyelid kisses which are no less heart-melting for their hackneyed, storybook affect.
Jesus. I’m happily coupled. And bewildered.
Is this how it works for everyone else?
]]>I don’t have much to say at the moment. I’ll give you an awesome WTF, an hilarious Youtube vid which comes courtesy of the great guy I’m dating. Honest-to-god dating, with dinners and movies and hand-holding and stolen kisses. Which is probably the biggest WTF of all.
]]>If you don’t feel like reading, in essence, both say this: a San Fran-based company, Rapleaf, has made a booming business of digital stalking. It tracks the online haunts of consumers on behalf of businesses like banks, lenders, and marketers, and compiles whatever data found–via tweets, Facebook updates, MySpace boards, whatever public digital trail one may have left behind–into behavioral profiles.
That alone should be alarming to anyone who has ever tweeted or status-updated in passing about an unwise purchase, looming medical bill, or tight funds. What makes this scarier is that they also track and compile data posted by your online network of acquaintances, reasoning that their choices will give insight into your behaviors, assuming like attracts like. This “behavioral tracking,” once turned over to a mortgage lender or credit card company, is designed ostensibly to help them better target and market to you, or at least that’s what the company’s founder asserts in the comments of the first article, and it’s what he is quoted as saying in the second. Just designed to make it easier for consumers to get approvals for credit and loans!
I call ENORMOUS. BULLSHIT.
Until I see a complete copy of Rapleaf’s standard contract for its business clients which, in impeccably crafted legalese, restricts use of the data compiled to marketing only, with severe penalties for transferring said data from the marketing department to risk assessment, I cannot believe these companies will not in turn use it as a sort of digital redlining.
Consider: many of us use our social networks to, you know, network. They often include people we don’t know well, or at all. But if those near-strangers are part of your public network, and display high-risk behaviors in their own networks, it could reflect poorly on you. Have a guy on your Mafia Wars Facebook friends list who frequently posts detrimental info in his own space, someone who also happens to be a client of the bank you’ve just approached about a small business loan? That bank, in possession of his credit info, which you may know nothing at all about, could use his irresponsibility or hard luck to profile you.
I don’t view this profiling as a casual threat, for a number of reasons. First, while it’s alleged to work to your benefit, we’re talking about companies that likely already have access to your credit history and financial records. That should be all they need to know about your suitability. While this profiling may help companies make marketing decisions, anyone who has ever read the fine print in a credit agreement should know these institutions generally give themselves license to use any scrap of information they find to pad their own balances, via interest rates and fees. Millions of Americans in this recession have already found that, should they hit hard times for a few months and prioritize rent over an outstanding store credit card, other creditors, even those that are still being paid on time, religiously, will raise interest rates to usurious levels, driving already strapped consumers further into debt. Second, while I can see these companies using your associates’ information to rate you more of a risk, I find it difficult to believe that anyone with a borderline financial history in a network of comfortable associates will be suddenly deemed less of a risk. And third, in a digital climate that is already showing evidence of segregation, it will encourage these segregated camps to become even more entrenched. If such profiling were to become common practice, there’s additional strong disincentive to associate with a professional, academic or social peer who may have similar interests, but an unknown or typically negatively stereotyped background.
I’m sure consumer protection groups will be watching this development closely, and if the practice does take off, odds are they’ll lobby for regulation. We can only hope. In the meantime, I’m glad I went the private route with most of my networks.
]]>I like Bai Ling if only for her consistent ability to scare me and out-WTF?! herself.
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And now, watch this response video:
*walking away from the internets*
*coming back*
I would like to let it be known that I–
*giving up, walking away again.*
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