Recent TV Expeditions: Smash and Lilyhammer

Leave a reply

A few notes on recent TV.

NBC’s Smash:
I wanted to like you. Really, I did. As a gay man who can’t stand Glee, I’ve been feeling left out of the club for years. But I’m over it. Unlike a lot of folks, I like both Debra Messing and Katharine McPhee as Julia and Karen, respectively. But Julia flipping out about her son smoking pot, in 2012? Totally and utterly unbelievable, and Messing seems like she’s on the verge of laughing each time she is forced to treat it like a capital case. Let’s not even talk about Ellis, or even worse, Dev. Ugh Dev.

Lilyhammer:
This one you may not have heard of, but it’s Netflix’s first foray into original programming.  Starring Steven Van Zandt (of Springsteen *and* Sopranos fame) as a mobster who moves to Norway as part of the witness protection program, the series is comedically very fun. It manages to strike the balance between drama and comedy that The Sopranos was so good at, which is an impressive feat.

Pennies Are Too Damn Expensive

Leave a reply

I’ve been trolling my back catalog of links I wanted to share and came across this. Pennies cost 1.8c a piece to make and are sorta useless.

…via the Atlantic. But one note on that – just because a coin’s production cost is higher than it’s face value doesn’t make it inherently bad, because it will recirculate likely thousands of times over its lifespan, which the Mint estimates at 25 years.

Fact and Fiction on Joseph Kony and Invisible Children

5 Replies

I’m a pretty savvy guy, but I’m having a really tough time separating fact from fiction when it comes to Joseph Kony and Invisible Children and I wish the media would do more of this. Here’s what I think is clear and what you should know:

  • Joseph Kony is a monster. This much is clearly true. Over the past 30 years, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has kidnapped 30,000 children and slaughtered many more.
  • That does not mean he has an army of 30,000, it’s a total over the course of decades.
  • Right now, experts think there are only a few hundred, not thousands, of members of the LRA. They’re still causing problems, but not on the scale Invisible Children would have you think.
  • Joseph Kony probably isn’t even in Uganda. In fact, most people think he’s not, and hasn’t been for 6 years.
  • He is not expanding into other countries, he’s in hiding after being indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
  • The US has boots on the ground in central Africa specifically for the purpose of tracking down the LRA.
  • Check here and here for more.

Here’s what I think we know about Invisible Children:

  • Charity Navigator gives them 3 stars (of four), which is a respectable score.
  • Despite what you read, the founders make modest salaries, all under $100k.
  • They don’t seem to do much to actually help people other than raising awareness.
  • With that in mind, this post saying they only give 31% of their revenue in direct need seems spurious.
  • If you count their film-making, research, and travel, which seems fair as raising awareness is their goal, 80% of their revenue goes to programs, not administrative costs.
  • They subscribe to a few philosophies of activism that many people, including myself, are wary of, including buying stickers, t-shirts, and “clicktivism.”

What am I missing? Lots, I bet. What questions are still open? There are a ton. But hopefully this clears up some of the facts surrounding #StopKony.

Sharing Publicly on Facebook

1 Reply

Lately I’ve been very surprised at the number of people who are sharing with the “public” setting on Facebook. I personally share a lot with the world (subscribe here!), which is a conscious choice I made years ago and have rarely regretted since. But along the way, I’ve seen a lot of outbursts by friends and colleagues how Facebook is exposing personal information in a way that violates their privacy.

I’ve always disagreed, arguing that if you don’t want people to see something, don’t put it online, and that while the privacy settings on Facebook aren’t the most intuitive, they do work. I’ve gotten burned a few times when I haven’t followed my own good advice, but for the most part those two rules have held true for me.

With all that in mind, it’s surprising to me the amount that I see the “globe” icon (indicating a post is visible to everyone) appear in my news feed. I’m inclined to think it’s user error and not intentional. Thoughts?

QuickConsult Contest – Win Free Consulting!

Leave a reply

A few weeks ago, I announced a little sideline called QuickConsult, which is designed to provide you with specific, actionable recommendations to improve your website or app. I’m excited about the opportunity to help more companies/organizations than ever and the first few that I’ve done have gone great!

To spread the word, I’m holding a contest giving away one free consultation each week for the next four weeks. Everyone’s eligible – all you’ve got to do is let me know how I can help. Each week, I’ll pick a winner and we’ll work together to make some great improvements on your website.

So what are you waiting for?? Enter the contest!

The Importance of Invitations in our Social World

Leave a reply

As most friends know, I’m a stickler about invitations. I rarely arrive anywhere uninvited or assume I’m invited just because my friends are. Turns out I’m not alone, and invitations are an important social signal to connect events with physical attendance:

Plancast and other social event sharing applications are rooted in an idealistic notion that people would feel confident inviting themselves to their friends’ events if only they knew about them. But the informational need here is not only one of event details (such as what’s going to happen, when, where and with whom). People often also need to know through a personal invitation that at least one friend wants them to join.

When you have a service that helps spread personal event information but doesn’t concurrently satisfy that need, you have a situation where many people feel awkwardly aware of events to which they don’t feel welcome.

This speaks right to my passion for using technology to connect people in the “real” world. A great invitation function, or a prompt to invite friends on Facebook’s Event feature, would almost surely increase event attendance.