Welcome to 5 Quick Things that I saw since last month that I thought were interesting enough to share with you. None of them are particularly timely so feel free to just enjoy 🙂

>Number One<

The Constant Eyes of The Modern Age

After the one-two punch of Columbine and 9/11 every school I went to after 2001 contained CCTV, police officers, and metal detectors. Every day we had to show the insides of our backpacks to the officer or monitor at the door. Even though I spent the rest of my time in school skirting this, it still felt like a prison. I don’t relish kids today and what levels that has to have ramped up to in this era of schools being of the most likely places you will be shot. That being said I’m sure plenty of parents and kids thought that moving classes to an online environment thought it would stop that type of security state hyper surveillance but obviously we live in a highly digital era where we are all tracked via cookies, social media, IPs, and an ever increasing network of the government simply recording all of our interactions. So while it’s unsurprising by the fact that tracking children via their school internet access is a thing, it still makes me unbelievaly sad.

>Number Two<

Not Another Argument about Kink at Pride

As a person who is basically the shining example of how to turn your life around by doing absolutely everything right, gaming the financial system through knowledge, and self-sacrificing to pay my $47,000 student loans from a highly prestigious university off within 6 years I can tell you: it’s a dream. I never made more than $32,000 in a year, I destroyed my mental, physical, and emotional well being do pay off my loans and I left America as it left me broken and empty with only a life of un-promises set before me as it dismantled more and more of the safety net. And I’m the success story. I paid my debt off.

I try not to think about how life changing that $47,000 would have been, what life could have been like if I’d at all been financially feasible to continue my education instead of moving between low paying jobs trying to keep my loan payments up, trying to keep my healthcare, etc.

Anyway this article is really good and we should cancel all student debt.

>Number Three<

Everything, Everywhere, All at Stunts

Laura Crone is a fantastically fun Youtuber who dives into all sorts of media from different angles. While it is possible (and very chic) for people to dive into the beautiful and hilarious and life changing film Everything Everywhere All at Once from deeply personal, emotional, philosophical, or even meta textural levels throw all that out the window – literally! This deep dive into how stunts works, how they’re used both cleverly and carefully in this movie is a great way to appreciate some of the things you actually may have missed while you were very busy having a good cry during the movie 🙂

>Number Four<

Gamifying Human Behavior

There’s a clicker game on my phone. I’m lying! There’s 7 clicker games on my phone. A clicker game is a game that basically just makes numbers go up through the action of clicking which then unlocks slightly more complex actions, where you click some more, and so on. I’ve never spent any money on them but they all have several avenues for doing so. Many of them have hard stop time limits which can easily make a person, itching to complete the latest progress bar, drop a few dollars here or there and then feel silly later for wasting money. That’s not how it works for people with gambling problems though and these apps are designed to loop people into gambling in them, and that doesn’t even touch on actual gambling apps which are marketed directly to the people who already have a problem.

In a casino when you run out of money you are asked to leave, but what happens when no one makes you put down your phone and you can just whip out your credit card and keep gambling in private through an app designed to make you want to keep going.

You can see if the apps you’re using employ some of these dark patterns by checking out this website also.

>Number Five<

Ao3: 15 Years of Fanfic

As a person who spends a lot of time on Ao3 I have so many feelings both good and bad. It’s been a wild ride of 15 years and this article hopefully can help explain why Ao3 is still a force for (mostly) good in this wild internet. There’s plenty to be made better about the site but it’s been an amazing force in my life and sometimes it’s nice to appreciate things.

Alright folks that’s all she wrote, see you next month!