Flicker Fusion

Since then, I’ve grown more critical of Rand’s outlook because it doesn’t include the human needs we have for grace, love, faith, or any form of social compact.

Since then, I’ve grown more critical of Rand’s outlook because it doesn’t include the human needs we have for grace, love, faith, or any form of social compact.

—Appalachian Trail enthusiast and South Carolina governor Mark Sanford thinks more people should read Ayn Rand. I’m sure Governor Sanford has all kinds of fascinating thoughts on “social compacts” - perhaps his wife would like to chime in?

I TOTALLY WENT ON A PRESS JUNKET AND I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK OF ME

I TOTALLY WENT ON A PRESS JUNKET AND I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK OF ME

Well, I sure as hell hope you see what Vice did there, cheeky bastards that they are. In one deft headline, they cunningly issued a resounding “fuck you” and then nullified your retort.

Not content with being the derivative sell-outs that they’ve built their reputation on thus far, Vice wears their boorishness as a badge of honor now. To their credit, at least they didn’t try to justify their whoring as some kind of “investigation” and they rightly snarked everyone else who played along. But an asshole who walks around telling everyone what an asshole he is and can’t believe you’re surprised what an asshole he is, he told you he’s an asshole, is, sadly, still an asshole.

It’s a cute, if unoriginal gimmick, reveling in the angst of people who bother to care, worming a finger in the bullet hole just to watch your victim squirm. Vice perpetuates this on their readers and everyone who bothers pay them any mind with some regularity but it’s getting embarrassing to watch.

To be honest, though, the ironically mustachioed, skinny jeaned, trustafarian Brooklynites who guzzle this up like fluffers who’ve finally resigned themselves to never making it on camera are getting exactly what they deserve as Vice’s core demo. I suspect the magazine realizes this (they’re nothing if not self aware) and is only too happy to turn a buck, with the side bonus of cheap drugs and a stream of only-too-willing interns, on self-loathing hipsters secretly hoping to show up as a don’t if only for the ironic cachet.

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Political activist group The Yes Men held a fake press conference yesterday, posing as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, saying that the Chamber reversed its stance on climate change. The “news”, as it weren’t, got picked up by Reuters and then breathlessly reported on the 24-hour financial news networks, including Fox Business Channel, seen here.

The video from the fake presser is worth watching (the comments from the fake reporters planted in the crowd are particularly good – “I’m on deadline”) but this one really does it for me.

First comes the stammering from our oblong-headed headline reader – you can almost see the cognitive dissonance working its way through his addled brain. Next, trying to make some sense of all of this, our FBC reader then seems to be blaming nuclear energy. Finally, after muttering for the 60 seconds it would’ve taken to verify the fake story, they finally realize that they’ve been had and immediately go on the attack. So desperate to be the ones who broke what turned out to be an untrue story, they are now going to make sure the world knows who really screwed this one up.

What a country.

I was more than persuaded by both [Gillette and Schick] that [disposable razor blade] technology isn’t some kind of con: the researchers I met were all gifted, dedicated people, responding with infectious enthusiasm and flair to the real technical and intellectual problems with which they were presented. So, yes, the business is about fulfilling the consumers’ desire for a better shave. But it’s also about creating that desire: if the two out of three men who prefer the Fusion to the Mach3 had never been offered the Fusion, they’d never have known what they were missing.

I was more than persuaded by both [Gillette and Schick] that [disposable razor blade] technology isn’t some kind of con: the researchers I met were all gifted, dedicated people, responding with infectious enthusiasm and flair to the real technical and intellectual problems with which they were presented. So, yes, the business is about fulfilling the consumers’ desire for a better shave. But it’s also about creating that desire: if the two out of three men who prefer the Fusion to the Mach3 had never been offered the Fusion, they’d never have known what they were missing.

—

From a fascinating article in The Guardian by Thomas Jones about the Shaving Industrial Complex [via Give Me Something to Read]

I abandoned the Gillette blades of my misspent youth a few years ago for a decidedly old school Merkur razor fitted with Feather blades from Japan and haven’t looked back. Even accounting for the badger brush and fancy soaps, I feel like I’m coming out ahead, or at least breaking even. But I genuinely feel like my single blade gives me a better shave than any combination of laser honed, diamond edged, teflon coated, microchip controlled gimmicks ever will. (For what it’s worth, apparently the science behind the multi-blade razors, hysteresis, is mostly, and this is a technical term, bullshit.)