[barmar]

My Kindle Fire sometimes seems to think I'm a woman. When I turn it on, it displays an ad. Most of the time they're ads for video games or silly solitaire games. But sometimes it will get into a rut of showing me a string of ads for feminine beauty products.

Maybe it's just because I don't use it much to access the Internet and never click on ads, so it doesn't really know what kind of consumer I am. Once in a while I'll get ads for books similar to the ones I've purchased, but if everything else is random why don't I see many male-oriented products (except that the Game of War trailer features a hot warrior princess -- I just googled it and discovered that she's supermodel Kate Upton).

[blackshoe]

kenberg, on 2015-July-16, 12:18, said:

ILast year there was an election for governor. I saw very few of the attack ads, but one stands out. There were several kids on bicycles riding toward a playground with rifles, I suppose assault rifles but I don't really know these things, lying across the handlebars. They rode to the playground and put the rifles up against a tree while they went down a slide. We came into this ad in the middle and Becky broke out in almost uncontrollable laughter asking what on earth this was. I explained that it was intended to scare voters about the Republican's approach to gun control. Maybe whoever wrote the ad took lessons from Tina Fey about caricature. Maybe it was written by a Republican double agent trying to make the Democrats look like morons. But no, it was probably written by someone who thought it would be effective.

I had a friend, sadly no longer with us, who grew up in rural upstate NY. Farm country. When he was in high school, he said, it was not unusual for students to bring their hunting rifles to school and leave them in the coat closet during the day, and then go hunting when school let out. Nobody ever said a word about it. But those were different times.

Re: Doris Day. I hadn't heard that one, but I'm not surprised.

Assault rifles. The term has been usurped by the anti-gun crowd. An M-16 is an assault rifle. An AR-15 is not - except to said crowd.

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2015-July-16, 21:50, said:

Assault rifles. The term has been usurped by the anti-gun crowd. An M-16 is an assault rifle. An AR-15 is not - except to said crowd.

Because a semi-automatic rifle provides an acceptable rate of killing?

[blackshoe]

Zelandakh, on 2015-July-17, 01:57, said:

Because a semi-automatic rifle provides an acceptable rate of killing?

No. Because an assault rifle is by definition an automatic weapon.

[kenberg]

blackshoe, on 2015-July-16, 21:50, said:

I had a friend, sadly no longer with us, who grew up in rural upstate NY. Farm country. When he was in high school, he said, it was not unusual for students to bring their hunting rifles to school and leave them in the coat closet during the day, and then go hunting when school let out. Nobody ever said a word about it. But those were different times.

Re: Doris Day. I hadn't heard that one, but I'm not surprised.

Assault rifles. The term has been usurped by the anti-gun crowd. An M-16 is an assault rifle. An AR-15 is not - except to said crowd.

There is always a danger of sounding like the old guy reminiscing about the good old days. But in fact times change, and a big change is in how young people are viewed. We lived in the center of the city where I doubt the high school would have allowed me to store my shotgun, and anyway I worked after school, but my guess is that my cousin would have been allowed to do so. He lived on a farm, his father worked in the iron mines, it would have fit in with the culture.

I bought my own car when I was 15. I drove when hunting with friends. But I kept the gun at home other times.

Still, the political ad was ridiculous. As evidence I cite Becky's howls of laughter when it popped up. It is hard to believe anyone actually approved that ad, but there it was.

Anyway, Mike's comment about political attack ads brought it to mind but I guess it is a bit off topic.

Also, Bill's comment about Comcast reminded me that I recently had a very good experience with them.There was some erratic behavior, I called in, a very pleasant and knowledgeable person helped me. She offered to stay on line (telephone line) longer while we checked it more thoroughly to see if it really was fixed. I suggested that I just get her name so I could get to her directly if it was not ok. Apparently she had already worked into her lunch hour because she said she was leaving as soon as our conversation was over but she made notes of what had happened so I could pick up where we left off if more help was needed. It wasn't.


The economic model for tv seems weird and getting weirder, at least to me. It's just from lethargy that I haven't dumped a lot of it.

[barmar]

I once called Comcast tech support, and got someone I used to work with when I worked at another ISP (she was in 1st tier tech support, I was in 3rd tier).

[mikeh]

blackshoe, on 2015-July-16, 21:50, said:

Assault rifles. The term has been usurped by the anti-gun crowd. An M-16 is an assault rifle. An AR-15 is not - except to said crowd.

I'm sure that those killed by an AR-15 are happy about the distinction.

[helene_t]

How was it ... if a thread goes on long enough, eventually someone will relate the OP topic to Hitler, ACBL system regulations, The existence of God, gun regulations?

[Vampyr]

helene_t, on 2015-July-17, 09:10, said:

How was it ... if a thread goes on long enough, eventually someone will relate the OP topic to Hitler, ACBL system regulations, The existence of God, gun regulations?

Do you know, I often wonder if blackshoe is for real or is a deliberate caricature. I generally lean towards the latter, just because it scares me to think that there are people like that in real life. Well, I know that there are some, but I am pretty sure that electrical and internet connections are patchy at best in cabins in the backwoods of Montana or Wisconsin.

[Zelandakh]

That is unfair Stefanie - there are people with more extreme views at the forefront of American media and politics.

[blackshoe]

kenberg, on 2015-July-17, 07:38, said:

The economic model for tv seems weird and getting weirder, at least to me. It's just from lethargy that I haven't dumped a lot of it.

That reminds me. I gotta plug that ethernet cable into the TV.