Episode 91: Refining Mining Into Tragic Magic

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(This episode is part of the series The Powell Movement.)

I am constantly amazed at how people bend themselves into cognitive dissonance pretzels rather than admit that there are psychological pressures at work on all of us, so much so that maybe we should make ourselves aware of the pressures that prove most effective on ourselves. You know, to see when we are being snookered.

That's roughly the thrust of this Episode 91: Refining Mining Into Tragic Magic. This is an introduction to the concept that the technology used to determine ad targets and what best moves them may have gone too far, especially when used in political concerns.

In this episode, I read from: Nir Eyal's Hooked; a New York Times Magazine article entitled "How Companies Learn Your Secrets"; a Paste Magazine article, "Hillary Clinton's Super PAC, Taking a Page from Vladimir Putin, Spends $1 Million on Online Trolls"; and a New York Times article called "Fake Russian Facebook Accounts Bought $100,000 in Political Ads".

I play a bit of audio from: the movie Top Secret; President Ronald Reagan, correcting David Brinkley's pronunciation during his last interview as president; Mark Zuckerberg, trying to reassure everyone that he wasn't evil; and an On The Media episode titled "Trust Issues." D. L. Myers, of course, voices the memo itself.

I play two from Jahzzar, first "Twin", and then "Downtown Serenade". KMFDM backs a new intro from Henry Giroux. I close with Mistle Thrush.

I'm releasing this and all my episodes under a Creative Commons 4.0 attribution, share-alike, and non-commercial license.