Life is God's novel. Let him write it.— Isaac Bashevis Singer, born in 1903
2. The Color of Your Consciousness Black Box Site
The psychological traps of online shopping, explained
Vox: “Online retailers have all sorts of tricks for getting consumers to buy more and buy faster. The people who create those tricks don’t really even try to hide them.A cursory Google search reveals all sorts of marketers advertising their tools to help merchants boost sales. They boast countdown timersthat are “a great way of creating urgency and encouraging shoppers to buy your products” and low stock counters that employ “psychological triggers” to ignite a sense of scarcity and increase sales.
Some companies offer sellers tools to show how many people have added an item to their carts, ordered it, or looked at it, and they’re open that these numbers can be real or random — as in, made up. A travel website tells you there are only three hotel rooms left at a certain price ahead of your next vacation, or an e-commerce platform tells you that you only have 10 minutes to buy that dress in your shopping cart. Sellers and marketers know that fomenting a sort of fear of missing out will indeed push you to act, whether or not it’s true.
The same goes for showing ratings and reviews, for marking something as a top seller, for indicating someone else in your network bought the same item before. Sometimes what you’re being shown is real, sometimes it’s not, and oftentimes, it’s impossible to know what’s actually the case. “It’s kind of buyer beware,” said Harry Brignull, a user experience expert who has tracked deceptive design, often referred to as “dark patterns,” for more than a decade and is currently working on a book on the matter…”
How to discover new music In a musical rut
Whatever your vintage age or existing tastes, you can find surprise and enjoyment beyond the streaming algorithms. by James Hadfield…However, ‘new music’ doesn’t mean only ‘music that’s current’. It can also mean music that’s new to you. Our tastes evolve as we get older: you probably know someone who was once an ardent clubber or punk kid but now spends more time listening to 1970s Brazilian music or the gentle jazz of ECM Records releases. That’s perfectly normal. You may be surprised to discover that music you once dismissed, or even outright disliked, now makes perfect sense to you (in my case, both of the above). So ‘new’ doesn’t necessarily mean contemporary…Music taste is subjective. Everyone has their own preferences and pet hates, obsessions and blind spots. I wouldn’t assume that the music I love is going to tickle you in the same way.
Your new favourite song may be hiding in plain sight on Spotify’s Global Top 50 playlist, though you’ll probably need to spread the net a bit wider. If you’re using a streaming service, try dipping into some of the curated playlists – which focus more on particular styles or moods – or generating a playlist from an artist, album or song that you already like. (One way to do this is to simply make a playlist with one or two of your favourite albums and then let the algorithm do its work: once it has finished playing songs from the albums, it will seek out similar songs by other artists with whom you may not be familiar.) Online radio stations can also be a great source of music.
NPR’s New Music Friday podcasts, Norman Records’ weekly playlists and The Quietus Music of the Monthfeatures are good places to catch up on the latest releases. The latter recently introduced me to ABADIR, an Egyptian producer of transportive electronic music, and Emergence Collective, a British improvising ensemble steeped in the influence of minimalist composers such as Steve Reich…”
See also TechCrunch: “DeepMind and YouTube release Lyria, a gen-AI model for music, and Dream Track to build AI tunes
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