By Arthur Kauffman

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Charles Duhigg:

Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium supplements and a bright blue rug. There’s, say, an 87 percent chance that she’s pregnant and that her delivery date is sometime in late August. What’s more, because of the data attached to her Guest ID number, Target knows how to trigger Jenny’s habits. They know that if she receives a coupon via e-mail, it will most likely cue her to buy online. They know that if she receives an ad in the mail on Friday, she frequently uses it on a weekend trip to the store. And they know that if they reward her with a printed receipt that entitles her to a free cup of Starbucks coffee, she’ll use it when she comes back again.

Extensive and pain-staking research on why companies want your data and how they can use it. Journalism at its finest.

Josh Marshall:

Sometime in the next couple weeks, visits from mobile devices will hit 20% of the total visits to TPM. The percentage has more than doubled in the last year. But as you can see from the chart below, the speed is accelerating. The percentage is now growing at more than 1% a month.

iPads and iPhones make up more than 70% of those mobile device visits.

Eric Li:

The West’s current competition with China is therefore not a face-off between democracy and authoritarianism, but rather the clash of two fundamentally different political outlooks. The modern West sees democracy and human rights as the pinnacle of human development. It is a belief premised on an absolute faith.

China is on a different path. Its leaders are prepared to allow greater popular participation in political decisions if and when it is conducive to economic development and favorable to the country’s national interests, as they have done in the past 10 years.

Li’s argument is one that I heard many forms of in a recent trip to China—China’s success comes from its stability, and its stability comes from political rights not outrunning the political climate. In other words, Li and others regard the Tiananmen Square rebellion and similar movements as destabilizing forces that, had they been successful, would have had hugely negative effects on the pace of democratic reforms in China. The reason for this fundamental difference in thought processes from the East to the West? The West’s faith that human rights are God-given.

Oh boy.

Phil Yu:

It’s good to know that she recognizes — albeit after the fact — what an awful, harmful commercial this is. But honestly, it still leaves me with about a thousand questions. How did she get involved with this job in the first place? What did she know going into it? What was her reaction when she saw the finished ad? What was her reaction to the reaction?

Of course the onus is still on Pete Hoekstra for (presumably) authorizing the ad buy, but I share Yu’s questions about Chan’s role in all this. How does a “recent college grad” get wrapped up in one of the biggest race-baiting debacles of the century?

Ryan Essmaker:

Call us crazy, but we’re interested in the mad ones—especially the ones who are mad to create. The Great Discontent is our attempt to scratch past the surface of what makes creative people tick. We’re not as interested in the best tools to use or a 1–2–3 step process; that’s all great, but we’re more intrigued by the artist as a person.

The Great Discontent is a journal of interviews focusing on creativity, risk, and what connects us as artists. We typically publish a new interview every Tuesday.

Great idea and beautiful responsive design.

The reflection thing

I turned 21 three days ago.

I’ve been reading journals from five years ago—bits and pieces of a mind remarkably similar to mine in its conclusions, yet entirely different in its process.

It’s as if someone took my brain right now, pried it open, poured concrete systems and plastic castles into it before coldly forcing it closed with staples and duct tape.

It’s as if now I’m five years younger, not older.

[pullquote author="David Grossman, To the End of the Land"]She almost says, When you’re older you’ll understand, but in fact she knows it’s the opposite: When you’re younger you’ll understand, when you’re a little boy again, making ridiculous bargains with frightening shadows and nightmares, then maybe you’ll understand.[/pullquote]

Advice from the past

On my sixteenth birthday, I gave my 21 year-old self some advice; mostly general, some specific. Here are some highlights:

  • Be living on less than $10,000 a year. There’s no excuse for making more than that—it only encourages consumption and waste. Not sure what I was thinking here; I should have thought about the fact that I’d likely be in college with minimal amounts of income. Still, it’s a good sentiment and I still try to live simply (probably less so than I had imagined five years ago).
  • Don’t even think about getting married. No worries.
  • Read more. I wish I had gotten on this one sooner. Last summer, I finally subscribed to the New Yorker, which I try to read entirely every week. Thanks to my Kindle, which I got this past Christmas, I’m slowly getting into the habit of reading books again, not just skimming them. I’m on my fourteenth book for 2011, and hope to keep up the pace.
  • Don’t drink too much. I think I’m in the clear here as well.

Back to the future

If I could mail myself a journal back in time to my sixteen year-old self, here’s some things I would tell me:

  • Learn to live in the moment: Everything in life matters less than you think; don’t miss the really good moments for focussing on the big picture.
  • Never get a cel phone: If you never start, you never have to quit.
  • Myspace is not forever. Yep.
  • Learn to do one thing well and learn to enjoy it. Don’t be the guy kind of good at everything without excelling at anything.
  • Research the effects of smoking salvia and Percocet together. Seriously.
  • The answer to the problems of religion isn’t an experiential, emotional high. In other words, don’t compromise your intellect for what feels right. Don’t just “go with it”.
  • Learn how to be OK with aloneness. Loneliness is the human condition; embrace it instead of fighting it. And enjoy the moments of loveliness in our bumbling attempts at togetherness without trying to hold them in your fist forever.
  • Shower less, wash your clothes less, and use less product on your body. For real, do you even know how much water you use?
  • Learn how to write your feelings if you can’t talk about them. And save your writing; don’t burn it in a fit of self-loathing.
  • Drink more. Yes.

Good.is had a post called Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Turkey. From number five:

Antibiotics are standard additions to commercially blended poultry feed. (So are corn, hydrolyzed feather meal, and blood meal). Hormones are not, but you can still find the label “no hormones” as long as manufacturers add the USDA-mandated disclaimer: “Federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones.” Turkeys aren’t protected by the federal Humane Slaughter Act, and they’re often stunned in electrocuted water baths before being decapitated.

How’s that Thanksgiving meal sitting on your stomach?

a vague review

Things you need to know about this book: Shoplifting From American Apparel was written by tao lin and published September 2009. i didn’t read it until early this year. And then i read it four times, back to back, just like that.

2x shoplifting arrest, 5x vague relationship

Sam is a writer who lives his days suspended between a world of Amazon and Gmail and the equally flat and uninteresting lines of urban America.

The drab lines and expressionless characters in this novella are an eery reminder of who we are—this lonely-ultra-connected generation. We who satiate our consumerist lifestyle with the pretense of fighting corporate greed. And eat at organic vegan restaurants.

And type “im fucked” a lot on Google chat.

The developed characters aren’t lovely or beautiful or demonic or hateful. They exist. They’re people. People we hardly want to get to know.

And also, this book was funny. In a weird sort of way. i laughed a lot, and i didn’t expect to. Not in a ‘ha ha’ sort of way; more of a ‘hehe’ sort of way. tao lin may have fashioned Sam in his own image, but i know a Sam. We all know a Sam.

And i can’t explain the thing about this book that made me read it four times. The thing that when you get done reading it makes you feel like you read something deep, something Hemingway-like with substance and double meanings and stuff. It’s the impulse that makes you so sure you missed some underlying connection that explains the meaning of the book that you read it again.

But it’s not there.

It’s my favorite book i’ve read all year.