Media continue to shower love on Barack Obama

Barack Obama has been out of office for a year and a half, but the media love fest for the 44th president of the U.S. continues unabated.
Obama was a charming politician who received fawning press despite a rather lackluster record from eight years in office. He oversaw an expansion of the federal government’s scope, used executive orders to bypass Congress, and kicked problems like the country’s massive debt and broken immigration system further down the road.
Still, the liberal-leaning media loved the guy and gave him favorable coverage in magazines, newspaper articles and television segments.
The cover of the June 25-July 8 issue of New York magazine features a photo of Obama with the text “Barack Obama, Where Are You?”
It reminds me of newspaper headlines in superhero movies that say “Superman, Where Are You?” and the like. (See examples below.) As if Obama could swoop in and solve our nation’s problems under current President Donald Trump.

In addition to that magazine cover, Obama has just popped up as a playable character in the video game “Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn” from Mad Dog Games.
Obama plays a gun-toting, drone-strike-using street vigilante in an episode of the game titled “Barack Fu: The Adventures of Dirty Barry.” The game developers say it’s a parody so they don’t have to get legal rights from Obama to use his name and likeness. (See articles by Polygon and Variety.)

Celebrities in my backyard thanks to lying clickbait

Clickbait purveyors will use just about any photo to generate clicks. Lately they’ve been grabbing celebrity pictures to promote sponsored links for auto-related business propositions in my area.
Taboola carried a sponsored link with the headline “New rule in Great Falls, Virginia, leaves drivers fuming.” It used a photo of Blake Lively filming a scene for “Gossip Girl” in which she’s being arrested in New York City. The photo was taken in March 2009 for her CW television series.

Another Taboola sponsored link had the headline “Find markdowns in Virginia on unsold car inventory.” It used a photo of socialite Tamara Ecclestone in her $600,000 Ferrari 599 GTO. (See article by AutoEvolution.) I doubt the website is selling that kind of car.
I don’t know whether clickbait companies are dumb or just exploiting the curiosity gap with inaccurate photos.

Fake news! Lying clickbait exposed!

Like carnival barkers, clickbait purveyors often lie about the things they’re promoting.
They’ll use a photo unrelated to the article or make a false claim to get you to click on their sponsored article.
What follows are some of the latest examples. (Click on the “lying clickbait” label for other articles in the series.)

An article by Revcontent titled “Angelina Jolie’s daughter used to be adorable” didn’t use a photo of one of Jolie’s girls. Instead it used a picture of Thylane Blondeau, now 17. At age 10, she was dubbed “the most beautiful girl in the world.” (See articles by Glamour and Yahoo Lifestyle.)

Clickbait writers like to promote pictorials about the Woodstock music festival in 1969 with photos taken elsewhere.
Two recent examples used pictures of buxom drag-racing promoter “Jungle Pam” Hardy taken in the 1970s. (See article on Jungle Pam by The Selvedge Yard.)

An article titled “The 10 most expensive luxury yachts in the world” used a photo of a concept design instead of an actual yacht. The concept superyacht was designed by Italian yacht designer Gabriele Teruzzi. (See article by Business Insider.)

An article by serial clickbait liar HistoryInOrbit said “Boeing does it first. This 787 takes off vertically.” The photo was of a Boeing 727 by Alexandre Dubath. The article likely refers to a demonstration of steep takeoff ascent by Boeing with a 787 jet. But that test flight was not a vertical takeoff. (See article by Forbes.)

Finally, there’s a category of clickbait for death-defying stunts that aren’t.
I’ve written before about Pedra do Telegrafo in Brazil a few times. The rock is a popular location for Instagram users. With the right photo angle, subjects appear to be risking their lives by hanging on to a high cliff. Actually they’re just a few feet off the ground. (See article by the Daily Mail.)

Another rock outcropping in Brazil called Pedra da Gavea actually does have a steep drop. An article titled “Final photo: Don’t blink, what happens next is unimaginable” implies that the person pictured must have fallen. That’s not the case. The subject of the photo is trained daredevil climber Leonardo Pereira. (See article by ABC News.) Both Pedra do Telegrafo and Pedra da Gavea are located near Rio de Janeiro.

Trump depicted as king, wrecking ball swinger on latest magazine covers

Magazines Time and The Week depicted President Donald Trump as a king on recent covers after Trump claimed he was above the law in regards to the investigation into possible Russian collusion in the 2016 election.
The Economist and The Spectator illustrated Trump wrecking America’s foreign policy and NATO, respectively, in covers this month.
Other magazine covers referred to Trump’s historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
I don’t usually include newspapers in my regular roundups of Trump magazine covers, but the New York Post’s cover of Trump meeting with Kim Kardashian West was too good to pass up.

Remembering Sears, the one-time retail giant

One-time retail leader Sears doesn’t look like it’s going to be in business much longer. The struggling company recently announced another round of store closings.
One of the stores set to close is an anchor at the Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills, Illinois. I worked at that store in the catalog department in 1979 and 1980. I still have my Sears name tag somewhere.
Sears built its brand as a catalog firm. What products it didn’t have available in its retail stores you could probably find in its thick-book catalog.
In the part of the store I worked people would pick up the products they ordered by phone, mail or in person. I’d retrieve their packages and check them out at the register. I’d also call customers at home to let them know that their orders had arrived.
Sears missed a huge opportunity to dominate online when the commercial internet arrived. It had much of the physical infrastructure in place. Instead, Amazon and Walmart rose up to grab that business.
Chicago-based Sears ended its catalog business in 1993 because of sinking sales and profits, just before the consumer internet took off. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com in July 1994.
Sears wasted away because it failed to adapt to changing consumer tastes and technology. No enterprise can rest on past accomplishments. It must be willing to embrace change.

Related articles:

Sears, Kmart parent company to close another 63 stores as sales crisis continues (USA Today; May 31, 2018)

It was once the biggest retailer in the US. 125 years later, Sears looks a lot different (CNBC; May 18, 2018)

Photo: Store-closing sale at the Sears in the Dover Mall in Dover, Delaware, in May 2018. (Photo on Creative Commons from Dough4872 on Wikipedia entry on Sears.)

What are these airport opinion kiosks all about?

You might have seen some automated opinion solicitation stands at the airport recently and wondered what they’re all about. I’ve seen the kiosk devices at Los Angeles International Airport in California and Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia and possibly elsewhere.
They are white plastic stands with big buttons featuring emojis to register your satisfaction with certain aspects of using the airport. For instance, one had a sign reading “How was your boarding experience today?”
Below the sign is a pad with four buttons with smiley and frowny faces – signifying very satisfied, satisfied, unsatisfied and very unsatisfied.
I can’t imagine the data gathered from these devices would be very useful. Boarding a United flight out of LAX on Friday, there were children in front of me who pounded the colored buttons like it was a game. Also, I think people would be much more motivated to hit the “very unsatisfied” button, possibly repeatedly, than satisfied people, who would likely just ignore the device.
It’s possible that the device acts as a placebo for unhappy customers. They hit the device when they’re unhappy, feel like their opinion has been heard and are less likely to follow up with an angry Twitter rant or email to the airline.
The devices are trademarked as HappyOrNot Smiley Terminals. The company behind them, HappyOrNot of Tampere, Finland, says it has over 4,000 clients in 117 countries and has recorded over half a billion responses to date.

Photos: HappyOrNot Smiley Terminals at LAX. (Patrick Seitz)

Post-apocalyptic video games alive and well at E3

Video game makers must have a bleak worldview, judging by the upcoming software releases on display at the E3 interactive entertainment expo in Los Angeles this week.
Post-apocalyptic scenarios were a popular theme of major video games shown at this year’s E3 show, which ended its three-day run on Thursday.
Walking around the Los Angeles Convention Center, E3 attendees were confronted by actors in gory makeup portraying shambling zombies from such games as “The Walking Dead” by Overkill, “Dying Light 2” from Techland and “Resident Evil 2” by Capcom. Undead creatures are threats in those games as well as “Days Gone” from Sony.
Other post-apocalyptic themed games at E3 2018 included “Fallout 76” (nuclear apocalypse) from Bethesda Softworks, “Tom Clancy’s The Division 2” (viral pandemic) from Ubisoft, “Rage 2” (asteroid strike) from Bethesda, “The Last of Us: Part 2” (mutant fungus) from Sony and “Metro Exodus” (nuclear war) from Deep Silver.
At least nine major post-apocalyptic games were announced at this year’s E3.