Stuff I learned from podcasts this week

Actually, by now it’s stuff I learned last week, or the week before that… But I still find it worth knowing!

You’re going to bullshit yourself regardless, so you might as well put it to good use!

Hidden Brain: Outsmarting Yourself

This was the second of a two-part series on cognitive dissonance: how you try to convince yourself that a decision you made was the right one, even in light of evidence to the contrary. Pretty much all humans do this, so even if you’re well aware of that tendency, you might still do it. But the awareness can at least help you harness it for good.

Some really interesting examples here of how to harness cognitive dissonance for good, including in the realm of public health. Hmm…

The federal government is killing local news by trying to help local news

The Paul Wells podcast: How Bill C-18 is threatening a local news empire

Thanks to Michael Geist, I’ve been aware of Bill C-18, the law that (essentially) says that Facebook and Google must pay news organizations for linking to their content, for years. And that it has resulted in Facebook (Meta now, I guess) doing exactly what they clearly said they would do if this bill passed, which is to stop linking to news. With Google now likely to do similarly.

What I learned from this Paul Wells podcast is how this has specifically hurt an organization that I had never heard of before. Village Media has been very successful at going into markets that have lost their traditional local news outlets. Village Media has filled that void, supplying communities with local news, all online. They have staff journalists, with benefits—not just a bunch of freelancers! They are profitable, and growing, and had been planning to expand into several new markets this year.

Until, until…

Losing both Facebook and Google means losing 56% of their traffic. In response to the uncertainty this has posed, they have stopped their planned expansion.

Village Media is a new guy on the block. Bill C-18 was meant to help the legacy guys. And here the Canadaland (Short Cuts): No Going Back with India podcast picks up the thread, pointing out that legacy media isn’t doing so great without their Facebook traffic, either! (Whereas Facebook/Meta itself is doing just fine.)

Metroland, part of of Star Medica, has just recently ended print publications in 70 Canadian communities. This would have represented an ideal opportunity for Village Media to swoop in and fill that void.

If only, if only…

And yes, I know Facebook and Google are evil corporations. I’m not siding with them over the federal government. I’m siding with journalists. With journalism. It matters!

Even though…

Wine journalism is slightly corrupt

Canadaland: A Wine Critic Spills All

Sure, I’ve been known to peruse wine review column. And I didn’t know:

• They do not pay for their own wines. They are given wines to review.
• This is because newspapers don’t let them expense the wines they review. If they had to buy them all, they’d spend more on the wine than they’d earn writing the review.

That is largely true of all wine critics, who nevertheless try to review honestly. And most of them adhere to the same 100-point scale most wine buyers are familiar, which has specific meanings (something else I didn’t know), such as: a score over 95 represents “a wine for the ages”, a really unusual and exceptional drink.

Most, but not Carolyn Evans Hammond, who writes for the Toronto Star (and their affiliate papers). I had noticed that her scores routinely seemed to be really high. I did not know that it’s because she does not use the same scale as everyone else. She’s invented her own scale, with a “value” meaning. Like, her 96 might mean that for $8, that’s a really great wine!

I’m so disillusioned now. (I kid, I kid. But do keep that in mind if you are shopping for a really special bottle, that she might be a reviewer to skip.)

The story behind Inuktitut

Elisapie interview from Q with Tom Power

I had heard of Inuk singer Elisapie before, thanks to my sister recommending her Inuktitut album. Otherwise, I likely wouldn’t have listened to this interview. But a couple tidbits I found especially interesting was that she considers this album of covers her “Most personal album yet”. Because she selected songs that really had meaning for her, and wrote her own translations of them (into Inuktitut). (Which, by the way, meant a long lead time for this album as it’s harder to get the permission when you change the song in such a way.)

The songs she found hardest to actually sing were Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” and Queen’s “I Want to Break Free”, because both originals featured such distinctive and great singers.

A couple other products sound cool

Fashioning The Beatles is a book that was featured on Commotion. All about The Beatles fashion sense which, interestingly, has not been documented in book form before!

And Tom Power interviewed Mick Jagger on Q. The Rolling Stones new album actually sounds… pretty good!