Views of a Modern World

Everything else Rick writes

Personalized amusement park video

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This idea falls into my “Orphans” category: projects or ideas that I find interesting but that I know are really low on my priority list. I figure it’s more fun and helpful to write about them and release them into the wild. If nothing else, I can put a David-Allen approved “DONE” label on these in my mind.

This article about a personalized video of surfing lessons reminded me of an idea I’d had a while ago.

When I’ve taken my kids to large amusement parks, a common feature these last 5–10 years has been the “photo pass.” The photo pass is an all-you-can-eat digital photo subscription. So, rather than pay $29 for a single photo of the three of us on a Harry Potter ride, we pay whatever – $99 or $129 – for several days’ worth of all the photos that get taken, on rides or even the standup photographers near the entrance or other scenic spots (like in front of the Millenium Falcon!).

What I’d thought of some time ago was a similar, but better, value-added service that such a park could provide. With the number of both personal video sources (smartphones, tablets, and video cameras) and park-owned cameras of various kinds), the park could create a model where as part of the package, they provide me with a personal video camera, as well as a site to upload any other personal video (or pictures). Then, at the end of each day, I can turn in that camera to the park, and they get to work. They can take my video and maybe park-owned video that I appear in that fits a B-roll kind of definition – waiting in lines, passing security checkpoints in rides and attractions, eating lunch. There’s almost certainly lots of video available. And with Fastpass (at Disney) running on a GPS-enabled smartphone (and probably bluetooth tracking too), it should be easy to get a crowd shot with me in it.

The editing work could be done by a team of video editors in an off-cycle time zone 8 or 12 or 14 hours away, which might be convenient for many reasons. But here’s another idea: an AI tool that has part of the idea in place. Magisto (www.magisto.com) is supposed to be an AI-powered editing app. Their target is to help small businesses create marketing and product videos almost automagically. They take uploaded video and analyze and edit it to create a short piece.

Whether Disney takes all the footage and pushes it into an AI editor or has a team of folks across the world cleaning it up, it’s probably 2–3x better than any regular person’s editing and 1000x better than the editing that almost everyone WON’T DO FOR THEMSELF. That’s my point. Unless editing is your thing, a little bit of skill from someone else will lead to vastly better outcomes compared to what you probably won’t do.

And then I get to walk away with a good-looking video (on DVD too) and maybe a book of photos that won’t just live on my hard drive, never to be seen again. Grandparents (at least my parents) would be happier with a book they could look through than a link to an online album.

Cruel World

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The publish date on this article describing this video is September 2017. I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it until now, August 2019. It was a bad idea.

I made it 45 seconds in, about 12–15 seconds of real content, and I choked and had to stop.

The video is bodycam footage of an Arizona police officer detaining a young teen for (as far as I can tell) nothing illegal. He turns the kid around to handcuff the boy and the kid’s anguished cry hit me right in the gut. This is what it means to know that a piece of media requires a trigger warning. That’s how this makes me feel – such a sharp, suffocating feeling, like an explosion going off right next to me, slamming every one of my emotions to the side, past the edges of my body, and then they snap back after I hit pause, like my brain recoiling from a concussion, smashing around inside my skull.

Typing this post gives me a smidge of distance so I can get the words out about how terrified this makes me that my son, doing nothing wrong, will feel the fear that that poor kid did. It’s the kind of feeling that I can’t even dig into because it’s so overwhelming. I am one of the folks who says that, “Hope is not a strategy” in business contexts on a regular basis. But I’m terrified of this, and I am afraid that cozying up to the fear to understand it would just make me angry, when there’s no one to be angry with.

I don’t know how I’ll ever look at even a few more seconds of this. It is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. My own near-death experience was like water off a duck; the thought of my son’s anguish and fear could only be surpassed by its reality.

Goodbye, cruel world, I’m leaving you today

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

Goodbye, all you people, there’s nothing you can say

To make me change my mind, goodbye

*Also: this isn’t a suicide note. As his namesake wrote, you’ve got to “rage against the dying of the light.” And that’s what life is. The fact that there’s goodness in the space between the infinite blackness is to be accepted with gratitude, not cursed for not being bigger or longer or brighter.

Blue Horseshoe Loves Bloomberg

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I’m impressed by the restraint over at Bloomberg. Justin Bachman wrote this entire article about tracking private jets to unearth pending deals, and no one mentioned Bud Fox.

If you can’t place the title of this post, here’s your hint. And shame on you; I’m going to re-watch it tonight.

Little-known bonus fact: the incomparable lobby of 195 Broadway, the old AT&T building and former home of Haight, Gardner, Poor & Havens (my first law firm), makes an appearance in the opening sequence. Extra fact: I never saw 1/10th that many people in the lobby at once.

Leading from the front

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Saw a law school friend’s post on why trans soldiers should be serving, and some idiot friend of his was complaining about it.

I was tempted:

Okay, as likely one of the few straight male [disclosure of potential bias] former Army officers [appeal to authority and experience] commenting on this, let me mansplain to the folks who don’t understand: everyone who thinks that less freedom and fewer rights is the right path gives the impression of having not read and understood the Declaration and the Constitution. Would gay soldiers have seemed out of place in the early 90s of DADT? Yes. Did that make it right? No. Will we eventually get over these worries of trans solders? Yes. But not soon enough. Continue your petty squabbling, especially those of you who want to reduce the rights of others who are, irony of ironies, willing to fight and die to protect your rights. [Evidently, I’m having a bad day. Prejudice does that to me.] /rant

But then I deleted it. What’s the point?:
(1) Is that guy ever going to change his mind?
(2) Do I need my former classmates to know how I feel and pat me on the back?
The second is a “no,” and I’m afraid the first is too.

One of my best friends recently attended an academic conference and shared a thought from a colleague, to the effect that “Has anyone ever been convinced by someone else’s regression?” The idea is that maybe we’re all just stuck with our beliefs and even those who claim to be empirical or data-driven really just rationalize our way to maintaining our beliefs – no cognitive dissonance allowed. I realized this morning that that comment may have just broken my life.

The only reason I went back on FB was to sign in to dating apps. That part has gone well. The rest? “Same as it ever was.”

What, then, do we do to change the world? Is leading by example – the Army way, one by one the way that works?

Does this mean I have to change what I do and how I do it and everything else?

Respect is earned

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The first rule of leadership is lead by example. I heard it in so many forms during my 5 year in the Army, I can’t possibly footnote it.

Recently, Kellyanne Conway said she was suprised at the disrespect for the president and the office.

And yet here’s this example of how then-candidate Trump showing respect for a certain reporter.

I learned, when the Army gave me a little gold bar to wear on my uniform, that you may be entitled to the trappings of respect- a salute, “Sir,” and all that – but you have to earn respect no matter what your rank.