{"id":14300,"date":"2019-01-11T13:42:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T21:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=14300"},"modified":"2019-01-11T13:42:44","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T21:42:44","slug":"article-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2019\/01\/11\/article-of-the-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Article Of The Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/nyti.ms\/2TFfNEx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">To Cover China, There&#8217;s No Substitute for WeChat<\/a> &#8211; Li Yuan conducts much of her work on the WeChat mobile app, including spotting trends -and prodding sources to get back to her&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I know, I know, you&#8217;re inundated with lists of articles to read every day, and if you&#8217;re like me, you end up reading none of them. Information overload has consequences. I never go to the movie theatre, except on my birthday, because it&#8217;s a tradition (along with a hot fudge sundae and a pastrami on rye), not because I hate the movies, not because I&#8217;m protesting, but because I don&#8217;t have the time. Never mind driving to the multiplex, the film doesn&#8217;t start when I get there, it&#8217;s not on demand, like the rest of our culture. And unlike gigs, it&#8217;s not live. I mean going to a concert is an event, is that what movies are going to turn into? Quite possibly.<\/p>\n<p>So I don&#8217;t understand all this excitement about awards season, because I haven&#8217;t seen the flicks, and most others have not seen many either. Used to be I lived for the movies, before they became so high concept as to defy reality, before the golden era of television.<\/p>\n<p>And speaking of television, with nearly 500 scripted series a year, who can get a handle on it, other than the critics. That&#8217;s who awards shows are for, the critics and old wave media, stuck in a circling the drain paradigm that the public wants no part of.<\/p>\n<p>I mean who cares who wins the Oscar?<\/p>\n<p>Same deal with the Grammys, although we&#8217;re always interested whether it will be a rapper or a woman or both. That&#8217;s more important than the music, because most people have not heard it. We&#8217;re all down in our niches, if we&#8217;re paying attention at all. That&#8217;s right, just like I&#8217;ve excised movies, waiting for them to come to TV and ignoring them once they do, there are people who&#8217;ve completely tuned out music.<\/p>\n<p>Not that the industry acknowledges it.<\/p>\n<p>The music industry is the same as it ever was. Focusing on radio and a Top Ten. Sure, it&#8217;s now streaming instead of sales, but despite being on demand, there&#8217;s no kowtowing to the public&#8217;s desires, no effort to make it comprehensible.<\/p>\n<p>And I read four newspapers a day to try to get a hold on things. I mean you can learn about music from kids, which I don&#8217;t have, but the world issues? Everybody&#8217;s ignorant these days, that&#8217;s the dirty little secret, if someone tells you they know, they probably don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>And the papers are all different. As are their owners. Do you believe Jeff Bezos led with his unit? Isn&#8217;t that interesting, how we never really change, how business is always secondary to lust and desire and love. Hell, Sumner Redstone summoned escorts.<\/p>\n<p>And the flaw of the &#8220;New York Times&#8221; is too often it&#8217;s living in the past, it&#8217;s anti-tech.<\/p>\n<p>But starting a few months back, they began this new series, about how their reporters utilize tech, it&#8217;s published on Tech Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>What bothers me is people covering tech who don&#8217;t have all the services, who don&#8217;t use the latest tech. When they say a 6s is enough. Sure, have a Samsung, as a matter of fact you should have both! But get the latest edition. And subscribe to all the video services. It&#8217;s your gig, you can write it off, I have a hard time taking your opinion seriously if you didn&#8217;t buy a ticket.<\/p>\n<p>And this week&#8217;s story is on the China correspondent.<\/p>\n<p>And she uses WeChat.<\/p>\n<p>Most Americans have no idea of the power of WeChat, as Li Yuan says, it&#8217;s &#8220;the equivalent of WhatsApp plus Facebook plus PayPal pus Uber plus GrubHub plus many other things.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Whew!<\/p>\n<p>Got that?<\/p>\n<p>On one hand, you don&#8217;t want to give one company that much power.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, think of the ease of use! The connectedness!<\/p>\n<p>And most people in China skipped the laptop and went straight to the mobile phone.<\/p>\n<p>Which is why you must not still be using your 5s, never mind your 6s. You need the power and the features to experience the present, never mind the future.<\/p>\n<p>And China&#8217;s a nearly cashless society.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s a censored society.<\/p>\n<p>And in this one brief article you get more insight into China than you do hearing the blubbering of the D.C.&#8217;ites.<\/p>\n<p>And speaking of D.C&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Are we really talking about physical walls when technology does such a good job?<\/p>\n<p>The issue with China is not tariffs, it&#8217;s how the nation has already superseded us in so many ways, and will continue to gain power. For all those America First, USA! USA! people, this is unfathomable.<\/p>\n<p>But if you read this article, not so much.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;To Cover China, There&#8217;s No Substitute for WeChat &#8211; Li Yuan conducts much of her work on the WeChat mobile app, including spotting trends -and prodding sources to get back to her&#8221; I know, I know, you&#8217;re inundated with lists of articles to read every day, and if you&#8217;re like me, you end up reading [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-online","category-the-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-3IE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14300"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14302,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14300\/revisions\/14302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}