Category Archives: Web
I Read the Internet So You Don’t Have To, Volume Two
Today's #febphotoaday theme was "words."
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last shared a collection of what I’ve been reading online, and given that I’ve amassed a new handful of clips in Evernote and Instapaper, so it’s time to share once again.
First off, the most important infographic ever made: Cakes Throughout U.S. History.
And while I’m on the subject of American history, imagine my surprise at coming across this headline: John Tyler’s Grandsons Are Still Alive! Now, because I am a huge history nerd, I know that Tyler was president in the first half of the 19th century, which makes the headline seem highly improbable. But it’s apparently true, explained with this epic understatement: “The Tyler men have a habit of having kids very late in life.” Mmm hmm. A little math on a post-it (since discarded) had them in their 70s. No word on the age of the women who bore the children, but I suspect”significantly younger” would not be an understatement.
Staying with things historic(ish), I enjoyed this L.A. Times article on Highclere Castle, the British estate where “Downton Abbey” is set. I knew a real castle was used for the exteriors, but was surprised to discover that the interiors are not soundstages. It makes the luxury of the setting all the more amazing knowing it is real.
I don’t presume to speak for any woman but myself, but I suspect there are some generally relevant points of frustration in this story: A Size 2 Is a Size 2 Is a Size 8. Key is the subtitle – “Why clothing sizes make no sense.” As someone who has railed time and again about why women’s clothing can’t just use our actual body measurements, it was interesting to learn some of the background that landed us in our current irrelevant-but-judgement-laden random number system.
Last but not least, this video had us laughing in the office this week. “It’s like an M, made out of fries.”
Have you read anything you’d like to share?
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Hat-tip to Julia for the sizing article and the video, and to Alison for the Downton story. And Twitter for the rest.
Time to Start Lying About My Age
Yesterday just before I left work, my friend Alison sent me a link to the Google Ads Preferences page – where our Googlian overlords reveal the demographic information they use to serve us customized ads. I don’t know if this was previously hidden, or if the release of Google’s new privacy policy just got people looking at it, but its wacky inaccuracies were taking the Internet by storm. (The Washington Post has details on their, uh, blogPOST blog.)
It took a moment of perusing my own see why. The interests listed were fairly accurate: cooking and recipes, specifically soups, stews, and Asian; team sports, notably hockey; and assorted interests around technology and social media. Yup, sounds like me. Primary geographic area: Washington, DC – also true. And then I got to the basic demographics, where they took me for a 25-34 male. Wrong, and really wrong.
Currently, this stuff is tracked by web browsers – that’s the change that’s got people up in arms. Google’s new plan is to merge browsing data into our account information to make the results more accurate, and therefore be able to serve more creepily-specific ads.
But because everything is still handled at the browser level I have a somewhat different profile at home. Still have cooking and recipes among my interests, but for meat, seafood, and Middle Eastern cuisine. I also like hockey, but apparently not technology/social media, so at home I’m a 25-34 year old female.
I have two thoughts on this.
First: holy gender-norming, Google! Technology AND hockey? Must just be a dude who likes to cook, but when tech’s not in play, clearly hockey is the outlier interest and cooking means I’m a chick. Oof.
Second: Though Google gave me mixed marks on my girlieness, I did land squarely in the age group that’s between six and 15 years younger than I actually am. Combined with the fact that offline me is often similarly mistaken, I think it’s clear that I’m meant to be lying about my age.
So all that stuff I said last spring about turning 40? Disregard. It was a typo. I meant 30 – the numbers are just so close together.
