is this karen's blog

My roommate is fervently opposed to YouTube's new, some say radical censorship policy, and since its breaking has been a major topic of discussion in our household. He's a self-claimed Ron-Swanson-esque libertarian, so Youtube's censorship lent him some fuel for spicy political monologues. When I was more youthful, and all into the haps of Youtube, ads were just starting to become commonplace for many of the creators I followed. They did videos defending the ad use, and I remember Grace Helbig said something like "sorry I'm trying to make a living providing you with free content." Ads on videos was a little annoying at first, but not a huge problem for me as a viewer. A 30-second ad was not that high of a price to pay, especially because I already was so used to ads on TV and just in general. From my understanding, uncensored content makes it difficult for Youtube's advertisers to select which videos will follow their ads as they fear viewers will a...

I thought QR codes were long dead and gone, however, class this week said otherwise. Then, I remembered an article I had read a couple weeks ago about a" virtual grocery stor e" which highly utilizes this technology. It's like a regular supermarket, except it has no inventory in-house and instead of food and shelves, "Walnut Stores," and those like it, render an experience very close to a visit to the real grocery store with pictures  of shelves and food. They could also offer a squeaky-cart-roulette feature to further authenticate the simulation. Just like the real thing! The protocol of using a virtual grocery store is relatively intuitive- imagine telling that to your grandparents or their grandparents. Each item is paired with a unique QR code which shoppers scan to add groceries to their virtual cart. The whole point of this thing is that it takes too long to get everything you need from the giant grocery store, so, once shoppers select their d...

Snapchat is really something completely different now in comparison to when it first started. I remember being pretty into Snapchat in high school, it was really so fun at first, to send a bunch of pictures with your friends. Now, Snapchat makes tons of $$ and the whole world seems to be one board. Companies seem especially into moving onto Snapchat, which is interesting, as the popularity of its original service has subsided, at least personally. I send Snaps much less frequently than I used to, and many of my friends report the same behavior. It seems the original aspects of the media are much less enticing than they once were. Snapchat has really become more of a news app with the discover tab and stories feature. I'm not sure how new it is, but a coworker of mine showed me a feature on Snapchat where you can search for basically any location, a store, restaurant, park, on Snapchat and it will show you any snap that was recorded at that location. I work at Suehiro, a sushi ...

Since 2013, records ordering the incineration of over 12 tons of clothing and textiles have been piling up for a specific waste plant in Denmark.  Fast-fashion is an issue garnering growing importance as its environmental and global economic impacts are discovered. In an investigation performed by a Denmark television station , reporters discovered a systematic "waste" disposal operation adopted by H&M Denmark, and other fast-fashion offenders, in which boxes of new jeans, jewelry, and textiles are combusted rather than sold for below retail price or donated.  Discovered incineration plant records in Denmark show approximately 12,000 kilograms of clothing burned by H&M per year since 2013. H&M perpetuates an attention to waste-avoidance, environmental responsibility, and ethics in the distribution of their ever-increasing line of products.  This sentiment is constantly expressed by the company in PR material and ads, such as the one below, ...

We did a bunch on Instagram this week- a social media everyone says I should get.  It's cool, and I have even viewed some Insta pages without having an account just to see a big cache of photos on something I'm interested in. Even so, I never liked the content I would see from people in my actual world, around high school and early in college. Seems like its all selfies, food posts, and outdoor hashtags, amirite? To me, Instagram is one of the best examples of the perpetual cultivation of a personalized online "image" (pun intended) which is conveyed to individuals in one's range of interaction in the hopes of redeeming whatever gains rendered from internet content irl. Or, hopefully, just a cool platform for showing people you know pictures you like and finding pictures you like from others- even if you don't know them. The latter perspective of Insta is obviously preferred, but I think the former, more cynical bit is a safer bet. Friends of mine ...

I made a Twitter account in high school, was active for a short period of time and have since become a user only when forced. In high school, Twitter was pretty poppin because people made a few juicy accounts about our school only. There was one called @PaliDimes or something like that which people dm people they thought were dimes (10/10, hot, etc.); people were pretty into it. There was another one something to the effect of @PalisadeConfessions where, you guessed it, people dm confessions for 15 seconds of anonymous twitter fame. It's interesting to me that twitter was a definitive, if small part of my high school experience. Imagine Sixteen Candles if Samantha had a twitter account: hell to pay on homegirl's feed. Although, I guess twitter puts a little birthday emoji next to your name on your birthday, so maybe if twitter had been an 80s' thing, her hip younger brother would have noticed and told her parents, thereby avoiding that whole plot?  When I'm...