NPR:

The world of influencing is pretty simple.

Companies from the likes of Airbnb to Amazon to Louis Vuitton pay people with a lot of followers on social media to promote their products. These creators then make content, typically videos, where they recommend the products and services, often adding a discount code their followers can use to sweeten the deal.

…

It has evolved over time and can now include things like the “come shopping with me” trend that emulates the feeling of casually shopping with a friend. The influencers film themselves walking around stores and filling their carts with clothing, makeup, cute little bowls for your ramen noodles and, of course, Stanley cups.

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De-influencing encourages people to buy less stuff and instead use what they already have.

I did not expect to share two articles related to sustainability today, but here we are.

In what I’d chalk up as another moment in the win column for Gen-Z, The Kids® are pushing up against the last few years of influencer culture, and saying, “Hey, wait, why do we need all of this crap?”

As someone who has been looking around his house and considered purging quite a bit, it’s a concept that I can absolutely agree with. Ironic, given how much of my last day job involved influencers.

I think the next generation is putting a strong focus on being genuine, real, and considerate, and rejection of capitalistic norms like these is just another example of it.

Now, how much this eventually effects our economy and relationship with countries that produce all of this junk…that’s for someone much smarter than me to consider. In the meantime: I breathe a sigh of relief that some people are still considering more than themselves.

The Dieline:

Let’s say you’re a sustainable healthcare company selling over-the-counter (OTC) drugs in compostable and refillable packaging. Pain relief, allergy, cold and flu—all the good stuff that prompts many late-night Walgreens runs. You offer consumers a bottle—a beautiful, frosted glass bottle that looks great in a medicine cabinet—they can fill for the rest of their lives.

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right? You can high-five yourself because you’ll never buy Tylenol again. That’s just another plastic bottle that would likely end up in a landfill.

But you’re also a young brand with maybe just a few years under your belt. And now, lo and behold, Target comes calling. They want to stock your products because they believe in your core mission of sustainability. Swell, huh? But now you not only have to stand out on the shelf, you need to explain to shoppers—who have no clue who you are—what your brand is and how it actually works.

Very cool write up from The Dieline, not just showcasing some very cool, very effective packaging design for the sustainable medicine brand Cabinet, but also digging into the tough parts of selling to customers the “buy the package once, then refills only after” ethos.

This made me excited to buy aspirin, y’all.

Disney+ on YouTube:

The upcoming season of “Doctor Who” follows the Doctor and his companion Ruby Sunday as they travel across time and space, with adventures all the way from the Regency era in England, to war-torn future worlds. Throughout their adventures in the TARDIS – a time-traveling ship shaped like a police box – they encounter incredible friends and dangerous foes, including a terrifying bogeyman, and the Doctor’s most powerful enemy yet.

A new era, a new Doctor, an influx of cash money from the mouse, this should make for a great time.

I really enjoyed the anniversary specials over the holidays, including the debut of Ncuti Gatwa, who was a lot of fun in the role, so I look forward to the release!

For the first time, it’s a world-wide debut, with episodes hitting Disney+ around the world starting on Friday, May 10th, 2024 at 7pm Eastern. That’s midnight, UK time.

Larian will NOT be making a Baldur’s Gate 4, it seems. I just heard so many of my friends groan at this news.

The internet was ablaze yesterday, as the United States Department of Justice officially did as rumored and decided, well, they were gonna sue Apple!

As The New York Times (paywalled) put it…

The federal government’s aggressive crackdown on Big Tech expanded on Thursday to include an antitrust lawsuit by the Justice Department against Apple, one of the world’s best-known and most valuable companies.

The department joined 16 states and the District of Columbia to file a significant challenge to the reach and influence of Apple, arguing in an 88-page lawsuit that the company had violated antitrust laws with practices that were intended to keep customers reliant on their iPhones and less likely to switch to a competing device. The tech giant prevented other companies from offering applications that compete with Apple products like its digital wallet, which could diminish the value of the iPhone, and hurts consumers and smaller companies that compete with it, the government said.

Sixteen states! Eighty eight pages! This is a Big Boy Document! They are serious about this one.

Let’s dig more into those accusations, shall we?

By tightly controlling the user experience on iPhones and other devices, Apple has created what critics call an uneven playing field, where it grants its own products and services access to core features that it denies rivals. Over the years, it has limited finance companies’ access to the phone’s payment chip and Bluetooth trackers from tapping into its location-service feature. It’s also easier for users to connect Apple products, like smartwatches and laptops, to the iPhone than to those made by other manufacturers.

This is the point and purpose of having a technology stack. Integrated systems which work together. Guess what? If you want to use a Fitbit (Google product) with an iPhone, you can. If you want to connect your iPhone to a Windows machine? You can.

You can do those things. But it’s better, easier, and works more cohesively via Apple products. Because Apple can account for all of their hardware and its quirks. This is no different – in my opinion – than JoyCons working more accurately on a Nintendo Switch than on an iPad. You sure can connect JoyCons to an iPad, but they sure as hell don’t work as well.

The lawsuit asks the court to stop Apple from engaging in current practices, including blocking cloud-streaming apps, undermining messaging across smartphone operating systems and preventing the creation of digital wallet alternatives.

Blocking cloud-streaming apps? OK, yeah, you’ve got a point. I think that’s a great idea to open that realm up. That’s what the EU has done with their DMA (Digital Markets Act), and Apple responded with their latest iOS update to account for it. The response to Apple’s response has been mixed, but there’s precedent. Go for it, DoJ!

Undermining messaging across smartphone operating systems? Uh…the only thing they have is iMessage, which allows Apple based users to use their version of a more secure enclave for messaging, a’la a Signal. If an Android user – who does not have iMessage – sends a standard SMS text to an Apple user, guess what? Apple users get that SMS. Yes! There is that green bubble versus the blue bubble thing – but that is almost exclusively a US based issue. Internationally, most people use WhatsApp…which doesn’t support SMS.

At best, maybe Apple should develop an iMessage app for Android or Windows. But I’ll be honest, I don’t see the point. And I know, you might argue “WHAT ABOUT RCS?” Apple’s on it. Sure, they got strong armed into it, but it’s happening.

Preventing the creation of digital wallet alternatives? I don’t even know what we’re fighting about here. The crummy US banking system already has tools like Zelle for you to send money. Perhaps I’m out of my realm here, but I definitely know that I’m not inclined to use a third-party payment tool.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. You’ve got the government taking credit for Apple’s success by way of the 90’s antitrust case against Microsoft, you’ve got the weird breakdown of calling Apple the primary vendor of “performance smartphones”, which isn’t a thing, but if it were, you could go after Ferrari or Bugatti for being successful there, it just goes on and on for 88 pages of nonsense. Minus that one decent argument about app installations / the App Store.

Let’s wrap this up, with the last bit from the New York Times story:

“Competition makes devices more private and more secure,” said Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s antitrust division. “In many instances, Apple’s conduct has made its ecosystem less private and less secure.”

What better way to make things more private and more secure than opening it up to anyone and everyone, and not locking the doors behind them. Do they hear themselves?

Up next: Merrick Garland finds out his newly bought PlayStation 5 copy of Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth won’t play on his Nintendo Switch, so he sues Sony.

Max on YouTube:

The next chapter in @TheBatman saga from Matt Reeves. Academy Award Nominee Colin Farrell is #ThePenguin in the new Max Original Series coming this fall to Max.

It’s been a bumpy two years since the release of The Batman, with writers strikes, actors strikes, and more, but the spin-off series The Penguin is finally on its way.

With the above teaser, we now know that the series will hit Max this Fall, and yes, Colin Farrell remains unrecognizable under all that makeup.

It looks like a no-nonsense crime drama, and I cannot wait to return to the orange hued version of Matt Reeves' The Batman universe.

Right now I’ve got a mix of sites on different hosting.

• I’ve got a Micro.blog. (marty.day)
• I’ve got blast-o-rama which has been on WordPress for SIXTEEN YEARS now.
• And I’ve got an omg.lol account.

I’ve been thinking lately about merging my WordPress stuff into Micro.blog, but now omg.lol’s creator is hinting on their own blog service.

What the heck do I do? I’d like something cheaper, lightweight, and distributable. That’s all I’m considering in this.