Bits and Pieces from Last Week

 A little late and from an unexpected source, I found support for my idea that the MPAA and the RIAA should be asking why porn survived into the digital age. That was something that I put out in 2010. The answer given in How porn shapes your phone habits, even if you don’t watch it (London Times) to my question is prosaic: 

The content was just bait to keep us scrolling and watching, while the traces of our most private desires were harvested and commodified.

More troubling now is this:

...Among the earliest people to craft online personas and compete for algorithmic visibility were so-called cam models: sex workers who already in the mid-Nineties began to vie for attention by selling the kind of parasocial intimacy that would later become a cornerstone of the creator economy. Viewers paid for nudity and sex, yes, but also for a sense of human contact. Influencers play with the same dynamic, offering carefully constructed fantasies in exchange for attention and, increasingly, money....

My reaction was it was a freak show, not reality, another thing to traverse while sight-seeing. But then I was never interested in the subject matter. Guess I was lucky, it may have been another in my group sessions went back to it. Leaving me wondering why. There really is nothing spectacular about looking at/watching naked people. I am left to the conclusion that I am missing the point, that I am out of touch.

Impossibility Is a Myth ( The Fence) some true white-collar crime for you art lovers.

Mike Ditka, the quintessential Chicago Bear and a Pro Football Hall of Famer, dies at 86 - law school made me a Bears fan. I have to admit not thinking of Ditka for many years now.

Who Put Bella In the Witch Elm? (Atlas Obscura) something weird to throw a curve in the works.

Because archeology fascinates me still: Ancient Wells, a Persian Trade Jar, and a Mysterious Structure Rewrite the Story of Tamil Nadu’s Sunken City and A 3,500-Year-Old Egyptian Dog Had a Unique Name, an Unusual Coat, and a Rare Hieroglyph ( Arkeonews).

Indiana interstate highway construction costs soar amid inflation, state's own ambitions (Indiana Capital Chronicle) brings me back to a 20 year old question: why not light rail?

 Is it nap time?

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