Web tracking & cognitive dissonance (Spam Mail #3)

Hi there. I’ve been thinking a lot this week about cognitive dissonance.

Seeing the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the US, and how many people flying for the Thanksgiving holiday has me feeling despondent about the virus outbreak. The news about potential vaccines with extraordinarily high effectiveness has me hopeful that there’s an upside to this, perhaps just after a very dark winter.

I don’t have any links directly about COVID-19 this week, but I do have 💩 Cool shit links if you’re feeling stressed, and 💎 Word gems on cognitive dissonance.

To my American subscribers, Happy Thanksgiving.

See you next week.

💩 Cool shit

Random and awesome links from the web to end the week with.

You’ll be okay - Are you okay? A wonderfully simple little web app to help ground you if you're ever feeling stressed or anxious.

ClickClickClick - We know the web tracks us. This shows you what is being monitored. Creepy.

Backlight - If the last link has you freaked out about tracking you’ll love this real-time privacy inspector by The Markup. Enter any website and see what user-tracking technologies they use. (Sidenote: If you don’t know The Markup you should follow them; they build their own datasets to conduct data-driven journalism).

Keyboard Simulator - Design and play with a virtual keyboard. Just in case you don't have one handy.

Lights and Shadows - I love web tech being used to make long-form article interactive - it’s basically the intersection of what this newsletter is about. This link goes deep into the physics of light (way too advanced for me), and uses interactive elements to simulate and explain concepts.

Design Islands - One of the coolest web interfaces I’ve ever seen. Imagine traveling at sea with an old-fashioned treasure map. Navigating between pages is like discovering islands.

💎 Word gems

Thought provoking long-form reads to savor on the weekend.

What the 'meat paradox' reveals about moral decision making (BBC / Julia Shaw)

This is not a judgement on people who eat meat. I eat meat. But I also think animal cruelty is wrong. The quote below really cuts into that contradiction, and the rest of the piece looks into how we deal with internal conflict.

Cognitive dissonance motivates us to find situations to reduce the dissonance. For meat-eating, there are two ways to do this: we can change our behaviour or change the belief. We can stop eating meat, or come up with reasons why eating meat is morally OK.

Understanding Trump (George Lakoff)

Lakoff brings his expertise in cognitive science and linguistics to break down the tactics used by Trump. The quote below is a sharp insight breaking down the cognitive dissonances we see play out in the political divide. Written in 2016, but I only read it this week and it’s still poignant.

We tend to understand the nation metaphorically in family terms: We have founding fathers. We send our sons and daughters to war. We have homeland security. The conservative and progressive worldviews dividing our country can most readily be understood in terms of moral worldviews that are encapsulated in two very different common forms of family life: The Nurturant Parent family (progressive) and the Strict Father family (conservative).

Our Love-Hate Relationship with Gimmicks (The New Yorker / Merve Emre)

And finally, something a little lighter. The wide-ranging exploration of gimmicks.

Although my calling something a gimmick registers a subjective response, it also demands agreement or invites confrontation, and more brazenly so than other judgments. Should a fan of robot chefs and Roombas question why I harbor such unwarranted suspicions about them, I will feel compelled to convince him that my suspicions ought to be felt universally. But I will also delight in a newfound sense of superiority, my belief that only I am discerning enough to see that these devices are overvalued, too good to be true.

If you ❤️ what you read please send me your credit card number, expiry date, and CVV, so I can send you $500.