Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- August 28, 2019 -- Biggest Story Of The Year?

Watts Up With That: a number of incredibly good articles. Scroll through to get an idea of all the "fake news" seen in the mainstream media. One of my seven featured blogs.

Ditto. Not a lot of people know that.

Newspapers. I was told that Starbucks across the US would quit selling newspapers by the end of August, 2019. Not all Starbucks sold newspapers. Most of the Starbucks coffeehouses I frequent sold the New York Times, the local newspaper, and The Wall Street Journal. And as of yesterday: no newspapers being sold in the Starbucks I usually visit. The manager told me she couldn't make money on the newspapers, but what was worse, most copies were picked up, and read by customers, without paying, and then returned to the stand. Why would that be surprising? Put coffee urns out in the open, and have a "pay on the honor system," and see how that works out.

Content: "Blinded By The Light." I heard a lot about that movie before it was released. Our older daughter saw it last week. Didn't say much about it. Now I read that it has "bombed," as have most "Sundance faves." Unless I missed it, the "Obama" Netflix movie was not mentioned.

Pop quiz, fill in the blanks: A 2014 article in The Atlantic that examined how Netflix categorized nearly 77,000 different personalized genres found that _____________________ was rated as the favorite actor by Netflix users. _________________ was rated seventh. _____________________, the director of many of the television movies and whose father directed many episodes of the TV series, led the list of directors. Todd Yellin, vice president of product innovation for Netflix and the person who designed the system, was at a loss to explain what journalist Alexis Madrigal called "this weird __________________thing."

By the way: this is the biggest story of the year --- as noted earlier -- Starbucks quits selling newspapers. This is the latest nail in the coffin for the The New York Times. Outside of NYC, Washington (DC), and airports, can anyone find a hard copy of The New York Times? Starbucks ending newspaper sales is the death knell for for the US newspaper industry.