A couple of years ago, we and the family of our youngest daughter took a trip south from Minneapolis to visit a cluster of Amish greenhouses. Both my wife and daughter Kim are big flower gardeners and this seemed like it would be a fun outing. As is my practice, I wrote a blog post about this outing.
Most of the posts I write draw some immediate attention. This is probably because each post generates a tweet. After a week or so, most of my posts seldom are visited again. This was not the case with the post about the visit to the Amish greenhouses. On occasion, I explore the data generated by my posts and I saw that the greenhouse post was probably the most popular post I have written.
I mentioned this to my daughter and she remarked that this is probably because the post comes up as one of the first search results when you look up Amish greenhouse Minnesota. She was looking for a map to identify the stops we might make on our venture and there I was. Evidently, I happened on a search topic that few have written about.
Of all the content I have posted on one of my blogs since 2002, this is probably the first time I have made the first page of the search results let alone the top hit.
Now that we can travel, yesterday we visited the Amish greenhouses again. Since I may have found the secret to social media success, I thought I would try again.
The greenhouses have evidently become a reasonable business for the Amish people and the tendency to purchase farms near each other and to collaboratively take on business ventures (many farms with greenhouses), they have identified a niche. There is nothing unusual about the greenhouses unless it is the use of wood furnaces to heat the structures and the somewhat lower prices which do draw crowds.
Like many ethnic groups any of us do not know well, we probably harbor some stereotypes about these folks. I grew up on a farm and I talked with a kid last visit who wanted to be able to purchase 80 acres to have a farm of his own. This is a very small farm within the scale of modern farming, but the Amish can somehow make it work. I have assumed that the use of horses and farming equipment suited to “horse power” was a way they ran a more economical approach. I noticed something interested in one of our stops. The farm seemed to have all new equipment.
The equipment was all new, but suited to using horses. I saw the company responsible for the equipment, Pioneer Equipment, and searched for them online. It turns out there is a company manufacturing farm equipment for this niche market. Capitalism has more facets than one might assume. This may be an ideal example of a small business not on main street.
A couple of stereotypical Amish country photos to end the post.
A map of “green house” country.
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You may be familiar with the recent documentary “Nomadland“. This is the story of people facing financial challenges who work low wage and often temporary jobs and are in desperate situations because of the cost of housing. They have taken to living in old vans and campers often off the grid as a way to cope. The camaraderie that develops among these people as they move about to find work is the focus of the movie.
Nomadland was first a book and I moved on to read the book after watching the movie. You get details in the book that the movie cannot or decided not to include. One topic covered at length was Amazon Camperforce. The main character in the movie works as a temporary Amazon employee and the book explains how this is a thing (camping while a temporary Amazon employee) supported by Amazon. Many of the nomads are older and the book also describes the physical demands of working in Amazon distribution centers.
I like camping and we have spent time on lengthy camping trips. I understand the camper culture of those who have adopted constant camper travel of a lifestyle, but many of these folks do not do so because of finances. The book references the blog site of Bob Wells who was featured in the book. The book was published in 2017 so I was not certain if the web site and blog would still exist, but both are still available and current. For anyone who has viewed the documentary, read the book, or wondered about those who live in campers and vans, I think you would enjoy the content on this site.
I have been writing about the Brave browser and what I call the Brave ecosystem for several years now. This is an update based on a nice analysis I found on a stock market site. The connection between those who offer analyses of investment issues and those of us who explore issues related to technology may not be obvious. The intersection here is BAT – the cryptocurrency that plays a key role in the Brave ecosystem.
The development of Brave (a browser-based on chromium that works very much like the Chrome browser) and the Brave ecosystem were based on issues many find troubling in the Internet as we know it. The issues are wrapped up in the personal data collected to better target ads to get ad companies to compensate content and service providers. Users get this content and services without having to spend money because of this ad model. What users lose is their personal data and perhaps more important users are being shaped by some online services into spending their attention in ways that may result in their being misled about the world around them.
A common response to an awareness of this dilemma is that more and more Internet users are taking advantage of ways to block ads. The article I cite claims 60% use some form of ad blocker and this percentage is rising. This reality challenges the entire business model for the “free” internet which has unknown consequences. As a content author or service provider, this trend clearly predicts a decline in revenue that funds infrastructure and labor investments.
Now for BAT. BAT stands for Basic Attention Token and is a cryptocurrency. I would think any micropayment system would work, but I understand that a cryptocurrency allows a degree of anonymity some think is important. Users can purchase BAT or earn BAT for accepting ads Brave offers as a replacement for the traditional ads that it blocks. The Brave ads don’t depend as much on the collection and sharing of personal information. If content/service creators register with Brave and if Brave users accumulate BAT in one way or another and if users allocate some BAT as compensation to content creators, users continue to have access, companies can continue to advertise, and users are less exposed to targeted ads. I admit there are many ifs, but the Brave model is a workable model if the multiple parties buy-in.
I do see changes in the models used by other browsers, but I don’t see any of these models offering compensation to creators.
What is in it for Brave? They take a cut of the ad revenue. What is in it for Internet users? They can be compensated for their attention. Hopefully, to make the entire model work, they will share some of this compensation rather than keep it.
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I have posted about the Brave browser and ecosystem several times. Some of the content below was written in 2019. I include it here because it is my justification for the Brave ecosystem which combines an improvement in personal online privacy AND a way to compensate online service and content providers. The focus on personal privacy especially the support for third-party cookies has become much more common and is available in most browsers. The component of the Brave ecosystem that is unique is the effort to provide a means to support content creators when the ads the content creators have included are blocked.
There have been some changes in Brave since 2019. The browser exists for all platforms, but Apple now objects to the method of compensating creators on iOS so only the ad and script blocking capabilities exist. MacOS does not include this limitation. Comments I might have made earlier about revenue opportunities for creators must be understood with this caveat. Brave relies on a cryptocurrency call BAT. When I started with Brave early in 2019, I invested $50 to purchase BAT to compensate the sites posting ads Brave blocked when I visited. I intended to spend this down at a rate of $3-4 dollars a month as I explored Brave. My Brave account is present at $240. This has nothing to do with any compensation my own content receives from Brave as my contribution should be significantly larger than what I take in. The drastic increase is due to the crazy world of bitcoin and how my initial investment has increased in value as a function of the higher valuation of bitcoin.
The following video is a more recent tutorial on setting up the Brave ad blocking and content creator compensation capabilities of Brave.
2019 description of the Brave ecosystem logic.
Free is largely responsible for most of the issues many of us have with the online world. The revelations related to personal privacy have made clear that what users thought was free really isn’t. Everyone pays with their personal data and users are exposed to online experiences that manipulate them through behavioral techniques. Users are manipulated to devote more and more attention to online experiences to bleed them of more and more information. We have lost control of what we want to accomplish online.
The response of more and more folks to the collection of their information has been to try to block this collection. While largely unsuccessful as a way to protect personal information, ad blocking deprives those attempting to provide useful information and services of revenue. Content creators intending to influence are often supported in other ways. Content creators attempting to do the work necessary to objectively offer information are left uncompensated.
I am a supporter of the notion that content creation and service provision must be supported. Ads have always worked, but ads are now “improved” through the collection of user signals (personal information) that end up being used for more than offering desired information to consumers. In searching for alternatives, I have come across the Brave browser and what I would describe as the Brave ecosystem. The browser does have the capability of blocking ads, cookies, and scripts. The browser and ecosystem do offer or at least plan to offer opportunities to deal with the compensation problem. First, the system allows users to submit money to compensate content and service creators. I think of this as a form of micropayments. You have the opportunity to commit a certain amount of money each month and this amount is divided among cites that join the ecosystem in proportion to the time you spend on the sites. The Brave plan also intends to offer the opportunity to view ads without personal data collection and will use the money advertisers spend to purchase the ads to compensate the viewers of the ads and the content/service creators. Brave does take a cut for maintaining the infrastructure for the service.
While I see these ideas as having great value. Brave is an immature service at this point and I fear faces the dual challenge of ramping up its service and attracting users. What I mean by this is that an immature service will not attract the average user and without users, the revenue stream may not support ramping up the service.
Here are a couple of examples of the “issues” I have experienced.
Users wanting to subsidize the micropayment support for content/service providers need to put money into the system. For reasons I do not fully understand, Brave uses a cryptocurrency system for their compensation model. Users must figure out how to submit their funds to be converted to a cryptocurrency referred to as BAT and this requires they use several other services (e.g., PayPal). The multiple steps required just to contribute will easily befuddle potential users who will give up before trusting and learning these other systems. There may be a reason for this approach, but the failure to explain the approach points to another general problem. Documentation is largely lacking.
My second frustration is with the flakiness of the system itself. I keep having problems in which things just stop working. The browser and the ad/cookie/script blocking works just fine. However, if this is what users get from the system, the browser will end up creating more problems than it solves. The company must get the compensation pieces working to avoid making the problems of the online world worse rather than better. Two examples. First, I have put money in the system, but recently at the beginning of the month when the money I have allocated for the month is to be distributed, the system claims I have failed to provide funds. Second, the system is supposed to keep track of the sites I have visited during the month and I should be able to see this list and the proportion of time I have spent on each site. This feature has stopped working (see image).
All developing services face such problems but must find effective ways of improving. I assume the developers struggle with how to respond to these bugs and continue to develop the features promised. However, both challenges must be met. Brave has outsourced problem reporting to the community of users. This is a standard geek kind of solution, but not one likely to encourage users who do not fit with this mindset. This is not really an open source kind of project. Too many reported problems fail to receive attention within a reasonable amount of time and fixes often do not materialize.
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Target is not in financial difficulty and is actually doing well. The sale of ⅓ of its corporate headquarters space is the result of deciding that after experiencing the pandemic and many employees working remotely, it no longer made sense to continue to spend money on the amount of office space it had accumulated. The cost of the space and the hassles and wasted time of commuting and parking in a downtown area could no longer be justified. The daily gathering of many who could easily work at a distance no longer made sense.
I mainly write about education and bringing up the situation with Target may not seem connected, but like Target will the experiences of remote working lead to changes. Many have made this prediction during the past year, but I would guess most also thought when gathering in the same locations to work or learn would return to normal in a few months. I think we will see some changes.
I would guess K12 education will change the least. Maybe more upper-level students will take courses remotely to allow the flexibility to work or to take courses not available in the local district. Remote learning may even mean that students go to their traditional school, but take courses from elsewhere.
I am guessing higher education will be impacted the most. This change has been coming for years. I taught several graduate courses to folks who worked, but wanted a graduate degree for advanced certification or unique skills. For practicing teachers who wanted to add a course to their existing schedule and travel time to reach a campus were often prohibitive and most colleges of education have been serving these students at a distance for some time.
My usual situation involved simultaneously teaching students in a classroom and others who joined online. In the “old days”, this was first accomplished by links among multiple gathering locations perhaps other colleges or a few high schools willing to host those from the region. The online experience then eventually shifted to individual computers with teachers often preferring to connect at the end of the day from their classrooms to be assured of a good connection and fewer distractions. Obviously, this worked only for those from the same geographic region and others might join later to catch the end of class and use a recording for the earliest segments. My other experience has been with individuals involved in a program focused on Instructional Design. This field is more specialized and is approached at a distance for the same reason high school students may take specialized courses online – the interest in any one location does not justify the cost of instruction.
I now wonder if full-time students who might go to a campus at present might take some of their coursework remotely as a way to reduce cost. The social experience of living and studying with other students is great value for learning and networking, but taking online courses as replacements for large lecture classes and perhaps freshman composition courses makes some sense to me.
An activity that I expect to change is the large conference. We attended the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) conference for years. I usually paid my own way because I also attended the AERA (American Educational Research Association) conference and applied any money I was provided by my university to this conference as it was more directly related to my teaching and research duties. Transportation, lodging, food, and registration fees would regularly mean I was paying more than $1000 out of pocket. That amount of money would easily purchase all of the relevant books I cared to read making the value of the conference hard to justify. Many argue that the value is in networking, but I have found conferences mostly of value for getting together with people I already know. At the K12 level, ISTE would cost about the same per teacher that attends and the value for sending many teachers seems questionable. I think less expensive regional conferences make more sense.
I have participated in a couple of online conferences this past year. I think there is potential. For most, I have not paid and this often means the presenters are supported by or are representatives of corporate sponsors. ISTE charged me $135 for early, early bird registration (now $155 I think) and offers presentations from more individuals selected in the normal way of reviewing presentation proposals. If large conferences continue, I predict they will be smaller in face-to-face attendance, but benefit from a paid online option.
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I have been online since being online was possible and I am still amazed what I find. Radio Garden allows immediate access to radio stations from around the world. Spin the globe and explore.
One of my favorite types of exploration is to listen to music from different locations. I am a big blues fan and the service allows you to search using different terms. Tonight it is blues from Istanbul.
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The federal minimum wage is presently $7.25. The states in this grey and white fix the state minimum to the federal minimum (map source). The $7.25 was established in 2009. Wikipedia offers some interesting analyses related to the positive and negatives estimated to result from raising the minimum to $15.
In 2021, the Congressional Budget Office released a report which estimated that incrementally raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 would benefit 17 million workers, but would also reduce employment by 1.4 million people. It would also lift 0.9 million people out of poverty, possibly raise wages for an additional 10 million workers, and increase the federal budget deficit by $54 billion over ten years by increasing the cost of goods and services paid for by the federal government.
Various federal assistance programs use these values to determine eligibility and are based on 130-150% of these values (see the link above).
One way to think about this is that businesses that pay the minimum wage are usually relying on taxpayers to subsidize the basic living expenses of their employees. For example, the Affordable Care act provides some subsidy to those making less than 400% of the poverty wage.
Any adult familiar with the cost of food, housing, transportation, medical care, child care, etc. should understand how limited an income of $14,500 a year really is. As a reality check, the following data represent state-by-state estimates of child care costs. Roughly half of the states require more funds to pay for the care of one child than an adult would make at the minimum federal income.
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Google is sponsoring a startup called Jigsaw that proposes to shape the Internet as a force for good. Among the priorities of this group is a focus on online toxicity. Jigsaw makes the case that online services are working on this problem (maybe), but it is focusing on its own products that can be made available to providers and users.
This means that you and I can try out what the company is working on. They offer a chrome extension called Tune that is an effort to take advantage of AI to reduce the toxicity of what you experience when using familiar social media services (e.g., Twitter, Facebook). If you are interested, visit the Chrome store and search for Tune. You may want to check out other sources describing this venture (PCMag, Perspective API).
Tune offers two ways users can adjust their experience. The first is a knob that allows the user to set the level of toxicity they are willing to tolerate and the second allows the selection of areas of toxicity they don’t want to deal with.
I have read reviews that are critical charging that Tune relies on a simple list of keywords. I cannot verify this is the case and even if it were true some may find this an improvement.
What is it that makes you feel like you have a sense of agency, a feeling of power? It is important we all feel some sense of control in our lives.
Cindy sent me this from a Facebook site she follows.
I have been growing tomatoes in my office using a hydroponic gardening setup and I know exactly how this feels. Power to the people – especially the gardeners.
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I am playing Phil Collins all day in honor of his 70th birthday. I checked Last.FM which keeps a record of nearly every song I have listened to since 2006 and Phil came in at 56 (just behind Paul Simon and Three Dog Night). I was a little surprised. By the end of the day, he should move up a few places.
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