Back when Kickstarter.com was a new website, I was stoked about what the service enabled. It felt awesome to contribute to interesting products and help the companies making them get started. While most of the Kickstarter projects I backed never ended up being useful, there have been a few projects which have been so successful that they have changed how I live my life:
Dark Sky – This was the first majorly successful Kickstarter project I ever backed. Dark Sky’s original project was to create a hyper-local rain forecasting app for iPhone and boy oh boy did they succeed. Since Dark Sky launched, it has been the only weather service I use up until recently. (Windy.com recently became my go-to source for wind forecasting.) I continue to check Dark Sky on both my phone and computer every single day.
Amazingly, I backed the next three projects in direct succession. Talk about a run of selecting good projects!
SmartThings – SmartThings originally launched as an internet of things (IoT) service which promised to make your home smart. They provided you with a hub which allowed various small devices to connect to the internet so you could control them remotely. These small devices included a door sensor, motion sensor, and outlet. Since launching, SmartThings was acquired by a little Korean company called Samsung. Maybe you’ve heard of them? Unfortunately, Samsung is a company that is clueless about how to design good products and they made changes to SmartThings that were so bad I had to abandon the service. However, this forced me to switch to using Hubitat Elevation as my IoT hub which was a blessing in disguise. Nevertheless, SmartThings got me hooked on the IoT revolution and I am now a true home automation enthusiast.
Boosted Boards – The Boosted Board was my most anticipated project. I was late to the game when it came to riding skateboards. I did not learn how to ride one until attending college. However, I made up for this lost time by practically living on my board. I used it to go everywhere. Unfortunately, halfway through college I severely injured my back which made kick pushing a board very difficult. When I first saw that the Boosted Board was an electric skateboard you didn’t have to push, I immediately threw down my money. I had seen electric skateboards before the Boosted Board, but none of them came anywhere close to comparing in terms of price, capabilities, and packaging. When the board finally shipped, it was even better than I had anticipated. Since receiving my Kickstarter board in 2014, I have traveled around 4,000 miles across three different Boosted Boards. While riding a motorcycle remains more fun, there are no other vehicles quite as easy and enjoyable to ride as a Boosted Board.
LIFX – Pronounced “lie eff ex”, as in lighting effects, LIFX is a Redwood City, California based company that produces smart lighting products. My original backing gave me two smart bulbs and I have since expanded to owning 5 different LIFX lighting products. While not the best in the world, along with SmartThings LIFX pushed me into the world of home automation and I’ve never looked back. Being able to control the lights in my apartment from anywhere in the world is extremely useful. While I’ve enjoyed my LIFX lights, unfortunately I will not be purchasing any future products from them unless they begin to use the Zigbee or Z-Wave standards.
Packed Pixels – You’ve likely never heard of Packed Pixels, but I use their computer monitors every day. Packed Pixels is a company that produces small computer monitors designed to attach to MacBook Pros and other laptops. They provide laptop users with a multi-screen setup without requiring the amount of space three full-size monitors would require. I no longer travel with my Packed Pixels monitors, but they are small enough to reasonably take on trips. While I’d love to own a desktop computer with a full-size multi-monitor setup, the Packed Pixels monitors do a great job of making life on a laptop much better.
While it might look like I am talented at selecting incredibly successful and useful Kickstarter projects, that is not the case. I have backed 170 successful projects on Kickstarter and only 5 of them have been successful enough to use on a daily, or even weekly, basis. That’s not a good hit rate. Given the number of projects I backed but never received the reward I was promised, I no longer back anything on Kickstarter.
Ghost stories are fun, but they are not scary because ghosts do not exist outside of our imagination. The story linked below is the most terrifying story I’ve ever heard because it is a true story about a woman’s experience while living alone.
Discover Quickly is a website designed specifically to help you discover new music on Spotify. You can usually tell within a second or two of listening whether you enjoy a song. Discovery Quickly uses this idea to explore music.
Start by selecting a playlist of music and then hover over album art to play each song. If you are intrigued by a song, you can click on it to learn more about the track and artist. Additionally, you can quickly add all of the songs you click on to your library or a playlist in one batch rather than adding each one individually.
I don’t think politicians go far enough in their efforts to address the social issues which currently harm the United States. I certainly don’t want Elon Musk to be president, but I want someone who is willing to take Musk-like bold positions on policies and advance our country in radical ways. To date, I had not seen that 2020 candidate until learning about Andrew Yang.
These three policies address some of the biggest issues facing our nation right now. But in addition to addressing issues of poverty, healthcare, and corporate externalities, Yang has dozens of other excellent policies which would lead to positive change: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/
I certainly hope Andrew Yang can at least make a splash in the race for 2020 to indicate that we don’t want the same old bullshit Washington has been feeding the country for decades.
Formula 1 recently released a 10-episode TV mini-series on Netflix which covers the 2018 racing season and it is fantastic. The series provides an inside look at the challenges the drivers and teams deal with throughout a season. Even for someone like me who pays a lot of attention to the sport, this series revealed new aspects of drivers and teams that I had not seen before.
Drive To Survive is a perfect TV mini-series. It’ll capture the amazement of both people who’ve never been interested in car racing as well as those who were born with motor oil under their fingernails.
This documentary details the story of how the companies 3M and DuPont knowingly exposed the entire world to a toxic chemical, known as C8, which causes cancer and birth defects and is now found in the blood of almost every person on Earth. C8 is so nasty and horrible that the scientists who studied the chemical named it “the devil’s piss”.
I don’t pay attention to most of the popular culture in the United States. Mainstream music, movies, and television are almost all garbage, and the National Football League is another worthless piece of junk that isn’t worth spending neurons on. (It should also not be overlooked that the NFL is owned by some of the most disgusting, money-hungry, ultra right-wing conservative billionaire men in the world, but that’s a subject for another post)
However, because I don’t pay attention to any of this trash, I frequently find myself out of the loop when it comes to memes and discussions on the internet. Just yesterday I found myself facing a confusing number of upset posts about something having to do with the Super Bowl and Spongebob Squarepants. I couldn’t even tell you the final score of the game, let alone why Spongebob had something to do with the Super Bowl, so I headed over to /r/OutOfTheLoop to see what was going on.
If you ever find yourself feeling out of the loop like I often do, I recommend bookmarking /r/OutOfTheLoop as it’ll usually clue you in to what the rest of the world is wasting their time on.
Fail State is a documentary which investigates the rise of the for-profit college industry in American higher education. The film provides a fantastic map of how we arrived at the place we are at now. Here is my brief summary:
Before World War II, the American population with a college degree was small. However, with the return of 15 million service members following the end of WWII, the U.S. government decided to provide an array of servicemen benefits through the GI Bill, particularly in the area of education. Millions of veterans went to college after the war thanks to the GI Bill and the number of college degrees earned per year more than doubled. The federal investment in education inspired states to follow suit and nearly every state made large investments in public college systems.
The amount of federal and state funds flowing into public colleges led to a blossoming of fantastic institutions. The competition these low-cost, high-value public colleges created for students led to considerable application decreases for private colleges. This existential threat for private colleges led them to push for legislation to save themselves: the 1972 Higher Eduction Act. This legislation changed the way that federal funds flowed to higher education. Instead of providing funds directly to colleges, the federal government would give the money directly to students in the form of loans, work-study programs, and grants. This would allow students to use the funds to choose the higher eduction institution of their choice, be it private, public, or even for-profit.
This change suddenly allowed for-profit colleges to receive federal money through student loans. The for-profit industry quickly expanded while failing to follow through on their promises of a quality education. Complaints to the government about the fraudulent behavior of for-profit colleges soon began surfacing, but Democrats fought the closure of schools as they saw them as good resources for poor people who had not been well served by traditional higher education.
By the early 1980s, it was becoming evident that the claims against for-profits were true as increasing numbers of graduates were unable to find jobs, forcing them to default on their federal student loans. Initially, it was the Republicans and Southern Democrats who were upset by the behavior of for-profit institutions. They saw the waste of federal money as unacceptable and opened investigations into many for-profit colleges which eventually led to thousands being shut down.
In 1992, George H.W. Bush signed into law regulations intended to curb for-profit abuse:
Enacted the 85/15 rule: Said that for-profit institutions had to get at least 15% of their revenue from sources other than federal student aid. (This rule was eventually changed to 90/10.)
Forbid paying bonuses to recruiters for enrolling new students.
Enacted the 50/50 rule: Said that at least 50% of a college’s students had to attend a brick-and-mortar campus.
The 1972 Higher Education Act not only created an environment for an abusive for-profit education sector to thrive, it led to a significant decrease in education funding for public institutions. The act decided that states would be in charge of handling public higher education. The result was that almost immediately states began cutting their higher education budgets. Higher education spending was viewed as the largest item of discretionary spending. It was viewed as unnecessary spending that could yield large savings if cut and therefore it was.
Additionally, during the 1980s the Reagan Administration decided to cut federal spending on higher education. Their argument was that during the 1970s the responsibility of putting a child through college shifted from the child and their parents to the government and they were giving that responsibility back to the family. Instead of providing funding, the Reagan Administration decided that they would increase the amount of money students could receive through loans.
After the regulations imposed by President George H.W. Bush, for-profit colleges quietly went about their business until his son arrived in the White House. With the presidency of George W. Bush, interest was lost in policing the for-profit education sector. Upon taking office Bush installed the chief lobbyist for the University of Phoenix, Sally Stroup, as his head of policy for higher education at the Department of Education. Bush also put Bill Hanson, a lobbyist for the student loan industry, as the Deputy Secretary of Education. Immediately, these two people pushed to dismantle the safeguards put in place a decade earlier by Bush’s father, H.W. For example, Bill Hanson led an effort which put loopholes in for-profits’ ability to compensate recruiters for enrolling new students. Another effort between Sally Stroup and John Boehner eventually passed legislation that removed the 50/50 rule, opening up a windfall of enrollment at online colleges.
In addition to easing regulations through the Executive branch, for-profit institutions also ramped up donations to members of the Legislative branch. Money for political donations was easy to come by as Wall Street took an interest in the for-profit sector. The increasing amount of contributions allowed favored legislators to quickly rise through the ranks of the Republican party. Once these people comprised the leadership, the rank-and-file quickly fell in line to support for-profit education.
Resistance to the expansion of for-profit colleges did not return until President Obama came to office. However, by that time the for-profit sector had so thoroughly purchased politicians on both side of the aisle that Obama was unable to propose meaningful regulations. Nevertheless, watered-down regulations were passed during the Obama Administration. However, now that President Trump and Betsy DeVos are at the wheel they have dismantled the meager regulations passed under the Obama Administration, opening up the for-profit sector for another cycle of taking billions of dollars in federal student loans in return for a worthless education.
As depressing as this subject is, the documentary does a great job at laying out how the government created the conditions for for-profit colleges to flourish and how the government continues to allow for-profit colleges to take advantage of the most vulnerable members of our population. The film is definitely worth a watch.
