Don’t let Facebook sell your mind
Plus: Annoying home office noise, mundane LEGO sets, glasses pipes and more!
A coalition of sleep researchers recently published an open letter opposing ads in dreams. "Our dreams cannot become just another playground for corporate advertisers," the researchers said. They called on the Federal Trade Commission to extend policies banning subliminal advertising to ads designed to appear in dreams.
Why the letter? The Coors beer people claim to have applied techniques developed by “a leading psychologist” to stimulate the running of Coors ads in people’s dreams while they sleep. The so-called Targeted Dream Incubation system involves a subconscious-stimulating film, followed by an “an eight-hour soundscape” to be played during sleep.
The idea, clearly a publicity stunt, is also a bad idea. Anyone devoted enough to put in the work to get the in-dream ads would clearly find it easier just to buy the beer. Anyone that motivated to be persuaded is already persuaded.
More to the point, injecting advertising into dreams is a revolting prospect, which most people would oppose on principle. It’s just intuitively wrong.
But isn’t that more or less what Facebook is planning?
Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas
1. Annoying home office noise
With the pandemic fading in highly vaccinated countries, workers across the world are putting on actual pants and returning to the office. To ease the transition, the Score a Score website is offering a collection of background sounds called “Homesick” that reminds you of the glory days of remote work. The sounds, which you can mix and match to create the perfect home office sonic environment in your corporate cubicle, include: “construction,” “traffic,” “leaf blowers,” “trapped fly,” “teenager,” “fighting couple,” “upstairs mystery stampede” and even “teething baby.”
2. Mundane LEGO sets
What’s going on in the world of LEGO, man? I feel like LEGO sophistication peaked with that playable Super Mario Bros Nintendo game I told you about a year ago. Now, new LEGO sets are super mundane objects like sneakers, typewriters and even a slice of pizza. What’s next? LEGO rolls of toilet paper?
3. Smoking glasses
An inventor named Gordan Zachary patented glasses that double as a pipe for smoking tobacco or “other smoking material.” Basically one of the glasses temples has a pipe space at one end and a hole at the other, and you can smoke through your glasses. His patent also covers a vape version. I get the feeling he was smoking “other smoking material” when he came up with this one.
Mike’s List of Shameless Self Promotion
Here’s what I’ve been up to lately:
Cybersecurity tips for travelers in the post-pandemic world
The worst cloud security predictions might not come true
Thieves are targeting smart cameras; here’s how to stop them
Why being intentional in encryption matters
Why food industry cyber awareness should be your main ingredient
How holograms, deepfakes, and AR are raising the dead
CURRENT LOCATION: Provence, France
