Thursday, March 6, 2014

Tech News: uPVALUE could be a Simple Solution to a Complex Problem

Upvalue is complex algorithm created to produce a monetary designation for social media profiles in order to establish and standardize a controlled marketplace for the allocation of personal adspace.  That’s a mouthful and it sounds like a headache.  Or worse, another overnight pop-up trend site, it’s only real value equating to a couple of kicks during a boring Wednesday lecture.  In fact, profile value calculators have been around for quite some time, came and went due to their viral you-have-to-check-yours-too yet all too common nature.  Their methods of computation were iffy and misleading, most likely only obtaining the basest of variables, such as number of followers, friends, and number of posts, since after all, the method wasn’t important, for soon there would be another similar website boasting more accurate numbers of an arbitrary value.  So, like the many Twalues and Tweetvalues, and FBMEs and ProfileWorths before it, it falls by the wayside and disappears, because it’s a fad with no purpose.  So, how then, could this Upvalue be any different?

Upvalue is not a fad site.  It doesn’t hope to gain popularity by simply being passed around in a viral weekday burst, only to fade away with the coming of the next.  KJ Williams, Upvalue’s Founder and the creator of its unique algorithm, is well aware of the arbitrary nature of assigning any value to a free profile.  “But that’s missing the point,” he says.  Upvalue is the first site to focus on the personal adspace of a social media profile.  It’s intended purpose is appraise the value of a profile solely on its potential to generate hits for an advertiser, as if it were a banner in a mall or a billboard near a busy intersection.  Advertisers would be able to search for a profile’s Upvalue and buy adspace for a certain amount of time.  However, the advertiser is not exchanging money for adspace, they are investing in a product and feeding into an expanding marketplace.  The second, and revolutionary, function of Upvalue, is an indirect result of the first function.  The fact that there is a standardized value for the purpose of buying adspace, means there is a very likely potential for growth, in which the consumer can benefit.  Instead of a simple exchange of currency for adspace, the consumer actually acquires uPid's, equity in the personal profile that matures as, you guessed it, the profile increases in popularity (i.e. gets more likes, followers, what have you).  Each uPid is a unique encrypted script much like its cryptocurrency counterparts.  It is used as a share bond. The shareholder then has the opportunity to sell those shares at the increased value in the Upvalue marketplace, and collect the profits.  Unlike real stock, an Upvalue is rarely at risk of declining in value, since the popularity of a profile is much more likely to go up than down, at worst maintaining a stagnant plateau of zero gain.

Got all that?  So what is this complex problem that Upvalue is supposed to solve?  It is no secret that there is a great disparity in terms of wealth in America.  The substantial percentage of profitable equity belongs to a very small percentage of Americans.  The rest simply don’t have the expendable income to invest in a volatile market.  However, there is a wealth of talent and creativity, especially in the youth, every year becoming even more savvy and adept at marketing themselves over social media.  Those who live and breathe Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and all the others, have the biggest advantage, because for once, they have the upper-hand, getting in at entry level while the big boy’s like Google generally wait until at least 1,000 subscribers.  Upvalue is thus a way of leveling the playing field.  It transforms the almighty ‘Like’ from little more than a brief pat-on-the-back validation of social standing, to something we can all ‘cash’ in on.

--You can follow uPVALUE on Facebook

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Still Don't Know Who to Cheer for in Super Bowl XLVII?

If you still don't know who to cheer for in tonight's big game, I've compiled an impartial list of stuff that may sway you either direction. 


Let's start with the San Francisco 49ers:


  • Harbaugh
  • Kokaine Biceps Colin Kaepernick 



  • Randy Moss says he's the greatest wide-receiver of all time.
  • GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYSSSSSSS
  • That guy on the 49ers who doesn't like gays.





Now for the Baltimore Ray Lewis-vens:


 LOOK WHAT JESUS DID!

  •  Other Harbaugh
  • Ray Lewis
  • Ray Lewis
  • Ray Lewis

  • I like Ray Lewis
  • I hate Ray Lewis
  • I heard Ray Lewis killed a goldfish.
  • I heard Ray Lewis may have fucked my wife.
  • Wait, are you telling me deer antler spray isn't an aphrodisiac?
  •  Michael Oher
  • Who the fuck is Michael Oher?
 This.
  • Oops, I knew that, cuz like OMG BLIND SIDE, TOTES THE GREATEST MOVIE EVAR
  • Michael Oher doesn't like the Blind Side
  • John Harbaugh (the coach) requested to play clips of the movie to the team to hype them up for the game.  For serious.


I hope this impartial list got you excited for the Super Bowl!

-Bat.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

"Some Black Guy Did it" Is still a plausible excuse

Oh Lord, you already know this is coming from Boston, the city that replaced "nigger" with "Monday."  Now, I'm a sarcastic motherfucker.  So, I read between the lines of everything Wes Welker's wife was saying in that facebook status.  Check this if you didn't hear about that.  Wes Welker's wife, because, she doesn't get a name.  A life of being pretty doesn't merit being called by name from me, especially when you're pretty enough to be sniveling little twat, and nobody says shit.




BUT, we're not gonna talk about her.  I'm not gonna do that.  I'm not gonna say she's choked more than her husband in big time playoff moments.  I'm not saying that.  Because I hate sarcasm.  Lulz. What I don't like is that it is the 21st century and people still use cookie-cutter perception models that shape their image of all black people.  You hear a teaser to the next news headline, and its a rape, or a robbery, or a murder, and the image that forms in your head is black man.  And at this point, any non-black reader seeing this goes, "well, that's not me, I would never."  Yes, you would, bitch, yes you would.  You don't even know you do it.  It's the reason people still cringe at the O.J. verdict.  He was so guiltyI just know it!

Wes Welker's wife tossed out the usual black man stereotypes embodied by Ray Lewis.  6 kids by 4 wives.  Acquitted for murder and that he paid a family off.  Not only is this information false, I don't think many people were looking to even refute such falsehoods.  Because--well, I mean, we've all seen these stories before.  Can't we all just assume all of that's true?  And it's all under the veil of such snarky animosity. 

There are people who have never had to think about not only how their words affect others, but never thought why they think such things or where such thoughts even originated.  These people, we call 'stupids.'  I'm not worried about the stupids like Wes Welker's titty doll.  What I'm worried about are the people who know these things and use them to capitalize and in some cases, get away with some very heinous crimes. 

"A BLACK GUY DID IT!"  Check out the Charles Stuart case of 1989 (Boston, who'da thunk it, right?), or even more recently the Bob Bashara case of 2011 (Grosse Pointe, Detroit suburb).  Both of them are the same.  All evidence points to the husband killing wifey.  But the media, perhaps not even the justice system, just latches on to one thing the public seems plausible, and they just ride with it.  That something is: some black guy did it.  Say that, and they will have these dummy cops searching every black man in the city, because that is just more plausible, than investigating the one guy with motive.  How many innocent black men have went to the chair or underneath the oak tree, for a white woman they didn't have anything to do with, didn't even know? 


--Bat

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Beyonce Got that Skin Disease that Uncle Ruckus and Manti Te'o's girlfriend got

Daaayyyyuuummm, it's been a long time since Destiny's Child huh?





Is this Beyonce or Jessica Simpson?  This is a white girl, y'all.  I'm sayin,' what did she do?  And what the fuck did they do to her hair??  Do she got that vitiligo?  That shit Michael Jackson had?  Or does she have what will from now on be known as the Lennay Kekua disease, where you just get clearer and clearer until you don't exist anymore?  Look at this:




Back in 90s, Beyonce was about five shades darker.  Did she get touched by the great holy spirit of dearly departed Ronald Reagan?




Shut the fuck up, Sammy Sosa.  I heard your explanation and it's still not making any sense.  And you better lawyer up, because word has it that Manti Te'o's girlfriend overdosed on your skin cream.  Now nobody can find her!



File this one under:  Manti Te'o and the case of the disappearing minorities.  That sounds like a good ass thriller.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

OK Django, you win...

Alright, Tarentino, I'll see your damn movie.  And people, don't get me wrong, I love Tarentino films, almost all of them.  My one gripe is one that most people may not recognize and most certainly wouldn't care about, but it's there.  It's not even quite as dramatic or cryptic as Spike Lee's reason for not wanting to see the movie.  



The reason is simply that I am particularly wary about the direction Hollywood is heading with this whole 'rewriting history for the sake of entertainment' thing.  It's a page taken right out of George Orwell's '1984.'  Or to be even more specific, something to the tune of Walter Rodney's 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.'  The theme is: 'history belongs to the victors.'  Hollywood media is the most prevalent source of entertainment in the world.  And, unfortunately, it has also become a very prevalent source of information as well.  People get their facts from mainstream Hollywood movies, and don't understand truth doesn't work like that.  Hollywood is an engine designed to produce profit based on audience turnout.  They have this down to a formula.  I have a very big problem with skewing truth for entertainment value.

Which brings me to my second point.  'History belongs to the victors.'  That stings.  Though it's not a conscious effort to bring about such a degrading parallel in the underdevelopment of Africa, the same notion made me cringe with Tarentino's Inglorious Basterds.  I'm not even Jewish, and that fact that non-Jewish people could revel and rejoice in a fanciful yarn about returning agency to the Jewish people, and equally ball their faces in disgust at the nefarious antics of Hitler, felt wrong, because it only reminds you that it didn't happen like that.  You wished it did, but it didn't.  People still suffer, despite attempts by others to change the meaning of something horrendous, for the sake of entertaining.  Non-blacks will enter the world of a freed slave-turned-bounty-hunter, and unite in a shared disgust in the horror that was slavery.  Sounds like some good ol' 'Heal the World' shit, right?    However, what agitates me most is that I highly doubt a black writer/director could have passed this thing in Hollywood.  I highly doubt it because Tyler Perry.  No, I'll elaborate.  It's almost as if Django Unchained is given as a gift to us, one that we cannot give ourselves.  Because, as I said, people unfortunately form the way they think from the Hollywood perception of things.  If the only thing mainstream accepts is funny, angry black women, cross-dressing, sexually ambiguous rom-coms; people don't think we can help ourselves!  There ARE black writers who don't write about gangs, guns, and cross-dressing.  Dr. Boyce Watkins said it best:

"If you want to understand this film, imagine a mainstream version of the John Singleton film Rosewood, with a lot more action.  To be honest, only a white guy could have made this movie and convinced so many white people to pay money to see it."

History belongs to the victors.  We choose to remind ourselves of the shit we did to you because we want to, and the story will be written in our books, told by our teachers, played in our theaters.  You have no agency in what truth you want to tell, and you should be happy we're telling your story at all. 

 Heck, George Lucas could barely get Red Tails through, Django had no problem.  It's going to get awards.  Watch it win Best Picture or something.  The reason I make this connection is that from what I'm hearing Django, is that it was very entertaining, and hardly offensive.  Entertaining. Red Tails might have been too respectable, or at least been a fair attempt at being 'Hollywood accurate.' Our history is made to be entertaining, and now I'm worrying.  

I'll watch your damn movie, though.

Peace.
-Bat

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Rob Parker and the people who hate him

So I was going to do a post on Rob Parker a lot earlier, but I decided I'd wait until I saw the whole show and digested everything he actually said, and make my call.  In short, I delved too deep.  You're gonna see what I'm talking about.  Look at the segment in it's entirety:





And then part 2:





I do like that Steven A. tried to at least inform Rob Parker that he was saying some dumb shit that was about to get him fired/suspended, while simultaneously putting a very positive spin back on it.  Of course, Skip Bayless then asks a ridiculous person a ridiculous question, about his braids.  At that point, I was convinced--he's drunk.  Rob Parker came in drunk that day, you can see it in his eyes, he's not making any sense.  He's not even pretending that facts matter.  He's "Glenn Beck-ing" it.  How are you going to come on a nationally televised broadcast with some garbage people said in the barbershop.  DRUNK.  I'll accept an apology from Rob Parker and if he actually says he was intoxicated, talking about his white fiancee, and maybe I don't know, is a Republican ("I'm asking questions!"), I swear I'll believe he was.  As soon as the braids comment came back, changing RGIII from cornball brother to brother within 20 seconds.  You poor. drunken. stooge.

BUT!

Oh, there is a but!  I always play that game.  Whenever someone does some stupid in the public sphere.  Everybody has to get their little two cents in (including me).  Most of these people might just be your everyday troll, but others might actually have some degree of public influence.  Those select few people have a duty.  It's a very simple duty.  That duty is called "don't be a complete psychopath with a microphone in your hands."  Condemning the actions of one, while simultaneously exposing your own craziness.  Check out this ball of sunshine and see if you can pinpoint where this video goes from funny to straight up Uncle Ruckus.  Peep the video.


This shit was like a suspense thriller!  Dude was funny, I was laughing and then: "BLACK WOMEN MADE HIM DO IT!! THE WORST EVIL ON THE PLANET!!"

What. The. Fuck.  And he's not joking.  Follow the guy on twitter @tjsotomayor.  He's a radio personality in Atlanta (which leads me again to ask the question: what the hell is in the water in Atlanta?)  Actually, don't follow him, just look.  You'll be tired after two minutes.  You'll see a timeline full of black women are nappy whores and evil and this and that.  What planet is this?

Rob Parker...and the people who hate him.  Do you go with the devil you know?

Peace.
-Bat

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Guy in Mitt Romney mask robs bank


 A man wearing a Mitt Romney mask and a Florida State hoodie robbed a Wells Fargo bank in Sterling, Virginia Thursday morning.  Apparently, robbing one teller wasn't enough.  He ended up robbing all five tellers before fleeing.  The police began their investigation at Party City to see if anyone bought a Mitt Romney mask that week.  Best and brightest right there...


See the video, along with the rest of the story here.