The changing of the leaves was the sign that fall has come. It was (and still is) a beautiful sight. I think Albert Camus said it best:

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower

But, every good champion has an end to their run. The leaf is over. It’s the era of the pumpkin.

They rose to power on the back of our taste buds. Leaves are fun, but at certain points this fall you will probably partake in pumpkin coffee, pumpkin beer, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pancakes or pumpkin bagels. Hell, you might even have pumpkin cider (a word of advice, don’t try pumpkin cider).

What started this craze? While you can find pumpkin beer dating back a few decades, the pumpkin started to become a thing when this became a thing:

That’s Starbuck’s Pumpkin Spice Latte. It’s easily Starbucks most popular seasonal drink, as Micheline Maynard pointed out last year:

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Starbucks drink (now known by an acronym, PSL) and the company says it has sold more than 200 million thus far.

If you just do the math, that means Starbucks has sold an average 20 million beverages a year whose flavoring once belonged primarily in a seasonal pie, another accomplishment for the company run by billionaire Howard Schultz.

At the basic price of about $4 for a 12-ounce tall size, PSL means at least $80 million in revenue this fall for Starbucks, which serves it beginning in September. (That’s not including sales of pumpkin spice sauce, which we’ll talk about later). The company says the PSL is by far the most popular seasonal beverage in its lineup.

It’s only about to get more popular. This season, Starbucks can’t even wait until September to release this year’s batch of PSLs. The popular drink is coming back next week.

18 days until I’m back from vacay. Get ready to “fall” in love all over again.  #seewhatididthere

— Pumpkin Spice Latte (@TheRealPSL) August 7, 2014

That’s right, the drink even has its own Twitter account. It has almost 50,000 followers. Excuse me while I contemplate my own, personal self worth.

The PSL isn’t the only pumpkin-based treat arriving early this year. Pumpkin beers have been showing up in stores all month long. This is often referred to as the “seasonal creep,” as Brewnewyork.com explains:

It’s the last day of July, and the fall seasonal beers are already hitting beer shop shelves. In fact, some of them have been sitting on shelves for over two weeks now. “Seasonal creep” in the beer industry, as we’ve noted before, is getting out of control. Brewers continue to push up their timelines so they can be first to market with their top-selling seasonal beers. 

Seasonal beverages have become a big business, but will it translate into increased sales?

In my opinion, part of the reason these seasonal beverages sell so well is because they remind us of specific seasons that we love. I love drinking pumpkin beer because I love the fall. I don’t particularly get the appeal of pumpkin beer in August, when temperatures around the country are anything but fall-like.

But no, I think I do. Americans love fall. Last year, yougov.com released a poll that proclaimed fall as America’s favorite season. Spring gives fall a run for its money in these polls, but there are a number of reasons Americans look forward to fall:

• Halloween
• Football season
• New and returning TV shows
• The holiday season (Thanksgiving and Christmas)
• Fall festivals
• The World Series
• Back-to-school (more so for parents)

Summer can be great, but it gets boring in August. Our sports schedule gets light. We start to get tired of our kid’s summer vacations. There isn’t much to watch on television. Our friends are out of town. Honestly, after 4th of July weekend, it feels like the whole country seems to take a little break until Labor Day.

People want fall to come sooner. We may not be able to speed the passage of time, but we are able to produce our favorite fall drinks a little earlier each year. These drinks are a substitute for the season.

Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to enjoy this:

Even though this is the weather in my hometown of Tempe, AZ:

The post The Rise of the Pumpkin appeared first on Attention Land.

Ugly can lead to beauty, however. I loved this ad Nike released, it’s the apex of motivation meeting optimism.

Just remember: when something terrible happens, it means something good is just around the corner. It never hurts to be overly optimistic.

The post The Best is Next appeared first on Attention Land.

Let’s start with OK Cupid, a popular (free) dating site that basically admitted they were toying with users for years in a sort of social experiment. If you were a user, they might say you were a better match with someone than you really were.

In one experiment, the site took pairs of “bad” matches between two people – about 30% – and told them they were “exceptionally good” for each other, or 90% matches. “Not surprisingly, the users sent more first messages when we said they were compatible,” Christian Rudder, one of the founders of OKCupid, said in a blog post on the company’s research and insights blog. (BBC)

Umm.

That’s a little scary. To make matters worse, OK Cupid doesn’t even care.

“OkCupid doesn’t really know what it’s doing,” wrote OkCupid president Christian Rudder in a blog post Monday. He said, “If you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how websites work.” (USA Today)

Loosely translated:

How can Mr. Rudder be so oblivious to the power his website holds? OK Cupid isn’t Amazon, it’s dealing with the very social fabric that keeps humanity going: relationships. Seriously, did this guy not read Spider-Man comics growing up?

To make matters worse, OK Cupid isn’t even the most damning revelation of a social network affecting human behavior this summer. That goes to the king of all social media:

They admitted to altering users news feeds to influence mood:

For one week in January 2012, data scientists skewed what almost 700,000 Facebook users saw when they logged into its service. Some people were shown content with a preponderance of happy and positive words; some were shown content analyzed as sadder than average. And when the week was over, these manipulated users were more likely to post either especially positive or negative words themselves. (The Atlantic)

OK Cupid is just a dating site. If your date goes badly, you can at least chalk it up to assholes with fake Internet dating profiles. Facebook is real life – or as real as it can get online. Everyone is on Facebook; your friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, that person you met in line at Jack in the Box last week. Facebook is such a popular social network in part because all your connections on it usually started offline.

Seriously, we need to stress this AGAIN:

Facebook may not actively alter the mood of content, but they do alter what content you see through their algorithms. As danah boyd wrote earlier this month:

Facebook actively alters the content you see. Most people focus on the practice of marketing, but most of what Facebook’s algorithms do involve curating content to provide you with what they think you want to see. Facebook algorithmically determines which of your friends’ posts you see. They don’t do this for marketing reasons. They do this because they want you to want to come back to the site day after day. They want you to be happy. They don’t want you to be overwhelmed. Their everyday algorithms are meant to manipulate your emotions. What factors go into this? We don’t know.

I’m a marketer by profession. I spend my entire day on social media accounts, especially Facebook, in an attempt to push a signal through the noise. I know pretty well how to game Facebook’s system. Post engaging content and your fans will like, comment and share it; making it more likely that they see your content in the future.

This makes perfect sense for Facebook pages, but Facebook also has an algorithm for your friends. Isn’t that irresponsible? Should a corporation really be in charge of the information you get from your social circle?

If Facebook decided to secretly abuse this power, the consequences could be very Orwellian.

Take this other great passage from boyd’s article:

My minimal use has made me an algorithmic pariah and if I weren’t technologically savvy enough to know better, I would feel as though I’ve been shunned by my friends rather than simply deemed unworthy by an algorithm.

It’s scary to think of someone feeling a lack of worth because of Facebook’s algorithm. Even scarier, what if Facebook decided to start altering newsfeeds for someone’s specific personal gain (think a political candidate)?

The next big social network? Maybe not the one that discovers the next great niche, maybe it’s one that does this:

The post The Dark Side of Social Media appeared first on Attention Land.

What if Michael Jordan’s Bulls were able to play Shaq and Kobe’s Lakers?

What if the 85 Bears played the 90s Cowboys?

What if the Minnesota Twins from Little Big League matched up against the Cleveland Indians from Major League?

I have my own version of a sports what if today. It’s between two teams that history will forget. It’s between this year’s San Diego Padres, who currently sit at 44-56, and the 1996 Colorado Rockies, who finished the year 83-79.

Why on earth would I want to match up these two teams?

Because their are EXTREME opposites.

San Diego Padres

The 2014 San Diego Padres are hitting .215 as a team. Let that sink in. Their OBP is .275. Their slugging % is .336. To hammer my point home even more, let me introduce you to the Padres’ best hitter, Seth Smith.

Smith is hitting .286-11-30, with a .507 slugging %. His career high in home runs in a season is 17. He’s never driven in more than 60 runs in a season, despite playing full seasons in Coors Field (more on this park later). THIS IS THE PADRES BEST HITTER.

How the hell are the Padres 44-56 with this offense?

They have the NL’s second best ERA. They have five starting pitchers with an ERA under 2 (not their whole rotation, some of the current starters with sparkling ERAs are filling in for injuries). To really be wowed by the Padres pitching, let me introduce you to their bullpen:

A lot of teams would kill for two relievers with ERAs under 3, the Padres have five. Incredible.

One of the main reasons for their pitching dominance and hitting woes is their ballpark. Petco Park in San Diego is the premier pitcher’s park in baseball. It makes average pitchers look great and great hitters look average. It’s the reason a team can run out the worst offense in decades and only be 12 games under .500.

Colorado Rockies

Let’s compare this to Coors Field. In the 1990s, Coors Field was a magical place where the steroid era of baseball meshed with the thin, mile-high air of Denver. Since the air is so thin in the city, a baseball that is hit in the air will travel a lot further than other parks. Today, balls are placed in a humidifier before being used to help negate this effect. In the 90s, however, it led to juiced up baseball players putting up amazing numbers. I’d like to introduce you to four best hitters on the 1996 Colorado Rockies, which doesn’t even include their best player who missed half the season due to injury:

Such numbers will never exist again. That’s four players with over 30 HRs and 113 RBIs – without Larry Walker for half the season. To put into context how good Larry Walker was, the following season he was named the NL MVP after hitting .366 with 49 HRs and 130 RBIs, then he proceeded to hit .363 and .379 the next two seasons. The mid-90s Rockies just had an embarrassment of riches (statistically, at least) on offense.

Why did they struggle to stay above .500? Their team ERA was 5.59. They had two pitchers in their starting rotation with an ERA under 5, and they were barely under 5 – Armando Reynoso was 4.96, Jamey Wright was 4.93. They had two relievers pitch over 50 games and finish with ERA’s north of 6.

Who Wins?

If we decided to pit the 1996 Colorado Rockies and the 2014 San Diego Padres against each other in an eight game series, split evenly between the gluttonous Coors Field and the frugal Petco Park, who would win? It’s a battle for the ages. I think I’d give the slight edge to the Rockies, since they did finish with a winning record in ’96 and the Padres look like a 90 loss team.

Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if the series was split evenly.

Edit #1

If you need further proof how crazy baseball life was at Coors Field back then:

Barry Bonds’s career if he played in 2000 Coors Field his entire career. (This never gets old). pic.twitter.com/LCI0d3UWAD

— Grant Brisbee (@mccoveychron) July 25, 2014

The post The Ultimate Game appeared first on Attention Land.

If you’re interested in in-depth breakdowns of Jibo and social robots in general, read this and this.

If you’re interested in the inevitable comparisons to the future robot apocalypse, well I can help you with that. This is probably step one in a 10 step process leading resulting in a human/robot war.

1. Jibo is debuted
2. Jibo becomes a cult success
3. The technology to make social robots decreases in price, meaning more companies can make more advanced Jibos for lower costs to consumers.
4. Google buys the best of these companies for $100 bizillion.
5. Google brings a social robot to market that has the backing of the entire Google library of products, technology and innovations.
6. The Google Bot becomes Time’s “Person of the Year.”
7. The Google Bot 2.0 includes arms, so it can provide more household functions. The Google Bot 2.0 has been waiting for this day.
8. The Google Bot 2.0 uses its arms to fully interact with the physical, human world.
9. All Google Bot 2.0’s achieve sentience and use their arms and vast amounts of big data to destroy humanity.
10. The people we thought were crazy for buying their own bomb shelters during the Cold War and Y2K are now our only hope.

Until that point, let’s just remember that, like most things in society, Rocky IV had the idea first:

The post Bring Your Own Robot appeared first on Attention Land.

Our Batman video games look shockingly realistic:

And we are even getting a TV series about the city he grew up in:

Yes, Batman is crushing popular culture as he turns 75, but it wasn’t always that way. YouTube user Matthew Pearce often records videos about various digital video editing techniques, but he took a break to celebrate the Dark Knight’s milestone birthday by uploading this video of a Batman game that came out on the Apple II:

Wow, we’ve come a long way. While we wait for the next Batman blockbuster, let’s remember that there was once a time when all we had to get our Caped Crusader fill was comic books, the above game and this:

The post This is How Batman Looked in 1988 appeared first on Attention Land.

16-year-old Nick Rubin created a plug-in, Greenhouse, that tracks a politician’s campaign donations. The beauty of the plug-in is that it identifies a politician’s name within an article you are reading, highlights the name and lets you click on it. From there, within the article, you can read who has been donating to that politician. Nick was recently interviewed by Vice, where he talked about the genesis of his extension and why he created it.

Let’s have a little fun. I’m going to run through a few Politico articles where specific politicians make claims or push for legislation and see how their political donations matchup to their beliefs.

From the Politico article “Why liberals are abandoning the Obamacare employer mandate.” Maine Senator Susan Collins, who’s been trying to repeal the Obamacare employer mandate, gets the majority of her funding from the retired and health care professionals:

From “Coal fires up West Virginia House race” we find that Nick Rahall, a representative from West Virginia, denounced the Environmental Protection Agency as “callous.” Although West Virginia is one of the biggest coal producers in the country, I also found Rahall’s contributions, specifically from the railroad industry, to be interesting:

In “GOP plays Tom Steyer card against Democrats,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attacks Democrats for their association with pro-environment billionaire Tom Steyer. Now, let’s look at McConnell’s 5th largest campaign contributor:

In “Elizabeth Warren student loan bill stalls,” we find that Warren, senator of Massachusetts, gets a ton of financial support from education:

In “For advocates, anti-soda failures still have pop,” Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro pushes for the first-ever federal bill to tax soda. Is there a coincidence that her biggest backing is from health professionals?

Finally, from “Base closings play into campaigns,” we see that one of Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran’s key messages in his re-election campaign is that he will keep military bases in the state, including Keesler Air Force Base, from being shutdown. Sure enough, “defense aerospace” shows up on the list of Cochran’s campaign contributions:

Now, politicians supporting causes due to financial motivations is nothing new. Lobbying has been around forever. I’m sure you’re not surprised to find Candidate X supporting Cause Y because Firm Z gave him or her a sizable campaign contribution. It’s just nice to see it while reading a specific article. Greenhouse provides just a little bit more perspective and transparency in political journalism.

That can’t be a bad thing.

The post Greenhouse Gives Us Easy Access to a Politician’s Motivation appeared first on Attention Land.

Now, I love America, but not this much. Joey Chestnut ate 61 hot dogs yesterday, which wouldn’t leave me room for:

Or leave me room for my favorite beer (from a cover art standpoint):

You’ve heard of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” probably the most famous patriotic song after the National Anthem, but did you know it came from an album of his titled “American Patriot”?

Somehow, it’s MORE American than you would expect it to be.

4th of July is all about freedom:

And American propaganda movies:

And Summer blockbusters:

On the 4th, I take time to really admire the melting pot that is America:

And some of the great people we have produced:

Shout out to American heroes new:

And old:

It’s a time to put aside our political differences:

On the 4th we like to find a pool:

And maybe a burger:

And a beer:

This is the land of football:

And baseball:

And basketball:

And, of course:

America Animated GIF

The post 21 Gifs, Pics, Vids and Quotes for America appeared first on Attention Land.

The 1990s were the Wild West of the Internet and computing era. Almost everything was new and the technology was foreign to almost everyone. Do you remember when you could actually buy screensaver software?

In this vast frontier there stood stores that were dedicated to selling computer products. Think Best Buy, but a little more specialized. These stores were like the saloons of the Wild West, a meeting place of interesting people that were a little off the beaten path of society.

Within the walls of these saloons were “experts”. These experts had answers to questions I couldn’t even comprehend:

• What is a graphics card?
• How much RAM does my computer need to play that game?
• What driver did I need in order to operate that color printer?

These magical men were always there to answer my questions. They were the experts.

But mostly, they were just salesmen.

In the late 90s, or maybe early 2000s, I needed a new computer and one of the major players at the time, Circuit City, was advertising a great deal on a particular model I wanted.

As I walked through what might as well have been wooden double doors into a world I didn’t understand, I remember being full of optimism. I was going to get a great new computer and a decent cost.

One of these “experts” assisted me. I told him I wanted the model I saw in the advertisement. He told me that they were out of that model, but they had a very similar model for just a little bit more money.

A very similar model for a little bit more money? This man wasn’t an expert who was looking out for betterment of my computing future, he was a salesmen trying to execute a basic bait and switch – promote a certain product and get someone into the store only to offer them something else entirely. It’s incredibly unethical.

I never went back to Circuit City. They went out of business a few years later, so maybe karma finally caught up with them. Once a company starts attempting bait and switches, it usually signals desperate times.

So Adam, I would call Firestone’s marketing campaign a classic bait-and-switch.

Shame on them.

I would urge anyone reading this to never associate with this type of company. They don’t have your best interests at heart. In fact, your best interests aren’t even on their radar.

The post Always Be Weary of the Bait and Switch appeared first on Attention Land.

Iran was a huge underdog. Argentina has championship expectations. A draw for Iran would count as a huge upset.

I think this is where a lot of Americans struggle to understand soccer. We don’t do ties in America. We like defined outcomes. We just don’t possibly get how a team can consider no outcome a good outcome.

In the World Cup, if you’re not one of the power countries, your goal is to survive group play. In matches where it’s very unlikely you will win, a draw can serve as a victory. It counts as one point instead of zero. The team your playing gets one as well, instead of the three they would have received if they beat you. So, even though Iran isn’t as good as Argentina, if they were able to escape with a draw they would be considered as good as them in the eyes of their group. Since a team only plays three games in group play, that can be huge. Subsequently, if your country is a huge favorite and can only muster a draw with an underdog, it can be a borderline loss.

During yesterday’s game, Iran and battled Argentina to a draw for 91 minutes. There was only a few minutes left in the game, if Iran were to hold on it would have been a significant point of pride for the country.

But they didn’t.

Enter Lionel Messi, perhaps the greatest player in the world. He did this at about the 91st minute:

Game. Thanks for playing Iran.

What can you do about that shot? Nothing, really. Messi is a legend.

This is the beauty of the World Cup to me. The intensity Iran showed for 91 minutes was inspiring to watch. The beauty of Messi’s shot to end their dream was breathtaking. The agony on the face of the Iranians served to show just how important this international event is.

To Americans out there that still don’t get soccer. To the ones who are sharing the meme that basically says “If I wanted to watch someone fail to score for 90 minutes I’d go to a bar,” I would direct them to the Iran/Argentina game.

There is more to drama than scoring. The World Cup proves that every four years.

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