Tag: Shopping

A Black Friday Warning

Just another FYI from your friend at IST…..

I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable T’giving…..

Thanksgiving is done and now we move onto the Christmas portion of the season and it begins traditionally with the Black Friday sales and ensuing madness.

Kids have made it known what they want and not it is up the Santa’s little helpers go out and find the requested things.

A warning has been aired…..if you are thinking about one of the AI enhanced toys….then think again….

They’re cute, even cuddly, and promise learning and companionship—but artificial intelligence toys are not safe for kids, according to children’s and consumer advocacy groups urging parents not to buy them during the holiday season.

  • These toys, marketed to kids as young as 2, are generally powered by AI models that have already been shown to harm children and teenagers, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to an advisory published Thursday by the children’s advocacy group Fairplay and signed by more than 150 organizations and individual experts such as child psychiatrists and educators, the AP reports.
  • “The serious harms that AI chatbots have inflicted on children are well-documented, including fostering obsessive use, having explicit sexual conversations, and encouraging unsafe behaviors, violence against others, and self-harm,” Fairplay said.
  • AI toys, made by companies including Curio Interactive and Keyi Technologies, are often marketed as educational, but Fairplay says they can displace important creative and learning activities. They promise friendship but disrupt children’s relationships and resilience, the group said.
  • “What’s different about young children is that their brains are being wired for the first time and developmentally it is natural for them to be trustful,” said Rachel Franz, director of Fairplay’s Young Children Thrive Offline Program.
  • Fairplay has been warning about AI toys for years. They just weren’t as advanced as they are today. A decade ago, during an emerging fad of internet-connected toys and AI speech recognition, the group helped lead a backlash against Mattel’s talking Hello Barbie doll that it said was recording and analyzing children’s conversations.

The Dreaded Black Friday

Since today will be a slow day here on IST I thought I would offer up a little history on the trials and tribulations of this day.

Black Friday has traditionally been the day after Thanksgiving that offers up sales and cheaper Christmas gift….it is considered to be the busiest shopping day of the year.

Until recently it was a single day of craziness and business but recently it has bee the whole month of November…..but where did all this craziness begin?

Might as well learn something….and that is why I am here….

The first recorded use of the term “Black Friday” was applied not to post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping but to financial crisis: specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday in September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.

The most commonly repeated story behind the Thanksgiving shopping-related Black Friday tradition links it to retailers. As the story goes, after an entire year of operating at a loss (“in the red”) stores would supposedly earn a profit (“went into the black”) on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers blew so much money on discounted merchandise. Though it’s true that retail companies used to record losses in red and profits in black when doing their accounting, this version of Black Friday’s origin is the officially sanctioned—but inaccurate—story behind the tradition.

In recent years, another myth has surfaced that gives a particularly ugly twist to the tradition, claiming that back in the 1800s Southern plantation owners could buy enslaved workers at a discount on the day after Thanksgiving. Though this version of Black Friday’s roots has understandably led some to call for a boycott of the retail holiday, it has no basis in fact.

The real history behind Black Friday, however, is not as sunny as retailers might have you believe. Back in the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving, when hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Not only were Philly cops not able to take the day off, but they had to work extra-long shifts dealing with the additional crowds and traffic. Shoplifters also took advantage of the bedlam in stores and made off with merchandise, adding to the law enforcement headache.

https://www.history.com/news/black-friday-thanksgiving-origins-history

There you have it….while you are out throwing money at retailers you can see that it is just blind consumerism and not something that will benefit you personally.

On another side….ever hear of ‘Brown Friday”?

Plumbers have!

If you’re one of those sit-com families that sit around the table on Thanksgiving and tell everybody what you are grateful for this year, maybe your answer should be “plumbers”.

While you eat your turkey, various potatoes, squashes, vegetables, and cranberry sauce, spare a thought for plumbers, who are preparing for what has become known in the industry as “Brown Friday”. The day is often the busiest of the year for the professionals, as they tackle the aftermath of Thanksgiving.

According to data analyzed by Yelp, searches for “emergency plumbing” surged by an impressive 65 percent on the day following Thanksgiving in 2023 compared to the previous and following two weeks. Google data shows a similar spike in searches for the same term.

Los Angeles saw a particularly sharp increase in searches around Brown Friday, with a 73 percent increase in searches for terms related to plumbing, and a 400 percent increase in searches for “plumbing repair”.

The cause for this surge in interest in plumbing is fairly obvious, as people stay at home and use their toilets and sinks more, while also not following the best guidance on disposal of foods and fats.

“Turkey may seem like the one thing that doesn’t cause harm to a kitchen sink, but that’s exactly what makes it such a threat,” Mr Rooter Plumbing explains in a blog post, outlining the main culprits. “While most of us know not to throw poultry skin and bones into the garbage disposal, grease is another matter. If poured into a kitchen sink drain, the drippings from your turkey can re-solidify into fats that coat your drain and lead to serious clogs.”

https://www.iflscience.com/while-you-enjoy-thanksgiving-plumbers-are-preparing-for-brown-friday-nightmare-76989

There you have it….the Black and the Brown…..

Enjoy your day and think about where all this began and why.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”