> Many online publications have quotas for their writers, sometimes up to 10 posts per day. What does this mean? There is very little time for original writing, so staff spend most of their day rewriting the interesting posts they find elsewhere. No rewrite is ever complete, though. Small elements of language stay intact, and they can act as tracer cells which track the lineage of content.

This chrome extension highlights lines of "churnalism" which result from the copy-and-paste journalism writers have to use to hit these quotas:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/churnalism/igpjomm...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fvADRst_YM

Unfortunately, it seems the service the extension used has been retired.

Creativity is the art of putting two things together that didn’t obviously go together.

This was an excellent example of such.

That's such an insightful comment that I gotta ask: can I add you to my professional network on LinkedIn?

Here's my standard response (so much so, that I have a keyboard expansion for it - 'lkno'):

"Hi YOURNAME. Thanks for the connection request but I usually have a policy of only connecting with people I know, have worked with or otherwise have a pre-existing relationship. If we have met and I don't remember it please accept my apologies. If you have a particular reason for wanting to connect, such as a role or opportunity, I am happy to hear what that might be. Otherwise, please feel free to follow me on LinkedIn if you think my comments may be of interest. All the best. Regards."

I usually give them 4-5 days to respond. 9 times out of 10, they don't respond and I 'Ignore' the connection request. Of the remaining 10% that respond, there's probably a 50/50 split between 'No problem. I'll just follow you' (to which my response is 'Thanks for understanding') and 'Hey! Here's a great offer!' (to which I invariably respond with 'Thanks but I'm not interested at this time').

Very rarely, I will get an angry response from someone as if I've actively impaired their career. I don't bother responding to them. Even more rarely, the response is actually of interest and a conversation will ensue (and it may even result in a new connection).

That last extremely rare occurrence is the reason I don't just blanket ignore connection requests. Having been on Linked in since 2008, working as an individual contractor for most of the years since, and using variations on the above approach for most of that time, I've amassed over 1000 connections of which maybe 25% are recruiters.

I add them when looking for new oppotunities and report as spam when not. Don't want to work with unlucky recruiters.

There's no downside to adding LinkedIn contacts unless you're really into reading the curated feed or something. In fact, having more connections can be beneficial

All my upvotes for you.

It works because almost half the new yorker cartoons involve one cartoon entity meeting or stumbling across another.

Is there any evidence to back this claim?

So LinkedIn uses "dark patterns" to trick users into contact list import and sending invitations, this is well-known.

But are they really sending e-mails in someone's name without their consent? Or do they just make it very hard to understand what you're consenting to?

I don't want to defend LinkedIn, I'd just like to understand the extent of their unethical behavior.

I think you also understand already that if you're not properly informed, you're not really consenting. This is like putting super small text in a contract and then saying "but you signed it!". On some level most people feel that this isn't a genuine dealing and that it isn't fair. Let's not muddy those waters by arguing about whether or not US law thinks it's OK to take advantage of people in this way (the only reason I mention this at all is that these discussions usually devolve into that and it's incredibly tiresome).

Is uninformed consent really consent?

These cartoons aren’t part of the caption contest. The caption only works on "caption contest" cartoons.

That’s part of the meta-meta-humour here, I think.

I'd say three: the one with Scott Pruitt, the one afterwards with the crier, and the Lion King one.