That phrase is just flamebait and that's probably why it's framed in quotation marks.
That said, I'm not surprised to learn that doctors use Google. We go to doctors to benefit from their judgment and experience, not because we need to learn facts from them.
Modern meme culture is just modern culture. Information is embedded in society memetically, at least in Dawkins' framework. That memes are simple, stupid jokes like "badger badger badger" is itself a meme.
This isn't nitpicking. The author lacking a strong definition of "meme" makes their blog post read like childish whining.
However, the author makes a good point if you think about it. To cut through all the meme history, it seems the author has a problem with "memes" being commoditized and leveraged by the powerful and interested, in order to sway public opinion. Worse, the average person can't help but get caught in the gears of the machine, because meme savvy can be an important factor for acceptance into certain social groups. This means minting memes becomes valuable.
Being able to turn Pepe the Frog into a divisive character has political value. Being able to inflict a notion of "coomer/doomer/bloomer" on people has political value.
It feels cheap compared to the more organic process of the past because it is. It is deliberately cheap so as to make it easy to analyze, process, and improve. The interests pushing the latest memes need them to be cheap because cheap is effective, much like making food sugary just makes it more addictive.
And unfortunately, unlike the food industry, memes will probably not be regulated, because there is no objective metric of the harm they cause when leveraged in a coordinated way. It would be like regulating gossip and hearsay.
Ultimately, what the author laments is that what used to be fun has been hijacked as a utility in a sociopolitical war for influence.
Everyone knows you're a slacker, except management. Because management sucks. It's pretty much an axiom at this point.
>Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them?
There are other ways to reason about this. My favorite pet theory is that slackers are useful for offloading schmoozing duties. If a hard worker befriends a social butterfly, that worker no longer has to directly socialize as much.
But everyone around you who does your exact same job knows exactly how worthless or worthy you are. Don't kid yourself into thinking you're some master con artist.
I am not a scientist but I don't think that's right. A decay and rot situation should put some amount of carbon in the ground. Where else would all the peat that formed coal have come from otherwise?
Obviously violent combustion will put a great percentage in the air, but I don't see a strong reason to believe that a rotting tree trunk will completely put carbon in the air and none of it in the ground.
Is there any reason we don't genetically modify trees so that they grow huge? GMOs are some of our most advanced technologies, yet it seems no one has thought to modify trees to grow more.
"To invest" sounds great, but I'll believe it when I see it. For a long time now, American car makes have treated EVs like a second-class product compared to their gas models. Even if these plants go up on time, I don't think Ford is going to elevate the EV to parity with their gas models.
It's hard to say for certain of course, but I believe part of Tesla's success is due to their commitment to the idea of the electric vehicle. With Tesla, I know I'm getting the best car Tesla can make because all Tesla makes is EVs. With Ford or GM or Toyota, I don't get that same impression. If I buy a Volt or an e-Mustang, I feel like I'm buying an inferior product.
If Ford wants to win in this space, they need to change that perception.
That contact and messages access exploit is quite neat. Some might say it even looks straightforward. I can only assume this is the "private API" that darkly patterned apps use, because it looks that obvious.
I wonder how ob/ob mutant mice behave. Do they move less and sleep more? Is their body set temperature lower? It doesn't make thermodynamic sense that they would get obese on half the diet unless their physical activity and body temperature were either or both impaired.
The targeted ad banner is hilarious. It reminds me of that scene in Silicon Valley where Dominos appears in a fantasy medieval universe because Dinesh mentions pizza.
That said, I'm not surprised to learn that doctors use Google. We go to doctors to benefit from their judgment and experience, not because we need to learn facts from them.