One thing that stuck out to me in the podcast was the difference between the history of how a singular person came to be versus looking at how the person impacted the people around them. In the podcast, Dr. B talks about George Washington. From our high school history class, I remember that we kinda just talked about his rise and then what he did that impacted other events, but never really his leadership tactics to cause success and unsuccessful missions. Evaluating the common people’s attitudes and quality of life is the most effective when determining if someone is considered a success or failure instead of looking at how the leader could have become more wealthy or just advanced part of society.  I know the greatest good for the greatest amount of people might not be what everyone likes to believe or actually produce results in the short run, but I think as a whole will be more beneficial in the long run.

I looked at the ad’s from the 2000s, meaning it was the Bush/Gore election. Interestingly, these two had very similar hot topics that they focused on, which were taxes and education. I think taxes are typically mentioned because many voters primarily cast their ballots based on money. Each party has a distinct fiscal policy, and each year, they have to bring it up to re-educate the population about how and why their policy is better. However, the other idea they focused on was education, and this was very interesting to me because I knew that there was an education issue in the US. Still, I did not realize how bad it actually was that the candidates would address the issue.

One thing noticed was that Gore talked about saving the environment, and it didn’t surprise me, but there was no environment box for me to check, so I really did not know what to put for that ad.

My favorite Ad was the Bush ad that did not talk about policy or any issues in general, but he acknowledged the fact that there is shit going on in the world, but I am here to be open and transparent with the people, so we can keep moving forward. He seems super down-to-earth and likable, giving him credibility and giving the American people confidence in him. I love facts and actually knowing the data, but sometimes ads that just let the people know everything will be ok and that someone will be open is a good thing.

So, I know absolutely nothing about running a village, but the basis of my tactics came from a camp my parents sent me to that basically threw us into the woods with few resources. I died the first time because I did not know how much wood one would actually need and how the rainfall severely affects how much time you need for water collection.

I managed the keep the two in good health. The small-business was really not running, but they had sufficient resources for the two of them. Also, I hiked taxes on the town to 50% because it did not impact Kodjo or Fatou since they did not have much income. Basically just doing everything to survive and nothing more.

However, a little box popped up saying  “Attempt to have a child” showed up when they turned around 20/21ish… Well, we have been talking about kids lately at practice because our coach is about to have one, so I thought it would be a GREAT idea to full send one. This was one aspect that the camp did not train me for. Kids are just a liability. Fatou could only work 6 hours while preggo, and then Damba (new kid) needs 2,500 calories which is absurd, along with the girl not working. Only two years passed, and I had to take out a loan that did not even last us.

The major takeaway from this simulation is that kids aren’t ideal when it comes to just survival since they literally do nothing for at least their first 5 years. Granted, if I tried to run my small business and make money, I would have had the funds to support the child. So the takeaway for life, don’t actively try to have a kid unless you are financially capable of supporting it.

Alright, so every Super Bowl, I watch the game and am actually interested in who wins, but the one thing that higher on my priority list is watching the Avocados From Mexico commercials. The way that the director and writer compose these masterpieces is something that I will never understand but always want to learn. These could be the funniest ads of all time, and I will tell you why I believe they need to do this.

So you typically do not see any fruit or veggie ads on the television unless it is a drink or maybe the occasional Green Giant. The reason for this is because if you go to a grocery store and want an apple, you will go in, grab a plastic bag, and put the color of your choice in. Easy. However, companies like Avocados from Mexico need to get their name out there because an avocado is just an avocado, so differentiating themselves is a must as they compete against the massive store.

They use a humorous bit that has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with avocados. Then, at the end they put a very bright green guac with them munching on chips to make it stick in your brain, so you go, “dang guac sounds so good right now, let me go to the store and grab a bag of Avocados from Mexico.” I think the way they draw in their audience with hilarious stories is why these commercials work for the company. I personally only buy these avocados because of the craftsmanship of the ads.

Before this class, I thought this chart regarding fans betting on the 2021 Bucs and Chiefs Superbowl was helpful. The part I loved was how 76% of the people didn’t care or thought the Chiefs were going to win the game, and Brady and the Bucs came out on top. However, the podcast taught me that you need to look deeper into where the material is coming from and the sample size of the data used.  The poll us sourced by a reliable place, but with only 2,200 U.S adults as the sample size, that raises some flags (you probably don’t get it, but each time the Bucs win, we raise the flags, so that was supposed to be a little funny). They do not say how the sample was taken (randomized) or just people who wanted to respond. That will have a huge impact on the data. Also, generalizing to the entire U.S population could have been a stretch since the US comprises 332 million people… So we just need to be careful when looking at graphics because the numbers can be quite confusing and significantly off if not calculated correctly.

The last point that Professor Bezio made was to think about what we think we know and what we know. Every day we make assumptions about people, places, things, and ideas, but typically these assumptions are not out of facts. The example about sandwich cutting was so legit because I assumed that everyone just cut their sandwich in half, but some cut them in fours. I don’t think cutting my food in half makes me a better person, but if you look at a bigger idea, it could be different.
I assumed before Flanigan’s research that you would be crazy to self-medicate. Why would anyone spend the money and time educating themselves to become doctors people can just go against their recommendations and take whatever they want ? I think she provides a solid argument that self-medicating can help lead to a decrease in black-market drug deals. The government could put a more regulated system in place to buy the medication from a store or get it from your local doctor. On the flip side of this, it is not explicitly mentioned in the reading, but black market + under the table deals are a huge part of the economy even if it can’t be explicitly calculated. If the government allows self-medication, the sector is gone. I am not saying that I specifically believe that black-markets are good, but they create jobs and are people’s livelihoods. Looking at a drug like Adderall, it is prevented from improving productivity. College students especially love that; however, you can’t legally get it if you don’t have ADD. If you were to allow for self-medication, the potentially sketchy black-market transactions would decrease, but you would have tons of kids on stimulants running around.
There are many answers to the question, and I just looked at part of it. Still, when you talk about life assumptions, you have to look at the facts and evaluate to make sure any implicit biases or even explicit biases are coming out when making the assumptions.

I read Celia’s post and commented under it, but I decided to make another post about it instead. Like Tess and I said in class, along with Celia agreeing, we have to face our past and learn from it to not repeat wrongful actions. Like in sports, we watch films of our own games to see where we went wrong to try and change it for the next competition. If we did not have the film to see where the breakdown occurred, we would just keep running into that same barrier. Keeping the names as is, is ok, but I think we need to have a plaque or a way for people to know how our school was founded, why it is so screwed up, then how it will get fixed and stay that way. So to use my sports analogy, we can see the play that was drawn, why it broke down, and how we can fix it to not happen again.

Adding the Mitchell to the Freeman building is a good step, but if they put a little nice signage out next to the name of the building, that could be helpful.

When reading the Blindspot pages and listening to the podcast, the concept of idea availability stuck out. We are surrounded every day with very similar people and circumstances because being comfortable is where humans, in general, feel the safest and accepted. Over time, different biases are formed because we like to take the easy way out and let society create us. Since we stay in our bubble, we are shown very similar actions and events every day. One part of the reading had us pick if option A or option B was more deadly. I chose B for the first and then A for the next two. The book predicted that I would do that and said it was because the media presents the A options, murder, and car accidents, more frequently than the B options, suicide, and abdominal cancer. If we go back to why people donate, people want to do the greatest good, but what tends to happen is they see different issues on their media outlets and feel a connection to donate. Whereas suicide awareness does not get the media attention, but at the end of the day is more deadly than murder, and we should be giving money to help the people struggling.

I have never taken an IAT test before, and honestly, I thought I could be biased, but not to the extent that the test said I was. I have taken concussion tests and honestly gotten good at learning the system after a few rounds. The last round in the 2 tests I played was what the game wanted you to be the best at, and since I have seen all the words/pictures six other times, you unknowingly start to recognize features in pictures and lengths of the different words. I am most defiantly not trying to say I’m not biased, and the game is completely wrong, but I think there has to be a better way to go about the process of seeing if you are biased.