I Am Finley

Top 5 Links of the Week

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As you can see one week in, I will be sharing quite a few links here. These are my favorites for the week.

1. Budweiser’s “Lost Dog” Superbowl Commercial Will Make You Cry

Super Bowl is coming this weekend and that means ad time. Budweiser does a great job at playing the heartstrings with puppies and Clydesdales.

2. New Trend? Let Your Kids Play Alone, Get Arrested. by GeekDad

I love when you see a blog that leans left post something that leans very far right. GeekDad went full tirade against helicopter parenting, the current trend in communities to report the parents of kids playing alone to the authorities, and the authorities to take legal action against those parents. The horror!

3. Design Studios Are Not Going Away by Ben Cline

We lost the great design studio Teehan + Lax, whiched caused a lot of talk in the community that design studios were becoming a thing of the past. Ben Cline comes in the set us straight.

4. Go Daddy Ad Shows that We Care Too Much About the Wrong Things by I.N.F.O. for Families

Normally the uproar about Go Daddy at Super Bowl is the amazing objectifying of women they are capable of. This year? Puppies and demands that they retract their multi-million dollar ad and apologize. And they did just that. I.N.F.O for Families checks our priorities.

5. Don’t Stress About Smartwatch Battery Life by Kit Eaton

Great history on the watch and batteries. Did you know the first pocket watch didn’t have a second hand? Or that they were so bad at keeping time that they’d be off my hours? Great read!

Well, all, have a very Super Bowl and I’ll see you back here on Monday!

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The Rubber Sword of Toothless Truth

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The true Gospel and true Sword of the Word are inherently confrontational and corrective.

And if there’s anything that this world and the modern American mindset hates, it is… confrontation and correction.

The plastic, world-friendly, harmless counterfeit sword is marked not by it’s ability to properly confront and correct, but by its aversion to the same.

The Rubber Sword of Toothless Truth, Stand Up For The Truth

I have long said that the biggest problem in the American church is a lack of apologetics teaching, largely stemming from the seeker-friendly movement that touched much of evangelism. The last church I belonged to fell into this badly, where they didn’t want to offend or confront false teachers within the body, even if the false teachers were leaders of small groups.

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Mophie’s “All-Powerless” Super Bowl Commercial

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Well done, Mophie. Not sure about the hairdo at the end there— won’t spoil the reveal for ya— but well done.

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Parks and Recreation on Parenting: Helping Your Children Through Lies

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Beautiful deleted scene from Parks and Recreation. Wyatt reveals that he’s been sneaking vegetables into Leslie’s waffles for years. Maple seeds! Reminds me of the three years that my wife— then fiancée— thought that cars needed blinker fluid. And then my mom ruined it. My dad was so proud of me and my wife was so mad. Still doesn’t think cars need break fluid.

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New Trend? Let Your Kids Play Alone, Get Arrested.

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In an age of Amber alerts and a constant culture of fear propaganda, helicopter parents cause us to imagine these stats are opposite. We’ve imagined and created dangers and fears where they simply don’t exist. Our kids suffer because of it. We should be parenting from a position of trust, not hard-wiring them for a life of fear.

New Trend? Let Your Kids Play Alone, Get Arrested., GeekDad

When I was a teenager, I road my bike to school once or twice a year. I lived outside of town in the farmlands of southern Illinois, so that trek was 7.5 miles of hilly country roads in the middle of nowhere out to one major highway. I was around fourteen and completely unsupervised, though often with my twin brother. This was only fourteen years ago.

In fact, violent crime is half of what it was just 20 years ago. Yet, parents live in constant fear that something horrible is about to happen to their kids.

Yeah, crime is at an all-time low, yet parents are in complete freakout.

But why do so many people feel this will happen to them? Internet posts and the 24-hour news cycle have created the illusion that pedophiles and kidnappers lurk just around every corner.

I’d go further. It used to be said that it takes a village to raise a child. In the village I grew up in, everyone knew my parents. They went to school with them, church with them, and were friends with them. If I didn’t tell my parents when I did something stupid, all likelihood pointed at them hearing it through the grapevine. It used to be that we trusted our neighbors to help with our children. Now we seldom know them. What’s worse, when our neighbors see our kids unsupervised, they call the cops. So now we fear what our neighbors think about our parenting. We’ve forsaken the village that could help with our children for fear.

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Navdy — Feels Like Driving In The Future

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Cool new product for cars that provides a powerful, heads-up display connected to your iPhone or Android. Easily use hand gestures and voice to control it. Not only does it allow you to control music, answer calls, and get turn-by-turn directions, but it also plugs into your car’s computer to show mileage and other real-time statistics. $299 for pre-order.

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Closed-Minded

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It is closed-minded to believe only one religion is true.

Adam4d is easily one of my favorite web comics. Today, Adam shows the inconsistency of those that cry “closed-minded,” “intolerant,” and worse at Christians. There is no absolute truth except the absolute truth that there is no absolute truth. Word.

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The best Gmail app for the iPhone is now made by Microsoft

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Hell, let's be honest, if you're relying on Google's own email apps on the iPhone, your experience is doubleplusungood. But there are plenty of alternatives in Apple's App Store, and it just so happens that the best among them now bears the name of Microsoft Outlook.

The best Gmail app for the iPhone is now made by Microsoft

Never thought this would happen, did you? Gmail’s iPhone app has always sucked. When they bought out, and shut down, Sparrow years ago, we had a glimmer of hope that it would launch as a new Gmail app that was amazing. But it did. And here Microsoft buys out Acompli and does just that, rebrand and relaunch.

For me, personally, I love Mailbox for email, both on the go and at the desk. But for the pro emailer that lives by email, much more than inbox management is necessary. And it looks like Acompli had it. And now Microsoft does. And what’s more, the new Outlook supports Gmail, Dropbox, and more than just Microsoft services.

One could hope that this would convince Google to make the next move, but Google seems to ignore these kinds of things.

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Comcast apologizes for changing customer's billing name to profanity

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"I'm a bit stunned by this" said Elliott. "Comcast is a big company. They can't control all their employees. But you'd think this is part of the basic training they give to their employees -- don't call your customers a-holes"

Comcast apologizes for changing customer's billing name to profanity

Not really stunned. When your customers have zero options but your company (this used to be called a monopoly), teaching your employees not to call your customers assholes comes long after teaching them to transfer you to a “retention specialist” when you request to cancel your service.

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Go Daddy Ad Shows that We Care Too Much About the Wrong Things

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For years now, Go Daddy has been running sexually explicit ads that objectify women. Where was the public outcry demanding that Go Daddy pull those ads? It didn't happen. Do we truly care more about protecting puppies than honoring the women in our culture?

Go Daddy Ad Shows that We Care Too Much About the Wrong Things

I was about to post about this yesterday when it broke, as I too have had a major problem with Go Daddy and their advertising practices. For years there ads have been horribly sexual and, as I.N.F.O writes, objectifying of women. While there have been murmurs and groans from Christians and other family-oriented groups, Go Daddy hasn’t once been forced to pull an ad. But when there’s even a chance that they could be supporting puppy mills— which I don’t even see when watching this ad— all Hell breaks loose and demands are made for Go Daddy to retract and apologize for their heinous ad.

Where are our priorities, America? As I posted yesterday, little shocks us anymore. We’d stand up for a puppy, but not for the modesty and dignity of women? Isn’t something wrong here?

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