One of the world's top advertisers is threatening to take their ads offline if digital platforms do not do something about the fake news and extremism on their sites.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Unilever is threatening to pull its advertising from digital platforms that it says have become a "swamp" of fake news, racism, sexism and extremism. 

The forceful warning to digital platforms such as Google (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB) will be delivered at an advertising conference in California later on Monday. 

"We cannot continue to prop up a digital supply chain ... which at times is little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency," Unilever marketing boss Keith Weed will say, according to a copy of his speech obtained by CNN. 

Unilever (UL), which owns brands including Dove, Lipton, and Ben & Jerry's, is one of the world's top advertisers. It has an annual marketing budget of roughly €8 billion ($9.8 billion), and 25% of its ads are digital. 

Weed will say that a proliferation of objectionable content on social media -- and a lack of protections for children -- is eroding social trust, harming users and undermining democracies.

This is the kind of thing that can actually have an impact.

As large and powerful as Google and Facebook are, their power is greatly reduced once you remove their revenue streams.

If enough advertisers follow Unilever's lead it could almost change things overnight. 

Instagram joins the growing list of social media platforms that the Russians used to manipulate the American people.

Courtesy of Business Insider:

It's been a couple months since Facebook confirmed that fake accounts likely originating in Russia bought ads on the platform to sow discord during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

On Friday, the company revealed that its subsidiary Instagram was also used in an attempt to influence the election. And on Wednesday, as officials from Facebook, Google, and Twitter testified before Congress, House Democrats released examples of the Instagram posts in question.

The ads are similar in many ways to those posted on Facebook and Twitter, which also targeted things like Sharia law, Black Lives Matter, and gay rights.

They're similar in another fundamental way: They succeeded in reaching millions of Americans. Colin Stretch, general counsel for Facebook, said Tuesday before Congress that malicious Russian actors managed to produce 120,000 relevant Instagram posts, which reached 16 million people from October through the election. 

The data before October is murkier, according to Stretch, though the company estimates that another 4 million people likely saw content from Russian accounts.

At this point I think we can safely assume that every social media platform was infected with Russian propaganda designed to alter our political points of view and make us hate each other even more. 

And no, staying completely off of social media yourself does nothing to solve this problem.

Google uncovers evidence that it was also used by the Russian to manipulate voters in the 2016 election.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Google for the first time has uncovered evidence that Russian operatives exploited the company’s platforms in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the company's investigation. 

The Silicon Valley giant has found that tens of thousands of dollars were spent on ads by Russian agents who aimed to spread disinformation across Google’s many products, which include YouTube, as well as advertising associated with Google search, Gmail, and the company’s DoubleClick ad network, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that have not been made public. Google runs the world’s largest online advertising business, and YouTube is the world’s largest online video site. 

The discovery by Google is also significant because the ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated troll farm that bought ads on Facebook -- a sign that the Russian effort to spread disinformation online may be a much broader problem than Silicon Valley companies have unearthed so far.

I have been waiting for Google to join the party.

After all if you are going to manipulate American voters it makes no sense to ignore perhaps the biggest player on the internet.

And of course utilizing Google's multiple social platforms also includes You Tube, which apparently allowed the Russians to recruit black vloggers who made videos to convince the black community that Hillary Clinton's campaign was funded by Muslims.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

According to the YouTube page for “Williams and Kalvin,” the Clintons are “serial killers who are going to rape the whole nation.” Donald Trump can’t be racist because he’s a “businessman.” Hillary Clinton’s campaign was “fund[ed] by the Muslim.” 

These are a sample of the videos put together by two black video bloggers calling themselves Williams and Kalvin Johnson, whose social media pages investigators say are part of the broad Russian campaign to influence American politics. Across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, they purported to offer “a word of truth” to African-American audiences. 

“We, the black people, we stand in one unity. We stand in one to say that Hillary Clinton is not our candidate,” one of the men says in a November video that warned Clinton “is going to stand for the Muslim. We don’t stand for her.”

Like I said, we are only hearing about the tip of the iceberg.

The Russians clearly went all in to discredit Hillary Clinton, and help Donald Trump get elected.

It is becoming impossible to believe that there was not some sort of deal made with the Trump campaign. 

Driverless cars are almost here.

Courtesy of Ars Technica:

Real driverless cars could come to the Phoenix area this year, according to a Monday report from The Information's Amir Efrati. Two anonymous sources have told Efrati that Google's self-driving car unit, Waymo, is preparing to launch "a commercial ride-sharing service powered by self-driving vehicles with no human 'safety' drivers as soon as this fall." 

Obviously, there's no guarantee that Waymo will hit this ambitious target. But it's a sign that Waymo believes its technology is very close to being ready for commercial use. And it suggests that Waymo is likely to introduce a fully driverless car network in 2018 if it doesn't do so in the remaining months of 2017.

......

According to Efrati, Waymo's service is likely to launch first in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb where Waymo has done extensive testing. Waymo chose the Phoenix area for its favorable weather, its wide, well-maintained streets, and the relative lack of pedestrians. Another important factor was the legal climate. Arizona has some of the nation's most permissive laws regarding self-driving vehicles. 

"Arizona’s oversight group has met just twice in the last year, and found no reason to suggest any new rules or restrictions on autonomous vehicles, so long as they follow traffic laws," the Arizona Republic reported in June. "The group found no need to suggest legislation to help the deployment."

This of course is still in its infancy, and I imagine that even when these cars start showing up all around the lower 48 that here in my home state of Alaska we will be among the last to have access, due to our inclimate weather and treacherous driving conditions.

I just hope that it finally arrives while I am still around to participate in this amazing breakthrough.

This is without a doubt when of my all time favorite technological advances.

Google reveals new tools for avoiding fake news.

Courtesy of the Guardian:  

Google announced its first attempt to combat the circulation of “fake news” on its search engine with new tools allowing users to report misleading or offensive content, and a pledge to improve results generated by its algorithm. 

The technology company said it would allow people to complain about misleading, inaccurate or hateful content in its autocomplete function, which pops up to suggest searches based on the first few characters typed. 

It also said it would refine its search engine to “surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content” – and acknowledged for the first time that it had taken the measures to combat the threat of fake news.

Well I for one welcome the assistance of Google in filtering through the misinformation and fake news.

However it can never take the place of a vigilant internet surfer utilizing their critical thinking skills and common sense.

Google to revamp advertising policies after boycott over ads placed on controversial You Tube videos.

Courtesy of The Guardian: 

Google has promised a wide-ranging overhaul of its advertising policies in response to a growing boycott of the company’s platforms from leading brands and advertisers including the UK government, Marks & Spencer and McDonald’s. 

In a blogpost published on Monday night, Philipp Schindler, the company’s chief business officer, wrote: “We have strict policies that define where Google ads should appear, and in the vast majority of cases, our policies and tools work as intended. But at times we don’t get it right. 

“Recently, we had a number of cases where brands’ ads appeared on content that was not aligned with their values. For this, we deeply apologise.” 

Many of the companies involved in the boycott had discovered that their advertising spend was being used to place banner adverts over YouTube videos from groups such as Britain First, indirectly funding extremists and damaging the prestige of their brands. 

In response, Schindler has promised a three-tier overhaul of Google’s advertising policies, both on YouTube and on the company’s wider ad products.

My favorite part of this article is that it mentions Breitbart specifically as being the source of fake news and racism.

Hopefully with Google and Facebook now taking ownership of their part in disseminating disinformation and hatred we will soon see a dramatic change in the ability of certain sites to spread racism, homophobia, and misogyny.

And wouldn't that be nice?

Teachers take on the herculean task of teaching their students the difference between fake news and real journalism.

Courtesy of AP: 

Teachers from elementary school through college are telling students how to distinguish between factual and fictional news — and why they should care that there's a difference. 

As Facebook works with The Associated Press, FactCheck.org and other organizations to curb the spread of fake and misleading news on its influential network, teachers say classroom instruction can play a role in deflating the kind of "Pope endorses Trump " headlines that muddied the waters during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

"I think only education can solve this problem," said Pat Winters Lauro, a professor at Kean University in New Jersey who began teaching a course on news literacy this semester. 

Like others, Lauro has found discussions of fake news can lead to politically sensitive territory. Some critics believe fake stories targeting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton helped Donald Trump overcome a large deficit in public opinion polls, and President Trump himself has attached the label to various media outlets and unfavorable reports and polls in the first weeks of his presidency. 

"It hasn't been a difficult topic to teach in terms of material because there's so much going on out there," Lauro said, "but it's difficult in terms of politics because we have such a divided country and the students are divided, too, on their beliefs. I'm afraid sometimes that they think I'm being political when really I'm just talking about journalistic standards for facts and verification, and they look at it like 'Oh, you're anti-this or -that.'"

Leave it to our heroic public school teachers to take on yet another almost impossible responsibility that the children's parents are ill equipped or simply unwilling to take on themselves.

Fortunately for the teachers there is also some help coming from both Google and Facebook who promise to do their part in identifying and rejecting fake news sites and making it harder for impressionable young minds to stumble upon them.

Would have been nice to have all of this happen before the 2016 election put that shitgibbon in the White House, but I guess it's better late than never.

Google removes Holocaust denying website from top search results.

Courtesy of Digital Trends:  

After facing considerable backlash over its most popular product, Search, Google has made some major changes. 

Earlier this week, we reported that the first result for a query in the U.K. on whether the Holocaust happened claimed it did not — and that the result was returned from a white supremacist website. Now, Google has changed its algorithm to remove that result (and other denial sites) altogether. 

This is an improvement over a previous fix, which simply bumped the search result down a bit in popularity. Now, it appears to be completely gone. Of course, it’s unclear how lasting a fix this is, and this certainly won’t be the only problematic query (with even more problematic search results) Google will have to reckon with. 

Here is how Google explained how they are making the search engine more accurate and less antisemitic.

When “non-authoritative information” ranks high in its results, the company says it develops scaleable and automated methods to fix the problem, “rather than manually removing these one by one.” 

“We recently made improvements to our algorithm that will help surface more high quality, credible content on the web,” the spokesperson said. “We’ll continue to change our algorithms over time in order to tackle these challenges.” 

Well good for Google. Returning results that are based in facts instead of propaganda is the first step toward moving us away from fake news and toward...you know...news news.

And for those who want their news with a slight racist or antisemitic bent, I guess there is always Bing.

(Of course I'm just joking, I'm sure Bing is also interested in providing fact based content as well. Seriously, does anybody actually use Bing?)

Google is going to cut off revenue streams to sites that promote fake news.

An example of a fake news item that showed up on Google.

Courtesy of The Verge: 

Today, Google announced that its advertising tools will soon be closed to websites that promote fake news, a policy that could cut off revenue streams for publications that peddle hoaxes on platforms like Facebook. The decision comes at a critical time for the tech industry, whose key players have come under fire for not taking necessary steps to prevent fake news from proliferating across the web during the 2016 US election. It’s thought that, given the viral aspects of fake news, social networks and search engines were gamed by partisan bad actors intending to influence the outcome of the race.

Gee ya think?

You may also remember that last month Google announced that it was going to try and help users filter out fake news stories.

Though apparently that has not really kicked in yet.

In other news it turns out that Facebook may have a way of filtering out fake news stories but is not using it for fear of upsetting its conservative users.

Courtesy of Gizmodo: 

Gizmodo has learned that the company is, in fact, concerned about the issue, and has been having a high-level internal debate since May about how the network approaches its role as the largest news distributor in the US. The debate includes questions over whether the social network has a duty to prevent misinformation from spreading to the 44 percent of Americans who get their news from the social network. 

According to two sources with direct knowledge of the company’s decision-making, Facebook executives conducted a wide-ranging review of products and policies earlier this year, with the goal of eliminating any appearance of political bias. One source said high-ranking officials were briefed on a planned News Feed update that would have identified fake or hoax news stories, but disproportionately impacted right-wing news sites by downgrading or removing that content from people’s feeds. According to the source, the update was shelved and never released to the public. It’s unclear if the update had other deficiencies that caused it to be scrubbed. 

“They absolutely have the tools to shut down fake news,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous citing fear of retribution from the company. The source added, “there was a lot of fear about upsetting conservatives after Trending Topics,” and that “a lot of product decisions got caught up in that.”

So in other words Facebook may have helped elect an unqualified megalomaniac because they feared offending thin skinned conservatives with the truth.

Jesus H. Christ!

Just in time for the election Google introduces new fact checking feature. Looks like bad news for Breitbart and Alex Jones.

Courtesy of World News Report: 

Internet search giant Google has introduced a new fact-checking feature in its new section to allow readers to determine whether or not a story is true. 

“In the seven years since we started labeling types of articles in Google News (e.g., In-Depth, Opinion, Wikipedia), we’ve heard that many readers enjoy having easy access to a diverse range of content types,” the company said in an announcement. 

“Today, we’re adding another new tag, “Fact check,” to help readers find fact checking in large news stories.” 

Through an algorithmic process from schema.org known as ClaimReview, live stories will be linked to fact checking articles and websites. This will allow readers to quickly validate or debunk stories they read online. 

Related fact-checking stories will appear onscreen underneath the main headline. 

I would tout this as the end of the Donald Trump campaign if I did not know that his supporters will view this with distrust and believe that any "fact" which Google calls into question must be true due to Google's liberal bias.

However for those of us who actually want to know the truth about the news, this will be an invaluable asset.

And it will be quite helpful during those torturous holiday meals with the conservative uncle who believes every bullshit claim that drops from the mouth of a Fox News host.

You know sometimes you cannot be sure something is a bad thing until Sarah Palin likes it, and then you know.

Courtesy of the international moron's Facebook page:  

Time out between kids soccer games to tune in to good news of UK voting to leave the European Union - choosing independence from global special interests and affirming status that controls its own borders and protects its own people. Happy Brexit prevails! 

I have to admit that I was only vaguely paying attention to all of this drama in Britain (Kinda got my own drama gong on.), so when the vote came down I started to Google it to find out more about it.

Well as it turns out it's bad, really bad.

But then I really did not need to do any of that googling.

All I had to do is wait for Sarah Palin to weigh in.

So without a doubt we now know that it was a terrible decision.

And people say she's not good for anything anymore.

I don't think that Ted Cruz's campaign staff are doing him any favors.

Take a moment and Google "TRUS."

Here I'll do it for you:

A transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) is an ultrasound technique that is used to view a man's prostate and surrounding tissues. The ultrasound transducer (probe) sends sound waves through the wall of the rectum into the prostate gland, which is located directly in front of the rectum.

So essentially the ad suggests that we anally probe Ted Cruz.

Which if you think about it makes perfect sense, because I am pretty sure that is where his ideas originate.

(H/T to the Daily Kos.)

How much do Alaskans like Barack Obama? Enough to make him our top Google search that's how much.

Source

What did I tell ya?

The man needs to move up here where he is loved and respected.

Of course the fact that he needs to avoid Wasilla goes without saying.

I watched The Interview so that you don't have to. Assuming you are too un-American to sit through an hour and fifty two minutes of red, white, and blue awesomeness!

(Warning, title might be a tad hyperbolic.)

So I kind of accidentally found a Google video link online. (I am not sure it will work for long, but until it doesn't it is a free way to see the entire movie.) And I thought, what the hell?

So I sat down and watched the movie. It took some time as it takes a butt load of bandwidth and I kept getting that still loading spiral that I hate so much.  But eventually I made it to the end.

By the time I saw the credits start to roll I had an epiphany which seemed to have escaped many of the reviewers who trashed the film.

This is a Seth Rogen movie. No seriously, it is.

So if you liked "Knocked Up," "Superbad," and "Pineapple Express" you are going to LOVE this movie.

If you don't like those movies, then no you are not going to like this one either.

And if you have never seen a Seth Rogen comedy before, then well you probably ought to start off with "Knocked Up" or "Neighbors" first. Those are movies that have a wider appeal than the straight up stoner Rogen vehicles, like "This is the End" or "Zack and Miri Make a Porno."

As for "The Interview" itself it had some really good laughs in it, and a whole lot of over the top stuff that kind of makes you cringe, and absolutely tons of toilet humor.

In other words it is a Seth Rogen film.

Now I love movies so I have seen a whole lot of bad ones, as well as a whole lot of buried gems that I am glad that I discovered. If I had to categorize "The Interview" I would put it somewhere in between.

In my most humble opinion if you like comedies, and you are not easily offended, then yes you should probably take the time to watch this.

However if you are a Fundamentalist Christian, an old prude, or a person under the age of sixteen or seventeen, then no this is not the movie for you.

P.S. By the way as we are still trying to make sure we know who the real culprits were behind the Sony hack, does anybody remember what the big news was BEFORE the hack?

Want to know how to vote? There's an app for that.

Courtesy of Time:  

There’s a lot of room for confusion around how to vote this election season, particularly in states where pending and recent court cases are making last minute changes to the process. 

To help people interested in casting a ballot, Google unveiled a tool Thursday that will make finding out how to vote in your state as easy as typing in a search. 

After noticing an increase in searches for ‘how to vote,” “register to vote” and “where to vote” the search engine launched a series of web tools to streamline and personalize results to certain voting-specific questions. 

The prompt even works for smartphone users with the Google app. If users simply say “Ok, Google. How do I vote?”, information on voter registration , identification requirements, and early voting pops up. 

“With so much at stake on November 4th, including the balance of power in Congress, it is crucial that voters have access to all the information they needed to exercise their power to vote at the polls,” Anthea Watson Strong, the elections and civic engagement program manager at Google said in a blog post Thursday.

I don't necessarily think that Google designed this to help progressives in this next election cycle, but if history tells us anything it's that access to more factual information usually favors the liberals more than it does the conservatives.

Which I think means we can expect some rather angry responses from the Right to Google's attempt to help voters.

The New York Times take on the Palin family drunken brawl gets it right, CNN not so much.

So before I went to bed last night I bookmarked this CNN video discussing the brawl which gets quite a few things wrong about what actually happened.

In their version Track comes out a hero protecting his father instead of as the instigator of the whole thing.

So as you can imagine I was a little irritated and was going to use this post to correct their shoddy journalism.

However as it turns out I don;t have to, because the freaking New York Times did it for me.

Here are just a few of the key points in that Times article: 

A birthday party donnybrook that has come to be known locally and beyond as the “Palin family brawl” has been ruled a no contest.

Yes in virtually EVERY story on this incident the words "Palin family" and "brawl" are virtually always used together. Often the words "drunken,""assault," and "heavily intoxicated" are also within the body of the report.

As a matter of fact if you simply Google "Sarah Palin" this morning the entire first page contains almost nothing except stories of this brawl.

All of the accounts are in agreement that Mrs. Palin, her husband, Todd, and three of their older children — Track, 25, Bristol, 23, and Willow, 20 — showed up in a stretch Hummer limousine for a 40th birthday party for twin brothers, Matt and Marc McKenna, held at the home of Korey Klingenmeyer, the office manager for a company the McKennas own. Most of the party took place outside, with dancing and a live band.

Yep that's correct.

Five police officers compiled a 26-page report after interviewing more than 15 witnesses — including the Palin children in attendance — and most of the accounts (except for those given by the Palins) say that Bristol Palin had repeatedly punched Mr. Klingenmeyer in the face.

The Palins lay the blame for the fighting on others. Some of the witnesses, including the host, say that the Palins, particularly Bristol, were the instigators of several fights that broke out, all of which involved members of the Palin family. 

And there you have it, despite attempts to mop this thing up and suppress certain key pieces of information, the parts that simply could not be swept under the rug clearly state that Bristol Palin went all "Real Housewives of New Jersey" on Korey Klingenmeyer, and that EVERY altercation involved the Palins.

And for the one that the Palins seem to want to protect the most, the much vaunted warrior bodied "combat veteran?" 

Track Palin is described by an officer as heavily intoxicated and belligerent, and was shirtless and had “blood around his mouth and on his hands.”

Swing an a miss there Sarah.

As for reports by some news outlets that Sarah was sitting in the limo and NOT part of the scuffle:  

Officer Benjamin Nelson said in his report that when he arrived at the home he found Sarah and Todd Palin arguing with other partygoers. He said that he also witnessed Todd, Track and Willow confronting Mr. Klingenmeyer in his driveway, and that officers had to separate the parties.

Yes, the Times is reporting that not only was the Mama Grizzly and active participant, as many witnesses already testified, but that her family actually attempted to start a fight with the homeowner right in front of the police.

 I actually think that this is my favorite part from the Times article:

Bristol Palin said she did not recall hitting Mr. Klingenmeyer, but reported that she was dragged by her feet and called names. Matthew McKenna told the police that during the fight he picked Bristol up, carried her into the street and put her down.

One of the things that needs to be taken into account concerning the Palins version of events is that they were ALL highly intoxicated. THAT is why they hired the limo driver in the first place, because they knew they would be to drunk to drive by the end of the night. 

Therefore, as every police officer know, when you hear the version of events laid out by the party that is shitfaced, you really have to dismiss about 75% of what they say.

If Bristol did not even remember hitting the homeowner, then her story about being dragged around by her feet has to be taken with a giant grain of salt as well.

And that also means when Todd and Track talk about being jumped, that it is a version of events told under the influence of many, many drinks. (And yes trolls Todd was also drunk, how else to explain trying to start a fight right in front of the police?)

Now let me reiterate again that those portions above were taken from an article in the New York Times. Do you know how many people read the New York Times?

The answer is "a lot."

So this brings me to Tripp.

Now despite the fact that he appears nowhere in the police report he was most definitely present during some of this fracas. I have been told that he missed the part where his mom started wailing on Klingenmeyer, but he could NOT have missed the entire episode. And he definitely rode away in the car with the bloodied family members afterward.

Now what is not as well known is that the custody case is not entirely closed, that is why if you check Court View you will see that it remains open. (Yes there is a reason but I am not at liberty to divulge that. Yet.)

What that means is that Levi still has a chance to argue for full custody of Tripp. And considering the publicity this story is getting he literally has all the ammunition he needs to not only ask for, and receive, full custody, but also to request that Bristol's visits with Tripp be supervised.

And that my friends may be the best thing of all to come out of this whole thing.

P.S. For those who may not have read it here is the police report in full.

Okay this College Humor presentation of "What if Google was a guy" is WAY funnier than I anticipated.

I surf the web a lot for my job, and I must click about three dozen videos or more a day and rarely watch any of them all the way through.

But THIS one was so damn funny that I actually watched it twice.

Google to ban gun ads in September. Ammosexual heads to explode any minute now.

Courtesy of Breitbart:

According to Google Support's "Dangerous Products or Services" page, the company "[wants] to keep people safe both online and offline, so [they] won't allow the promotion of some products or services that cause damage, harm, or injury." 

Included in the dangerous products for which ads will be blocked are "Guns & Parts." This covers "functional devices that appear to discharge a projectile at high velocity, whether for sport, self-defense, or combat." 

Also included is a ban on ads for "any part or component that's necessary to the function of a gun or intended for attachment to a gun." This covers "gun scopes, ammunition, ammunition clips or belts." 

The ban will also halt ads for "dangerous knives... throwing stars, brass knuckles, [and] crossbows," among other things.

Just another reason to love Google.

It's Monday so let's start it off with something sweet.

A little girl was bothered that her daddy worked too hard, so she wrote a letter on his behalf to his employer, who happened to be Google.

Just in case you can't read it clearly: 

Dear Google Worker, 

Can you please make sure when daddy goes to work, he gets one day off. Like he can get a day off on Wednesday. Because daddy only gets a day off on Saturday. 

 From, Katie 

P.S. It is Daddy's BIRTHDAY 

P.P.S. It is summer, you know 

Yeah, it's summer you know. 

Believe it or not, Katie's dad's boss at Google wrote back.

Wow, he got a whole week off for vacation. Nicely done Katie!

You know the only time my daughter got me out of work was when I had to use vacation days to stay home with her when she caught chicken pox.

We still kind of had fun. You know in between the itching and applications of calamine lotion.

(H/T to Business Insider.)

What internet surfing says about your state.

So the folks over at Estately Blog have laid out a sampling of internet searches from each state.

Of course I only care about Alaska's so I thought I would share those here.

Adult Friend Finder: It gets lonely up here. What do you expect?

AR-15: Alaskans LOVE their guns!

Bestiality: Still lonely.

Bird Watching: Yeah this is the wrong blog to explain this one.

Couch Surfing: This must be from the younger crowd, who alternately crash at different friend's houses instead of getting a permanent place of their own, or more recently use it as a way to travel while saving money on hotel stays.

Mail Order Bride: Did I mention how lonely it can be up here?

Pull Tabs: Alaska's substitute for casinos. I have never participated, but it is a big thing up here, especially with the native community.

Sarah Palin: I think that might just be me. Everybody else up here seems completely uninterested.

I an not particularly surprised by these examples, but I have to imagine there were many others like Hawaii (Alaska's favorite vacation destination.), weather (Alaskans are obsessed with this.), and PornHub (Have I ever mentioned how lonely it is up here?)