Fakes Everywhere

Fake news has come up with Donald Trump's rise to the position of President and it is constantly monitored now.  An area that isn't in the spotlight as it should be is Fake Reviews.  It got my attention with yesterday's purple mattress company's  'verified reviews.' How much was TripAdvisor fined for fake reviews? It was fined $610,000 in Italy for failing to prevent fake reviews.  Italy has followed through with fraud convictions of fake reviewers who have made significant amounts of money creating false reviews for TripAdvisor.  That doesn't seem like enough of a fine to deter them in the future.  I didn't see any articles on more companies convicted of this - yet 40% of businesses who sell online are negatively impacted by fake reviews.   The big story is Amazon. BuzzFeed looks in-depth at the Amazon Fake Review Economy HERE.   This is an expose of how the industry works.  It is called a review-fraud economy.  It is a complicated system of sellers, reviewers, and how buying and selling reviews works. Closed groups on Facebook and 'Slack' channels are used for the tens of thousands of underground workers who bid on creating 'reviews' and get paid per piece written.  Amazon's platform services are so open that what has resulted is a war of sellers and a labour force engaged in fraud as paid work. Sellers undermine competitive products by creating false reviews.  There are businesses whose business is to copy products, put them on Amazon for sale, and then create reviews to promote the copied product and demote the real product - even if its has a patent.  Amazon's open platform facilitates this.  Amazon doesn't want to alienate third party sellers - that's a third of its business.  However, it is causing financial disasters for small businesses that have a genuine product. In terms of the Fake Reviews, one approach to the problem is to sort out the false from the real. The organization Review Verifier showed two ads and asked which of these two hotel reviews is real.  They describe the general characteristics to look for in fake reviews. They say deceptive writers used more verbs than real review writers did.  Real writers used more punctuation than deceptive writers.  The deceptive writers also focused more on family and activities while the real writers focused more on the hotels themselves.  CNET is a company that offers an automated approach HERE.  Or go to Fakespot.com to paste in a url and they will analyze it for fake reviews.  Another site strips out the fake reviews and adjusted the rating without the questionable reviews.  In contrast to this, I found these summertime pictures.  The first is the Daniel B. Stowe Botanic Garden, and the second a casual Toronto Island garden.

Origami in the Garden

Origami in the garden was the theme of the artwork at the Minneapolis Arboretum Garden.  This was the most beautiful of the sculptures.  Set in a pond, it was isolatable so can be admired with the hint of the garden that surrounds it.  Buddhist monks carried paper to Japan during the 6th century.  Japanese origami dates from this period and was used for religious ceremonial purposes. Origami butterflies were used during Shinto weddings to represent the bride and groom in the 1600's. Our picture today shows cranes in flight.  Cranes are the best known design.  The crane is auspicious in Japanese culture.  Legend says that anyone who folds one thousand paper cranes will have their heart's desire come true. The thousand cranes is a poignant story of the 20th century.  A young Japanese girl, Sadako Sasaki was exposed to radiation of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  By the time she was twelve in 1955, she was dying of leukemia.  She decided to fold one thousand origami cranes so that she could live.  She saw that other children in her ward were dying, and she realized that would not survive. She wished instead for world peace and an end to suffering.  Her thousand cranes are said to have been completed after her death. There is a statue of Sadako in the Hiroshima Peace Park:  a girl standing with her hands outstretched, a paper crane flying from her fingertips.  Every year the statue is adorned with thousands of wreaths of a thousand origami cranes.

Tools and Their Houses

We've seen  the increasing size of houses over the decades since the second world war.  Then post-war houses were built on a 660 square footprint, and had three bedrooms.  When I was young, we saw these houses in many neighbourhoods in St. Catharines, and seemed fine at the time.  Now designer tool sheds seem as large as small houses.   It was a delight to see this tiny tool shed at the Maine Coastal Botanic Garden.  It seems like the right size for one of those post-war houses.  It would nestle in the back garden and be in scale with the house. This one is leaning - it is the children's garden where whimsy reigns supreme - the fence posts are carved in cats and the entrance is marked by giant watering cans and tools.