Millennials Probably Killed Pabst Blue Ribbon, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: PBR is losing its cool, antivirus software is still useful and even Renaissance painters loved a good pee joke.
Millennials Probably Will Kill PBR
If you are reading this, chances are you probably already have your own set of thoughts about the popular and cool light beer known as Pabst Blue Ribbon. Enough time has elapsed that likely, most of those thoughts deal in the past. And Mel's Tracy Moore excellent excavation of the boom and looming bust of the hipster staple, will likely confirm everything you probably already knew about the beer.
In fact, you're probably not that surprised that parent company MillerCoors will likely spin down the brand in order to solidify Miller Lite's own standing amongst the Light Beer Wars. We have come a long way since the recession of 2009. We are nearly at full employment. Student debt and stagnating wages are definitely holding millennials back, but we're older now, wiser. Heck, if we can't afford to make a down payment on a house of our own, we might as well spend a few extra bucks to treat ourselves to a beer that has some substance to it.
I will say, personally, now that I'm 30, it is impossible for me to have more than three drinks without a hangover absolutely ruining the next 24-36 hours. Why spend $15 on 12-pack of PBR when I can spend the same amount for three decent beers, be in bed by a reasonable 10:30 pm, and wake up ready to do things like read the fine print on my health insurance policy.
[Mel]
You Probably Could Still Use Antivirus Software
These days, it seems far more likely that hackers will steal your personal information not through personally attacking your physical machine, but rather finding it on, say, a website that hosts the personal information of 2.2 billion people. With this in mind, it sort of seems a little silly to install a program with root access on computer in order to fend off hackers who otherwise have moved onto more lucrative places for your passwords.
Still, like dentists saying you should floss and brush as often as possible, Motherboard's Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai spoke to a handful of security experts and found that, yes, it can't hurt to have an anti-virus installed on your machine.
Even if you are pretty vigilant about downloading and installing software from trusted sources and largely avoiding the sketchier places of the internet, there's no real downside to having some kind of third-party software there to save your ass in the event something does get past your own safe-browsing best-practices. The only exception, Franceschi-Bicchierai finds, is that when it comes to enterprise use of AV software — since one vulnerability in your AV of choice could mean your entire business is exposed.
Even Renaissance Pee Jokes Are Ripe With Meaning
I have to admit that my favorite kind of art is Renaissance portraits. Given that I made the mistake of shaping almost all of my college education around careerist aspirations (I took a lot of journalism and creative writing classes), I don't really have any sort of art history or criticism knowledge to really explain why.
I know that they're beautiful demonstrations of painting technique. I know that they make me feel a sense of history; a connection to humans who lived in times very similar and very different from ours. And I know that I just like to sit there and look at them for the better part of an hour and just kinda soak them in.
But now, thanks to a recent piece of criticism from the BBC's Kelly Grovier on the symbolism found in the portraits of 16th century painter Lorenzo Lotto, I now have a starter set of tools to unpack meaning in elaborate portraits of Renaissance merchants and clergy. Grovier centers on one painting of Andrea Odoni, where in the background you'll notice Venus washing herself in a basin that Hercules is simultaneously peeing into.
It sounds obvious, but Lotto took the time to paint this lewd scene, and it was not to just make a funny joke in the background of an otherwise serious portrait. If you can believe it, it's actually a reflection on the subject. Amazing. I now understand art criticism.
[BBC]
