Buh - whu?!

From HuffPo:

Pandora Can Predict How You Vote

Listen to Bob Marley on Pandora recently? Then Pandora assumes you're a Democrat.

Using an algorithm influenced by election results and the musical preferences of individual users, Pandora will introduce a new advertising service next week that enables political organizations to target listeners based on its sense of their political leanings, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Mary J. Blige and Bob Marley listeners should expect to hear Democratic advertisements, while those who jam out to Yanni and Dolly Parton would be best targeted by Republican campaigns. Bruce Springsteen and Jay Z listeners could go either way.

Specific genres can also give insight into users' political leanings. Country, Gospel and New Age listeners lean toward Republicans, while fans of jazz, reggae, R&B and electronic music are more commonly found in counties favoring Democrats, the company said.

Jack Krawczyk, Pandora's director of product management, told The Wall Street Journal he believes Pandora's predictions are between 75 percent and 80 percent accurate. Y'all know there are plenty of Brad Paisley fans rootin' for Hillary in 2016.

For more on Pandora and political ads, head over to WSJ.com.

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ME:

So, I wonder what a playlist of Cary Brothers, Kings of Leon, A Perfect Circle, Lifehouse, Porcupine Tree, Staind, Steven Wilson, Imagine Dragons, The Lumineers, Mumford and Sons, Three Days Grace,  One Republic, Sick Puppies, Goyte, The Civil Wars, Airborne Toxic Event, Bear Lake, Puscifer, Alternate Routes, Theory of a Deadman, Trapt,  Lana Del Ray,  and Pink,  indicates...?

(I'm guessing some sort of bipolar disorder as part are relentlessly depressing, the other relentlessly upbeat while the rest are either wholeheartedly sappy or entirely cynical (with Puscifer and A Perfect Circle being downright blasphemous on occasion).

Wednesday Reading Meme

What I've just finished reading:
Sherry Thomas' "Tempting the Bride"

shadowkat67 and I have a long, spoiler-ridden talk on the subject in this post where I explain that while enjoying 95% of the book, the ending made me so angry that I didn't properly enjoy the 'happy ending.'  I'm torn by this because I'm not sure how much of that is due to the novel (I think a fairly large amount is due to the novel) and how much is baggage from BtVS, because somewhere early in the novel I was hit by the realization THEY. ARE. SPUFFY!

I don't know whether they are literally an author's Victorian AU version of Spuffy (though David, the hero, having curly blond hair that he tames with pomade along with impressive cheek bones and square jaw doesn't preclude the possibility) or whether Sherry Thomas is Spuffy fan (shadowkat67 thinks she heard Thomas was, and since Thomas also writes urban fantasy it does seem like it could be a possibility) but the RELATIONSHIP DYNAMICS in the story are totally Spuffy.

David and Helena drive each other nuts.  They say terrible, horrible things to each other... but on some level, they enjoy the word play and one-upmanship.  David has also been in unrequited love with Helena for forever, and he ruefully admits to himself that it was unfortunate that when he fell for her way back during their teens, he had been an obnoxious snot, the kind to pull the hair of girls that he liked. However, what's long been love for him is most decidedly not for her. She has eyes only for Angel Andrew, who she fell in love with as a teenager and who she can't and/or WON'T get over (despite now being 27 years old), and despite Andrew being distinctly unavailable. David, in the interim, has adopted a dynamic of saying outrageous, cutting, and/or erotic things to her to get a rise out of her because to him it's better that she scream at him than ignore him.

So David and Helena snipe at one another even though David is always but always there for her and her family.  However in Helena's eyes, nothing David ever does is right while nothing Andrew ever does is wrong... and if it is wrong, she assumes all the blame herself and clears Andrew of any responsibility for it.

Circumstances spoiled in the discussion with shadowkat67 follow.  David and Helena draw close under trying circumstances, he confesses his long unrequited devotion and his screwed up way of dealing with her, apologizing and changing his behavior in the process. He's honest with her about everything.  They actually fall in love and... near the end of the novel, at the drop of a hat she's offered a chance to be with Andrew and SHE LEAVES DAVID!

As I said to shadowkat, it was like Thomas gave me BtVS's Touched followed by End of Days all over again.  It goes from David beautifully attesting to unquestioned, unshakable devotion and loyalty to Helena with unprecedented closeness between them to her doing a complete 180 the next morning, regressing into a giggling teenaged version of herself at the slightest hint that she might get her 'true love' back.  All within the space of a couple of pages!  I had flashbacks to "Does it mean something" with a chaser of crypt snoggage to (hell!) space sex.  Ugh!

(Worse, in David and Helena's situation,  Helena didn't just break David's heart by doing this, when Helena did her abrupt 180 she  emotionally devastated David's special needs daughter by walking out as well.)

After that, I was so angry with Helena that I had difficulty accepting that she got her 'happy ending' simply by realizing that she was nuts to have turned her back on David in the present to go running after Andrew in an effort to recapture a teenaged dream.  David had given her total honesty and his his heart and she (yet, yet, yet again) chose to go running to a deluded fantasy that she should have spanked her inner moppet over years earlier.  Her doing so at that very late point in the story basically made it impossible for me to say 'yay, she came back!"  Because at the relationship stage where she pulled the rug out from under David, what she did amounted to an untenable rejection of someone she claims (albeit belatedly) to love. It was a bridge too far.

At any rate, for all the good parts of the book, the ending was too rushed after having carried Helena's obsession with Andrew too damn far to simply shrug off with David being willing to accept Helena's too damn late ILU as being better than never.

What Are You Reading Now:
Nothing at the moment

What Are You Reading Next:
Don't know. I'm still considering Nalini Singh's urban fantasy series with vampire hunters, vampires and arch angels.  It looks like it might be enjoyable.