Today's Divide-N-Conquer

Christian Science Monitor:

If you search Twitter for the hashtag #FamiliesBelongTogether, a tag created by activists opposing the forcible separation of migrant children from their parents, you might be in for a pop proofreading quiz.

That’s because, in some locations in the United States, the top trending term, the one that Twitter automatically predicts as you type it, contains a small typo, like #FamiliesBelongTogther.

The misspelled hashtag, and others like it, have enjoyed unusual popularity on the social platform.

- and -

This is not an accident, say data scientists, but the result of a deliberate, automated misinformation campaign. The misspelled hashtags are decoys, aimed at diffusing the reach of the original by breaking the conversation into smaller groups. These decoys can dilute certain voices and distort public perception of beliefs and values.

“This is becoming more like a mind game,” says Onur Varol, a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute. “If they can reach a good amount of activity, they are changing the conversation from one hashtag to another.”

It's a very old problem-solving metaphor: Try to eat the whole steak all at once, and you choke on it. So you cut in into bite-sized chunks - and enjoy your meal.

hat tip = Blue Gal

ProLeft Podcast

The Professional Left

Buy some ProLeft swag

Episode 441:

Guess which party's been wrong about practically everything.

We talk about Rudy Guiliani, at least one person who is "tired of winning," and a number of people who've discovered all of a sudden that Truth is important, like Rex Tillerson and Matthew Dowd. A surprising sincere apology in the wrong place, the "Democrats in Disarray" lie never dies, and a wake up call for conservatives on Medicaid and nursing homes.

At this point, where 30-35% of Americans are all set to riot - set to pull a Charlottesville on the streets of dozens of cities - the latest version (GOP 5.0) of New Conservative Republicans are wondering, "How do you sell truth to rubes who refuse to hear anything but Benghazi or Emails or Vince Foster or Troopergate or Pizzagate or Kenyan Usurper or or or?

But the real question - the one that driftglass and Blue Gal are spectacularly good at rooting out: "How did those gullible rubes get to be so fucking Gullibly Rube-ish?"

Coffee Cast

A new one for me.  Pretty "hard left" (not that there's anything wrong with it).

This episode features Blue Gal and driftglass. Mighty fine.