Today's Video

Lift the veil of anonymity, and the tenor of online "discussion" changes considerably.

Dogs explain the internet:

Illustrating the universal understanding that invisibility is the ultimate power.

Overheard

The  stock market is so cool - such a perfect barometer for the economy - because when it goes up we know we'll be getting almost nothing, and when it goes down we know we'll be losing our jobs.

And what's even better, now we know that during a pandemic, it goes way up and we still get nothing - plus we lose our jobs.

Wow - gotta love this special kinda capitalism.

Internet Winner

Quoted by Jonathan Swan at Axios, relaying sentiments of an unnamed source from inside the White House:

"It's basically Sidney versus everybody," the source told Swan. "That is why voices were raised. There is literally not one motherfucker in the president’s entire orbit — his staunchest group of supporters and allies — who doesn't think that Sidney Powell should be on that first rocket to Mars."

QAnon Illustrated

It begins

And it ends

Overheard

Turns out there's an upside to getting COVID-19 while working for Trump - you lose your sense of smell.

Overheard

It's OK to kick a pregnant woman.

As long as you do it from the inside.

Overheard

Lots of buzz on the intertoobz lately about "mini strokes".
I thought maybe Stormy Daniels was back again, talking about her escapades with the Prez.

Overheard

Justin Trudeau has been criticized for pissing Trump's name in the snow, but it was Melania's handwriting.

Not Fun

So this wasn't fun at all, but I wanted to see what we might expect to come from the dark side of the botweb, so I engaged this - whatever this is - on Twitter.

I'm convinced this "guy" is a bot, and it was set to troll me to a certain degree and when the algorithm crapped out, it moved on. It replied to me 8 times, never with anything but memes and the one "cartoon" clip tweeted by James Woods.

Be advised - these are pretty awful. And not surprising, they have that old familiar ring to it. 

ie: "I kinda actually hate women because they're a little threatening since I'm still a little hung up with my mommy issues, so I have to pretend that her sexuality is the only thing any woman really has going for her, etc."

You were warned - here we go.

Has anyone ever figured this Biden rant out? It’s truly strange. Like science fiction level strange... pic.twitter.com/yEaiHUN9hg

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) August 13, 2020

Stop Doom-Scrolling

...and do something useful.

Everything is terrible. And much of it can be directly tied back to Trump. Though he didn’t devise environmental degradation, create COVID-19, or invent racism, he has inarguably advanced all these disasters, and as you read the endless bits of bad news on your social feeds, it’s hard not to feel hopeless. Sometimes it feels like doomscrolling is all you can do — whether it’s a mortifying addiction to pain and disappointment, or a restless search for something hopeful.

But I have a great alternative: hateclicking.

Early this year, the Pew Research Center released a study suggesting that executives in the tech sector had a fairly dire diagnosis for the pattern of what the study called “digital disruption.” In fact, a full 49% of the respondents felt that the “use of technology will mostly weaken core aspects of democracy and democratic representation in the next decade.”

But in June, TikTok users and K-pop fans had a different idea about the virtues of digital disruption. Famously, they joined forces to throw off the official count for Trump’s rally in Tulsa. It was beautiful, it was brilliant, and it was all done from the confines of their respective quarantine.

It’s in this spirit that I offer hateclicking as a practical way to cost the Trump reelection campaign money, and to distort the data they’re capturing for further advertising investment.

What follows was written by a friend of mine who is running for public office in the 2020 election cycle. Not wanting to piss off his campaign manager, he can’t publish it under his own name. I told him I’m more than happy to.

What hateclicking is, and how to do it.

The Trump campaign is unprecedented in how aggressively it runs paid online advertisements. These ads nominally push out messaging and solicit the opinions of voters, but in actuality they are about generating fundraising dollars and merchandise sales, collecting data, and building a giant house file of email addresses and phone numbers to use for further fundraising and merch sales.

Advertisers pay social media companies and publishers like Google in a variety of ways, but generally each time an ad is clicked it costs the advertiser money, usually from a few pennies to a few dollars.

Here is where you come in. Every day (and up to a couple times a day) Google “Trump” or “Trump Store” or “MAGA Hat” or something similar and then click on the ad links. Look for the ones that say “Ad” next to them, those are the ones they are paying for.

What follows was written by a friend of mine who is running for public office in the 2020 election cycle. Not wanting to piss off his campaign manager, he can’t publish it under his own name. I told him I’m more than happy to.

If thousands of us do this a few times a day it will increase the campaign’s online ad spend while producing nothing of value for them. It is probably not helpful to refresh and click again more than a handful of times per day because online advertising platforms often filter out repetitive frequent clicks from the same computers and don’t bill for them.

Here are some things you can do for bonus points:

• Let the page load fully before closing it so that trackers have time to register the click
• If you happen to click through to a Trump merchandise page, add a few items to your cart before you close the window — this can tie up inventory and make some items appear unavailable to legitimate MAGA shoppers
• Right Click on links to open multiple links in new tabs
• Use your browser’s “incognito” mode to search and click multiple times
• Use a VPN to click on ads from virtual locations multiple times.
• If you can stomach it, follow some prominent GOP pages on Facebook so that you start getting Trump Facebook Ads and then click and comment on those to also use up their Facebook ad budget.

Happy hating, everybody.

Overheard

• We need clean drinking water
• We should try not to infect each other with a deadly disease
• We should listen to the advice of doctors and scientists and others who know about this stuff
• Don't shit where you eat

Here in USAmerica Inc, in 2020, these are statements of partisan ideology.

Making The Rounds

Two Americans died of Ebola, and "conservatives" lost their shit, insisting Obama had botched it and should resign.

Four Americans died at Benghazi, and "conservatives" lost their shit, launching multiple investigations over 3 ½ years, holding 33 congressional hearings, and requiring Hillary to testify for 11 hours on one occasion.

45* may bring the COVID-19 thing in under 200,000 dead Americans, and the Republicans cheer.

200,000

DEAD

AMERICANS

That's how a cult operates.

Overheard

Q:
Is COVID-19 really all that serious?

A:
The churches are closed because of COVID-19.
The bars, and the cat houses, and the casinos are closed because of COVID-19.
When heaven and hell agree on something, ya gotta know it's pretty fuckin' serious.

Foil Hatters

I get really tired of debunking this shit.

Chinese lab conducted extensive research on deadly bat viruses, but there is no evidence of accidental release

WaPo:

On Thursday, the U.S. intelligence community released an assessment formally concluding that the virus behind the coronavirus pandemic originated in China. While asserting that the pathogen was not man-made or genetically altered, the statement pointedly declined to rule out the possibility that the virus had escaped from the complex of laboratories in Wuhan that has been at the forefront of global research into bat-borne viruses linked to multiple epidemics over the past decade.

“The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said, using a common initialism for the U.S. intelligence community.

It goes on to tell of certain activities concerning genetic modifications of some viruses in order to make them easier to study - which involved making the viruses more capable of infecting hosts, including humans.

Most of us find this pretty alarming because it sounds like it came straight out of a Michael Crichton novel. But the real point is that because you have to acknowledge the "possibility" of something going horribly wrong - and things do go wrong with near-shocking regularity - you end up giving just enough daylight for the Foil Hat Brigade to run amok.

You can't say absolutely that there's no chance of something happening, so the nutballs seize on that and lickety-split, the villagers are destroying everything they associate with the monster, including all the information they need to make sure they can fight it and beat it.

They just burn everything and hope for the best.

"It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."

But wait - there's more.

WaPo:

Since the novel coronavirus pandemic began, misinformation has proliferated on the Internet — par for the course during a crisis. People took to social media in droves to share false claims that covering your body in chlorine or eating garlic were effective methods of fighting the virus, both of which were disproved by the World Health Organization.

The pandemic has also sparked a wave of more insidious conspiracy theories, such as the false claim that 5G mobile networks spread and worsen the coronavirus, which has led to dozens of instances of arsonists setting fire to cell towers across Europe.

Misinformation spreads online much like a virus itself. Though various types spread slightly differently, the transmission of the 5G conspiracy theory offers some insight into how false claims grow online.

A “calamitous event” like the pandemic creates a “very fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories,” said John Cook, an expert on misinformation with George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication.

The onslaught of information and misinformation on social media, on cable news and in general conversation may create confusion, but it’s made even worse by human discomfort with ambiguity, especially when our lives are at stake.

Kate Pine, an assistant professor in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University, is currently interviewing people around the United States on how they’re navigating covid-19. She said people “feel like they’re inundated with information, but they don’t have the information they want,” and as a result, they might be more willing to believe outlandish claims.

- and -

“When people feel threatened or out of control or they’re trying to explain a big significant event, they’re more vulnerable or prone to turning to conspiracy theories to explain them,” Cook said. “Somewhat counterintuitively, it gives people more sense of control to imagine that, rather than random things happening, there are these shadowy groups and agencies that are controlling it. Randomness is very discomforting to people.”

In the mean time - don't forget that 45* needs to make us look the other way. He's desperate to get the economy back up and running. And while he can easily blame COVID-19 for the economy going in the shitter, he has to get us thinking away from his total fuckup-itude, so he's desperately spinning the yarn about how COVID-19 is all China's fault.

He invites the inference that China "attacked" us with the virus and so none of the bad shit that happens as a result is his fault - everything he does is justified because he's just being a strong powerful leader - a wartime POTUS.

Overheard

2020 Stress Factor:
People locked down by themselves just want some company, while people locked down with others just wanna be left the fuck alone.

Overheard

"...and if you still don't think of him as your president, then you better not cash the check he's sending you..."

Dude - c'mon - not only will I be cashing that check, I'll be laughing my ass off the whole way into town, knowing that every check I get is an open admission from this administration - as well as from every Republican - that trickle-down economics has failed again, and that these clear-eyed steel-nerved social Darwinists have had to fall back on a radical left idea like Minimum Basic Income to keep this joint from goin' tits up for-fuckin'-ever.

Seriously, what part of your feverish brain can make you believe I won't enjoy getting back a thousand of my tax dollars in the form of a check that basically says, "Ya'll were right - we was lyin' about that shit the whole time" on the memo line?

Overheard

Him: I'm exhausted - I went out for a walk, and it's usually a good way to relax and enjoy some time to myself and not have to worry about much of anything. But now - with all this COVID-19 thing - I have to watch every step, and make sure nobody gets too close, and I have to practically live in fear of every stranger. It's pretty awful just walking down the street.

Her: And now you know how almost every woman feels almost every day of her life.

 

Overheard

This is like going through the 1918 Spanish flu and the Great Depression at the same time - with Krusty The Clown as president.

 

Overheard

If millions of monkeys sat at millions of typewriters for millions of years, one of them might produce a Shakespearean sonnet, but not one of 'em would come up with a Donald Trump tweet - because monkeys aren't stupid.

Are We Being Selected Out?

Here's to all the savvy survivalists out there making sure they stock up and get ready for the COVID-19 pandemic while enjoying a nice buffet down at the Wood Grill, and the freebie samples at CostCo, and the communal bowls of pretzels at their local bar - all the stuff that everybody touches &/or sprinkles with their Respiratory Droplets with every cough and sneeze.

I just watched a cool video on human evolution, and I gotta say: we're here because of pure dumb luck - smart's got nuthin' to do with it.

hat tip = Facebook friend Linda M-M