Seems to be a bit breezy today
He jumps out of the car and measures Hurricane Irma's wind. His conclusion: It's windy. #Irma #Irma2017 pic.twitter.com/XdmCUvhf4u— James Melville (@JamesMelville) September 10, 2017
Sep 10, 2017
Another Tweet
Seems to be a bit breezy today
How Great I Art
Yay Mikey!
And guys (as of this writing), I had a great spike in visitor traffic for a coupla days*. I'm just amazed by your generosity, and of course, altogether impressed with your excellent taste where blog-reading is concerned. Thanks.
*update: it's not nearly so heavy now. But hey - nice while it lasted.
Sep 9, 2017
Two Weird Ones
Some very odd shit goin' on
Eastern Bahamas:
Eastern Bahamas:
Impressive slow moving landslide due to permafrost melting spotted in Tibet on September 7, 2017 https://t.co/PsU9BDl667 pic.twitter.com/OUWH39PFC9— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 9, 2017
Today's Tweet
Gosh, ya mean the flag and the anthem and all that stuff might mean different things to different people?
Holy crap - whooda thunk it?
Rodgers: Kaepernick isn't on an NFL team because of his protests and it would be "ignorant" to think otherwise. https://t.co/EvOgSwj8g6— Twitter Moments (@TwitterMoments) August 30, 2017
Business Insider:
You won't find Aaron Rodgers kneeling during the national anthem this season, but in a recent interview with ESPN's Mina Kimes, the Green Bay Packers' offensive captain said he had no issue with players who choose to protest.
That includes Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback who is still waiting for a job offer less than two weeks before the start of the 2017 regular season. Kaepernick drew national attention even from outside sports circles last season when he popularized the practice of not standing during the national anthem in protest of racial injustice in America.
Rodgers said it would be "ignorant" to believe that Kaepernick's trouble finding a team had nothing to do with his activism.
Watch That Social Media
This could get fun
Vox, Ella Nilson:
It is unclear how successful the so-called Russian “troll farm” on Facebook was. Many of the accounts were crudely designed and used stilted, awkward language, and many of their posts were not widely shared throughout social media. Also, the majority of them ran in 2015, the year before the election, when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were still competing with other candidates in the primaries.
The Russia-linked accounts worked to spread misinformation in two ways, according to a recent New York Times report. In one strategy, they bought political ads that focused on social issues including immigration, race, gay rights, and gun control, rather than touting one candidate over another.
Their second strategy was to create hundreds of fake accounts that linked back to their own websites, filled with hacked material on Hillary Clinton and prominent Democrats like businessman and investor George Soros. The Times investigation found a concerted effort to spread misinformation and direct traffic to these sites using these fake accounts.
Fake accounts are nothing new in social media; Twitter is rife with fake “bots” that can spread dubious stories or popularize hashtags. As the Times pointed out in their report, enough fake Twitter bots can push certain hashtags into Twitter’s “trending” category, where tweets with those hashtags can then be seen by more people.
Twitter has mechanisms in place to try to prevent bots from spreading fake trends around the internet, but new research by a cybersecurity firm called FireEye found that one bot-propelled hashtag still broke through, and Twitter’s relative lenience on fake accounts compared to Facebook doesn’t help.
Facebook, on the other hand, is taking new steps to crack down on fake accounts. It recently announced it wouldn’t allow pages to advertise on its site if they repeatedly posted fake content, and that it has been increasingly monitoring and shutting down fake accounts.
A former FBI agent named Clinton Watts recently told the New York Times that Facebook and Twitter are both experiencing a “bot cancer eroding trust on their platforms.” To Facebook’s credit, Watts said the site is currently doing much more to combat the issue, “cutting out the tumors by deleting false accounts and fighting fake news.”
It’s worth noting that even the most successful fake Facebook accounts have nothing on Fox News when it comes to influencing voter’s decisions, according to a new study.
I'm wondering if there might be some legal action against Zuckerberg and/or his minions for violations of various Campaign Laws.
Sep 8, 2017
Today's Debunkment
Snopes:
A friend posted it on Facebook, but now I can't find the original graphic.
Here're a couple I dug up:
Today's Quote
For the next time you get stuck in a Nazi-vs-antifa debate, and you you're forced to deal with the False Equivalence bullshit.
"I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire."
"I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire."
--Winston Churchill
Sep 7, 2017
New Music
NPR Tiny Desk
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Tunes:
Chaos and Clothes
Molotov
Last Of My Kind
Players:
Jason Isbell (vocals, guitar)
Sadler Vaden (guitar)
Amanda Shires (fiddle, backing vocals)
Jimbo Hart (bass)
Derry deBorja (keyboards)
Chad Gamble (drums)
Ashwin Wadekar (guitar on "Last of My Kind")
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Tunes:
Chaos and Clothes
Molotov
Last Of My Kind
Players:
Jason Isbell (vocals, guitar)
Sadler Vaden (guitar)
Amanda Shires (fiddle, backing vocals)
Jimbo Hart (bass)
Derry deBorja (keyboards)
Chad Gamble (drums)
Ashwin Wadekar (guitar on "Last of My Kind")
Today's Tonight
My love-hate relationship with football continues.
Per Five-Thirty-Eight:
My Donkeys play the late game Monday night.
Broncos (-7.5) 74%
Chargers 26%
The End Of The Beginning?
Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter:
Given the nation’s problems, from the unsettling situation along the Korean Peninsula, to the destruction left by Hurricane Harvey, to general income inequality, to terrorism, to climate change, our timing in bringing a man like Donald Trump into the White House really couldn’t be worse. The man is clearly unfit for any kind of public office, let alone the highest office in the land. The majority of the electorate knew this when they went to the voting booths. His “many sides” response to the events in Charlottesville during his horribly eventful, 17-day vacation sparked a run on his remaining popularity. (As Trump’s better, Winston Churchill said, “I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.”) The members of the president’s vaunted business panels left him. The members of his arts panel left him. The Republican leadership blanches at the mention of his name. His popularity in the swing states he won is on a downward spiral. Even charities that had booked space for their fund-raisers at Mar-a-Lago, his mid-market wedding-and-birthday rental facility, are pulling out. He still has the neo-Nazis and the racists, which must give him some comfort. This is going to sound unkind, but why are supremacists invariably the worst specimens of the race they are claiming to defend?
Given the nation’s problems, from the unsettling situation along the Korean Peninsula, to the destruction left by Hurricane Harvey, to general income inequality, to terrorism, to climate change, our timing in bringing a man like Donald Trump into the White House really couldn’t be worse. The man is clearly unfit for any kind of public office, let alone the highest office in the land. The majority of the electorate knew this when they went to the voting booths. His “many sides” response to the events in Charlottesville during his horribly eventful, 17-day vacation sparked a run on his remaining popularity. (As Trump’s better, Winston Churchill said, “I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.”) The members of the president’s vaunted business panels left him. The members of his arts panel left him. The Republican leadership blanches at the mention of his name. His popularity in the swing states he won is on a downward spiral. Even charities that had booked space for their fund-raisers at Mar-a-Lago, his mid-market wedding-and-birthday rental facility, are pulling out. He still has the neo-Nazis and the racists, which must give him some comfort. This is going to sound unkind, but why are supremacists invariably the worst specimens of the race they are claiming to defend?
With normal presidencies, history often takes its time reaching a verdict. But once in a while, the verdict arrives with the speed of a tweet after an imagined slight. Judging from the assessments of six distinguished historians—see “History’s First Draft,” such is Trump’s grim fate. His time in office, like so much of his life, will be deemed a corrupt, messy shambles. The only lingering question is the extent of the damage he will have done by the time he is forced out of office.
Reading the essays by Jon Meacham, Stacy Schiff, Robert Dallek, Edmund Morris, A. Scott Berg, and Garry Wills, you come to the realization that our 45th president resembles none of the others—there is no true parallel. He is a mutant. In terms of temperament and judgment, he is the opposite of a Monroe or an F.D.R. He may be as intellectually hollow as Reagan, but he lacks Reagan’s humor, grace, and core of principle. He may be as psychologically disfigured as Nixon, but he lacks Nixon’s intelligence and stamina.
Today's Tweet
Every day. The weirdness known as USAmerica Inc just gets weirder every day.
In the pantheon of visual metaphors for America today, this is the money shot. pic.twitter.com/09COuDutBC— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 7, 2017
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