2018 archive
Facebook Frolics, Guinea Pigs Dept. 0
Writing at Psychology Today Blogs, Susan Krauss Whitbourne describes how Facebook profiled its users victims. Here’s a bit of the article:
The Rule of Lawless, Warranted Intrusion Dept. 0
The news is full of stories about what the Mueller investigation’s raid on Michael Cohen’s office and home might portend and I will not speculate. You can find plenty if speculation at legitimate (and, no doubt, illegitimate–see below) news sites.
Nevertheless, I will this teeny contribution from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jay Bookman regarding the nature of the search warrant (emphasis added):
(snip)
Such exceptions are rare, however. Judges asked to approve such an exception and grant a search warrant must be convinced of a prima facie case that a crime has occurred and that the lawyer had somehow been involved in the actual commission of that crime. That’s always a high bar for prosecutors to clear, and it no doubt becomes even higher when the client in question is the president of the United States.
In other words, this is no fishing expedition.
All the News that Fits 0
Lance Dutson, a Maine Republican think-tanker, is dismayed to realize that one of the things he helped tank was truth. Here’s a bit of his article; I urge you to read the whole thing (emphasis added).
What I didn’t understand then was how destructive a total lack of common reality could be. While I chided the filtered evening news model, I didn’t realize we’d replace it with an anarchic ecosystem of unvalidated truths. I never imagined conservatives could be so successful in undermining the credibility of the traditional media, and I never envisioned a world where common truth ceased to exist.
(snip)
In this model, stories do not need to be true, or fair. They need to make people mad enough to share them.
Sympathy escapes me.
Television Comedy 0
“There’s One Now” 0
Dick Polman muses about how to spot a sociopath.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite to your neighbors.
Authorities say the bullet struck a dresser near where a man was sitting. He wasn’t hurt.
In a somewhat unusual note, charges are pending.
A Question of Identity 0
David Pakman interviews Amanda Marcotte, discussing the right wing’s identity politics and double-standards. Whether or not you agree with all the points made in the discussion, it’s worth a listen.
Russian Impulses 0
Shaun Mullen reports on Manifest Manafort Destiny while mincing no words. A snippet:
For openers, Manafort’s entire career has been one exercise in evil after another.
(snip)
The distance between circumstantial and provable can be substantial. But if the Russia scandal has taught us nothing else beyond the fact that virtually every key Trump player is a bad actor, it is that if something looks like a coincidence, it almost certainly is not.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite in public discourse.
The Kitsap Sun reports no one was injured during the Thursday event.
The story goes on the report that the fumble-fingers who dropped his portable penis “sheepishly” returned to retrieve it.
