Author's archive
Meta: A Message to a Comment Spammer 0
From the spam commenter:
Hmm it seems like your website ate my first comment (it was super long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I submitted and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. I too am an aspiring blog blogger but I’m still new to the whole thing. Do you have any tips for first-time blog writers? I’d definitely appreciate it.
Yes indeedy-do. And it will continue to eat your spam comments and spit them back out.
Hoick! Ptui!
Aside:
The spam was not in the faux comment itself; that seemed innocent enough, like the quotation above. It was in the commenter’s (purported) email address, which linked to a hinky website.
It was not the first comment linking to said hinky website. It was more like the eleventy-first. And it will certainly not be the last.
Fortunately, I have software that catches the creeps and quarantines them so I can evaluate (and delete) them at my leisure. You have no idea how many creeps it has caught since I first blundered into the blogosphere a decade and a half ago. Heck, neither do I! But it’s well into the hundreds, if not the thousands.
Said software has served me and my two or three regular readers well.
Phoning It In 0
At the Portland Press-Herald, Victoria Hugo-Vidal, whose job involves dealing with health insurance companies, describes dealing with “customer service” robots.
If you’ve ever spent 45 minutes or an hour trying to get through to a real live human being, only to be disconnected (thank you, land line telephone company), you will be able to empathize with her. Here’s a bit.
Craven Images 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., muses on what happens when you create your God in your own image. Here’s a bit; follow the link for the rest.
And they hold to that false deity with ferocious vigor. Author Eddy Harris once described a conversation with a white woman in Mississippi whose mother belonged to a whites-only church in the 1960s. The older woman was asked whether Jesus would have allowed African Americans to worship in his church. “Of course he would have,” she said, “but Jesus would have been wrong.”
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Settle disputes with politeness.
Twits Own Twitter 0
Jason S. Sexton is skeptical that Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter will have beneficent effects. He remarks that
Follow the link for his reasoning.
Twits on Twitter, Dis Coarse Discourse Dept. 0
At AL.com, Cameron Smith argues that Twitter is not the “public square.” A snippet:
We have far more control over our social media world than the real one. We follow what interests us, tell platforms that we’re not inclined toward certain topics, and we’re even able to block or mute individual voices. All the while Twitter’s algorithm observes our interaction with the platform and feeds us content that it expects we’ll want to see.
I’ve been to plenty of public spaces discussing the issues of the day. None of them function like that.
He may be right. Twitter may be more like Speaker’s Corner (where I once listened to a man rant passionately that toilet paper is the root of all evil) than Plato’s school.
Nevertheless, as long as persons, both on and off Twitter, act like it is a place of legitimate discourse, his point is moot.
We are a society that has sacrificed its soul for clicks and likes.
Facts Are What People Think 0
David and a caller discuss why so many persons disdain scientific fact.
Aside:
I think the caller gets it right. The effects of global warming are near and will be dire.
And I think we are well past the tipping point.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Honest to Betsy, this is just mean for the sake of mean.
What’s the Opposite of Woke? Asleep 0
At the Idaho State Journal, Chris Huston skewers the duplicity and under-lying bigotry of Florida’s “anti-woke” law. Here’s a bit;
The Disinformation Superhighway 0
Aside:
Remember, when Section 230 was passed in the mid-1990s, “social” media was not a thing.
The great majority of web content was static websites, Usenet forums, and the like. Prodigy and Compuserve were big players, and AOL was on the way to being one. The provision was designed to protect web hosts, such as GoDaddy and Inmotion Hosting, and similar services from being held liable for material posted by users and, alternatively, users from censorship by the services.
There were no algorithms manipulating what you might see next.
I suggest that an argument can be made that, when “services” manipulate content with secretive algorithms so as to attract and keep eyeballs, their claims of being innocent providers of neutral platforms for posters can be questioned.
(Typo corrected.)
In the Tank 0
Steve Corbin argues persuasively that “think tanks” are tanking our polity. Here’s a bit of his piece:
Follow the link for his reasoning.
A Notion of Immigrants, Reprise 0
Sam and his crew discuss the Republicans’ weaponization of anti-immigrant bigotry.