Author's archive
Recommended Viewing 0
Empires of Stone, on Tubitv.com, particularly episode three about the Great Wall of China.
It reveals the secret ingredient.
Afterthought:
I’ve been having lots of fun (and learning) lately watching documentaries on Tubi and Netflix. Frankly, they beat the heck out of the more of the same “entertainment” shows.
It’s All about the Algorithm 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Amanda L. Giordano explores ten techniques that “social” media companies (remember, they are companies who desiring profits from our “engagement”) use to keep us “engaged.” Here’s what she says about the algorithm:
Follow the link for the other nine items she identifies.
Aside:
I would argue that, in most cases, there’s nothing “transparent” about the “terms of service.” They are often, purposefully in my opinion, dense piles of impenetrable legalese designed to discourage persons from reading them all the way through.
The one exception in my experience is Google, whose terms are written in generally plain language. Yet persons, including on occasion myself, use them anyway.
“Cluster of Weirdos” 0
An excerpt:
What we’re seeing here is that, to all these guys, . . . it’s just entertainment. They don’t care about what’s actually at stake, which is our democracy . . . .
Trump NDA DOA 0
Full Disclosure:
I once had a job that required me to sign an NDA.
In my case, though, I was working for a tech company with intellectual property and patents to protect, not for a con artist and charlatan with slimy things to hide.
Russian Impulses 0
The Portland Press-Herald’s Victoria Hugo-Vidal discusses Putin’s precedent for Florida’s (and other states”) codifying hate over sexual identity in law.
The Wanna-be Emperor Has No Suit 0
At Above the Law, Liz Dye reports on Hillary Clinton’s lawyers response to Donald Trump’s ludicrous RICO suit. A snippet:
When Stirring the Pot Means Slipping the Mickey 0
I have been to Florida many times for both business and pleasure. True, it’s been a couple of decades since my last visit, but, I swear, it seemed to be, as my old doctor used to say, “within normal limits” back then.
Toxic Noxious Masculinity
0
Rebecca Watson skewers (you will pardon the expression) Tucker Carlson’s great balls of fire.
We are a society of stupid.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Guns and stupid, guns and stupid.
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you brother,
You can’t have one without the other.
Florida Man Does the Math 0
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
The plantation mentality–it’s still a thing.
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
Der Spiegel interviews British historian Antony Beevor about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It is a fascinating read. Beevor sees many echoes of Russia’s imperial past (and echoes of previous military miscalculations) in what is happening right now. Here’s one exchange:
Beevor: Putin’s distorted mindset, obsessed with the triumphant war against Nazism, has turned everything inside out. Isn’t it a great propaganda task to liberate the enemy of Nazism? Putin and his ideologues grotesquely depict the Ukrainians as born-again Nazis who need to be eliminated and re-educated, as the utterly manic article in RIA Novosti by Timofei Sergeitsev describes. The role of liberator from Nazism did indeed give the Red Army the idea that it could behave as it wanted both personally and politically. It was a notion of superiority. Rights of conquest meant not only imposing a Soviet regime on neighboring states. It also involved the comprehensive looting of the country as a form of reparation, and the idea that what Ilya Ehrenburg called “the blonde witch” – German women and girls – should pay for their menfolk’s crimes in the Russian motherland.
All the News that Fits 0
Thom explores why Republicans seem to be so susceptible to fake news.