January, 2017 archive
“Undermined from Within” 0
I don’t know to what extent I buy this, but the truly scary thing is that it does not sound impossible.
You can find another take in the same vein here.
Fantasy Alt-Football
0
This is good for a snicker.
(You can stop listening at about the minute and a half mark; the rest is promo.)
“Five Signs of Totalitarianism” 0
Christopher Lebron lists them at the Boston Review. Do any of them sound familiar?
Sign 1: Leader Insists on Mass Public Adoration.
Sign 2: Regime Controls the Truth.
Sign 3: Regime Suppresses Knowledge Producers.
Sign 4: Regime Invents Common Enemies.
Sign 5: Leader Is Surrounded by Cronies and Sycophants.
Follow the link for a detailed discussion of each one.
The Voter Fraud Fraud, Bait-and-Switch Dept. 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Roy Eidelson exposes the con. A nugget:
Read the rest.
Lies and Lying Liars
(and the People Who Love Them)
0
Warning: Language.
Truth:Trump::Oil:Water 0
In The Charlotte Observer, Frank Harris observes:
It is the stuff of dictatorships and totalitarian regimes. Like oil and water, Trump and truth don’t mix.
More at the link.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
The hunt for politeness continues apace.
When you go deer hunting, be sure to cover up your little furry white tail. After all, why else might your hunting companion mistake you for a deer?
All the News that Fits 0
Facts never survive the Reince cycle.
Bubble Boy in Alt Land, Reprise 0
Warning: Language.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
And a polite society is a clean society.
Whenever I cleaned my guns, I first made sure they were not loaded.
Why? Because I’m not stupid.
I am sometimes thoughtless, inconsiderate, selfish, preoccupied, self-centered, conceited (as I was informed in the sixth grade), full of myself, occasionally arrogant, and headstrong.
But not stupid.
It seems that NRA Paradise is peopled by the stupid.
Afterthought:
Why is it that, in police reports, men become “males” and women become “females”? (I know that men and women are “males” and “females,”–when I was a teenager, my parents gave me a book on The Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers* that informed me of that startling fact–but, really, now, synonyms and all that . . . .)
Inquiring minds want to know.
Stray Thought, Going Rogue Dept. 0
The uncomfortable truth–the one that no one dares to talk about–is that the United States of America has Trumpled its way to becoming a rogue nation.
The next stop is pariah.
Frankly, if things continue on the course of the past week, I’d not be surprised if civilized nations begin to impose sanctions on the Trumpled States of America within the next six months.
Distressed and depressed. Not surprised.
Twits on Twitter 0
The BBC looks at Twitter Bots:
“It is difficult to assess exactly how many Twitter users are bots,” said graduate student Juan Echeverria, a computer scientist at UCL, who uncovered the massive networks.
Mr Echeverria’s research began by combing through a sample of 1% of Twitter users in order to get a better understanding of how people use the social network.
However, analysis of the data revealed some strange results that, when probed further, seemed to reveal lots of linked accounts, suggesting one person or group is running the botnet. These accounts did not act like the bots other researchers had found but were clearly not being run by humans.
Via Schneir on Security.
