Tag Archives: News

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from comical Bond villain to dreadful oppressor

For those that make the fervent case that we need Facebook in the business of deleting fake news, I give you in response a perfect example of why we don’t want that. It’s a rather short road from policing fake news to policing all reasonable speech. As we’ve previously written, Facebook (specifically Zuckerberg) has been in the sucking up to China’s dictatorship business for some time now.

And how! Courtesy of the New York Times (who like the Post occasionally bothers to engage in actual journalism):

The social network has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity because the tool is confidential. The feature was created to help Facebook get into China, a market where the social network has been blocked, these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg has supported and defended the effort, the people added.

How would this delightful tool of oppression work?

Well, for example, say a belligerent blog author took it upon himself to publish some thoughts on how Xi Jinping, Dictator & Overlord of the Chinese People, rose to power as one of the most corrupt dudes on the planet to the tune of billions in cash. And made the point that Xi’s current anti-corruption campaign is the biggest hypocrisy since Stalin called Hitler “a bad bloke”. Xi and his family made billions, but now Xi’s suddenly a paragon of virtue. So one can only come to the conclusion that he’s using anti-corruption efforts to purge those who oppose him.

Then say said blog author posted that on Facebook. And then say one of that blog’s six demented followers liked that post? Well, using Zuckerberg’s fancy new tool, Xi’s goons could preconfigure the system so that it would automatically purge from the planet. Nobody in China would ever read those words because the following terms would not be allowed in any post seen in China:

Xi Jinping

Dictator & Overlord

Delicious Stout Beer

Hypocrisy

Amateur Jai-Alai Extraordinaire

Kleptocrat

Stalin

Kute Kitties

Hitler

You know, one can occasionally hate Google equally as a partial anti-liberty bully. But on this count, Google’s conduct has been quite admirable. For well over half-a-decade Google has fought China on censorship. The result is Google’s profits and scope in China are in the tank. But at least they’ve made a stand. In contrast Zuckerberg is just drooling for those extra one billion eyeballs, because $. And if freedom of speech loses in the process? Oh well.

I don’t understand this line of thinking. If you’re in the free speech business, how do you ultimately increase your future bottom line by getting into the anti-free speech business? That’d be like Coca Cola sending an employee into the White House to restock the machines with Coke, then he goes into the Oval Office to campaign for an ultra-tax on sugary drinks. Zuckerberg’s behavior makes no sense. That is, unless you see it through the lens of Silicon’s Valley’s cynical elite. As in, Zuckerberg and Xi are both in the extreme 0.1% of all humanity. And that means they have more in common with each other than the rest of us. So they think they can cut a deal, and damn the consequences.

My final point, any company should be wary of selling its soul to do business in China. It’s a trap. If Facebook got into China without restrictions tomorrow, it’d probably get it’s clock cleaned by China’s own businesses. Uber China no longer exists for a reason. If the vicious-rule-breaking-barbarians at Uber can’t even break into the Chinese market, what chance does Facebook (or anybody else) have? WeChat already has 700 million Chinese users and is specifically tailored to China’s users, by folks who live there and understand the culture. Zuckerberg can’t compete with that. But he appears happy to mortgage his honor to try.

Uh [shakes head], the problem with comical Bond villains is that in cold reality, outside the scope of fun movies, they’re actually dreadful oppressors.

Hat tip, to the Facebook employee who’s honor is intact, for leaking this info to the New York Times. We who are free, salute you.

22FACEBOOK2-master768.jpg

“Why yes Mr Xi, yes Sir!  I am selling out.  Are you buying?”

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who gets to decide what’s fake?

We got through most of this entire lunatic campaign season without nary a word about fake news sites. I find this amusing as for the most part I consider Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc, etc, to all essentially be fake news sites. They don’t actually report news so much as they seek to shape public opinion to serve whatever interests they champion. There’s also the ever delicious The Onion which is usually a good place for a decent laugh, though even they have an obvious slant they push, but they’re obviously an admitted satire site.

But what folks are actually talking about are the sites that are totally off the deep end. They have no purpose except to play people for morons to move the election needle. Some of the examples I’ve heard over the last week were popular articles that said something along the lines (my paraphrase) of, but all of these were lies:

– The Pope had endorsed Trump

– Trump had commuted to Valhalla before the campaign ended

– Machines will not be our Masters

– Trump won the popular vote

– Going vegan makes you happy

– Trump was seen at Putin’s dacha alongside six former Olympic gymnasts (I too thought this one 99% accurate)

– The Walking Dead is a good television show

So now that the election is over a whole bunch of folks are stating that these fake news posts were in some way responsible for altering the course of the election. This point of view is mostly for those in the Hilary camp who ascribe some of the last minute push towards Trump as caused by said nakedly vicious pro-Trump fake news. Facebook, Google, and your local school newspaper are now thus under pressure to filter and delete said fake news stories from their feeds. The idea is that you the voter will no longer see this fake news so you can know the news you read online is legit.

First off, I feel sorry for Facebook and Google on this because no matter what they do everybody is going to hate them for it. One side will claim they’re not doing enough to police fake news or hate speech, the other side will claim censorship. Both sides will be simultaneously right and wrong. Facebook and Google will be caught in the middle of the broader cultural wars. Zuckerberg will become progressively more frustrated and insane, thus laying the groundwork for his impending slide into the oblivion of Bond villain darkness.

Because honestly who gets to decide what’s fake? As I understand what Facebook and Google are being asked to do, they have to hire somebody to edit their feeds. Then that person upon viewing some news they deem fake is supposed to delete it so folks can’t see it. Well, what’s fake?

– The Pope had endorsed Trump, fake, delete.

– Okay, what about The Onion? Well, that’s fake too, but that’s satire, so, do not delete? I guess. Well, what’s satire and what’s fake news? Who determines the difference?

– Okay, what about Salon or National Review? Well, they’re flamethrower sites for the acolytes, so it’s analysis and not technically news, so, do not delete? I guess. Who gets to determine the best way for remembering where you put your keys?

– What about that random Facebook post by normal average human that becomes popular but is chock full of lunacy, lies, and opinion? Well, but that’s not from a news site, so, we do not delete? But it’s still fake, so shouldn’t that person be made to shut up? Even if that person is just an average person they’re still shaping public opinion, aren’t they? Who decides who is made to shut up?

– But what if somebody reposted that person’s post as if it was news? Do we delete them too? What about somebody’s random blog post, is that news? Who decides what’s a blog post and what’s fake news? Who decides if Lady Gaga is hot or not?

– What about a 1930’s Looney Tunes cartoon clip with Speedy Gonzalez, is that hate speech worthy of deletion? Who determines what is hate speech, what is stupidity, what is fake news, and what’s just normal average painful human discourse to resolve our problems? Have you contemplated your future bleached skeleton status lately?

– What about a scene from Frozen which falsely gives the impression via fake news that Elsa would not have been put to death by the Catholic Church for witchcraft in real life? Shouldn’t we delete that too?

And on and on and on.

Where does this end? Where do you draw the line on what should be seen and deleted? What is fake and what’s not? The answer always will end up being the opinion of some screener, likely guided by policy that a bunch of folks from Facebook and Google got together and wrote. And thus, a bunch of random people you’ve never met get to determine what you’re allowed to say and read. This is not healthy in any aspect.

Facebook and Google are private companies and can essentially do whatever they want within the law. For example, if Google decided it hated cats and deleted all cat content from its site I’m pretty sure there’s nothing anybody could do to stop them. But Facebook and Google are also so ubiquitous to society you could make an argument they’re becoming an intrinsic part of our culture, infrastructure, lives. Do we really want two of the global Internets backbone sites to be in the censorship business? For any reason at all?

I come down to two points on this:

1) I am an open season kind of person on free speech and thus to all the Internets. Facebook, Google, Twitter should not be in the business of removing content whether it’s fake, hateful, whatever. This means you can post fake Trump news, evil ISIS propaganda, incorrect tips for how to properly cook an egg, Tweet how much you despise [insert anything here], and so on. Dealing with all this nonsense is a price worth paying rather than living in an online society where strangers get to police thought.

2) Humans as free individuals are responsible for what they do and do not read and how they process information they acquire online, in newspapers, from ads, from their neighbors, from their imaginary friend, from their own fears, from their own dreams. If somebody read fake news and believed it, that’s their own problem and responsibility. Living in a free society is hard work. It requires you to think for yourself, do your own research, and make your own decisions. It’s not the responsibility of society to do that job for the citizen. Indeed, if society did, then said citizen would never be truly free.

And I want us all to live free.

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we prepare to do battle with the Moon

Apparently this large thing in the sky is called a “Supermoon”. I don’t really understand why it has to be Super. Other than that in today’s culture everything has to be epic. For example, I now generally hear on the news several different ways to describe various weather phenomenon or patterns when we used to simply say, “It’s going to be cold tomorrow.”

But hell, I’ll go along with this. It’s a Supermoon. Got it. It’s harmless, right? Wrong. For you see, the Moon is not to be trusted. It has powers. Super powers. Why else would they call it a Supermoon?

This is the closest the Moon has been to Earth since 1948. The thing about astronomy is it has the power to cause you to briefly consider your own forthcoming bleached skeleton state. The Moon won’t be this close again until 2034. Think of all the things you could endure between now and then. Halley’s Comet won’t be back until 2061. Which means just about every person alive on this planet today has (at most) one more shot with Halley’s before their pending commute to Valhalla.

Last night said Supermoon was in the rise phase as I drove home at dusk. It certainly did look bigger. But according to the BBC, this is mostly an optical illusion:

“To observers, it will appear about 7% larger than normal and about 15% brighter – although the human eye is barely able to discern that difference.”

I tend to give us humans a little more credit than that. The Moon doesn’t just look bigger because folks are calling it a Supermoon. I think our brains and eyes can inherently detect that it’s 7% bigger and 15% brighter. We look at the Moon all the time. When it’s that different, our brains will tell us, even if it’s subtly.

I was thinking, that it looked so close and clear last night you could almost reach out there and touch the darn thing. That from my eyes to the Moon’s surface was one clear line, one straight shot. 221,524 miles is a long way, unless you can imagine that it’s not.

The Moon’s always been up there like that while we humans mess around down here. Some Roman Senator or Chinese Imperial bureaucrat pretty much saw the same thing. Some of us have actually been up there. When you really think about it, it’s quite special that a few of us have actually reached out there and touched it. We’ve made that journey. And it really does say something about how little we dream anymore or how much we’ve lowered optimism in our collective psyche that we haven’t been back in five decades.

Where’s our promised Moon colony or Bond villain Moon Base? I mean, technically I guess the Moon Base could have existed without us knowing it. And Bond already blew it up. But I’m betting that didn’t actually happen.

Anyways, either way, I’ll do battle with this Supermoon tonight. I’ll arm myself with a decent coat, a beer, and my camera. My dogs will wield a knife, handgun, or belly full of kibble, whichever they prefer. And we’ll get a shot (camera) at taking on this Supermoon. Moonrise is shortly after my return from work. So it’ll play out well.

If I survive, I’ll try and remember to post a picture on this degenerate blog. I might get distracted, because I have to do a ton of work for second job after I get home tonight. But I’ll try and make it happen. But if I don’t make it, make sure to take your revenge on the Supermoon for me. For you see, the Moon is not to be trusted. It has powers. Super powers.

Update: The Moon was obscured by clouds and light rain.  We couldn’t get a shot.  What does this Supermoon have to hide?  We’re on it.  We’re on the case to find out.  We’ll get right on it.  [cracks beer]  [sips]  [stares blankly at bare wall]

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we belligerently break down what the hell just happened

1) The outcome: people are pissed

This is a global phenomenon. There is an entire subset of humanity (half the population) in the democratic world who rightly or wrongly feel they’ve been left behind. They’ve got no skin in the game of a modern globalized, multicultural, interconnected world that the politicians, businessmen, and the media have built. Said politicians, etc, have tended to dismiss the concerns of these people as resistant to change on the kind end, and things like racist on the unkind end. Abject dismissal was always going to be a poor way to address the concerns of a substantial portion of society’s citizens. People who genuinely believe their children will have it worse off than they’ve had it don’t appreciate being called backward. The establishment (the other half of the population) have taken it for granted that the newfangled world they’ve built was always the right answer. And so it’s been a only natural that everybody should get aboard and reap the benefits. The problem is that the benefits haven’t trickled down to everybody. Not enough effort was expended to aid workers who lost their future to globalization. Too many elites spend more time worrying about corporate tax policy or transgender bathrooms than a opioid addiction that’s literally bleeding whole areas daily. These things matter. In any democracy, when half the electorate feels that both political parties are essentially ignoring their core interests, don’t be surprised when they get pissed and back fringe lunatics. This happened with Brexit, it happened with Trump, it might happen soon with Marine Le Pen. It will continue to happen until those that govern make it a point to work for all citizens, not just the narrowly defined slice of the country that happens to be inside the system.

2) Hillary was Donald’s Hillary

The prevailing wisdom of this campaign was that Trump was the perfect candidate for Clinton. She’d sail to victory because he was such a lunatic. I tend to think it was rather the other way around. Clinton was the perfect candidate for Trump to battle against. Where Trump was the anti-establishment guy, you could not have conjured a more inside the system player than Clinton. Where Donald could connect with voters in his own crazy way, Clinton probably couldn’t even properly connect with her own campaign staff. Everybody got aboard the fact that Clinton was going to make history as the first woman president. She even planned her coronation beneath a glass ceiling building. The problem with this line of thinking is that nobody bought it outside the bubble of politics. To the average voter, Clinton was always going to be there just because she was the other Clinton’s wife. The real glass ceiling of this election was that a lot of folks wanted somebody to break the glass on establishment dynasties, be it Bush or Clinton. In an election where well over half the country thinks things are going in the wrong direction, what people were definitely not looking for is more dynasty. They were not looking for a person who’s been in politics for forty years. Imagine if you will, how different this would have all played out had Sanders, Warren, or even poor Jim Webb been on the ticket. Any one of these people would have likely beat Trump. Anybody could have beat Trump. But not Clinton, she was the keen match he needed.

3) The division

After all of this, after all this mess, the answer is 60 million Americans pulled one lever, 60 million Americans pulled another lever, and 6 million Americans (like yours truly) threw their vote away. Statistically speaking, you could not imagine a more divided electorate. This is a rather troubling existence for the nation. The American system is built to produce divided government. But I wonder if it’s built to handle a consistently divided nation. Each side is talking past the other. Nobody wants to listen anymore. If 60 million folks think the other 60 million folks are not just wrong, but nefarious, we’re in for a death spiral. History tells us that tribal alliances can progressively break down and destroy a culture. And what we have here are truly tribal feelings. As an example, for the very, very limited amount of time I watched live election coverage I was troubled to observe:

a) An analyst on PBS who stated that the election was only playing out the way it was because of the “South” and it’s continuing capture of the broader political forces of America. In other words, if you lived in Ohio and voted for Trump, you didn’t do so because you’re protesting that the elites forgot about you. Instead, you were doing so because you were inherently racist. This is the idea that Trump won because a full 60 million Americans were too stupid to vote for anybody else or are just racist, or sexist, or whatever. Everybody surely remembers Hillary’s “deplorables” comment, right?

b) An analyst on Fox who stated that the election was only playing out the way it was because of “Conservatism” and it’s return to recapture America from the dark forces of liberalism. In other words, if you lived in New York and voted for Clinton, you didn’t do so because you were appalled by Trump or believed in the progressive ideas Clinton stated. Instead, you were do so because you wanted to destroy the old America to remake a new one. This is the idea that a full 60 million Americans wanted Clinton to win so they could detonate the country and remake it at the expense of the other 60 million. Or that 60 million Americans only want to milk the nation of the other 60 million. Everybody surely remembers Mitt’s “47 percent” comment, right?

I don’t know how you resolve the feelings of (a) and (b) without a lot of turmoil. I do worry, friends.

4) The reality

As stated, the American system is built to produce divided government. Whoever you voted for, either Clinton or Trump was going to run against the brick wall of this reality. The American President might be the least powerful Executive in the modern democratic world. It was designed to be this way from the beginning. People who think Trump’s going to rule as some unhinged dictator should not forget that the system is constructed specifically to prevent such a thing from happening. However badly you thought about Clinton or Trump, I assure you, American has previously survived far, far worse than these two idiots. I suspect, either way, that we’ll be sitting here four years from now with much the same situation on our hands. I could be wrong, but if you remember back in 2008, the Democrats were equally in control of all the arms of government power. What came of all that? You could say Obamacare, a few key Supreme Court decisions, etc. But largely, I don’t think most folks would say in the last eight years America has undergone earth shaking radical change. I loosely predict it’ll be the same result by 2020 or 2024.

Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, I just don’t see much changing for the average man or woman on the street. Trump voters are going to be rather disappointed to realize that their local mayor has far more power over their lives than Trump. They’ll be disappointed to see they can’t have problems that have taken decades to create wished away by a maniac who shouts loudly. Clinton voters are going to be rather relieved to see that even this guy can’t do the level of damage they feared. The needle will move, but for the most part people’s lives aren’t going to change. The system, the broader waves of our culture, are bigger than this election or Trump or Clinton. Where is our reality headed? As I’ve stated above, I’m worried, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this, in the broader path of where we are bound, this election is little more than a rounding error. I wish, I wish we’d take a step back and think about the bigger picture. Instead, I fear, we’ll soon be wrapped up talking about small fry nonsense like the intricate details of Executive Order Whatever or Senate Filibuster Verbiage. This is disappointing, but also, rather comforting. One way or the other. Life goes on.

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clowns have always been evil, why is this news?

When my age was still in the single digits I had the unfortunate experience of accidentally catching a television scene where a clown brutally stabs a fellow human in a manner that’d probably be considered horrific even by today’s degenerate tv standards.  It melted my little child brain.  I couldn’t sleep for days.  My parents were freaking out.  Can’t sleep.  Clown will eat me.  It was at one of my relative’s houses and I figure somebody accidentally left it on a channel not appropriate for the kiddies.

Suffice to say, from that day forward I’ve always hated clowns.  So now lunatics dressed as clowns are walking around scaring people all across the country.  People are freaking out.  Oh, clowns are now all of a sudden evil?  What took you all so long to realize this?  Remember those party clowns when you were a kid?  Evil.  Who actually thinks clowns are happy, funny creatures anyways?  I seriously have never gotten this.  Here, just look at these random clowns:

clown.jpg

Closet serial killer

french clowns.jpg

Cheese eating surrender monkeys

ronald.jpg

Evil robber baron

the joker.jpg

Upstanding ordinary average Gentleman

I always remember The Simpsons having it right.  This is what I thought clowns were like:

bart clown.png

Can’t sleep.  Clown will eat me.

Clowns or fools have been around since Caveman Overlord Steve turned his bitter rival Former Caveman Overlord Carl into his fire pit fool.  These jesters or whatever didn’t dress like creepy murderers though did they?  Where did this modern incarnation come from?  I’m guessing the circus.  Early in the 20th Century I’m sure all clowns looked like this, so it became part of the culture and that was that.  I guess I’ve just never understood why such a look became associated with fun or happiness.  I’m clearly not alone in this thought process because clowns are all over horror movies.

So now that social media has enabled the rest of the human race to see clowns my way, it’s turned into mass hysteria.  I don’t understand why.  Look, on any given day you could walk by a complete psychopath on the street.  He or she could be just wearing jeans.  You’d never know they were evil.  But now, since this clown thing is a thing, the psychopath’s are very helpfully dressed up as clowns.  Now we know they’re lunatics just based off their choice of attire.  It’s win-win!

We should support this.  And thus, anybody wearing a clown suit should be immediately arrested by the secret police and sent to a special island.  China’s building all those new islands in the South China Sea, right?  What we do is buy one of those new islands and put all the clowns on it.  Can you imagine the horror of an island with 9,634 clowns?  The thought sends chills into my soul.  But it’s okay.  If we get too freaked out by this, we can always get China to bomb the island.

evil-clown

The sweet & tangy taste of human flesh appeals to this man

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apparently we need to clarify what an explosion is

Samsung has rightly gotten a bad rap lately for shipping countless smartphones to customers that otherwise should have been classified as controlled live ordnance.  And now there’s news this morning that Samsung washing machines are also apparently exploding.  Maybe this is the start of the apocalypse that lunatics (and my Guests) have been waiting for all these years.  It starts with exploding phones and appliances, and the next thing we know folks have to wield shotguns just to cross the zombie infested streets safely.

But hold on for a moment, what does an exploding Samsung phone actually look like?  Well, here’s an example:

fail phone.jpg

Eh, sorry folks, that’s not an explosion.  If the phone had actually exploded it’d be in a million pieces.  In fact, I do believe the phone rather “caught fire”.  Hey, words matter, kids, except on this degenerate blog, and the presidential campaign.

I know the media prefers to use the word explosion because it’s more dramatic and they get a bunch of clickbait.  I too was guilty of this.  When I was a young lad I broke my arm playing sports and I told people that my bone was “shattered” instead of “broken” because I thought it was more dramatic.  Nobody was impressed.  In fact, they were always quite confused.  I’m an idiot.

If you want to know what an actual explosion is, here’s a video of the recent Falcon 9 explosion on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.  Video here.

Falcon-9_explosion_A-2016-09-01-879x485.jpg

Now we’re talking!

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why can’t this man just die?

It’s generally poor form and not beneficial to your soul and the future of the human race to wish an early expiration date upon your fellow man.  But some people are so far over the line I really don’t have a problem with it.  I thus give you the ongoing saga of how serial child slave trafficker, rapist, lunatic, murderer, Dallas Cowboys fan, and apocalyptic fanatic Abubakar Shekau is somehow still alive?  Why can’t this man just die?

For those of you who believe in conspiracy theories or conspiracy theory movies or that only fifteen families are pulling the levers of planetary power, I give you this guy.  We’re so screwed up we can’t even find and kill one single guy who really, really, really deserves it.  This is how I know that if the CIA ever teamed up with Walmart and the Illuminati to put chips into all our coffee so they could get into our brains, the plot would quickly fall apart after one of the monk bagman rear ended a street cop while texting in the rain to his boss about how he left the evil plans USB drive (unencrypted) in the changing stall at the Sears while he was buying new monk-solid-white-high-top sneakers.

I mean I get it, without credit cards, smartphone chips, a desire to drink quality beer, or any plans for the future you can fall off the grid real fast.  But you’d think that eventually we’d be able to buy off one of his buddies or spot him with a drone while he’s sitting inside his 1974 Buick Skylark outside the elementary school trying to kidnap another busload full of young girls.

You know I’ve said it many times, but there’s still something to be said about solving problems with a sledgehammer up front rather than allowing things to fester.  What if the UN had put 100K troops on the ground for a month to comb Boko Haram’s jungle paradise?  They could have stayed for a month, then left the Nigerian Army (what of it actually exists) in charge once the problem was temporarily solved and hope it somehow all worked out.  Then Abubakar Shekau and all his evil buddies would have been dead, and thus not had the ability to kidnap thousands of young boys and girls to serve as child soldiers and sex slaves.  That would have been a decade ago.  He’s still here.  Great.  But hey, at least we’ve got Twitter hashtags, so whatever, we’re good.

In the meantime, I read a few weeks ago that all the fighting has basically triggered a local famine because Boko Haram hasn’t allowed a decent crop harvest in three years.  Awesome.  Check that into the Earth win column, please.  I’m sure this issue came up last night (I kept my word and didn’t watch) as Trump and Clinton traded skilled barbs about which one has an older weathered face under $1247 of television makeup.

Uh, I need to calm down and quietly drink my coffee, I think.  I’m too cynical in my cubicle.  But at least I’m leaving this job soon.  Oh yeah, for those who have been around this degenerate blog for a long time, I’m changing jobs.  Hopefully the new one I won’t hate as much as I do this one.  But either way, in the meantime?  Abubakar Shekau, kind Sir, please just die.

Abubakar Shekau.jpg

Seriously, just fucking die.

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do not watch this debate

Ponder if you will this typical suburban scenario.  There’s these two folks who live down the road from you, we’ll coincidentally call them Don and Hil.  They’re both running for president of your development’s homeowner’s association.  You kick yourself every time you remember that you were foolish enough to buy property that had an active association.  You got cited last year for the length of your garden bush’s fronds.  You had to look up the word fronds in your dusty dictionary to determine what you were being sited for, yeah that’s right, the freaking dictionary.

Don is retired and used to run the town’s largest real estate firm.  He made a whole truck of money but his company had a reputation of mixed success with questionable business practices.  He lives at home with his much younger trophy wife and he dotes on his kids and grandkids.  Don’s generally a likeable guy who will chat with you while you walk your dogs.  But he only ever talks about himself and tends to yell a lot.  He also randomly picks pointless fights with others in the neighborhood over shit nobody controls, like where the town holds its 4th of July fireworks display.

Hil is vice president at a local insurance firm.  She’s hardly ever home as she travels a whole bunch, and in any case lives alone as her estranged husband is never around.  The rumors say he lives in Thailand.  Folks who know folks who work at her firm say she’s efficient, works hard, and generally does a decent if mostly average job.  She hardly knows anybody in the neighborhood.  When she talks to people it’s generally very brief and reserved, and she’s then on her way to somewhere else.  She’s filed multiple complaints via the current homeowner’s association leadership about how her neighbors keep their homes.  Nobody really knows why, since she’s never around that much.

The campaign kicks off in earnest.

Don walks about the neighborhood accosting folks even when they don’t want to talk.  He’ll lay his hand on their shoulder and speak to them anyways, about three inches from their faces.  He makes disparaging remarks about Hil, other neighbors, The Zoo, and random cereal brands.  He makes no promises on what he’d specifically do as association president other than that he’d “liquidate” the existing association order.  Folks find this appealing as they’re sick of the association being in their faces about what color their damn shed is.  But Don also talks about how he’s going to “demolish” city hall and “kill all those fuckers”.  Folks don’t really like or understand this as the local mayor, Zelda, is an extremely popular and competent grandmother of five.

Hil covertly compiles the demographic details of every member of the neighborhood and then hires a Pilipino based data analysis firm to produce a multi-hundred paged detailed report on an effective campaign strategy.  When the neighbors discover this, they’re naturally concerned that their lives are being looked at in such a matter.  Hil denies everything, but one of Don’s friends later finds a half-burned copy of the report in the neighborhood park dumpster.  Hil’s plans for the association are fairly sensible, but are presented in an arrogant, aloof, and sterile manner.  Folks who speak with Hil on the street get upset because they think she talks down to them when they say they don’t understand her plans, or want to complain about the way she filed complaints against them last year with the association.

They debate at the association contractor office tonight.

You can’t stand either of them.

So, do you get in your car and drive 15 minutes to watch the debate?  Only if you’re an idiot.  Instead, you sensibly decide to stay home and watch the game surrounded by your family and dogs, and some beer.

Do not watch this debate.  Neither of these people should be president.  In fact, none of the four Democrat losers or 37 Republican morons who competed against them in the primaries should either.  God I hate both these political parties, so very much.  It’s a sad and troubling time for our democracy, folks.

But it seems tonight’s debate is set for record viewing numbers.  I think folks are watching it only to see the horror show on display.  Like how if a blimp blew up over your home, you wouldn’t be able to look away.  Both these idiots have negative approval ratings of like 87%, and presidential debates aren’t about substance.  So it can only be voyeur awfulness that draws people.

Well, I’m not going to take part.  I won’t be voting for either of them.  So who cares.  I’m out.

Sigh, why can’t Monday Night Football have a decent game on tonight?  We get the Falcons, a former Super Bowl contender who have apparently faded into irrelevance faster than their host city.  And we’ve got the Saints who are a team on hospice care until Drew Brees’ career dies and Sean Payton has his contract terminated.  And you know what, I’ll still take it.  I’ll watch this garbage game, and not flip the remote.  You bet.

You should too.  Please.

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the courage to insert one’s head into the clouds

I’ve gone on record in multiple forums that I consider Apple as the most overrated business entity since the East India Company.  And yet they continue to mint money faster than the planet’s drunken central bankers.  Just walk by an Apple store at any mall to observe armageddon in progress as perfectly reasonable people assault one another with tied stick bundles in an effort to acquire the next model power adapter for $134 each.

Can this Apple insanity last?  I don’t think so, but what do I know?  I spent last night filling 42 individual sandwich sized plastic bags with dog kibble in preparation for a forthcoming family wedding / vacation / work trip.  Do you have any idea what it takes to label, open, fill, and reclose 42 individual sandwich sized plastic bags?   I have no life.  On the other hand, I have now discovered the fiercest of torture techniques for use in future interrogation procedures when we need the aliens to tell us where they hid the fusion bomb.  (hint: it’s in Brussels, so we’ll laugh and just shrug at them)

So Apple did their product launch thing yesterday.  The weirdo goons of the Internets were so into this event that even reputable (in theory) sites like The Washington Post live streamed the event.  Really?  It’s that important to hear about a minor update to the iPhone?  And then this morning the decision to remove the audio jack from the new phone is more important than, well, a whole bunch of stuff.  It’s way higher on the news banners than NFL opening day, which angers me immensely.

Anyways, these product updates don’t really interest me so much.  What I get more into is what is says about where Apple is headed.  This is important because they’re the world’s largest company and have more money in the bank than all but five nations on Earth.  Tim Cook brushes his teeth with plutonium every morning, and then gets the scientists to remove the radiation immediately afterwards, just because he can, he can afford it.  In a world where the planet’s 0.01% wealthiest want to pay for experience over possessions, nobody beats Tim Cook’s dental care.

So I’ll just focus on this nugget from Apple Lord Protector, Marketer, Hi-Ali Extraordinaire, and Amateur Bridge Player Phil Schiller as he explained what’s what with turning hundreds-of-millions of existing Apple headphones into future landfill:

Some people have asked why would we remove the analog headphone jack in the iPhone. I mean, it’s been with us a really long time. I’m sure you know that the source of this mini-phono jack is over a hundred years old, used to help quickly exchange in switchboards. Well, the reason to move on … really comes down to one word: courage. Courage to move on, do something new, that betters all of us. And our team has tremendous courage.

That’s got to be about the most pretentious corporate shill I’ve ever heard.  How far up its own ass does Apple have itself?  So what Schiller is trying to say here is that Apple is taking a big risk by dumping wired headphones.  Most companies wouldn’t have the balls.  He’s right.  But who would have the gall to use the word ‘courage’ to describe it?  Nobody else.  Eh, maybe freaking Goldman Sachs, them too.

How about instead, “Apple is a company not afraid to take risks.  We’re the leading edge of society’s technological curve.  So we’re taking the leap, we’re embracing the future of sound.”  Etc, etc.

No, no, they’re courageous.  Oh, well, good for you all.  [stares wide eyed at blank cubicle wall]

Hey there was this company once upon a time.  It made elite products that it sold at an exponential markup relying on brand loyalty, reliability, and straight hype.  It was blindingly successful, had a bright future, but began to slowly lose market share because all its competitors offered similar capability for 1/5 the cost.  But this company was counting on its reputation and ability to hold the world’s attention and overpower the growing loss of sales, but simply didn’t possess the innovation it once had to capture the imagination of consumers.

That was Apple in oh, say 1995.  What saved them back then was that Steve Jobs dude who came back.  He brought this company back to life.  Who’s going to bring it back to life in 2019?

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Apple displays photograph of it shoving its own head up own ass.  [perfunctory excited clapping]

 

 

 

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the balance with life

For the first time this year, American deaths by drug overdose will overtake deaths by car accident.   If you loosely add in the suicides per year that can directly be traced to drug use as the primary causation, you enter an era where over 50K people a year are dying this way.  No other cause of death not related to old age or cancer (fuck cancer) even comes close.

In one of the mid-sized counties just north of mine, they have a sign on the way to the airport that logs death’s per year specifically from opioids / heroin.  It’s over 60 lives already this year.  That county is not that big, folks.

When it’s not playing psychotic referee to the sewer that is Washington politics, The Washington Post can actually output some high quality journalism.  They’ve run a multi-part series examining this issue in detail.  You should read each part, alongside a shorter but similar piece by BBC Magazine.

In many ways, I’m a freedom based lunatic.  And so for years I’ve been of the impression that the way to end the drug war is to legalize all drugs.  Let folks get high, whatever, tax it, and offer treatment.  However, I’m beginning to wonder if the growing drug lethality upends the game on this issue.

Science, reckless doctors, and pill companies have created drugs that are exponentially more powerful than what was available even 15 years ago.  Where it was once extremely difficult to get clean once you were hooked, it might now be nearly impossible to recover once you’d trained your brain to accept modern opioids.  When you add in the ultra vicious horror story drugs like fentanyl (which apparently is so lethal it can get into your blood if you even touch it), and whatever other death dealing nightmare synthetic drugs science will soon create, it seems we’re at a bit of a crossroads with all of this.

You can probably do a few lines of coke in your day, or smoke hundreds of joints, and come out mostly okay.  With this shit, you can literally die on the first hit, or after just a few months find yourself hooked for life without a way out.

When you add this to the already everpresent overmedication of anti-depressants, and whatever other societal ills you can think of, it becomes quite the balance with death.  It’s moments like this why I barely care about the presidential election.  Nobody has answers for these types of problems that are literally killing tens-of-thousands of Americans a year.  Neither political party is interested in proposing deep core type solutions to tackle these problems.  Instead, they’re chasing that sound byte.  Idiots.

I find more solace in those identified within these articles who are on the street, helping every day.  The elderly councilor aiding dozens in addiction classes, the local mayor putting his ass on the line to identify and fight the problem, a young man who lost his friend and now battles to save others.  When our national leadership is garbage, and the topic is as dark as this, it’s hopeful to know that folks are still fighting to save others with ferocity and compassion.

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Behold the potential cause of America’s downfall.