Happy Wednesday [DOT 9/3/22]

9/3/22 MegMegMcGee 28

It’s been a little bit of a week for me. I drove back and forth to Cleveland, where I not only celebrated my Mom’s 80th birthday but also caught a terrible cold. Masks forever! Currently cycling from Nyquil to Dayquil with the sun.

Hope your week is going better!

Ukraine Updates:

U.S. to ban oil imports from Russia as White House explores drastic plans to buffer economy from energy shock
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/08/biden-bans-russian-oil-imports/

Oh FFS

According to audio obtained by The Washington Post, Trump told a group of Republican donors in New Orleans that the United States should paint Chinese flags on its F-22 planes and then use those planes to bomb Russia.
“And then we say, ‘China did it, we didn’t do it, China did it,’ and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch,” Trump concluded.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/07/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-china-russia/

Like from Robin Hood?

Stonks!

Iconic U.S. brands Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s and Starbucks suspend business in Russia
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/08/coca-cola-follows-mcdonalds-starbucks-in-suspending-business-in-russia.html

Sprots!

Anxiety and uncertainty grow after basketball star Brittney Griner’s arrest in Russia
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/08/world/brittney-griner-russia-arrest-family-friends/index.html

No thank you.

Giant venomous spiders infiltrated the southeastern US and are expected to spread rapidly, experts say
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/08/us/venomous-joro-spider-spread-scn/

Have a great day!

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28 Comments

  1. I get people fooling voters once. Once. Bobert and Greene and Gaetz getting re elected is absolutely an indictment on our citizenry.

      • They — and Trump — have weaponized the fake blunder. They’ve figured out that the press will chase the red dot from the laser pointer and fail to say the bigger issue, which is they are dangerously incompetent.

        The press excuse is that people can put it all together. But the narrative they’re selling, such as it is, is they’re weird, not that they’re dangerous.

        Maggie Haberman did it recently with Trump and the flushed documents — the story became the damage to the toilet, not the damage to national security.  And then it’s on to the next red dot…

        • That’s a really solid point, and I’m guilty of it too. I look for the joke and think, “what a moron,” instead of looking at how truly dangerous these maniacs are. Ridicule can be effective to embarrass them, but it can also function as a smokescreen to hide the fact that they are planning to overthrow the government and destroy democracy (to choose one orange example — he’s a fucking buffoon until his handlers plan and execute an insurrection that came closer to succeeding than any of us like to admit). And that’s another corollary — sometimes the idiot out in front is an actual idiot, but is there to distract us from what’s going on behind the curtain.

          • It’s definitely not new — Reagan took advantage of it with his quips about trees causing air pollution and Huey Long played up the daffy country lawyer schtick.

            Usually these people are able to play off the vanity of the media and encourage them to feel like they’re too savvy to treat any of it as more than a game. Which is why the press holds its real fury for earnest politicians like Elizabeth Warren who feel real urgency about real issues.

        • The press excuse is that people can put it all together. But the narrative they’re selling, such as it is, is they’re weird, not that they’re dangerous.

          This is a problem, as long as their supporters are willing to write off each individual blunder without ever considering them in sum.

          • And not just the supporters but all of the casual news consumers.

            At a previous job whenever customers had problems with a product, the standard management response was to stick a line up somewhere on the website or put a sentence in the printed terms and conditions.

            With the net effect that everything that was communicated to customers was an endless blur of disconnected factoids. It was impossible for customers to construct on their own a reasonable understanding of how things worked.

            That’s how a lot of reporting works, and smart bad actors know how to exploit this approach.

    • Hell it wasn’t even McCain himself–the dude was too damn lazy to look onto her, until they met, iirc!

       

      It was his stupid staff & the folks *around* him who actually chose Palin…

      Although that also reflects poorly on ‘ol hothead McCain’s judgement…

  6. So…the Emmett Till anti-lynching act finally passed the Senate–by Unanimous Consent.  Honestly, I’m having trouble figuring that one out.  There is no way that senators like Toomey, Graham or McConnell voted for it out of a sense of doing the right thing.  I really can’t figure out what their motivation is, because it most certainly isn’t being concerned about winning the black vote.

    • I think a lot of the GOP is trying to position itself in relation to the worst of its worst, and hoping that “not 100% crazy” is translated by the press as “sane.”

      Basically, vote to let their kooks ban Maus and punish kids who wear a rainbow shirt to school, but act like that’s going a little too far. It’s all about Kayfabe heroes and villains.

    • Insurance. The next time a picture surfaces of one of them in blackface, they can reassure their constituents that they “don’t have a racist bone in their bodies” because they voted for the Emmett Till anti-lynching act, like that’s an act of extreme bravery and not the very least they could fucking do. Ooh, you voted against murder. Well done, you!

  7. Sorry to hear about the cold, @MegMegMcGee. That’s another reason that I love masks — haven’t had a cold in 2-plus years. I’m sure the social distancing has helped with that as well.

    Anyway, drink as much water as you possibly can, and get as much sleep as you possibly can.

    • Typical bullshit from Blackburn.  I once wrote her a letter when she was my representative-in-name-only in the House.  I doubt she wrote the response, but it was just a bunch of talking point bullshit that in no way addressed the concerns in my letter.  She is one of those truly unprincipled people who will do whatever it takes to grab and hold power.

      • I wrote both my parents’ Senators like a crazy person when their phones got turned off.

        Only the democrat responded with something helpful, and also a type written letter to my dad.

  10. Shades of Apollo 13 and the CO2 poisoning scenes:

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-09/flipping-wrong-switch-and-not-hackers-caused-outage-in-taiwan

    This is a good example of how system designers have to think about how things work in a failed state and not just in an optimal state. Sticking a label on something isn’t nearly as effective as built-in physical controls.

    I think it’s a good parallel to Facebook, which happily grew when it was all about sharing photos of puppies, but has a rotten design for dealing with faked propaganda photos. They try to deal with misinformation with ad hoc labels, when they really need to rethink the way their algorithm works.

    • Why would they do that when they’re hauling in buckets full of money?  Until their share price goes in the toilet–and that it’s specifically tied to their shitty algorithms–they will have zero incentive to change any of it.

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