I cannot with the Supreme Court and the Michigan shooting today so if anyone wants to talk about that you’ll just have to add it in the comments. I do this for free and for fun, I don’t need to give myself a stroke.
At least it’s Friday!
So I was in Ohio over Thanksgiving and there’s no masking there, no social distancing, everything is open…TG I’m boosted honestly.
Biden announces plan to get booster shots to 100m Americans amid Omicron arrival in US
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/02/joe-biden-coronavirus-nationwide-campaign
For Matty:
Andrew Cuomo under federal investigation over sexual harassment allegations
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/andrew-cuomo-under-federal-investigation-over-sexual-harassment-allegations/2021/12/02/03a9e87e-53be-11ec-8769-2f4ecdf7a2ad_story.html
A trend I can get behind (the charging, not the killing.)
Sheriff’s deputy is charged with murder in killing of Casey Goodson Jr. outside grandmother’s house
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/02/casey-goodson-jason-meade-indicted-murder/
Every Vote Counts!
Sprots!
NFL suspends three players, including Bucs’ Antonio Brown, for violating Covid-19 protocols
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/02/us/nfl-suspensions-covid-protocols/index.html
Stonks!
Stock futures dip ahead of November jobs report as omicron concerns loom
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/02/stock-futures-market-open-close-news.html
Um, that better be worth more than that!
Surgeon fined $3,000 for amputating patient’s wrong leg
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/02/health/austria-surgeon-fine-amputation-scli-intl/index.html
If you forced me to pick one thing to like about Melania Trump it would be her no fucks given attitude towards her unpaid job as First Lady.
Have a great day, dear Deadsplinterites!!
The Cuomo probe is all well and good, but it’s turning out to be pretty pricey. Davis, Polk & Wardwell did the Assembly report (even more damning and juicier than the Attorney General’s Report) and Wilkie, Farr & Gallagher is handling this DOJ probe. On top of this, the State is covering Handsy’s legal bills, and for a while those of his henchmen, but luckily Hochul put a stop to the unindicted co-conspirators’ taxpayer tab. Last I heard $23 million has been spent so far, and I’m not sure if that includes Handsy’s bills.
Nothing gets me more in a holiday mood than my fond remembrances of Mel’s “Home for the Holidays” annual Grand Guignol. When and if a Trump Presidential…surely they wouldn’t call it a library, probably something like Monument to Most Praised Defender of America’s Freedoms, is ever built, I hope this tape is played somewhere, on continuous loop:
“I’m working … my ass off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a fuck about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?”
Right you are, Mel, and no one should underestimate you! Sheer genius to turn your imagination to your Slavic roots and reinterpret all those scary children’s tales you were forcefed as a child.
Did you all see this when it first made the rounds?
https://djtrumplibrary.com
Happy Friday, everyone.
To be clear, none of the First Ladies in the past several decades have actually decorated the White House. They might come up with the concept but the actual work (aside from a few photo ops) is being done by other people.
It’s like when Martha Stewart keeps giving the impression that she’s designing and decorating her house while making seven course meals made from food in her two acre garden. As if there isn’t an entire staff doing it.
Yeah, I don’t see any First Ladies balancing on a ladder (maybe Michelle — she can do anything). It’s like working with any agency — they present designs and the First Lady picks one and makes changes and the stuff gets put up.
The more telling thing about Mel’s design is that it suggests DEEP unhappiness and misery. But, hey, Mel, you knew what the job entailed when you took it. Just remember Captain Combover doesn’t pay contractors, and you’re a contractor.
I don’t think Mel feels anything deeply. She’s as shallow as they come. I also don’t believe she’s unhappy. She’s proven herself to be as petty, mean, and bitter as her husband. And has profited greatly from her husband’s White House grifting. Weren’t there rumors that she demanded the prenup be renegotiated before she moved to Washington? She may be the best compensated FLOTUS ever, while having done far less than any of her predecessors.
Here’s another Cuomo-related thing I’ve been meaning to post for a couple of days now (not that I’m obsessed):
https://defector.com/lets-all-laugh-at-andrew-cuomos-pathetic-crisis-team/
Defector, for those who have never heard of it, is a hardy group of Gawker staff alums from when Gawker was Gawker, which is not to be confused with NuGawker, nor with the sad collection of the desiccated Get/Out Media sites.
They put this stuff in email!
The reason they were so sloppy is because they had people like Katie Tur at MSNBC and Edward Isaac Dovere of The Atlantic in their back pocket. Ben Smith at the NY Times seems to have let himself be spun.
And as you’ve written about, it wasn’t the NY Times that led on any of this, it was the Albany Times Mirror, which seems to have been the only serious outlet which refused to engage in the access journalism everyone else practiced (The NY Post also dished, but who knows whether they were horsetrading info with Cuomo on the sly.)
Facebook sold ads to outlets promoting antivax and election lies:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/02/tech/facebook-vaccine-holocaust-misinformation/index.html
An expert quoted said Facebook “appears to have a lighter-touch moderation approach to ads from seemingly commercial pages, like those selling t-shirts, compared to pages associated with political campaigns.”
Which is obviously a loophole so big you could drive a truck through it, and which well funded disinformation campaigns obviously know about.
Notably, when confronted by Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Facebook took down some of the ads — but they let the company keep peddling.
Facebook moans about how hard it is to monitor every individual piece of content, but they wouldn’t be in this boat if they moved up the ladder just one step and cracked down on bad actors.
Facebook claims they have an incredible capacity to track individuals from device to device across the internet, and understand their associations. They know who makes these disinformation networks. They play the ineffective whack a mole game because they want to create the illusion of acting while leaving flat out evil networks in place.
Yeah, the Facebook “we can’t stop it” is complete fucking bullshit. If I look at something on Google, ads show up in my Facebook feed. There’s no way a company that can do that can’t monitor and squelch hate speech.
As has been pointed out, hate generates clicks, so Facebook’s policy is to encourage hate. It’s really that simple.
It’s worth stressing, though, that it has emerged from whistleblowers that Facebook all the way up to Zuckerberg is particularly tuned into appeasing the right at the expense of clicks.
They’ll come up with general policies on hate and disinformation knowing that it hurts Facebook’s numbers when they serve up extremist content. They want extreme content, but it works just as well when it’s Britney Spears or football violence as Trump, without the same costs in parts of their audience.
But the reason they work out massive exemptions for the Trumpist stuff is because Zuckerberg fears (and admires) the GOP. Facebook has the capacity to manipulate its users without promoting the hard right, but they choose to push clicks in that direction instead.
And speaking of right-wing types, never forget that Thiel “mentored” Zuck when he was first getting Facebook off the ground, invested in it, *and* sits on it’s board…
Douchebags & jerks typically tend to be buddies with *other* douchebags & jerks, not good people🤨
Well this is good news!
Yesterday our area closed 1 high school due to a threat and arrested a 14 year old for threatening 3 other schools and charged him with a 6 felonies. They are investigating another 12 year old that made a threat and it seems this is happening all over the country.
Yesterday I was listening to an interview with the author of a new Trump book. This guy has actually written multiple books on Trump since the 80s, it’s called The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family. What caught my interest was him talking about 4 generations of the Trump crime family and apparently his great grandfather opened a brothel in a place I have hiked/mt. biked and snowmobiled for the last 20+ years. I had no idea so had to research a little and found this…
https://www.oregonlive.com/travel/2016/03/trumps_grandfathers_brothel.html
Spoke to soon, another high school just got a threat today! WTF kids?
Re that Trump thing–there’s also a history of “avoiding military service” dating back to ‘ol Friedrich–he originally left Germany (Bavaria) to avoid the mandatory military service there…
Then, when he tried to move back when he was old & rich, they banished him for the dodge;
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/21/trump-grandfather-friedrich-banished-germany-historian-royal-decree
Yet another reason why I’ve never understood why the “Hurr-Durr, ‘Murica!!!” and military stans/pseudopatriot crowd think Cadet Bonespurs is “Such a good, Patriotic, Man!”
His whole damn FAMILY has a legacy of draft-dodging & cutting-and-running🤨🤨🤨
Interesting times…
Oregon to ban ‘gushing’ love letters to homeowners from potential buyers
huh…the housing market is fucked up nowadays
when did houses stop going to the first person that has the cash?
preferably more than asked
coz again the housing market is fucked up nowadays
(over here at least everyone is bidding well over asking price in the hopes of getting a house which in turn drives up the house pricing even more…which you’d think has to come tumbling down again sometime…but sure isnt showing signs of doing so anytime soon)
Some older people over here would rather sell their house to someone they think will take care of it or “deserves” it over the highest bidder. It is pretty rare but happens with people that don’t have family and the house is all the have. Although, in 99% of the sales here it is bidding war and highest cash offer and no contingencies wins. Some areas of Seattle now developers are paying $100,000+ over value of homes and even letting owners live rent free for a year while they get permits to tear the homes down to build multiple micro-apartments, condos, or houses. While I understand the need for cheaper places to live, they don’t require them to provide parking and get built using every inch of the lot line. It adds tons of extra street parking cars into old neighborhoods with little parking to begin with under the assumption they won’t have cars. You can only go so far on a Lime scooter and really don’t want to do that when it is flooding outside or 20 degrees and is a pretty unlikely assumption with our not the best public transportation.
That’s what we did to my parents’ house. It was in a pretty bad state, but habitable, and we got tons of offers. We decided to sell it to a couple where the woman grew up in the town but could no longer afford to buy there (McMansionization hit the town hard), and the husband was a general contractor. Oh, and the woman was pregnant. We sold it strictly as is, no takesies backsies. We got better offers but people came right out and said that the land was laughably under-utilized (it was a large lot for the town) and it would be completely torn down within a week of having been taken possession. Money isn’t everything.
eh..when you dont have it…money might not be everything…..but it sure as fuck is a large chunk of it
i cant even get a mortgage for any of the homes in my little city…as houses start about 70k out of my maximum allowable mortgage for my wage
i cant move out to the countryside either…it’d be cheaper…. but i’d need a car….which would eat all the monies i saved and probably then some
*shrugs*
just gotta dig in and hope i make it to the big upheaval
WTF? The parents of the kid didn’t show up to get arrested and are now fugitives.
https://www.rawstory.com/james-and-jennifer-crumbley/
Yeah the update of “oh they didn’t run they went elsewhere last night for their own safety but totes are coming back for arraignment” ummmmm bullshit. Bullshit.