Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 27/3/24]

Hope everyone is having a good week so far…


Gift article:

Six missing people presumed dead after Baltimore Key Bridge collapses, Coast Guard says
https://wapo.st/4af8H1y


How long was that in Scaramuccis?

NBC News ousts Ronna McDaniel after network’s anchors launch unprecedented on-air rebellion
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/26/media/nbc-news-ousts-ronna-mcdaniel/index.html


Sprots!

Utah women’s basketball team switched hotels after experiencing racism, says head coach
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/26/sport/utah-basketball-racism-ncaa-tournament-spt-intl/index.html


Stonks!

Stock futures inch higher after S&P 500 notches three-day losing streak: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/26/stock-market-today-live-updates.html


A classic:


Have a great day!

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48 Comments

  1. “To be clear, we believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election coverage, but it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier,” Brzezinski said.

    I’ve got news for you, Mika. That’s what conservative republicans ARE.

    • Not so fast. Why, I bet you could find five, maybe six, conservative Republicans that aren’t election deniers.

      There’s Liz Cheney, and … uh … well … I’m gonna have to get back to you on this.

      • …sounds easy, enough…you did liz…so there was the one who said…no…wait…just said before they did the other thing…or…no…they checked the hypocrite box, too…well…how about…no…that’s a dead end, too

        …wait…I know…I’ve got access to google…ah…this seems promising…lots of results…maybe too many…there’s the false positives I already threw out still in the mix…hmmm…maybe if I throw “fact-check” into the boolean mix?

        …ah

        …well…on the upside that’s a more manageable number of results…but…they don’t look great…& I’m beginning to feel like somebody’s time might be being wasted in fruitless pursuit of…something?

        …forget what it was now…some urban legend or other…probably nothing important?

        • @SplinterRip–i’ve got your back!😉

          I can name 5 for y’all…

          Of course, they’re alllll *former* Republicans now…. buuuut that’s a bit of a technicality, since the Republican party and the Trump party/Magats *do* seem to be taking separate paths now–what with all the MTG-sorts now usually *calling* themselves the Magat party.

    • The political press is incredibly insular, and people like that have been told for years by their “civilized” GOP cohort that it’s all just a game, that the true intellectual diversity and enlightenment is on the right.

      What they keep running into is the reality that the right is intellectually bankrupt and captive of a few old washed out concepts.

    • That was one of the safest seats…

      It means that Empty Gorgon and Gym and all the other Asparagus who thought they were safe from any sort of retribution… Whoops! No hiding place, motherfuckers.

      • In sooth, Republicans be shitting themselves.

        It’s interesting to note, however, how many media outlets are ignoring or burying the story, rather than point out the obvious conclusion: If Republicans can’t win in Alabama, they are fucked. I mean, it’s Alabama. And it was a landslide. Which WaPo refers to as “decisive.”

        These are the same media outlets that breathlessly swoon over every poll showing Biden trailing (which are fewer every day, BTW). They’ll analyze specious polling data to death, but actual results? They say GTFO with your proof. We want speculation, baby!

    • My daughter is a Zag & I have spent a bunch of time in Spokane which used to be solid red but is now pretty purple.  We refuse to go to Idaho & will not spend a cent there.  Funny thing was a friend of mine & Zag alumni had just called me before I saw that story and told me how he had to go to Idaho for business but refused to spend any money while he was there.  I mentioned before that during the height of covid, Spokane hospitals were full because of Idaho idiots.  The joke was “come for the vaccines & stay for the abortions”.

    • Ngl, I was *shocked* that *someone* involved with the team thought booking them in Coeur d’Alene would be “just hunky-dory!”😬

      It’s *not* like much of Idaho *isn’t* Mormon (so it *shouldn’t* have been “an unknown factor!)…

       

      Annnnnd what with alllllllll the Nazi shit going on in & around Coeur d’Alene siiiiiince the 90’S, I was more shocked that what happened *WAS* in any way “unexpected” or “surprising” to the folks involved with the team🙃🫠

  2. So I’ve been trying for 3 weeks to get my shithole mortgage company to rerun my escrow analysis.

    Second phone call was last Monday (3/18), they said 3-5 business days.

    Third phone call was Monday of this week (3/25), where the nice lady said she saw the request from 3/18, but it takes 5-7 business days so should be done by Wednesday at the latest. And that she expedited the request.

    Over/under that I’m calling again tomorrow? I was supposed to get an email saying it was done.

  3. I posted similar results a couple of months ago. Traffic to right wing sites continues to vastly underperform vs four years ago. Mainstream site traffic is also sliding, but not as badly.

    https://www.therighting.com/election-year-audience-erosion-continues-for-right-wing-websites

    I’m sure it’s a combination of factors. Covid was obviously a driver for 2020 audiences, but I’d be surprised if that would account for much difference for right wing sites compared to outlets like CNN.

    Trump fatigue is probably a part of it for the right. And I’m also curious what role Facebook and Google de-emphasizing news in their algorithms has had.  Top Facebook government affairs ghoul Joel Kaplan is known to have helped drive tons of traffic to right wing sites in the past.

    The year over year results are interesting too. It’s interesting how Twitter turning into a Nazi cesspool hasn’t helped right wing sites overall.

    This could all change, of course.  But it’s an interesting hint to where right wing enthusiasm is right now.

      • Yeah actually this was my thought. How many people just died off and there’s less viewership now for their entire household since pawpaw was the angry old bastard mainlining Fox News 12 hours a day.

      • Plus just demographics, which is I think what brighter is pointing out. Right-wingers skew older, and many simply reached the end of their allotted days. COVID helped, I’m sure, but huge declines are probably just cohorts of elderly MAGAs dying off.

        I’d also like to think that fascism isn’t a growth industry. Elmo clearly thought it was, but that’s not proving out, is it? I suspect that from a business standpoint, doing the exact opposite of anything Elmo does is the right decision. It’s the Costanza Effect.

    • Elmo’s overseen a Twitter nosedive, per most metrics — down 25% give or take in users since he took over, and one can only imagine what the advertising looks like (not that it was a huge driver before but I’m sure it has nose dived.)

      I do think the Covid stay home era is probably a bad comparison because people were consuming WAY more media at the time, but it’s less a question of how popular the platforms actually are now vs. how much they continue to lead one of the two major parties around by the nose. That has continued unabated and likely will for a while.

      • …I heard a couple of remarks from friends…one in a news-adjacent sort of gig & the other a teacher…who made it sound like even mentioning newspapers now makes you sound like a dinosaur to at least a couple of generations

        …& that the biggest drop in audience retention for the news orgs isn’t that they’re losing them to rivals…whether ideologically aligned or not…it’s people just tuning the whole category out of their “feed” not because they have beef with the coverage but because they just can’t take the underlying content & are just happier when they ignore it wholesale

        …which…frankly…was more than a tad depressing to hear, even if it made a certain amount of sense?

        • As someone who still subscribes to a daily newspaper, can confirm. Hell, even my friends who were reporters and editors for newspapers no longer subscribe.

          Frankly, I consider it my duty to subsidize a free press. I wish more people did.

          • …amen

            …even the BBC might be on the cusp of finally restructuring the way the license fee funds it…or which bits it has to cover

            …the new guy in charge even said in as many words that one option might be to have some elements…like the world service…which is already something of a shadow of its former self…financed by central government distinct from the strictly-not-paid-from-that-purse parts that deal with the domestic public service broadcasting remit

            …&…part of me can see it…but part of me thinks of babies flying through the air in a cascade of bathwater

            …it’s flawed & wounded & will absolutely turn on the hand that feeds…but I think a lot of people who think we could manage without what they see as somewhere between the bad sort of gatekeepers & an intrusive middleman keen to line its (increasingly light) pockets at the expense of the thing it claims to provide…might be shocked if they do find out joni mitchell was right all along & they don’t know what they had ’til it’s gone?

        • I’ve been beating this drum for a long time: the news media’s competition is as much other forms of media as it is other forms of news. It’s definitely a bad thing when someone tunes in to unmoored-to-reality propaganda instead of journalism, but honestly, I suspect it’s far more common that someone streams a show on Netflix, or plays a video game, or watches a movie or checks Facebook rather than watches/reads/absorbs the news. Newspapers were built as common-interest publications with a lot of entry points for different people because of this! 

  4. In last night’s episode of “Hawaii 5-0” we are at the Port of Honolulu where a container ship drops off its cargo. There is a crowd to observe this. In the container is this absolutely jaw-dropping race car. Farcy would love this episode. This was the era of Jackie Stewart and Mario Andreotti so we were all watching racing whether we wanted to or not.

    It is being delivered to ruthless and fabulously wealthy businessman Ricardo Montalban. He is there with his fiancée (so he hasn’t put a ring on it) and Nicky, an adorable 20-something mop-top who is his son from his first marriage.

    Ricardo Montalban has a quite impressive estate, but we’ve seen it before, owned by other characters. It has its own garage extension, and that’s where the race car went. There’s an alcoholic mechanic on-site, I mean, why not, he lives in some kind of room or suite next to this garage, and he is killed. 5-0 is on it.

    Ricardo Montalban is not happy about this but he still pulls in a test driver to take it up into the mountains and see how fast it will go. The test driver loses control and the whole thing blows up in a fireball.

    If it were up to me I would give up and collect butterflies, like Nabokov, but not Ricardo Montalban, who promptly orders a replacement. The first one was yellow but now this one is red. Meanwhile they’re all suspects, and there’s an underworld figure whom the fiancée knew in Paris who’s blackmailing her. That’s a little bit of a diversion.

    Toward the end Ricardo Montalban goes into the garage (which, remember, is attached to the house) and discovers his son Nicky under the hood of the new race car, tinkering around. Ricardo Montalban can see, or guess, what Nicky is up to, and Nicky starts screaming about how awful he’s been to his mother/Ricardo Montalban’s ex-wife and how much so many of his business rivals hate him & etc. He then attacks Ricardo Montalban with this industrial-strength wrench but of course 5-0 to the rescue. Amazingly Nicky is not shot on-site.

    Amazing.

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