…so…some of you have more or less got used to the way these go when it’s my turn…links abound…whatever point I flatter myself I might be making gets circled around until eventually I have it vaguely surrounded & hopefully there’s a semblance of sense…& then I try to find a tune or two to leave at the bottom as a reward for all that scrolling I just made you do…well…more or less…if it’s the weekend (or I’m feeling guilty about bringing the bad news) there might be a cartoon or two in the mix…but there might be some new folks who are kind enough to cast an eye over today’s effort so
…quick bit of housekeeping…as a rule (to the extent that we have rules we manage to stick to) on any given day the first post up is the DOT (generally around 06:00 east-coast time) & the last is the DUAN (at 18:00)
…today being wednesday you can be pretty sure there won’t be a Wednesday Steel but on a monday there’s a Coffee Break & on a friday there’s a Happy Hour to help you transition between the week & the weekend…while of a saturday morning there’s the Brain Drain to help you while away the supposedly idle hours…not that you ought to be idle since you could be spending that time trying out one of the FYCE (food you can eat) recipes that generally show up on a tuesday and thursday but sometimes break out into daily offerings if the authors are feeling generous
…most afternoons there’s a Strange But True tale living up to its name*…& from time to time one or two folks have provided the occasional long read that should you have the time might be of interest to you – or #metoo
…& then there’s your wildcards…which can be hard to predict…so if anyone fancies trying their hand at knocking up some posts of their own they’re more than welcome & there’s probably room…& @myopicprophet will hook you up with the ability if you ask nicely & they’re not too badly run off their feet at the time…in which case it might take a bit longer but it’ll still happen…if we end up with an excess of posts they might end up just popping up randomly but until then we’ll generally try to spread them around a little so something gets to sit at the top of the list for at least an hour or two before it gets knocked off by something else…unless it’s stuck up there (which we do sometimes do) so it’s worth scrolling a little if you’re checking for the latest thing…or looking at the order on the “sticky notes” list which I’m reliably informed can’t lie to you about that stuff
[* – the aforementioned “regular” posts all generally go up more or less on a schedule whilst others are more of an ad hoc kind of a deal]
…so…where was I…oh, yeah…this is the bit where I bury you in links
The worst legacy of Trump’s term of office is a bitterly divided America.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/08/joe-biden-donald-trump-election-healing-robert-reich
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-won-now-comes-unimaginably-hard-part
…I mean…the guy won his race so I dunno…maybe he knows some stuff…but I think the lady makes a better case, myself?
…I’d make some crack about how the left always eats itself but god damn it…any which way you look at it the important thing ought to be that both of those people are more appealing than the fucking clown car of an administration that’s finally on its way out
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-gsa-letter-biden-transition/2020/11/08/story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-transition-agencies-biden/2020/11/09/story.html
…& we ought to be able to feel some kind of good about that considering all the shitty we’ve felt these long decades-I-mean-years-no-wait-I-think-I-had-it-right-the-first-time
Trump, then, will become the fourth president in American history to never win the popular vote in a presidential election. Further, he will leave office having never had majority support of any kind from the American public.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/07/trumps-political-legacy-never-having-support-or-approval-majority-americans-or-voters
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/08/trumps-heart-doesnt-seem-to-be-in-it
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/incendiary-texts-traced-outfit-run-top-trump-aide
No social media is safe: How election misinformation spread on LinkedIn, Pinterest and Nextdoor
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/07/pinterest-linkedin-election-disinfo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/09/facebook-steve-bannon-misinformation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-irregularities-claims/2020/11/08/story.html
…oh…did I happen to mention
…& he doesn’t get to keep the one he’s been using, either
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/11/donald-trump-loser-president
…so there’s that, at least…& this
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/trump-will-lose-special-twitter-protections-january
…although I believe the technical term is “too little, too late”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/trump-trumpism-american-life/2020/11/05/story.html
…& sure…betsy devos is an awful choice for that post…but has there ever been a shittier choice for AG?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/10/donald-trump-longshot-election-lawsuits
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/11/09/trump-removes-climate-program-director
…meanwhile, in the be-grateful-for-small-mercies column we have this
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-appears-likely-spare-obamacare-..
…but hey…I did promise there’d be a song…so there’s always that?
News here just said the us of a went over 200k new cases in a day…impressive but not in the good sense of the word
I know it’s a big place and all but how many cases can you get before it becomes unmanageable?
Another corner rounded, eh?!
Round with no guardrails,apparently…
No brakes, as we’re careening down the mountainside, either!😬😬😬
🥴
Turning and turning in a widening gyre…
…it’s a little out of order but since we’ve already had several years of “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” at the hands of the right…would it be too much to ask for a bit of “the centre cannot hold” so the left could have a turn with the reins of power for once?
…it’s fair to say the outlook is concerning
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/covid-19-cases-could-nearly-double-20-million-christmas-nbc
…& with this kind of thing still being pushed by one side of what shouldn’t really be a debate
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/thomas-poses-mask-mandate-question-during-supreme-court-aca-hearing
…it seems like some people just aren’t interested in protecting themselves or others from the consequences even when it’s explained to them?
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/two-way-street-cdc-report-says-masks-protect-wearers-everyone
…so I’m honestly worried that at some point the answer to your question is going to make itself known…mostly, it has to be said, on account of the apparent unwillingness of the party clinging to the power that might have allowed it to manage the situation being wedded to obstructing the incoming administration from gearing up to try?
Where did you see the 200k figure? WaPo is reporting 135k on Tuesday.
…one of the people biden tagged to get on the case (osterholm) mentioned it as a prediction, I think?
https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/dr-osterholm-we-ll-be-hitting-200-000-cases-a-day-95638085996
it was on the NOS liveblog..also the radio kept mentioning it here
interestingly enough..mostly the links im finding on the first page of google are things like this
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/us-records-new-high-of-over-200000-covid-cases-in-24-hours/article33072027.ece
i have no idea how trustworthy the hindu is
Hmm…the WaPo article quotes someone as saying that we could easily hit 200k per day before the end of the year. I wonder if that became a transatlantic game of telephone and hit your news as confirming a 200k case count.
It’s not manageable now in a lot of places. Hospitals are backing up with volume and delaying unnecessary procedures. And our health care system was shit before this. This isn’t meant as criticism of medical workers – those folks are good people doing the best they can in a shitty system. Just that we don’t have the infrastructure or the volume of medical workers needed to handle this if it gets much worse.
…at least as I understand it that was very much the reason there was a lot of talk about the importance of trying to “flatten the curve”
…but I’m with you on it not being the medical workers who deserve the criticism when it’s people acting selfishly/irresponsibly at all levels from the oval office down to the street who are the reason the problem is exceeding their capacity to help
That’s interesting about LinkedIn spreading disinformation. When I
was part of a round of layoffsquietly left my company after 21 years I was senior enough that part of my severance included career counseling. God knows how much this cost the company.It didn’t help me at all, but the counselor told me to create a strong general resume and post it on my new LinkedIn account. I tried to explain to him that there were only about a dozen people in the country who do what I did. Also, my industry is very word of mouth, I last crafted a resume sometime in the late 1980s, and I was in a different field. It’s incestuous but it is a meritocracy of a somewhat brutal kind: word spreads if you screw up.
“Accentuate something more general, like you reduced costs or oversaw growth–”
“I did nothing of the kind. I loved my job and every year I got a bigger and bigger budget because I wanted to do more of it. Meanwhile the company itself was losing more and more money and they were kind of gambling on me and some others, so I placed a few bets and lost most of them, that’s why I’m here.”
“Hmmm.”
“Do you think I should join Facebook? I never have and I think I missed that train.”
“I’d advise against, because you will have to carefully curate every posting, and even those you are ‘friends’ with might be scrutinized by a potential employer.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
It was very old school. It was like I was supposed to be a white collar technocrat trying to get a job at Dunder Mifflin. Because they’re so expensive their main clientele are people in the finance field, which has a lot of churn and is somewhat bloodless and resume driven. I attended a seminar about how to ace interviews with potential bosses and the HR person.
“This doesn’t seem right. Why would the HR person get involved? Don’t you have to be an employee for them to–”
Deep sigh. Anyway, I decided to go out on my own and through contacts and contracts have become a work-from-home freelancer. This pandemic lockdown is nothing new to me. I’ve been doing this for a decade. With mixed results. It’s like I’m in a medieval guild. Senior people at a company will insist that I be given jobs, but the minute they leave the work dries up and I follow them to wherever they wind up.
But back to LinkedIn. The only thing I saw on there were news links and commentary by try-hards who’d spread the word that Company X was going to revolutionize an industry that they had no knowledge of. “Well, that’s interesting, but I have no interest in ‘disrupting’ some part of the economy I’ve never thought about.” I never once saw anything even vaguely political. People taking a partisan stand are gambling (like I did at my corporate job) and might be welcomed at Company A and blacklisted at Company B. It’s a weird venue to disseminate political news, true or fanciful as they might be.
Thanks for reading my TedTalk.
I’ve been on LinkedIn for a decade now, and have a few hundred contacts. They typically link to me — I stopped bothering trying to reach out to people after about year 2 or so. I scroll through some of it daily or every other day. I’ve only seen one political post and it generated a massive string of complaints. Anecdotal, to be sure, but I didn’t see much of anything. Most people prefer to keep it to professional matters.
My career isn’t like yours, and I will say that a LinkedIn profile is pretty much standard for everybody in the industries I’ve worked in. I suspect HR departments use it rather than verifying work history by phone — just see if you’ve got two or three people linked from each job and that means you most likely worked there. Beyond that, it hasn’t helped me to any great degree — I’ve found and applied for some job listings and gotten a handful of interviews. My experience is that it really functions as more of an electronic resume.
The thing that freaks me out about Linked in is that you are sort of…………..automatically entered into it, I guess? I get emails that I’ve got a Linked In request from somebody, and I have never once used Linked In for anything. How did I get there? It’s creepy.
You shouldn’t be. You have to set it up. My guess is that those are spam emails. Don’t click the links!
Definitely spam emails.
I used to get those, and at the time I thought it was because the people setting up their accounts let Linkedin use their email/contact list. I remember some sites and stuff used to ask for access to your email contacts, not sure if that’s still a thing anymore…
I dislike the random contact requests that seem to spam me from LinkedIn. Especially folks with tenuous or no connection who are searching on job title/role to sell you on their business.
That happens a lot, and it’s very annoying. But I just delete them and move on. Another thing I dislike is interview candidates who try to link to me. No, you don’t have the job yet and no, I’m not going to link to you because HR forbids me to communicate with you outside the hiring process and I have no desire to explain to you why I didn’t choose you, if indeed I don’t choose you. Once you’ve got the job, then okay.
But that’s truly a function of any social media. I’ve lost count of the number of questionable invitations I’ve gotten on Facebook. Delete and move on.
I am not on LinkedIn but my coworker is and she gets everything from from “Senior Medical Director” type jobs requiring a PhD to fat vat operator at Chik Fil A. She has never gotten anything worth consideration.
Good morning Deadsplinter!
I’m happy to share hosting Coffee Break and Happy Hour. If anyone is interested you can pm me. I won’t be around as much today, I’m off for a social distancing doggie play date and hike with a friend.
Hannibal, you are a smart lady, so I shall take a page from your book and use this venue to make the same offer.
I’d love to have some fresh voices in BrainDrain – perhaps someone who watches and enjoys movies/television? If interested, please do pm me. Also for Food You Can Eat…we can always increase output , eh?
I’m going to be a bit snarky for a second, and I hope y’all know it’s because I love you all, and I love this place!😉😁💖
But I also wanna give the GT folks a heads up, that sometimes RIP (aka Jake/ SplinterRIP) will also load the DOT with WaPo links–forgetting that *we do NOT all have subscriptions to the Washington Post!!!
In the event of that happening, it ought to be automatically assumed (On a CONSTANT & ongoing basis, fwiw!😉💖) that we ALL know we are supposed to open those links in “incognito mode” on our browsers–because UNlike the New York Times, WaPo’s paywall *does not* work in incognito mode!
Today’s post was *not* “heavy” on the WaPo links, in case you’re wondering what i mean when i say “occasionally RIP will load the DOT with WaPo links”–this is actually a pretty small amount of them!😉😄💖
Rip, apologies for the razzing! (You SHOULD, I hope know by now, that I’m one of the geeks who loves the link-filled posts, because you always seem to manage to catch some stuff I’ve missed over the course of the previous day(s), and that heads-up is GREATLY appreciated!💖💗💞💓
But, too, the newbies deserve a heads up, so they aren’t too intimidated😉💝
Oh, and OTHER “heads-ups”:
I DO, I’m sure, annoy folks like I do over at GT & reddit by using too many emojis, ANNNND going on too long!
Also, Farsythe and some of the rest of us WILL occasionally & randomly start to pop music into the comments of ANY AND ALL POSTS!!
This is NORMAL, and to be expected(!), and feel FREE to add your own and/or join in, if you’re so inclined!–because if ya can’t tell by the DUAN posts–we DO tend to be a big bunch of music lovers ’round here😉😁🤗💖
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
There is a Chrome and Firefox extension.
Thanks, Myo!😉💞
…it’s a fair cop, guv…I admit it gets a little (or possibly a lot) excessive sometimes…& personally I read most of that WaPo stuff in a thing that calls itself pocket so I do sometimes forget that the paywall thing is a PITA…also most (but not all) NYT links tend to embed which is what picks the images that can look oddly cropped but should link out to that if clicked on…if I’m feeling organized I’ll even try to block quote from some of it here & there but the truth is I spend too much time reading & (according to myo) not nearly enough time writing up posts…particularly ones that aren’t in the DOT category
…for the record, though…I happen to be a fan of snark
[p.s. …if you’re in a hurry you can click the little number that tells you how many comments there are just under the title at the top of the page & fast forward past the whole post to get to the good stuff down here…it’s an open thread so you don’t even have to feel guilty about it or anything]
One can never, ever, ever spend too much time reading. Carry on as you are!
…words to live by…or maybe that ought to be words *I* live by
Unless one is easily distracted, because of a medical condition (such as ADHD)… annnnnd manages to be chronically late to things, because they keep rolling into rabbit holes on the interwebs!
😉😂🤣
Not that that EVER happens in my house, because there is apparently a “reading forcefield” there or anything…😉💖
Wait, I’ve been here since Day 1 and THIS IS THE FIRST TIME YOU’RE TELLING ME INCOGNITO MODE BYPASSES THE PAYWALL??!!
…I don’t think it entirely does but it does tend to reset the you-get-the-first-ones-free thing so with a bit of juggling it can get you a fair way…might depend a little on browser/device stuff, too
…& then there’s the bits that they don’t apply the paywall to just to confuse things even more…although there do also seem to be some things that the paywall doubles down on sometimes so all in all I don’t envy whoever it might be trying to keep that extension myo linked up & running?
This is good advice, and even as a former journalist I would never tell you to get a subscription to the New York Times, which has done less than it should to aid democracy over the past two decades.
However, I am a subscriber to the WaPo (as well as two local papers) and I would humbly suggest if you have a few bucks to do the same thing. WaPo routinely runs $29 sub deals for a full year; there is probably no better deal anywhere for almost anything. I don’t always love who and what they publish — does Hugh Hewitt really add value? — but good journalism is desperately important right now and the Washington Post produces a LOT of it. Plus their app doesn’t totally suck.
I do think paywalls are *in general* a problem in this country and something I may write about in some horrid 20,000-word screed at a later date, but I would just say, these are things worth paying for if you have the ability to do so.
That is an extremely valid position, and I think I’ll do it. I subscribe to my local paper because I think it’s incredibly important to support local journalism which is dying a miserable slow death, so I need to throw a few bucks to WaPo.
…it’s a fair point…ultimately we can’t afford for decent independent journalism to become a thing of the past
…the alternative models being what gave us the likes of facebook or whatever else monetizes its users & has zero compunction about serving them poorly while they go about it I do tend to think it’s not a bad deal overall…much the same way that the license fee people pay in the UK to subsidize the BBC is pretty good value for the money when you think about it even if (or hell, possibly because) a lot of people benefit from it without being the ones paying
…but I guess I wish there were more places that were funded the way the guardian is
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited
…they’re still probably worth throwing some cash if you can spare it since they aren’t getting the subscription fees they used to in the heyday of print media…but in theory they can pretty much afford to keep people informed without putting a paywall up where their online stuff is concerned…& the way things seem to have gone in the “information age” I think there’s a pretty good argument to be made that not being in a position to pay ought not to disqualify a person from staying informed…not when there seem to be so many people determined to remain as uninformed as possible because their echo chamber seems comfortable & they don’t want to hear about a reality that doesn’t
the Guardian,and the “MPR model” are two of my faves, because when I have a bit of Cash on Hand, I can just toss it tgeir way😉
Re this; “it’s a fair point…ultimately we can’t afford for decent independent journalism to become a thing of the past”
That’s what has me a bit bummed here locally😕
Two of the local Minneapolis papers are shuttered/shuttering.
The City Pages stopped on the 28th, and The Southwest Journal is shutting down at the end of Dec.
my goal is to fiiiinally get a real subscription set up–it just seems like the week of any given month when i finally remember to *do* that, is typically the week i end up needing to fix my car🙃
(This week was the rear brakes,cabin air filter, oil change, *and* nes valve stems & a re-seal 9f the bead on both back tires😖🥴)
My goal is to get that subscription before the end of the year, though!😉😁
There is nothing quite like Python on philosophy, is there? One of your links ended with this quote from a Philip Kennicott, who is the Washington Post’s art and architecture critic, of all things, (and has a degree in philosophy): “But reality requires that we think of it (Trumpism) as a chronic condition of American public life — not a virus that can be quarantined and perhaps cured, but a lifestyle disease rooted in sedentary thinking.” Just so – and the Republican/DeVoss attacks on education make their desire to control the populace through institutionalized ignorance all the more obvious.
…I was raised to believe that people who don’t love monty python are seldom to be trusted but I do have a particular soft spot for the philosophy stuff, too
…the apparently fashionable desire to not think about stuff drives me nuts on a regular basis & I totally agree with him that it seems to be a chronic condition…& with you that in large part it is a phenomenon deliberately cultivated predominantly by the GOP…& high up in the reasons I pretty much loathe that bunch
This is a point I try to hammer home at every available opportunity. It’s not only Trump who will be leaving (preferably in shackles) but the whole cabal. No more Jarvanka. No more Stephen Miller. The whole Cabinet (and there’s so much chaos in the administration that in 4 years there have 60 or 70 floating in and out depending on Trump’s tweeting whim) will be gone.
There is suspicion on the Left that Biden won’t do as much as he promised. He probably won’t, even if the Georgia Senate seats go D. And then speculation that he might appoint Republicans (gasp!) to the Cabinet. If you look back to before 2016 the non-Tea Party wing of the Republican party had lots of bright, sane, sober individuals. To my mind there are 100 Dems for every one of these figures, but if you throw a bone or two and keep them on a leash what is the harm? The power of the Executive, vested in the President, is unimaginably vast. Now that we’re looking in the rearview window, Trump could have been far more effective if he focused and stopped tweeting nonsense from a golf course or while watching Fox News. Ronald Reagan, who was just shy of 70 when he took office (which caused some concern; nowadays that seems on the young side) understood this. He had been the Governor of California, which itself is larger and wealthier than many countries. We’re still living with his legacy 40 years later. He actually knew “The Art of the Deal” and if you could time travel back to 1979 and then fast-forward to 1989 you would have seen an America remarkably transformed. What is Trump’s legacy? He’ll be thrown in the dustbin of history, a curiosity to generations to come, perhaps, should anyone want to pursue it. I, for example, am fascinated by William Jennings “Crucified on a Cross of Gold” Bryan but I am a decided minority. “Free silver!” How many of you know what that refers to? And that was something, a huge issue in its day. Trump…”Build the wall and get Mexico to pay for it!” Yes, well, maybe not so much, and like all Trump propositions immersed in grifting and sleaze.
Two TedTalks in one comment thread!
…I’m mostly sure free silver was the flip side of the gold standard but I’d probably garble any attempt to explain the supposed pros & cons beyond knowing a few folks who think dropping the latter was a mistake
…definitely know next to nothing about William Jennings Bryan, though…so that’s another fine rabbit hole you’ve led me down, sir
…& just when I looked like I might actually get something done today, too
The only thing I know of William Jennings Bryan was he was a featured character in an episode of Drunk History. I remember the storyteller constantly having trouble saying his name. I *think* it was the Scopes Monkey trial???
Yeah, Bryan argued for the prosecution for some stupid reason.
Two things:
1. Appointing Republicans to the Cabinet didn’t do shit for President Obama. McConnell obstructed like crazy anyway. There is no reason to expect a different outcome this time.
2. The Free Silver Movement was the proposition that the US should not back all of its currency with gold only. Bryan supported the idea of backing paper money with silver in addition to gold, which would have theoretically inflated the value, which would have then theoretically benefited farmers who had been particularly screwed by the panic of 1893. That’s my basic understanding, although I will confess to not being super educated on the matter.
You are correct. There were fears of inflation, maybe massive inflation, so if you were a debtor who owed $100 that $100 might only buy $50 dollars’ worth of stuff years later. America had been on the gold standard since the 1870s. That’s why there was pretty much zero inflation up until WWI. If you put $100 in a bank account in 1880 you’d get a modest rate of return, unless you speculated in the stock market, where all bets were off, and in 1913 it would be worth about the same.
Roosevelt loosened it a little bit when he took office in 1933, and Nixon finally abandoned it in 1971. Nixon’s decision caused shockwaves around the world, and was a big factor in the global inflation that came in the 1970s, as everyone else abandoned the gold standard. For decades preceding WWI the British pound was worth about $5. No negotiation, and they were tough to come by, you’d have to go through a cumbersome process if, for example, you were headed to Britain. No credit cards either, but there were letters of credit. Today the pound is trading at $1.32 but at one point in the early-ish 1980s it almost achieved parity with the dollar, I think it sank to about $1.08.
Similarly, when the euro was introduced, it was initially kind of a failure. It was wildly overvalued in the countries who joined (so you’d convert your Marks or francs or lire or whatever) but that shot inflation up. Meanwhile, if you visited from abroad, like I did, much of Europe had never seemed cheaper, because within the Eurozone that was all well and good, the price of fruit, let’s say, went from local currency X to euros, but so did everyone’s salaries and savings. For the visitor buying euros on the open market, it was in freefall. Now the euro is at $1.18 but when I went, in the glorious Fall of 2000, it had slipped to 86 cents. It was like Paris in the 20s. Why not order a bottle of champagne? Why not upgrade to a room on an upper floor with a balcony?
This is where I always get confused. I thought the gold standard had been initiated in the mid-19th century, but I also understand that the US adopted the gold standard in 1900. Which is which?
1879. Bryan unleashed the “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic convention in 1896.
He was actually very Trump-like in a way. Very much a populist, vowing to fight for the forgotten man, and more than a little nutty. Unlike Trump, he was also very smart and a gifted orator, which is why he agreed to join the Scopes trial, because he didn’t believe in evolution. Almost a century later lots of Trump supporters don’t, especially the ones prone to breed with their siblings or close relatives. Nothing ever really changes. What we’re going through in 2020 probably bedeviled Rome two millennia ago, and Greece three.
oh god…theres singing kids at my door
i forgot its st martins day….last year we didnt get any kids and tbh all things considered i was not expecting any this year….
good thing i got some emergency mars bars this monday just in case
https://youtu.be/4z9LkJiEHns
This is a youtuber I watch (SimplyNailogical) who does a podcast with her partner. Most recent topic was the US election, even though they are both Canadian. It is an interesting perspective, even though nothing we didn’t really already know (the US is embarrassing, the world celebrated Biden’s election, Canada is more liberal than the US, and everyone else gets our news crammed down their throats).
I’m embarrassed that farscythe and myo know as much or more about American politics than I do. Not to mention how little I know about the system of government in their respective countries.
yeah..well..to be fair…i probably know more about american politics than i do about politics here
there is no avoiding that shit….
We DO have a habit of meddling in the affairs of other nations, AND of spreading our own Chaos & Bullshittery raaaaather widely, don’t we?😬😖🥴
lol…..just a bit
but… previously…you at least had career politicians calling the shots and largely being…uhh…well boring
which reminds me…how the fuck is biden going to fix international relations?
i mean…if theres one thing trump has proven its that americas word doesnt mean shit/agreements/treaties/dont mean shit
its not the kind of thing the rest of the world will just forget….
That’s something I’m wondering, too, my friend, and worrying about, too.😕
As Trudeau Sr. once said, it’s like being in bed with an elephant. No matter how mild mannered it is, every little twitch is goingbto disturb you. Or something like that.
@hannibal
Interesting point made in the video I left was, Americans can afford to ignore foreign politics because it doesn’t affect us as much (not to mention, we really have to go looking for it). While our bullshit directly affects everyone else so it behooves them to pay attention.
I’m watching it now and they just made that point, which is a really good one. I like getting the perspective of people outside of the U.S.
Waayyy off topic, but I still can’t wrap my head around Florida. The fact that he won by 3% pts, just has me wondering about how many dirty tricks they probably pulled. It really steams me that they got away with keeping felons from voting, against the will of the people mind you, but it makes me wonder what other suppression tactics they employed. I really hope someone investigates it, cause it’s getting zero coverage.
I say we should demand a recount in South Carolina, Kentucky, Texas and Florida -withe international observers.
I mean that idiot Matt Gaetz publicly called out our idiot Gov Brian Kemp for not delivering Georgia to the repubs.
Why is there even a run off between Warnock and Loeffler, isn’t he ahead by 4, 000 votes?
I believe the candidate needs more than 50% of the votes. Hence the runoffs in both races
Ah, thanks
yep, this!
GA is a “50% or more of the votes” state, when candidates seek to avoid a runoff.
“The fact that he won by 3% pts, just has me wondering about how many dirty tricks they probably pulled.”
I can’t remember if it was an NPR show, or an MPR one, but *one* of the shows i caught on my commute last week talked about the flooding of spanish-speaking… snapchat (or maybe What’sApp?–however that may be spelled?!?)
Evidently the spanish-speaking sides of multiple sites were just being HAMMERED–Facebook, too–with misinformation & disinformation, talking about how the D’s wanted to bring Cuban & Venezuelan-style Socialism/ communism to the US.
And since those posts were originally being posted by folks claiming to be *outside* the US, but were then amplified & passed on to their USA-based relatives, the info didn’t need to get fact-checked or checked for violations of Campaign Finance law, like it would have, had it been based in the US🙃
Found the story!;
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/24/927487143/a-bilingual-tool-that-fights-misinformation-on-whatsapp
Having heard this *before* the election, then reading this thread by Natalie Morales, it made TONS of sense, why FL went the way it did.
Basically, the Trump Admin did what Stone & Bannon alllkways talked about doing–they completely FLOODED the zone with bullshit🙃😕
…I saw some stuff about this, too…but at the time I think I already had more links to cram in the DOTs than I knew what to do with so I maybe didn’t find a spot for those ones…so if I didn’t I’m kinda sorry about that because I meant to
…it’s weirdly on-brand but also sort of concerning that it seemed to get the traction that it did when (once again) so much of it is/was transparently bullshit & not all that hard to refute if you think to check any of it out?
Absoooolllluuutely concerning… yet not AT ALL surprising to me, after having lived out in Outer Wingnuttia (Michelle Bachmann/Emmer’s Congressional district🙃), where Facebook tends to be the main source of news for FAR too many folks.
I had a former roommate who INSISTED that “The Minions were based on Jew-Kids the Nazis experimented on!”
Yes, that person really used the term “Jew kids”😖😬😱–that was HOW uneducated/poorly educated they were🙃
I fact-checked SO many of their claims of “news” they heard from people they knew on Facebook in seconds, that they basically stopped talking to me… which, tbh, I was 100% OKAY WITH.
But FAR too many folks up there buy into the “well, this info is coming from someone I know, so it has to be true!!” theories of “news” and “trusted sources of information.”
🙄🙄🙄