I love a happy ending. I wonder how they are going to explain away the bots, child trafficking and censorship that went on before Musk bought it?
My Favorite Twitter Meme, So Far
(got it from Woosterman)
Everyone is laying off in Tech land. That means they kept the good employees. The Twidiots who quit over ideological differences with Musk are in for a nice Sunday surprise.
I’m glad to have left this cesspool of Social Media behind. I hope Musk can make free speech a possibility again, but I doubt it. If he can just kill the hate and one sided discussion it will be enough to call it a success.
It won’t be enough for me to go back on. It’s a waste of time.
Here’s how I look at it. No one really cares about my opinion. I extend them the same courtesy.
Not my favorite, but still funny.
And Now You Get Why Twitter Is So Messed Up Internally
The real cowards won’t play when it’s not their rules. It must be that tough to have words bother you so much that you can’t work for a company.
I find this wildly entertaining that Musk bought a majority stake in hater Twitter. I can’t wait to see what will happen and hope for a wonderful train wreck to entertain me on this one. I am finding Must to be right far more than wrong and am learning to trust non traditional thinkers such as him.
I really don’t think much will happen, but the consternation it will stir up may split the audience for other platforms. That would take away the historical preference for Twitter Twatter.
Like in the movie War Games, sometimes the best move is to not play. I have had a blissful twitter free life now since before Trump. I recommend it or another instant platform of your choice.
I have accounts with all the competitors, but the drain of being on another social media platform is being overpowered by my introverted nature to avoid people.
So Much For Big Tech Being The Good Guys
We all knew it anyway. Maybe with Musk buying Twitter it will eventually stop being the hate fest that currently is. Naw, I don’t believe it either.
The Real Reason People Use Twitter
Most Of The Pricks Trying To Destroy The USA In One Picture
More pricks:
Conspiracy Theorists Were Right The Whole Time About Covid-19
Steven King On Putin, Trump and Biden
Well, this tweet didn’t age well did it? This is 180 degrees wrong in less than 12 hours.
Stick to writing fiction. There is a real world out there.
Really, this is like Thomas Friedman saying the stock market would collapse when Trump was elected. These guys are so deluded by ideology that they can’t live in a factual world.
Putin knew he was free to make move when Biden collapsed in Afghanistan. There is no telling what Xi is planning, but it is safe to say that it doesn’t look good for Taiwan right now.
The reality is that Putin didn’t do anything when Trump was the Commander in Chief. He knew there would be strategic consequences, not political maneuvering.
For Those Who Picked Personality Over Policy, Look What You Get For No More Mean Tweets
On Government Silencing The Opposition
Exercise your first amendment.
This is what the MSM/current government/SJW/Woke/PC/climate change people/Fake book/Twitter/Youtube/Google and the left are doing. If you aren’t worried about your truth being challenged, you don’t have to silence anyone. If the facts don’t support your spew, see Harry’s quote.
It seems that you can’t say anything without offending someone. If you read my blog, it’s there waiting for you somewhere. It’s not going to stop me. Look down a post or two about John not giving a fuck.
On a hat tip from Moonbattery.
Fauci Spending Hundreds Of Thousands To Study Transgender Monkeys – China Reports Next Virus As Hemorrhagic Fever , Passed To Humans From Monkeys And Bats
First, Fauci tortured Beagles during Covid when he was lying about gain of function. Now, he’s “studying” trans Monkeys (is there such a thing?) to the tune of $200,000 taxpayer dollars.
Put 2 + 2 together with this. A new “Ebola-Like Hemorrhagic Fever Virus” has been reported in China.
From Dr. Malone, mRNA inventor. “He died on Aug. 2, with tests finally showing that he died from Marburg, a “highly infectious disease that causes hemorrhagic fever” — and has a fatality rate of up to 88 percent, the WHO said.”
Marburg “is in the same family as the virus that causes Ebola,” which killed at least 11,325 people in the 2014-2016 epidemic that started in the same part of Guinea. The country was only recently declared Ebola-free after a brief flare-up earlier this year killed 12.
Marburg is believed to have originated in bats and is passed from animal hosts to humans.
“The potential for the Marburg virus to spread far and wide means we need to stop it in its tracks,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa.
The agency dispatched 10 experts to help local officials, who said at least 146 people had been identified as having been in contact with the man before he died.
“We are working with the health authorities to implement a swift response that builds on Guinea’s past experience and expertise in managing Ebola, which is transmitted in a similar way,” Moeti said.
Marburg outbreaks start when an infected animal, such as a monkey or a fruit bat, passes the virus to a human. The virus then spreads from human to human by contact with an infected person’s body fluids.
Sure, it’s a stretch to think that he’s done the same thing with the Monkeys that he did with the dogs, but for sure he worked with the Bats in Wuhan and helped create Covid.
How is this schmuck not in jail for murder, just for Covid alone.
I’ve figured out the key to stop Covid (along with help from Dr.’s Malone, Zalenko, McCullough and Yeadon. It’s not the vax, but a combination of vitamin’s, HCQ, Ivermectin and not believing what government, the Gates foundation, Fauci and Pfizer.
Now, we have to unlock the key to the next round from the CCP that is being unleashed on us, even if it isn’t Marburg.
I’ve learned to search the patterns, distrust the Government, the WHO, NIH, Gates Foundation, the MSM and to figure out for myself what needs to be done. I’ve learned that you should listen to who is banned from Twitter or fake book because they are exposing the people behind the bio-terrorism that is going on.
I just hope that whatever the Chi-Coms and Fauci unleash on us next is avoidable until we pick the lock like a bunch of Houdini’s while the above listed are trying to do the great reset and kill off a bunch of us.
Oh, I’ll get to the WEF and Davos as they are behind the great re-set, but that is another blog.
Get Ready For The January 6th Circus Since The House Doesn’t Want To Help America. It’s An Agenda About Control – It’s Karen City
Just like trying to impeach a president who wasn’t even in office when Covid was raging across the country, the assholes on parade in the house will prance around with the Media (MSM) instead of trying to solve important issues, say the supply chain or let the people arrested a year ago be given a fair treatment.
Oh, FakeBook Facistbook will ban anyone one who actually represents freedom of speech about it along with Twatter and the other hate groups.
We need to stop this nonsense and get about putting our country back on track. They haven’t accomplished anything other than helping themselves to money for a year now.
Blogs I Follow, Doug Jones (Lawryn’s Lynx)
This is a good news site for those that want to skip the lies and bias of the MSM, link here.
I don’t know about you, but I gave up trusting the alphabet news services on either side. They all have an agenda. I decided to go to sites not bought off by a political party.
There isn’t sensationalism here, but I get a good cross section of what is going on that others won’t cover.
I have a lot of sources and will link to them over time. This is one I’ve followed for years and am ok with.
If you look at the Bad Blue top 20 tweets, I get some of my sarcasm material there.
FYI.
A Vicious Crime Against Humanity
Just as we saw with hydroxychloroquine last summer, government alphabet agencies, the medical industrial complex, and their willing accomplices in the media have recently made it clear that there is yet another safe, effective treatment for COVID-19 they wish to torpedo. It’s the latest naughty word which will get you censored on social media and mocked and belittled by late-night “comedians”: ivermectin.
While ivermectin has been used by certain brave doctors around the world to treat COVID-19 for over a year now, it only recently became the target of a multi-pronged attack, with the U.S. government, the media, and Big Pharma all playing important roles in the deadly dystopian disinformation campaign against the drug. As more Americans became aware of ivermectin’s efficacy against COVID-19, like clockwork the government and its propaganda arm in the press jumped in to discredit it, referring to the drug snidely as a “horse dewormer.”
We watched the FDA embarrass itself with its ridiculing tweet telling people “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,” while linking to an agency article on why people should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent the China Virus. We saw Rolling Stone magazine forced to admit that its recent story about Oklahoma hospitals being overwhelmed by patients who overdosed on ivermectin was completely false.
Pharmaceutical company Merck, which produces ivermectin, discredited its use for COVID by irresponsibly stating, “We do not believe that the data available support the safety and efficacy of ivermectin beyond the doses and populations indicated in the regulatory agency-approved prescribing information.” It is worth noting that Merck and Pfizer are developing their own oral antivirals that would directly compete with the cheap and effective ivermectin. These antivirals, unlike ivermectin, would be patented, creating the potential for pharmaceutical companies to rake in billions of dollars from their use.
What the globalist elites and the medical establishment won’t tell you is that those who discovered ivermectin and its use to treat parasitic diseases won a Nobel Prize in 2015—it was the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine’s only award for treatments of infectious diseases in six decades.
Almost 4 billion doses of ivermectin have been prescribed for humans, not horses, over the past 40 years. In fact, the CDC recommends all refugees coming to the U.S. from the Middle East, Asia, North Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean receive this so-called dangerous horse medicine as a preemptive therapy. Ivermectin is considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be an “essential medicine.” The Department of Homeland Security’s “quick reference” tool on COVID-19 mentioned how this life-saving drug reduced viral shedding duration in a clinical trial.
To date, there are at least 63 trials and 31 randomized controlled trials showing benefits to the use of ivermectin to fight COVID-19 prophylactically as well as for early and late-stage treatment. Ivermectin has been shown to inhibit the replication of many viruses, including SARS-CoV-2. It has strong anti-inflammatory properties and prevents transmission of COVID-19 when taken either before or after exposure to the virus.
Ivermectin also speeds up recovery and decreases hospitalization and mortality in COVID-19 patients. It has been FDA approved for decades and has very few and mild side effects. It has an average of 160 adverse events reported every year, which indicates ivermectin has a better safety record than several vitamins. In short, there is no humane, logical reason why it should not be widely used to fight against the China Virus should a patient and doctor decide it is appropriate to try in that patient’s case.
Critics argue that ivermectin hasn’t been approved for use in the fight against COVID-19 and therefore should not be prescribed to patients. Doctors, however, often prescribe drugs to help patients that aren’t necessarily approved for their particular ailments—it’s called “off-label” prescription and according to the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, 10-20 percent of all prescriptions are prescribed in this fashion.
Make no mistake, the evil, deadly, coordinated globalist attacks we are currently witnessing on ivermectin will go down in history as a vicious crime against humanity; a grievous public health policy error that can only be explained by following the money. Many top doctors agree that hundreds of thousands of American lives could have been saved had early treatment protocols such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine not been so maliciously vilified by authority figures, some pharmaceutical companies, and healthcare providers who just so happen to have financial incentives to suppress the truth about these cheap, effective drugs.
Dumbing Down Harvard, Again – And How They Went Woke
I wrote about the decline of the education you get there a while back and thought it would improve. I guessed wrong.
You can read about it in the link above, but the old boys club is wearing off. Their most recently famous alums actually were drop outs. They also did the best in life.
Now to the rest of the story.
Of course, there is the Covid madness. The supposedly smartest students have had to go to class online again because of……you guessed it:
These idiots have bought into the false narrative, despite the growing evidence (Israel, UK and the opposite in Sweden) that the inoculation (if it were a vaccine it would have worked) is the panacea.
Harvard University states on its website that 95% of students and 96% of employees are vaccinated, and notes that “COVID-19 testing requirements remain in place for every member of the community who is authorized to be on campus this fall, including those who come to campus infrequently. The Dashboard data is relative to individuals, living both on and off campus, authorized to participate in Harvard’s COVID-19 screening.”
From the same article linked above:
Data from Israel reportedly showed earlier this month that “’fully vaccinated’” people are 27 times more likely to be infected and develop COVID-19 symptoms than unvaccinated people with natural immunity,” and “‘fully vaccinated’ people are 8 times more likely to be hospitalized from a ‘breakthrough’ infection.”
WHY THIS MATTERS
Building relationships to take into the business world is the big benefit of going to one of these antiquated halls of ignorance. Harvard creates the biggest “Old Boys Club (including girls)” because of their interaction in group projects and going out together.
This just nixed the big benefit other than bragging that you paid too much to say that you went there.
We already knew in the real business world that outside of NY and Massachusetts, anyone coming in with a degree from Harvard meant that they were going to be a drag on productivity. Some finally came around to what real life teaches you, but we still had to put up with their nonsense until they either left or realized how the world actually works.
CANCEL CULTURE
The students have shown an inability to understand sarcasm from one of their own, a Law Professor with some actually creditable certifications:
Adrian Vermeule, Harvard Law School Professor And Intellectual Iconoclast:
This reflects an ongoing attempt by l******g students to purge academia of viewpoints that do not perfectly align with the social justice and Black Lives Matter orthodoxy. Much like during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, students lead the way in belittling and trying to damage dissident professors, with public shaming and institutional ritualized denunciations preferred methods of intimidation.
Here was his crime, tweeting this:
For example, as unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud spread following the election, Prof. Vermeule tweeted “ Lol the election isn’t over until Team Joe fixes up your ballot for you ” and “Kids, not sure if you knew this, but missing ballots have magical properties that make them visible only between midnight and 6am .” His post-election retweets included statements such as “ Even a Saddam Hussein had to make some pretence of not getting 100% of the vote in an Iraqi election … ‘Baghdad on the Delaware .’” And these examples only scratch the surface. Prof. Vermeule may try to play off his statements as a joke, but they amount to a pattern of promoting demonstrably false conspiracy theories. His statements are harmful to democracy and unbelievably divisive. To work at Harvard Law School is to be granted a platform and a level of legitimacy. Prof. Vermeule is abusing this platform in order to undermine democracy and delegitimize the results of the election.
Are you kidding me? This stuff is funny, and even if it’s not funny to some Harvard Law students.
The whole story is here, courtesy of Legal Insurrection, but in quick summary it shows how quick they are to jump to conclusions against their indoctrination and one sided beliefs.
WHY THIS MATTERS
An intelligent mind can entertain both sides of an argument without taking sides to fully understand the context. Whether or not they choose to side with one or the other would result from critical thinking and the ability to judge based on facts and history.
This current group of woke automatons rushes to judgement before the facts are known and worse, believe they are right because of where they are studying rather than being smart.
ENTRANCE EXAM DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MINORITIES
This takes two different paths. They reduce the entrance standards for some minorities who then can’t keep up. They are then stuck with a huge amount of debt and no benefit. They are having to take remedial courses and drop out of STEM studies.
Conversely, Harvard discriminates against those with the ability to qualify, but don’t have the proper heritage.
Here is what I’m referring to:
Adam Mortara, another attorney representing Students for Fair Admissions, accused Harvard of giving Asian-Americans significantly lower ratings for certain personal qualities, such as leadership and compassion, than other races, according to the Washington Post.
“Harvard has engaged in, and continues to engage in, intentional discrimination against Asian-Americans,” Mortara said.
A Harvard University dean testified that the school has different SAT score standards for prospective students based on factors such as race and sex — but insisted that the practice isn’t discriminatory, as a trial alleging racism against Asian-American applicants began this week.
The Ivy League school was sued in 2014 by the group Students for Fair Admissions, which claims that Asian-American students, despite top-notch academic records, had the lowest admission rate among any race.
He said Harvard sends recruitment letters to African-American, Native American and Hispanic high schoolers with mid-range SAT scores, around 1100 on math and verbal combined out of a possible 1600, CNN reported.
Asian-Americans only receive a recruitment letter if they score at least 250 points higher — 1350 for women, and 1380 for men.
This discrimination has now reached the Supreme Court.
Exerpt:
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, now at the Supreme Court, has the potential to reshape the course of affirmative action in the United States — for the better.
The case positions a group of highly qualified Asian-American college applicants against the university to which they seek admission, Harvard. These applicants allege that Harvard has practiced longstanding admissions discrimination against them in favor of less-qualified minorities.
GOING WOKE
Being woke is a crime of idiocy. You shouldn’t expect that of an institution heralded (not anymore) for their intelligence and education. Harvard has managed to pull it off spectacularly.
Now, at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, ‘political correctness’ on campus is taken for granted. But what I experienced then was less the direct coercive tyranny of leftism than a pervasive culture of capitulation and pusillanimity, with everyone from administrators to deans and professors to students and even the campus police looking over his or her shoulder in fear of censure by others. The fear was only justified on the part of those being silenced: at one Harvard event, Ayaan Hirsi Ali required stricter security arrangements than did many heads of state.
The affirmative action that Harvard implemented required lying. Departments looking for the ‘best’ person to fill a position were obliged to demonstrate, not that they had conducted a fair and open search, but rather that they had interviewed an appropriate percentage of women and other ‘minorities’. Since individual merit and group diversity are contradictory goals, the entire process was corrupt irrespective of outcome. At one departmental meeting, when the chair asked us to supply arguments for a member’s candidacy for promotion, someone at the table hooted, ‘Why bother with all this? He’s Hispanic!’ I was the only one who laughed at this eruption of suppressed truth.
There is more at the link above, but political correctness claims another victim.
IN CONCLUSION BUT PROBABLY NOT
Those of us who have been in the real world know that real world experience trumps a diploma. Sure, it will get you in the door, but those with the ability to adapt, lead and have the above stated ability of critical thinking are the ones you want to keep.
If they keep up this idiocy, those outside of the Northeast (OK, California, Portland and Washington – both of them are just as woke and dumb) won’t want them if they intend on surviving.
Save your money unless you have a Wall Street connection ready. Everyone thinking alike and acting with the same wokeness is of little benefit to the concept of an ongoing concern of a business, a FASB standard.
Bacon and Bombings, Testing the Censors
I love bacon. It’s what I thought of when I saw this. Then of course, I recognized an opportunity to test out the censorship of WordPress.
I think a lot of the tech companies are loony about free speech and who is allowed to have it. That’s why I put stuff up that I know others will get mad about. It’s not about you honey, this is poking the dragon ever so slightly at first.
I self-censored Fake Book and Twitter so I can’t go after them, but then I’d have to be in that cesspool to get kicked out. I left that social media shithole behind to better my life. It worked.
My View On What Social Media Has Become
Don’t get me wrong, there are some good things, but sooner or later it goes down the crapper when someone “offends” another. It is where you can find more bias and discrimination (against anyone and everyone) since segregation.
Twitter is probably the biggest cesspool. Since Facebook Fake Book started censoring, you can’t trust what is real or not. I also don’t care about my high school or college enough to see what they are doing. If either of us cared, we’d have stayed in contact.
The hate generated against the last President just told me the people in charge of these platforms are untrustworthy. They say one thing and do another.
Do what you want. Most are addicted to social media. The truly smart people don’t waste time trying to impress others as to how good their life is or worry about what others have.
My life is better without social media terrorists. I still get what I need to know without it being filtered by a loser in a cubicle with an axe to grind over who voted for whom. The elitist oligarch’s have told them what is allowed, then they prattle on condemning exactly what they are doing.
As usual, I’ll just do my own thing and let others suffer who wish to read that tripe.
Twitter, The Cesspool Of Hate Announces Birdwatching Stasi To Spy On Others
Eliminating as much social media from my life as possible has made it much better. Sooner or later, even your bestie is going to post something that pisses you off and down the toilet we go.
Now, you can spy on your neighbor like the Stasi and report your neighbor. As for me, I’m getting rid of as much hate as I can, and that started with Twitter. Their latest to shut down free speech isn’t helping anyone.
The Tweeter is recruiting volunteer truth interrupters’ to crack down on misinformation they say is running rampant across their site. The site announced the launch of “Birdwatchers” on Monday to empowering certain users to flag misleading tweets. So-called Birdwatchers will discuss what’s misleading about a flagged tweet and then be able to rank those comments, with the goal of allowing seemingly unpaid users to take a hands-on approach to combating your lies and falsities.
The Official Tweeter Support Account posted the announcement with a video of an failed attempt at humor of an egregious example of a necessary flagging of falsehood: “Whales are not real. They’re robots funded by the government to watch us.” Now, you don’t have to read between the lines to understand the mentality that came up with this idea.
At first, Birdwatch will only be open to a few users who apply to join the program, traditional fact-checkers and other high-profile people. Birdwatch replies to tweets will meanwhile only be visible on a separate section of the site. But eventually Twitter hopes to include the replies on the regular site, building a Wikipedia-style system of relying on users to combat misinformed and blatantly false tweets.
IP’s, User Names and Locations would surely not be cataloged. *wink wink*
Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News, said the program has “promise,” but cautioned that Twitter doesn’t seem to have a plan to prevent retaliation against Birdwatchers. Twitter said it’ll adapt the program based on user feedback before debuting it on the whole site.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1353769252784926720&lang=en&origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.diogenesmiddlefinger.com%2F2021%2F01%2Fyou-too-can-sign-up-for-dorseys-truth.html&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
My big concern — which I expressed many times to Twitter — is for the safety of these contributors. What happens when a high-ranking Birdwatcher whose note does well on a Ted Cruz tweet is featured on Tucker Carlson? They say user safety is top of mind but … you know.— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) January 25, 2021
MLK On Darkness, Hate and Love
Yes, I’d rather post the I have a dream, but politicians won’t let us make it come true.
Instead, this is a lesser known quote, but there has been a lot of hate and darkness (Twitter, Facebook, the elections, need I go on?). I for one am tired of it.
For today, I’m letting the Reverend point out what the problem is. He also gave us the answer, if anyone will listen. I hope I”m not alone.
I’m Shocked, Social Media Causes Depression
Social Media, the place where you can make yourself look better to feel good about yourself when someone likes the tripe you post. Aside from being little more than a digital high school, a cesspool of hate (Twitter) and one of the biggest time wasters invented, it appears to causes depression.
In recent years, a number of studies have linked heavy social media use to an increased risk of depression.
“But then you have to ask the chicken-and-egg question,” said study author Dr. Brian Primack, a professor of public health at the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville.
On one hand, he said, excessive time on Twitter or Facebook might fuel depression symptoms. On the other, people with depression might withdraw from face-to-face interactions and spend more time online.
So Primack and his colleagues decided to see whether social media use made a difference in young adults’ risk of future depression.
It did, according to their report, which was published online Dec. 10 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The study included nearly 1,000 adults aged 18 to 30 who were depression-free at the outset, based on a standard questionnaire. All reported on their usual social media time and were assessed for depression again six months later.
By that time, nearly 10% fit the criteria for depression.
Overall, depression risk rose in tandem with time spent on social media.
Things Not To Do – Arguing On The Internet
I already talked about this in the post “Stupid things that smart people do“.
I posted about how people have Internet road rage also as they are so brave hiding behind their screens doing things that would get their asses kicked in real life.
Arguing on the Internet is the biggest waste of time, other than social media. Why do you ask (even if you don’t)? Besides being a waste of time, you are looking at the best side of people and comparing it to the worst side of you (they take better vacations, their family is nicer, I’m not as pretty……). It’s like a first date or job interview. You are seeing the side they want to show you, not the real McCoy.
People think they are going to convince others that they are wrong or should switch to think like them because they are right. Neither of these will happen. You won’t convince anybody of anything and you just wasted more time in addition to Facebook, Twitter (the cesspool of the Internet) or any of the other time suck sites.
The other people that argue with you are the ones who do it to piss you off. I know some of these people who do it for sport. Hell, I get people in comments here who want to make their point because they believe they are right and I am wrong. My answer is get your own blog.
Don’t be a time waster. Don’t argue with people who ate paste. Life is too short and someone out there really needs your help or time, not the kid from school.
Great Sayings – Marcus Aurelius on Celebtards, Sports Stars and Politicians Today
“The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.”
Marcus Aurelius
Celebrities pretend to be someone else. They are trained liars. Sports stars are the best of the best at playing kids games. Politicians for the most part live to be re-elected and like celebtards, are trained liars (many are lawyers who are masters at not telling the truth). The MSM are the worst. They are news readers that have a bias one way or the other. None of them really know about what they are telling us to do. It is almost always do as I say, not as I do.
Why the hell would we listen to these people’s opinions? For the idiots who trust social media, it’s because they live a false life on social media. Kids (I include millennial’s to teenagers here) haven’t had enough hard knocks in life. Sometimes it is the parents fault for trying to not have them go through what made them learn about life. That’s why everyone got participation trophies and time out.
Older people who buy into what others are saying instead of finding out and deciding for themselves have no excuse. Life causes us to learn whether we want to or not. It’s called making mistakes and learning from it. They just didn’t learn from it.
The net is don’t change your values because you went with the crowd. That didn’t work in high school and it won’t work now. Learn to think for yourself and do what you know is the right thing to do.
Seek out those who know what they are talking about, not those described in paragraph one above
Great Sayings – George Eliot Talks About Sports Stars, Politicians, Celebtards and Social Media
Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t like getting told how and what to think by people who aren’t qualified to do so. Athletes are paid well to entertain us and distract us from the drudgery of life.
Celebrities pretend to be other people on screen or on stage. They are paid liars basically.
Politicians, well I guess everyone has their own opinion, but most hold them in low regard. When I say low, most who are polled have them below used car salesmen.
All of the above get fame, adoration and a lot of money for what they do. I don’t fault them for making the most of their work, only how much influence they think we care about
Social Media? It has become the cesspool of the bad side of people. Sort of an internet road rage.
With that being said, my advice to all of them is to never miss any opportunity to shut up.
Great Sayings – Self Survival By Governments, Innovation and Those In Charge, but are not True Leaders
Hat tip to Moonbattery
For politics, we need balance. History shows that too much dominance by any side makes for lack of clear vision as leaders. Their goal becomes being re-elected instead of serving the office they were elected to. There are plenty of examples.
In Companies, being the solution to a problem is one business model, until the problem goes away then so do profits.
The better model is innovation. Not that I find it that innovative, but look no further than the iPhone as an example. Conversely, we are still stuck with Windows however and I find no real innovation there. I left that platform as quickly as I could
Then of course there is Facebook, Twitter, Google and host of other platforms that haven’t really offered a solution other than sucking the time out of your day and providing a place to move along anarchy.
Look at the motives of the person trying to offer a solution. Are they selling you a bill of goods, re-election or innovation?
Journalist Jokes, Because well….They Are Journalists
I worked with the press for decades. The ones I worked with were nice people, but they had to write something that people will read, until now. Journalists are supposed to (try to) and learn about the subject they are covering. Now they write ridiculous stories and then write the opposite. They don’t even bother to fact check anymore. No one reads corrections so they don’t care, and it shows. I can’t even say this current lot are nice. If you see below, they aren’t well liked either.
Lately, they have been circling the wagons to cover one side of the political scene or the other together. They are exposing themselves to the public as to how little they know or how little they want to hide their bias. A bunch of them just want to jam on the president out of spite, but they are either self-owning or he is swatting them like flies, especially Jim Acosta.
Twitter/Twitchy caught on and now instead of lawyer jokes, it is journalist jokes. For the most part, this lot deserves what they are getting. They are now as useless to regular people as celebtards and sports stars trying to give their opinion on something other than their sport.
The hashtag is #JournalistJokes, go see for yourselves. Here is a list of some as a starter. Others are more creative than me.
“Three journalists walk into a building. You’d think one of them would’ve seen it.”
“What’s 5 miles long and has an IQ of 30?” “A JOURNALIST PARADE!”
“Three journalists walk into bar and say ‘ouch’ – then write stories about how the bar is racist and phobic.”
“How does a journalist change a light bulb? He holds while the whole world revolves around him.”
And Twitchy’s pick for the winner: “What are the best four years of a journalist’s life? Third grade.”
“Why are there only 2 pallbearers at a ‘journalist’s funeral?” “Garbage cans only have two handles.”
“How do you make a journalist’s eyes light up?” “Shine a flashlight in his ear.”
“What do you call 25 skydiving journalists?” “Skeet.”
“How do you get a one-armed journalist out of a tree?” “Wave to them.”
“What’s the difference between a smart journalist and Bigfoot?” “Bigfoot has been spotted.”
“Why can’t a ‘journalist’ dial 911?” “She can’t find the eleven.”
“What do you do if a journalist throws a grenade at you?” “Pick it up, pull the pin out, and throw it back.”
“What’s the different between God and a journalist?” “God doesn’t think he’s a journalist.”
Hat tip WND
The 10 Cannot’s – Inserting Reality Into Today’s Politics (And Woke Culture)
Some sanity and reasonableness should be considered when putting yourself out into the social media universe. Everyone seems to think that it is now their responsibility to tell us how to think, speak and act.
Here are 10 logical statements that are not new, but should have been taught to those who think they should tell us what to do, especially by politicians, the media and celebtards. I wish George Orwell were alive today to see how right he was when he wrote 1984.
PC culture is ruining our society and frankly is taking the fun out of life for those of us who don’t get offended easily.
It’s time for a lot of people to grow up and act like adults. Personally, I blame the educational system. It has a considerable lack of diversity in terms of being able to view all sides of an issue before opening there mouths or post on Twitter, which I now call Hater. Other platforms are becoming just as bad, but the hate usually starts there.
Rep. Stephen M. Young inserted into the Congressional Record, in 1950, an article from Harper’s magazine, written by a Lincoln scholar, Albert A. Wolman, listing most of the ”Ten Cannots” and other material falsely attributed to Lincoln.
The 10 Cannots:
1) You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
2) You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
3) You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
4) You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
5) You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
6) You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
7) You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
8) You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
9) You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence.
10) You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
Social Media, Ruining Your Life Part 2
I recently posted how Social Media is probably making your life worse, especially those who have to look anything up to know everything. Even more, those whose lives and feelings are governed by their online image and how many likes they got vs. others are losing out on life to a device.
The other issue is having your face buried in your phone while walking. You are clueless to the world around you. See the video above.
UPDATE: Getting Cosmetic Surgery for Snapchat Dysmorphia
This is by far the most narcissistic thing I’ve read. People (tide pod eaters) are getting surgery to look like the filters they use on their Snapchat because they don’t look good enough in life because it is wreaking havoc on their self-esteem. The report in the journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery claims that these filters can sometimes trigger body dysmorphic disorder, a mental illness that can lead to compulsive tendencies and unnecessary beauty procedures, among other negative outcomes.
A study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that people who were regular users of social media were twice as likely to feel lonely than those that were light users.
Another study released found that social media, especially Instagram, deepened feelings of anxiety and inadequacy for 15 to 24 year olds.
Go play outside and leave your phone in your pocket. Also, don’t live your life on social media and you won’t be so self-obsessed.
UPDATE: A study came out stating that good social media don’t out weigh the bad:
(Reuters Health) – For young adults, the adverse effect of negative social media experiences on mental health outweigh any potential benefits of positive experiences, a study of university students suggests.
Each 10 percent increase in a student’s negative experiences on social media was associated with a 20 percent increase in the odds of depressive symptoms, researchers found.
But positive experiences on social media were only weakly linked to lower depressive symptoms. Each 10 percent increase in positive social media interaction was associated with only a four percent drop in depressive symptoms – a difference so small that it might have been due to chance.
“This is not inconsistent with the way we see things in the offline world . . . The negative things we encounter in the world count more than positive ones,” said study leader Brian A. Primack, director of the Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.
“If you have four different classes in college, the fourth class that you did poorly in probably took up all your mental energy,” he told Reuters Health by phone.
Primack said he believes social media lends itself to negativity bias because it is saturated with positive experiences that leave people jaded.
YOU ARE BEING WATCHED
I talked with friends at the gym who are or were in law enforcement In cop terms they are always made by others because they are constantly looking around. They are aware of their environment, potential danger, potentially dangerous people and escape routes. As you can see in the video of fails, these people are vulnerable to all of the above.
Guess how else you are vulnerable with your head buried in a screen? It doesn’t take a genius to know that Facebook, Google, Amazon and every other site is not only tracking your clicks, but are tracking where you go and what you do.
We used to have instructions, a map and intuition to get where we were going and for the most part, we got there. millennial’s can’t get to the 7-11 without Google Maps now. It’s also funny how they can know everything, but have knowledge of very little. Take away their phone and not only would they not run into things, they’d have to actually learn about how things really work and how to navigate (I’m not discriminating here, I know directionally challenged relatives my age who fall into this category). Looking up something on your phone doesn’t make you smart.
YOU ARE GIVING THE PERV’S A FREE TICKET
I’m not in law enforcement, but I put my phone away and watch others, especially those watching girls. It’s almost a sport. It used to be if a guy was looking in the wrong part of a girl, they got busted immediately. It was like watching a tennis match seeing the heads turn when a cute girl walked by. They had to use mirrored sunglasses and just glance when they could and not let their wives/girlfriends catch them. Now, instead of having to glance behind sunglasses, the perv’s just look down or up (or up and down) anyone they want and modesty just goes out the window. It’s truly tasteless, but if you had your head out of the phone, you wouldn’t be getting eyeballed so lasciviously.
GET A LIFE
It’s amazing to watch people now escape to their phone in what used to be a social situation. So stop running into things and get a life.
FACEBOOK IS DESIGNED TO EXPLOIT HUMAN VULNERABILITIES
Recently, former Facebook president Sean Parker pointed out how Facebook is hurting people.
When Facebook was getting going, I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, ‘I’m not on social media.’ And I would say, ‘OK. You know, you will be. And then they would say, ‘No, no, no. I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence. I value intimacy.’ And I would say, … ‘We’ll get you eventually.’
Parker discussed the possible psychological effects of social media and Facebook in particular, especially for children who are now growing up in a digitally connected age:
I don’t know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because [of] the unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and … it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other … It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.
The former Facebook President discussed the company’s initial aim, which was mainly centered around drawing in and building their audience:
The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.
Parker described Facebook’s appeal as a “social-validation feedback loop” which exploits human psychology to keep users coming back to the app:
It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.
Parker also briefly discussed how his vast wealth is likely to allow him to live longer than the average person due to advances in medical science
Social Media, Making Your Life Worse Just By Using It, And it Proves Sturgeon’s Law
I tend to notice trends early. I quit Twitter 4 years ago as soon as work didn’t (unofficially) require it. Almost every time I used it, the conversation degraded by the 3rd or 4th tweet into something political, followed by unsubstantiated name calling. You have to have a thick skin and a terse personality to want to survive out there.
A few years later I tried helping a friend get on Facebook and we both decided that it was like a high school reunion, or being in high school where you make up stuff to seem like your life is better than others. He finally told me to stop and to not put him on. At that point it dawned on me that most of social media falls under Sturgeon’s Law:
Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap.
There might be a corollary that 99% of social media is crap.
The trend I noticed besides people acting false was that I never felt better after being on twitter and I loathe Facebook for the same reason. This was 5-8 years ago and now the studies are coming out proving what I noticed.
A recent article in the USA today talked about another high schoolish trend, mob mentality.
Social media also has polluted our more general life, with the ability to form online mobs increasing, as Prof. Glenn Reynolds aka Instapundit recently wrote in USA Today:
People enjoy forming mobs. Mobs allow people to do things they’d be afraid to do on their own, to steal, to hurt and kill, to burn and destroy — and also to feel set free from the bonds of civil society, to experience a kind of atavistic catharsis, a feeling of power and a solidarity with their fellow rioters, in a way that’s otherwise difficult to achieve, especially without suffering serious consequences….
But now there’s a new kind of mob, an online mob. And judging by the events of the past week, this new mob is becoming a more frequent problem. Part of that is because it’s easier (and safer) to be part of an online mob than one in the real world.
Joining a real mob requires you to leave your house, go somewhere else, and experience risks and discomforts. Joining an online mob can be done from an easy chair at home.
There are times that I post something and bizarre comments come it, so much so that I have to moderate them according to the policy on the sidebar. Some just violate the policy too much. It’s like twitter, if it can get political it usually does. Since I’ve posted a lot about the military and patriotism, I caught a lot of crap.
I read a blog post by Legal Insurrection that noted the increase in suicides and the link that may exist between the two.
A New, More Rigorous Study Confirms: The More You Use Facebook, the Worse You Feel
Social Media and Teen Depression: The Two Go Hand-In-Hand
Rise in teen suicide connected to social media popularity: study
Suicide rate’s increase can be tied to social media, technology: Dr. Marc Siegel
Using Many Social Media Platforms Linked With Depression, Anxiety Risk
Why don’t people just put it down? It looks to be like the new next cigarette, just as addictive and equally as bad for you.
As for me, I can go about my day enjoying not getting into useless tweet storms and having my head glued to my phone. Hell, I won’t even put Facebook on because I don’t want them in my life.
I’d like to say the higher IQ people would be immune to this, but it’s not true. They are just as susceptible to this and it goes under things they shouldn’t do.
WHAT FACEBOOK KNOWS AND IT ISN’T TELLING YOU
It preys on Women’s emotions and other mind altering and interfering techniques and the company KNOWS THAT IT IS DOING IT.
Even former Facebook President Sean Parker realizes the pitfalls of Facebook:
The former Facebook President discussed the company’s initial aim, which was mainly centered around drawing in and building their audience:
The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.
Parker described Facebook’s appeal as a “social-validation feedback loop” which exploits human psychology to keep users coming back to the app:
It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.
Comments such as this from Facebook former President, combined with Facebook’s mishandling of user data, has led to a greater level of distrust around the company. What was previously seen as just a website by many users was becoming better known as a data collection company.
It turns out that platforms like Facebook are the “Junk Food For the Soul”. In other words crap that isn’t good for you.
THE CESSPOOL OF HATE AND DISCRIMINATION BY TWITTER
Just say something, anything and pretty soon it can turn into a hate storm if you offend someone or anyone. I saw someone post here’s a picture of a rock, let the arguing begin just to prove it and it did.
When I check I often find that a user who has blocked me is someone I have never interacted with. So why the block? Often, it’s due to being on a block list created by a liberal activist group. Twitter supports block lists and makes it easy for users to mass-block entire universes of people they don’t even know.
But Twitter now uses factors such as the number of people who have blocked an account to determine whether to classify it as “low quality” content. The company also uses the number of complaints or reports on the account. If the number of these exceeds certain thresholds, an account can be deemed low quality and access to tweets from that user are severely diminished.
I couldn’t wait to leave that platform of time-wasting and hate and my life is better because of it.
Why Newspapers and The News Are Not Only A Dying Model, But Dead
“I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.” – Thomas Jefferson
I don’t subscribe to the newspaper anymore, but I got one this morning. I’m sure that it was a teaser to try to get me to subscribe. Upon reading it, I realized I already knew everything in the paper except the local high school football scores from games after I went to bed.
A DYING MODEL
The subscription rates to newspapers are dying, not even a slow death. Similarly, the evening news is also a dinosaur. They report what we knew as much as a full day before.
I am on twitter and read blogs all day long. I occasionally go to the news sites, but as I discuss below, their bias (I hold both left and right guilty equally here) usually makes me fact check what I’m trying to find out which defeats the purpose of fact-finding, especially if it involves politics. That subject is pretty much unavoidable these days.
Nevertheless, I enjoy many other subjects which you could read about it on other blog entries if you have nothing better to do, and I find good information about them that is interesting and INSTANT.
I’m a boomer, although a technically savvy one having been in the IT industry all my life. The Gen X,Y, millennials, and whomever follows them demand even more instantaneous everything virtually dooming the news model of our prior generation. Thank you Internet.
THE END OF THE BASTIONS OF NEWS
We have establish that we are now used to getting information instantaneously. The other reason that the model is dying is that they are biased. This is ok if you are a neo-con or a loony lefty, but for everyone else (the other 80% given 10% on the edges of left and right) we don’t trust them anymore.
Once, these two sources were the basis of our world and local information. Besides being static rather than dynamic, they also have stopped being factual sources of information, rather they are partisan, with Fox on one side and CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, NYT, WAPO, LA TImes, Reuters, AP, HuffPo, Local News, Local Papers and most other news sources on the other side of issues. All are positioned in a place that position the facts from a point of view. Some of them blatantly lie. Reporting was supposed to be the facts of the story that let the reader make up their mind on their position.
We’ve actually learned that the news has been biased for at least as long as there has been television, we just didn’t have the instant fact checking that the internet and the other sources have provided.
There is a joke from Bernie Goldberg that said if they had been reporting on Moses at Mt. Sinai, the headline would read “Moses get the 10 Commandments from God, and here are the two that we think are important to you”.
Walter Cronkite said that the Viet Nam war was lost during the time that we were winning. LBJ said that if he’d lost Cronkite, he’d lost America. We’ve since learned that the then “most trusted man in America” was also one of the most biased.
LIFE MOVES ON
Other things have died and we have lived and moved on. Black and white TV, network only channels vs. cable TV and landline phones vs. mobile (cell for those in the US) phones. Such is the fate of newspapers and TV network news. Here is just one fact concerning the NYT declining rates. I’m sure you could find somewhere that their subscriptions are increasing, but this would seem deceitful given the nature of digital delivery.
So am I disturbed by this trend? Actually I didn’t even notice it until I saw the paper in my yard this morning. I haven’t subscribed for news in many years (note: I get the Sunday paper for the coupons as long as they pay for the 1 day delivery – my sister calls me a tightwad but it leads to becoming this).
I get my news from the above stated sources and know more about what is going on than the anchors have time to present in their biases manner.
So as they say, life moves on.
Will Google Buzz be the Next Twitter?
I doubt it.
Update: Nope, It looks like a loser, there isn’t any buzz nor is there Google wave and I doubt that Google+ will make it either.
In the caveman days by technology standards, something would be the buzz and a behemoth like Microsoft would swoop in with a copy and take over the market. Word/Wordperfect and Netscape/IE come to mind.
Anymore, the next buzz could only last months before the next buzz comes around.
Twitter is too established. So much so that the next big thing is likely to overtake it, not a me too of the same thing. If Buzz is as successful as Google Wave, it’s already DOA. It’s too bad that Twitter has censored certain groups because of political bias and moral casualness and relativity. They have become an untrustworthy platform.
Google’s problem is that it has a limited audience, Gmail users. It’s big, but not big in comparison to the the marketplace worldwide. Google has said do no evil, but their Chairman continually does so and interferes with political bias. With their meddling worldwide and privacy invasion, they violate the do no evil so consistently and constantly that they can’t be trusted.
The only possibility is perhaps the advertising model, but if you are like me, I hate watching an ad when I’m trying get to a video. That’s as annoying as popup’s and spam.
Twitter may have already have an advertising model.
As for me, I’m already looking for the next new grass roots product that isn’t overtaken by the masses. That way the message gets through easier without the clutter and noise. And there are a lot of annoying people on Twitter, almost as annoying as Twitter’s social policy stance.
More on Twitter, the Positives/Negatives and Sturgeon, Now Refinement of Sources Makes It Powerful
Update: Now that a lot of social media pressure has cut the lunch/poop talk down, combined with multiple Twitter platforms, it has become a powerful tool. I find myself opening Twitter as my first site now to find out what is going on. I have refined it to include those people and topics that are meaningful to me and it gets me the information I need better than almost any other platform.
I get a lot of information from blogs still that I tweet or vice-versa and can know what is going on around the world on multiple issues. Again, refinement is the key.
I define the refinement requires that I only follow what is crucial to my interests at the time. Since what I’m following changes, so does my sources of information. That is why I’m not too worried about who or how many I follow, nor who or how many follow me. Attaining numbers is far different from attaining knowledge and information.
Platforms like this along help me eliminate bias which is killing former information platforms like the network news and print media.
I follow trends. I’ve seen much about this platform recently that has caused me to think about it. I use it sparingly and don’t post that much as I’ve always maintained that no one cares that much about what I’m doing with my time.
As an Analyst Relations Best Practice, I find that it is good to know what the analyst is doing to be on familiar terms with what they are doing. Additionally, when I can’t reach them, I direct message an analyst as a back channel and it is very reliable.
The first article I noticed though was by Zach Whittaker who wonders “Twitter, is there any point”?
I often wonder this as Twitter follows Sturgeon’s Law. If you look at the comments of this blog, it laments that many talk about lunch, flights and bowel movements.
On the plus side, he notes: “Twitter is what we call an “Enterprise 2.0″ application; not only a web application which tells the world what you’re doing, but is highly influential in the way businesses run, keeping customers and partners informed and gaining feedback on services. ”
On the negative is: “Whilst it may be a next-generation application, I still struggle to see the point it makes, or the impact it has. With the API and development opportunities, it’s certainly made an impact in developing technologies such as Adobe AIR, but besides this I fail to see why I should continue to update mine; something I haven’t done in months.”
The next thread was the Mumbai terrorists following Twitter. I’m not so sure it’s a good thing to tell them where you are if they are trying to kill you. It is not as bad though as CNN ratting out citizens trying to hide.
Recently TPTB declined $500 from Facebook to buy Twitter, so I’m wondering if they know something I don’t about its value. The jury is out for me other than as a tool to reach certain people, but I know that the hunter in me instinctually says look for cover, not expose yourself.
Delusions of Adequacy 