Year: 2020

Objectively Pro-Bigotry and Pro-Fascist

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Clearly Fraudulent

I am referring, of course to Facebook.
It turns out that Zuckerberg’s monster is complicit in Ben Shapiro’s astroturfing to monetize false engagement.

You can be sure that if this were someone selling cheesecake, they would have been banned years ago.

From a more personal perspective, if I were to do this on my blog, I would be demonitized instantly.

In fact, if I were to make a post just SUGGESTING that you click through on the ads on my blog, I would subject to sanctions from Google™ Adsense™.  (Please see my disclaimer below)

I’m not sure if Zuckerberg is a wing-nut, or if he simply finds that it’s more profitable to sell whack-doodle conspiracy theories to the wing-nuts, and I don’t care.  The effect is the same:

The success of The Daily Wire, the website run by right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro, on Facebook is mind-boggling. The site has a small staff and primarily aggregates content from Twitter and other news outlets. Typically, its articles are very short, usually less than 500 words, and contain no original reporting.

And yet, last month, The Daily Wire was the seventh-ranked publisher on Facebook, according to the analytics service NewsWhip. Articles published in The Daily Wire attracted 60,616,745 engagements in May. Engagement is a combination of shares, likes, and comments, and is a way of quantifying distribution on Facebook. The reach of The Daily Wire’s articles was equal to the New York Times (60,722,727) and more than the Washington Post (49,219,525).

But that actually understates how well The Daily Wire does on Facebook. While the New York Times published 15,587 articles in May, and the Washington Post published 8,048, The Daily Wire published just 1,141. On a per article basis, The Daily Wire receives more distribution than any other major publisher. And it’s not close.

What explains The Daily Wire’s phenomenal success on Facebook? Popular Information revealed part of the answer last October. But the full story is much darker.

Popular Information has discovered a network of large Facebook pages — each built by exploiting racial bias, religious bigotry, and violence — that systematically promote content from The Daily Wire. These pages, some of which have over 2 million followers, do not disclose a business relationship with The Daily Wire. But they all post content from The Daily Wire ten or more times each day. Moreover, these pages post the exact same content from The Daily Wire at the exact same time.

The undisclosed relationship not only helps explain The Daily Wire’s unlikely success on Facebook but also appears to violate Facebook’s rules.

………

The network of large Facebook pages promoting The Daily Wire are all run by Corey and Christy Pepple, who are best known as the creators of Mad World News. Facebook pages controlled by the Pepples include Mad World News (2,176,003 followers), The New Resistance (2,857,876 followers), Right Stuff (610,809 followers), America First (577,753 followers), and American Patriot (447,799 followers).

………

Why do these toxic Facebook pages keep sharing content from The Daily Wire? Do the Pepples just really like Ben Shapiro’s site? The Daily Wire did not respond to a request for comment. But the behavior of these pages strongly suggests that The Daily Wire and Mad World News, LLC, the company owned by Corey and Christy Pepple, have a business relationship.

The Daily Wire is the only website outside of those owned by the Pepples that is shared by these five pages. And each of the five Facebook pages shares at least ten Daily Wire links every day. Conspicuously, the Facebook pages share the exact same links from The Daily Wire at the exact same time.

………

The pattern repeats over and over again, ten times or more every day. It’s behavior that strongly suggests that Mad World News, LLC is being paid to promote content from The Daily Wire.
If that’s the case, The Daily Wire could be violating Facebook’s rules. Facebook allows pages to be paid to post content, but the sponsorship must be disclosed using Facebook’s branded content tool.

………

The activity also appears to violate Facebook’s prohibition on coordinated inauthentic behavior, which includes a ban on activity to “artificially boost the popularity of content.”

………

There is no reason that the network of Facebook pages run by Corey and Christy Pepple should have flown beneath Facebook’s radar. Years ago, the Pepples became notorious for exploiting Facebook with poisonous content.

………

The Daily Wire’s apparent business relationship with Mad World News isn’t the first time the site has been caught flouting Facebook’s rules. Last October, Popular Information revealed a clandestine network of 14 large Facebook pages that purported to be independent but exclusively promote content from The Daily Wire in a coordinated fashion.

………

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a relationship with Shapiro, who Zuckerberg has hosted at his home. According to a source who has spoken with Shapiro, Zuckerberg and Shapiro remain in direct communication.

My standard disclaimer on any post about the aforementioned service applies:

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

Nature Cannot Be Fooled

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The good little Neoliberals in Chile decided to increase forestation and offset carbon emissions by paying loggers to plant forests.

This program achieved none of its goals:

A multi-decade state program to subsidize tree planting in one of South America’s wealthiest nations led to a loss of biodiversity and did little to increase the forests’ capacity to capture greenhouse gases.

Chile’s plantation forests more than doubled between 1986 and 2011, while native forests shrunk by 13%, according to a new report by U.S. and Chilean academics. The country subsidized tree planting while its forestry sector boomed over that period.

Yet the environmental benefits are not as clear. Subsidies accelerated biodiversity losses in Chile as plantations often focus on one or two profitable tree species, the report said. While forest area expanded by more than 100% between 1986 and 2011, the carbon stored in vegetation increased by just 1.98% during that period.

“Our simulations indicate that plantation subsidies accelerated biodiversity losses in Chile by encouraging the expansion of plantations into more biodiverse forests,” researchers said in the paper published inNature Susainability on Monday. Chile’s case “provides several cautionary lessons,” according to Robert Heilmayr at the University of California Santa Barbara, Cristian Echeverria at Universidad de Concepcion in Chile and Eric F. Lambin at Stanford University.

This has happened time and time again:  Attempts to enlist the profit motives to achieve a public good generate profits, but little in the way of public good.

The title is taken from Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman’s comment in the appendix that he authored for the report on the space shuttle Challenger destruction:

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

1½ Million for the 3rd Week in a Row

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Not Good

Initial unemployment claims remained at 1.5 million, worse than had been predicted.

This is not a “V-Shaped” recovery:

The number of workers seeking jobless benefits has held steady at about 1.5 million each week so far in June, signaling a slow recovery for the U.S. economy as states face new infections that could impede hiring and consumer spending.

Applications for unemployment benefits were slightly below 1.5 million last week, at 1.48 million, the Labor Department reported Thursday. While weekly totals have gradually eased from a late March peak of nearly 7 million, they also remain well above the prepandemic record of 695,000 in 1982.

Meanwhile, the number of people receiving benefits, an indicator for overall layoffs, totaled 19.5 million in the week ended June 13, down slightly from previous weeks.

Economists say the sluggish improvements in claims tallies dim prospects for a quick recovery. Further, a recent increase in coronavirus cases could affect efforts to reopen the economy—and get people back to work and spending money.

Not a Good Look

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Remember “Success Academy”?

It’s an under-performing politically connected charter school that overpays its CEO (and former city council member) Eva Moskowitz.

It also turns out that, at least according to its now former spokesweasel, it’s also racist and abusive as a matter of policy:

A spokesperson for New York City’s largest charter network resigned in protest, stating she can no longer defend Success Academy’s “racist and abusive practices” that are “detrimental to the emotional well being” of its students.

“I am resigning because I can no longer continue working for an organization that allows and rewards the systemic abuse of students, parents, and employees,” wrote Liz Baker, a Success spokesperson, in a resignation letter Tuesday.

“As the organization’s press associate, I no longer wish to defend Success Academy in response to any media inquiries,” she continued in the letter, which was obtained by Chalkbeat. “I do not believe that Success Academy has scholars’ best interests at heart, and I strongly believe that attending any Success Academy school is detrimental to the emotional wellbeing of children.”

The stunning resignation letter comes as the network has been besieged by complaints from employees, parents, and students about a culture that some argue is racist. Baker, who has worked at Success for about a year and four months, is one of the network’s most visible employees and was responsible for responding to reporters’ questions about the network.

………

Baker’s resignation is likely to draw further attention to turmoil at the network, which has boiled over in recent weeks. In largely anonymous social media posts, people connected to the network surfaced complaints about calling 911 on students with behavior problems, policing Black students’ hair by banning certain headwraps, and a culture where white educators are comfortable dressing down parents of color for minor issues like arriving late to pick up their children.

Half of the teachers and principals at Success are white, 27% are Black, 13% are Hispanic, and 5% are Asian. Meanwhile, 83% of the network’s roughly 18,000 students are Black or Hispanic and most come from low-income families.

Remember Success Academy is a charter school, which means that it is publicly funded, and Eva Moskowitz makes $890,000.00 a year with 17,000 students, as compared to the $345,000.00 received by New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, who serves 1,100,000 students.

Money well spent, huh?

Moo

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I really cannot add anything to this.  It exceeds my capability for mockery:

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) cannot sue Twitter for defamation over the contents of tweets posted by a parody account posing as Nunes’ cow, a Virginia judge ruled Wednesday.

The ruling (PDF) from judge John Marshall found that Twitter is “immune from the defamation claims,” as first reported by the Fresno Bee.

Nunes in 2019 filed a $250 million lawsuit against three Twitter accounts as well as the service itself alleging defamation, negligence, and conspiracy. One of the three accounts belongs to an identifiable person, Republican political strategist Liz Mair. The other two are clearly parody accounts: One, @DevinCow, posing as Devin Nunes’ cow, and the other, @DevinNunesMom, posing as Nunes’ mother.

Not The Onion.

Tweet of the Day

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"I joined a gang of bank robbers. These incompetents, tripped on their shoelaces, got lost, ran out of gas, forgot the masks and passed a note to a teller that read 'I have a gub.' Worst part? They wouldn't let me blow things up! I quit. Here's a book about my moral superiority." https://t.co/tzYQUyqmbQ

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) June 25, 2020

John Bolton is not your friend, and he has been a consistent force for evil his entire life.

Linkage

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John Oliver finishes his ownership of corrupt coal baron Bob Murray’s SLAPP suit:

Welcome to the Brotherhood of Sh%$-Hole Nations

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As a result of an abysmally managed pandemic response, it is looking increasingly likely that the EU is giving serious consideration to banning travelers from the United States.

This is some definition of, “Making America Great Again,” that I was previously unaware of:

European Union countries rushing to revive their economies and reopen their borders after months of coronavirus restrictions are prepared to block Americans from entering because the United States has failed to control the scourge, according to draft lists of acceptable travelers reviewed by The New York Times.

 That prospect, which would lump American visitors in with Russians and Brazilians as unwelcome, is a stinging blow to American prestige in the world and a repudiation of President Trump’s handling of the virus in the United States, which has more than 2.3 million cases and upward of 120,000 deaths, more than any other country.

 European nations are currently haggling over two potential lists of acceptable visitors based on how countries are faring with the coronavirus pandemic. Both lists include China, as well as developing nations like Uganda, Cuba and Vietnam. Both also exclude the United States and other countries that were deemed too risky because of the spread of the virus.

Welcome to the 3rd world, folks.

Payback is a Bitch

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Remember when Florida required anyone coming there from New York to quarantine for 14 days?

Well now New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are requiring a 14 day quarantine for travelers from Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

Oh to be a fly on the wall the meeting between Governors Cuomo, Murphy, and Lamont:

Hey, remember those hicks down south getting in our face?

It’s Payback Time

(Disclaimer: This is not an actual dialogue.  It’s the product of my imagination.)

I am amused.

46 Years of Anti-Union Politics Will Do That

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This is an Embarrassment

The United States hasn’t had a President who was not hostile to Organized labor since at least the Ford administration, so it is no surprise that America has been ranked as having the worst worker’s rights environment among all the developed nations:

The U.S. has the worst record among major developed countries when it comes to workers’ rights, according to a survey of labor unions.

The world’s largest economy is ranked a 4 in a scale by the International Trade Union Congress, meaning there are “systematic violations of rights.” Every other Group of Seven country ranks 3 or better.

How about card check and repealing Taft-Hartley the next time the Democrats controll the White House, House of Representatives, and the Senate?

Primaries Tonight

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And while we do not have final results, there are way too many absentee and mail-in ballots for that, we do have some results.

Final results should be available in the next week or so:

As an FYI, AOC crushed her Republican until a few months ago Wall Street opponent.

Rule 1 of Mistreatment of Cop Stories: Cops Lie

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Rule 2 is see rule 1.

Case in point is a police officer producing a false report of a tampon being put in his Starbucks Frappuccino.

It is, of course, false.  What is in the picture (you can click through, but it’s kind of gross) is NOT a tampon, as evidenced by the intrepid reporter who tested a tampon in a Frappuccino.

How the f%$# to you list that on your resume?

Update: This story has been updated with comment from Target, which said it has “reviewed video footage and have not found any suspicious behavior.”

 Last night, America was seized with horror when Bill Melugin, a reporter for the local Fox affiliate in Los Angeles, tweeted an image of a tampon being pulled from a cup with the tip of a distinctive green straw.

 An off-duty LAPD officer, according to Melugin, found the tampon in a blended coffee drink he’d purchased at a Starbucks inside a Target in Diamond Bar, and later filed a report with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.

 “This disgusting assault on a police officer was carried out by someone with hatred in their heart and who lacks human decency,” the LAPD’s union told Melugin.

………

The story, though, raised questions, and not just because of the long history of cops claiming to have been assaulted by fast-food workers, only for those claims to turn out to be nonsense. According to Melugin’s reporting, the officer could only have been identified by their police credit union debit card. As anyone who’s been in a Starbucks since the coronavirus pandemic began knows, though, cashiers don’t handle debit cards. As the story goes, then, the cashier would have had to closely scrutinize the officer’s card as they ran it through the machine and alert a barista to their identity; the barista, making the drink in plain sight, would have then have had to acquire a tampon and put it into the drink after it had been through a blender.

………

In order to see if the cop’s story was even remotely plausible, Motherboard performed a science experiment. Aric Toler, a researcher at Bellingcat—an organization which analyzes open source media and has, for example, exposed the use of chemical weapons use in Syria by studying video and photographic evidence—suggested, in the interests of rigor, that we buy 10 Frappuccinos and 10 different types of tampons. Given the fact that we were biking and did not want to spend a fortune, we decided instead to try one Frappuccino and one tampon and see how that went.

You can click through for the details, but once again, we are seeing cops “Testilie.”

Doing the Right Thing for the Basest of Reason

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This is driven by bigotry and politics, with Covid-19 being used as a pretext, but it is the right thing to do.

The visas in question, H-1B, L-1A, etc. are intended to bring in people who with skills that are unavailable in the United States.

In reality, it’s primarily about getting cheap foreign workers into the country, with foreign body shops like Infosys and Tata being the largest users of the program.

The tech companies are screaming that the sky is falling, but they will be able to get what they need, they will just need to pay a few bucks more an hour:

President Trump issued a proclamation Monday barring many categories of foreign workers and curbing immigration visas through the end of the year, moves the White House said will protect U.S. workers reeling from job losses amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The ban expands earlier restrictions, adding work visas that many companies use, especially in the technology sector, landscaping services and the forestry industry. It excludes agricultural laborers, health-care professionals supporting the pandemic response and food-service employees, along with some other temporary workers.

The restrictions will prevent foreign workers from filling 525,000 jobs, according to the administration’s estimates. The measures will apply only to applicants seeking to come to the United States, not workers who already are on U.S. soil.

“American workers compete against foreign nationals for jobs in every sector of our economy, including against millions of aliens who enter the United States to perform temporary work,” the proclamation states. “Under ordinary circumstances, properly administered temporary worker programs can provide benefits to the economy. But under the extraordinary circumstances of the economic contraction resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak, certain nonimmigrant visa programs authorizing such employment pose an unusual threat to the employment of American workers.”

In fact, these problems have always posed a threat to American workers and American workers’ wages.

The real goal of these programs has been to supply cheap tech labor since before I graduated from college. (I literally had someone in an unemployment office in 1982 tell me not to bother, because H-1B job postings were not a real job opening.)

I expect this to be reversed shortly after the election, but this moratorium will provide an opportunity to show that there is no real STEM shortage, and this is a good thing.

Pandemic Neurosis Strikes Yours Truly

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What’s more, I’m not alone I am one of roughly 50,000 people who have signed a petition to rename Columbus, Ohio, to “Flavortown,” as an homage to celebrity chef Guy Fieri.

I am NOT a fan of Fieri’s TV shows, but, you know, pandemic, bored, slowly going crazy, and he has been doing good work when he’s not doing his job on TV, which appears to be portraying a bleach blond hedgehog:

A petition seeking to rename Columbus, Ohio, “Flavortown” to honor native Guy Fieri has attracted thousands of signatures.

“Columbus is an amazing city, but one whose name is tarnished by the very name itself. Its namesake, Christopher Columbus, is in The Bad Place because of all his raping, slave trading, and genocide. That’s not exactly a proud legacy,” the petition states, referencing both a line from the NBC series “The Good Place” and passages in the explorer’s own diary describing atrocities committed on the island of Hispaniola.

“Why not rename the city Flavortown? The new name is twofold. For one, it honors Central Ohio’s proud heritage as a culinary crossroads and one of the nation’s largest test markets for the food industry,” it goes on to state. “Secondly, cheflebrity Guy Fieri was born in Columbus, so naming the city in honor of him (he’s such a good dude, really) would be superior to its current nomenclature.”

“Even though it’s my favorite city, I was always a bit ashamed of the name,” Tyler Woodbridge, who started the petition, told CNN.

Woodbridge added that Fieri’s charitable work on behalf of restaurant workers, raising more than $20 million for those who lost work or wages during the coronavirus pandemic, made him a worthier namesake for the city.

Go, sign, and if you live in “Flavortown”, talk to your elected officials.

Have You Heard of the Hostile Workplace?

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I’m working from home 3 days a week right now, and I have an excessively affectionate workplace.

It’s not Sharon* though, it’s the cats.

Today, I could not go more than 15 minutes before Meatball (the little queen) jumping up on my lap, or Destructo (the BIG Tom) nuzzling my elbow in a quest for affection and attention.

I’m sure that I am not the only one who has experienced this.

It’s surreal.

*Love of my life, light of the  cosmos, she  who must be obeyed, my wife.

Something Weird is Going On

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The White House press corps(e) has just been kicked off the White House grounds, which is a very unusual development.

This is a highly unusual development. They didn’t do this when Trump cowered in inspected the White House bunker 3 weeks ago.

I see a few possibilities:

  • Trump is cowering in inspecting the bunker again, and does not want the press to see.
  • He’s having a physical health problem.
  • He is having some sort of mental breakdown, likely losing his sh%$ over his underwhelming Tulsa campaign rally.

Anyone wanna take bets on which is this?

Nope, No Racism Here

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Whites Only

At the Ramsey jail in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the jail was specifically excluding black officers from having any contact with infamous murderer cop Derek Chauvin.

I really could not imagine them doing this for a non-cop, or for a black cop:

Staff members working at the jail that held Derek Chauvin, the white officer charged with murder in the killing of George Floyd, say that only white employees were allowed to guard him when he was first brought to the facility last month.

Eight officers have filed complaints with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, saying that the superintendent of the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul kept them from bringing Mr. Chauvin to his cell — or even being on the same floor as him — last month, solely because of their race.

The officers, half of whom are black and all of whom are people of color, said the orders from the superintendent, Steve Lydon, who is white, amounted to segregation and indicated that he thought they could not be trusted to do their jobs because they are not white.

After initially denying that officers’ contact with Mr. Chauvin had been determined by race, a spokesman for the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office acknowledged the move this weekend and said Mr. Lydon had been temporarily removed from the superintendent role as the sheriff investigates the officers’ claims.

Roy Magnuson, the spokesman, provided a statement that he said Mr. Lydon gave to investigators. In it, Mr. Lydon said he had decided to keep nonwhite employees away from Mr. Chauvin because he believed having people of color interact with him could have “heightened ongoing trauma.” He said he had only done so on short notice and for 45 minutes before realizing that he had made a mistake, after which he reversed the order and apologized. Officers said it had lasted longer — affecting one shift two days later — and that not enough had been done in response.

The discrimination complaints, which were first reported by The Star Tribune, were the latest instance in which correctional officials have been accused of giving preferential treatment to a white inmate. Some activists have for years argued that officers were too kind to Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., when they placed him in a bulletproof vest and bought him food from Burger King. Critics said that a black suspect in a similar crime would not have gotten the same treatment.

In this case, one of the officers said in his complaint that he had seen, on the jail’s cameras, a white lieutenant let Mr. Chauvin use her phone inside his cell, a violation of the facility’s policy. Mr. Magnuson said the Sheriff’s Office was opening an internal investigation into that claim.

Gee, what a surprise, racist supervisors in a law enforcement agency.  Hoocoodanode?

Is Work from Home the New Normal?

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If this is the new normal, it presages a major change in the workplace, at least the office workplace, though I have no clue as to what the end-state would be.  ¯_(ツ)_/¯

New York City will allow companies to reopen their offices on Monday after a three-month lockdown from the pandemic. Few employees seem ready or willing to go back.

Most companies are taking a cautious approach. Some are keeping offices closed, while others are opening them at reduced occupancy and allowing employees to decide if they prefer to keep working from home. Mary Ann Tighe, chief executive for the tri-state region at real-estate services firm CBRE Group Inc., said many New York City clients don’t plan on being fully back in the office before Labor Day. And maybe only then if schools have reopened.

Companies are worried about another wave of infections, Ms. Tighe said. Some are also concerned about commuting bottlenecks, if more drivers lead to traffic jams or public transit limits the number of riders. Lower maximum occupancy in elevators could also lead to lines.

New York real-estate brokers and landlords say they anticipate only 10% to 20% of Manhattan’s office workers will return on Monday, though they expect that figure to increase gradually over the summer. Traders at financial-services companies are eager to return, these people say, but most of their other employees are staying away. Tech and creative companies are also taking their time.

Potentially, this could mean a number of things:

  • Reduced demand for office space.
  • Fewer positions in middle-management.
  • Reductions in traffic and commuting time.
  • Human Sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

OK, maybe not that last one, but if the demand for office space in the center city drops long term by more than a few percent, it could be the genesis of another banking or real estate crisis.