news – Page 5 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Has Fact Checking Ever Worked?

Facts and the factless.

Has fact checking ever worked? Seriously. Has it ever? In my opinion if there was ever any real utility, it’s long since lost its pucker.

Mark Zuckerberg caused all sorts of consternation yesterday announcing he was going to dismantle Meta’s fact checking operation now that he realizes a million-dollar bribe probably wasn’t enough to keep him out of jail during the reign of the next administration. It was quite a public puckering up.

But let’s get real for a moment. Once any fact-less statement takes off it spreads faster than a wildfire in California and all the fact checkers in the world can’t snuff it out. For some facts do indeed matter. They occasionally do in our legal system, though not always. They used to in our legislative processes, but that’s long since become a relic of a time gone by. For most of its history, journalism wasn’t what so many bemoan the loss of today. Myths have fueled our religions and our histories since we first sought understanding.

And as for social media and the Internet in general? That’s a medium that has always allowed (and encouraged) the presence of fake personas. All bets there have always been off.

Prior to Zuckerberg’s recent sucking up, Meta had taken recent fire for allowing the creation of AI-generated chatbot personas to appear in feeds alongside regular users. Reaction to that led to a pull back that’s sure to be only temporary. I mean, think of the business model. Why do you need problematic real users when you can just create them and still con advertisers into paying for ads that most avoid or don’t see anyway? Programmatic users are certainly easier to control than problematic real ones—at least until the AI takes over.

Here’s a fact that doesn’t need checking. Facts matter if you think they do, but most of the rest of the world doesn’t care what you think if they can support their beliefs—or protect their business model—by making shit up and making it stick.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

January 6th. Never Forget. Remember While You Can.

We’re living in a moment like no other.

Never Forget. Never Fucking Forget.

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Crime has a new and devalued meaning in this new world, but the criminal who started this will be in charge soon. Never forget that he and his worshippers did what they did to this country on January 6th. To make a buck. They may legally be let off the hook, itself another crime that mocks our legal system into irrelevance. They most certainly will try and erase history and this story. We have a history of that sort of whitewashing in this country. It’s something we do all too well.

Bad things are going to happen to this country and its people beginning in a few weeks. This most recent spark may have been lit on an escalator in 2015, but it burst into all-consuming flames on January 6th, 2021, after smoldering with occasional flare-ups since the American Civil War, itself an conflagration smoldering since this country’s founding.

I recommend reading this article in The Atlantic from Jacob Glick, “ What I Saw on the January 6th Committee.” It has an interesting and worthy perspective on the surrounding investigations. But let’s set investigations aside. They mean little these days when they can be both derailed or manufactured from whole cloth.

The Big Lie won. The Big Liar won. Those who worship at his feet, along with those of us who see what is actually happening and about to happen, lost. There’s this sense of trying to find a sense of normalcy, a sense of balance to manage the treacherous path ahead. There will be none. We’re off-axis, and gravity is behaving in mysterious ways.

We are living in a moment when the history of this world will change. Not under our feet, but in front of our faces. There’s no rug to be pulled out from under us, only a mirror we avoid like a vampire.

We really don’t know how or what those changes will bring. The times they are a-changing, but it’s not the same song. We are breathing rare air right now, and in our lungs, it feels mysterious and wrong. January 6th will be the moment remembered. Never forget it.

Never forget it in the ways we have forgotten the other moments that allowed it to take place.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Crashing and Burning

Time to get on with the inevitable.

Let me state clearly here at the beginning of this post, I do not want to see anyone in any capacity hurt by the looming government shutdown. Repeating, I do not want to see anyone in any capacity hurt by the looming government shutdown.

That stated and repeated, let me offer the following. Regardless of any action taken on a government shutdown people are going to get hurt.

Assume this circus/charade/shit show over a government shutdown wasn’t occurring. That responsible adults (assuming a lot I know) would be working to transition our government from one administration to another in an orderly fashion. We know, based on campaign promises and post-victory statements that large numbers of people are going to be harmed and hurt once the new administration is sworn in come January 20th. You can’t repeat often enough that cruelty is the point. There is going to be pain. Let those so desperate to cause it, feel some of it themselves.

So, with that as a given, and with the continued interference from Elon Musk, an unelected drugged up man child of an oligarch who has desires on running not just the US, but the world, I say let these damn Republican sniveling cowards shut down the country. Take Musk’s urging and keep it shut until January 20th and possibly beyond. Should make for a swell inauguration party.

At some point no matter how smoothly any transition may or may not go, the system is going to crash and there’s going to be damage none of us can calculate. Why not get on with it?

Sure you can play the game of which administration’s watch it might happen on, but give me a break. There’s no effective action coming from the outgoing administration or Congress to correct the actions of what feels like a transition already out of control and almost completed. Sure, Biden, at the moment still wearing the crown bestowed on him by the Supreme Court, could declare a state of emergency and make some bold moves. But we all know that’s not going to happen.

Call the bluffs. Blow out the bluster. Bust it all. Then let’s see what happens when the pieces need to get picked up come January.

One way or the other sacrifices are going to need to be made. Lame social media calls for resistance and not surrendering in advance are going to feel more like nursery rhymes than rallying cries. What we had is gone. It’s not coming back. You kid yourself if you think otherwise. Democrats stepping in to save some semblance of what was are only going to weaken any position they currently don’t really have at the moment. At least not until they come up with their own madman oligarch.

When an arsonist has to put out the fire he started to try and save himself, things look a lot differently.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Politics and Theatre: Demonstrators Wave Nazi Flags Outside Performance of Diary of Anne Frank

Like everything else the theatre and the arts are in for turbulent times ahead.

Most of my theatre professors earned their bones in the 1960’s. So it’s no suprise that one of my favorites once told us that “you aren’t doing real theatre unless someone shows up with guns to stop people buying tickets at the box office.” I’m not sure this was what he had in mind.

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A group of people showed up outside a community theatre performance of The Diary of Anne Frank in Livingston, Michigan waving Nazi flags. Obviously this upset the play goers and the play doers. Some were escorted to their cars following the performance. The demonstrators left the American Legion parking lot, where the play was being performed, after being told to by local police, but did exchange words with patrons across the street.

Here’s a quote from The Fowlerville Community Theatre via CNN:

The Fowlerville Community Theatre, which put on the production, said in a statement the play “centers on real people who lost their lives in the Holocaust” and added the cast and crew “endeavored to tell their story with as much realism as possible.”

“On Saturday evening, things became more real than we expected,” the group said. “The presence of protesters outside gave us a small glimpse of the fear and uncertainty felt by those in hiding.”

“As a theatre, we want to make people feel and think. We hope by presenting Anne’s story, we can help prevent the atrocities of the past from happening again.”

Something tells me theatres, and the arts in general, are in for more of this, and not just on topics that bring out anti-semitism, given how we’ve just turned this country upside down and inside out, revealing all the ugly that I think my professor genuinely thought that theatre and the arts should be protesting against and illuminating.

Of course the theatre and the artists have also shown throughout history that they can be important voices against ugliness and hatred as well even in times when they’ve been shut down and persecuted. Art and storytelling always finds a way.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Husbands, Wives, and Voting

Husbands and wives and the ballot box.

My mother and father have both been gone so long that I’m glad they don’t have to live through the political mess we’re in currently. Politics and voting seemed much simpler then. Until my father died my mother always voted the way he told her too. There wasn’t any bullying involved. It was just the way of things. They’ve both been gone long enough that this current political squabble about wives not telling their husbands that they are going to vote for Kamala Harris would make no sense to either one of them.

Jesse watters mad on fox.

As context, my first presidential election was 1972 and my dad and I argued over politics until he died in 1985. Needless to say we mostly didn’t see eye to eye. After Dad passed, Mom declared that going forward she would be voting with her children’s best interest in mind. She’d sound each of us out and make her own decisions. Sometimes we agreed. Sometimes we didn’t. She still leaned much more conservative than liberal, although in a few elections she surprised me. Had she lived long enough I’m convinced she would have voted for Hillary Clinton.

The intriguing thing, as I look back on it, was that Dad, and thus Mom, didn’t always vote one way or the other from a party perspective on a national or state level.

As I recall Dad was an Eisenhower Republican, but he voted for Kennedy and then again for Johnson. He voted for Nixon the second time around, but not his third. He voted for Mills Godwin when he ran as a Republican for governor the second time, but not when he ran as a Democrat the first time. Godwin won both times. So there was always a mix, and Mom always followed suit. Or at least that was the assumption.

Again, that was a different era in what seems like a different land.

From what I’m seeing these MAGAt dunces that are terrified of their wives voting secretly for Kamala Harris and lying to them about it probably need to worry about more than just how their household might split the vote. I’m guessing that’s one reason these Project 2025ers want to do away with no-fault divorce, along with everything else that provides women an equal footing.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

The Verge’s Election Coverage Is Top Notch

The Verge is rocking its political coverage.

Kudos to Nilay Patel and his team at The Verge. In an era when many businesses, including those in media and journalism, are working overtime to hedge their bets in the event of a victory by the decaying orange convicted felon/child rapist, who promises to exact retribution on his enemies, The Verge is producing some outstanding and unflinching political content.

You can check out each of the posts they’ve published in The Verge’s Guide to the 2024 Presidential Election. They are each well done. I’d like to highlight two of them:

A Vote For Donald Trump Is A Vote for School Shootings and Measles is Nilay Patel’s endorsement for democracy, solving problems, and Kamala Harris. Here’s a quote:

Donald Trump is a dangerous maniac who can barely complete a sentence, and it is lunacy to believe he can even recognize the existentially threatening collective action problems facing our nation, let alone actually solve them.

In an age when we’re seeing the former top dogs of the journalism profession tuck tail and retreat into their dog houses and not issue endorsements, this one is not only worth a read it is worth sharing.

Sarah Jeong lays out the stakes when it comes to our justice system in Trump’s Takeover Of The Entire Legal System Hinges On This Election. Here’s a quote:

Legal observers understood at the time the enormity and lasting impact of what was happening, but few clocked that the problem was about to become exacerbated by a recursive power grab.

Again, well done and well worth your time as are each of the posts on the blog.

I say posts, because The Verge has resumed a blogging format for its work. Don’t let that fool you. There’s real quality journalism happening on that blog. Much better, much more thorough than what we’re seeing in what used to be called the Main Stream Media.

Certainly we can’t say we weren’t warned.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Fears rise as the election nears in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading

Time for some Sunday Morning Reading, with more than a dash of politics, culture, and tech mixed together and served up for your pleasure.

Why Do Politicians Lie? My $.02 is because they can and not enough of us seem to care. Bill Adair takes a look at What I Didn’t Understand About Political Lying.

Michael Moore thinks Joe Biden should use the immunity and powers granted the office of the presidency by the Supreme Court in his final days to take care of some business. I may not agree with everything on Moore’s list, but check out what he thinks in Bucket List Joe. I do agree with the principle though.

The election is just around the corner and having served previously as an election judge I know first hand the anxiety election workers up and down the chain are feeling. The New York Times Editorial Board takes a good look at the stakes for those folks, paid and volunteer, in The Election Will Need More Heroes.

The Atlantic, famous for not endorsing a presidential candidate each and every election, has endorsed Kamala Harris. The endorsement is no surprise. Endorsements are choices and Trump has increased their pace of doing so. Check out The Case for Kamala Harris.

Life is a gamble and sometimes you need to go all in. Natasha MH pushes her chips forward with Into the Battlefield Armed with a Toothbrush.

A bit or two on tech and AI that I found interesting this week. Apparently we’re running out of data to train these AI engines on, and we’re also running out of space in data centers to do that environment crushing work. Check out Microsoft Azure CTO: US Data Centers Will Soon Hit Size Limits from Reed Albergotti.

And on a frightening note, apparently Silicon Valley Is Debating If AI Weapons Should Be Allowed To Decide To Kill. Margus MacColl explores this tricky issue, which really shouldn’t be a tricky issue.

There’s also apparently slippage in the great gold rush to Artificial Intelligence as everyone chases a less than Holy Grail of turning these data crunching engines to machines that can reason. Gary Marcus says that LLMs Don’t Do Formal Reasoning-And That Is A HUGE Problem. For the investors, shareholders, and suckers perhaps. I’m guessing the rest of us are just fine with that.

The two hurricanes that hit the U.S have caused so much damage and for those suffering that has been multiplied by the political BS that has followed. Who would have thought that on the ground Neo-Nazi’s showed up to “help” but. more to the point, use the disasters and their aftermath as recruiting tools? Tawnell D. Hobbs, Jennifer Levitz and Joe Barrett explore When The Hurricane-Relief Worker Turns Out To Be a Neo-Nazi. Who would have thought it? Anyone who has read a history book.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

Sunday Morning Reading

Halloween is around the corner and the election is nearing. Sunday Morning Reading is full of scary politics and a tech ghost story.

There’s one month to go prior to the election that will decide the fate of the U.S. and possibly the world. After today that’s four more Sundays for Sunday Morning Reading. Fair warning those four Sundays will have more than a normal dose of politics in the mix. That said, enjoy this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

Politics has infected everything and in my opinion in the worst ways imaginable. Nothing points this up like the storm around the storm recovery from Hurricane Helene. Juliette Kayyem in The Atlantic tells us The Fog of Disaster Is Getting Worse, and she’s correct. Perhaps a better way for journalism to cover this beyond just complaining would be to do what Chantal Allam and Joe Marusak did in the Charlotte Observer and tackle each bit of disinformation, (which I prefer to call lies) head on in Helene Fact Check: Here Are The Rumors and the Reality in Western North Carolina.

The mythical swing voter has become larger than myth. Parker Malloy in Dame tells us The Real Swing Voters Aren’t Who You Think.

Phillip Bump usually nails it. He does so again in Trump and His Allies Are Not Planning To Concede Another Election Loss. Nothing is over on November 5th.

LZ Granderson in The Los Angeles Times also nails it in Trump Blames Immigrants As If That Were A Policy Position. It’s Just Racist. I’m losing hope we’ll ever recognize that we’ve recognized this and don’t seem to care.

Trump and his delusional followers couldn’t be this close to turning the clock back unless they had help from our transparently corrupt Supreme Court. Bill Blum takes a look at the awful immunity decision in John Roberts and the Second Coming of Dred Scott.

Speaking of the Supreme Court, Andy Kroll, Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz take a look at why We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court’s Supermajority.

Joyce Vance is worried that even if Trump loses he won’t face any consequences in Trump Must Be Tried. She’s right to worry.

And the final link on the politics beat is and is not about politics, but it is about endings. Sunita Puri looks at how promises at the end of life, like Jimmy Carter’s to stay alive to vote one last time, can affect our last days in Death Has Two Timelines.

The WordPress saga continues and it seems to get muddier with each clarifying new chapter. Dave Winer says WordPress Has a Greater Destiny. I agree with his premise. I think those screwing things up do as well. In a competition between destinies unfortunately everyone loses.

I’m preparing some thoughts on the new iPhones and Apple releases for later this week. I won’t have to write much about the new Camera Control after reading José Adorno’s piece Apple’s Biggest Hardware Change On the iPhone 16 Is A Huge Disappointment. I feel much the same.

As if the political moment wasn’t harrowing enough, Halloween is also around the corner. Angela Watercutter tells an intriguing tale that weaves tech (TikToK), a haunted house, the cops and a rolled up rug in her backyard in She Asked TikTok If Her House Was Haunted. Then The Cops Came.

The New York Times Plays the ‘What If’ Game with Trump’s Desire for Revenge

The question isn’t ‘what if’? The question is how can it be stopped?

In one of its graphic layouts the New York Times has decided to play “What If” with Donald Trump’s desire for revenge and retribution should he be reelected in an article titled If Trump Wins, Could He Really Use the Justice Department to Jail His Rivals?

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The short answer is yes.

There’s really no “what if” about it. One of the most frightening discoveries many Americans came to over this past almost-decade is just how ill equipped our constitution and system of justice is when it comes to dealing with someone of Trump’s ilk. It’s always been that way but we’ve had (mostly) men of good character keeping us on the tracks. We’ve only had one instance in my lifetime (Nixon) that has tested the boundaries and limitations to the point of breaking. Things held then. They won’t this time around.

Dependent on the honor and integrity of those holding office those boundaries and limitations have been washed away like most of the top soil in Western North Carolina. When it comes to what used to be the Republican Party, the only honor that seems to exist in that crowd is the honor among thieves with no limitations on their lack of integrity.

To such a point that Trump feels completely free to talk about how he wants to leverage the Justice Department to set up his own reign of terror, and finds far too many cheering him on. You can almost smell the blood lust seeping out from under those red hats.

Now that we know Trump’s desires AND that he has a completely corrupted Supreme Court willing to grant him the leeway, this shouldn’t come as a surprise nor should it be a game of “What If?” We have a system that can’t stop it and individuals willing to gleefully take advantage of it to pursue harm.

As the Times points out, Trump could easily pull this off and “stay within the constitutional limits on presidential power.”

Regardless of who is elected, the only question is what are we going to do about it?

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Spread the Word: Today Is National Voter Registration Day

Today is a good day to check your voter registration or register if you haven’t.

Spread the word. Today, Tuesday September 17, is National Voter Registration Day. It’s a good day to reach out to your friends, family members, and neighbors and encourage them to register if they haven’t or to check their registration if they have.

Depending on where you live keeping up to date on your registration is as crucially important as registering. We all know that some states are working to purge voter rolls or make voting more difficult. Certainly you can take care of this on other days, but don’t let the clock run out on you.

You can go to this link to check your registration or register.

Bottom line it is up to you to make sure you’ve got things lined up or raise hell if others are working to keep you from voting.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.