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Well, I sat down at a computer which I haven't used in a long time. More than a year? I'm really not sure when I last logged into Facebook with it. For some reason, I thought I'd click on Facebook. Firefox has my saved password, I should just click and be in. Ooops - I'm not in. It wants me to enter a password, or click the "forgot password" thingy. Well - actually, I didn't want on Facebook very badly. It's far to much trouble to go to my own computer, and retrieve the password. I remember now that I changed the password about a year ago, give or take a little.

NOTE: I did NOT click the button to ask for a new password or anything. I loaded the login page, entered an invalid password, and was redirected back to the login page. End of story - the page was then closed.

So, a few days later - not minutes later, or hours later, but DAYS later - I check my email, and Facefook is offering to log me in. Hmmmm? Fact is, I've logged in, from this computer, since then. I wanted to check up on a group of veterans, and checked their Facebook page.

From: Facebook

Guy, get back on Facebook with one click

Hi Guy,

It looks like you're having trouble logging into Facebook. Just click the button below and we'll log you in.

Get Back on Facebook

If you weren't trying to log in, let us know.
 

Now, I might understand this email, had I received it within a few minutes of the failed login. The system noticed that someone failed a login, and automatically generated an email - that seems like it might be a "feature". But, this email is days, almost a week, after the fact. WTF? Doesn't look like an automagic script thing to me. Worse, as I say, I DID log in, and check the page that I was interested in, then logged out. That probably should have turned off any automagic actions that the system was working on.

The email APPEARS TO BE from Facefook, but I'm sure as hell not clicking the link provided.

So, who thinks that I'm being phished, and who thinks that Facefook (or someone at Facefook) has chosen to give me some personal attentio? Shit looks weird to me!

Oh, before anyone asks, I'll decline to provide the actual email with identifying information. True, those identifiers are false, but I'd rather not associate them with this, or other accounts using this username, etc.

So, I went and saw Episode VIII today at noon. I figured, screw opening night; I'll catch it Saturday in the daytime so I don't have to stand in line, fight for elbow room, or listen to a bunch of shitheads talk through it.

tl;dr: I wish I'd just given up on the franchise.

I'm not going to bore you with a lot of detailed analysis because that's not how you watch a movie for enjoyment. I'm just going to tell you it wasn't good and boil the "why" down to the most crucial bit: the dialogue.

If you ripped out the voice track from the movie, rewrote it, and re-recorded it, VIII could have been about as good as VI. As it stands, the dialogue was worse than I or II. Yes, even considering Jar-Jar. After mostly enjoying VII and the much better Rogue One, this was to me the biggest let-down in franchise history.

The sausage is made. You may now officially commence the bitching that you prepared long before you knew what was in the bill.

Previously: Another Former Facebook Exec Speaks Out

Palihapitiya's initial remarks included the statement that Facebook "overwhelmingly does good in the world". Maybe that wasn't good enough for somezucky?

Former Facebook Exec Who Suggested Social Media Was Destroying Society: I Love Facebook

He's already rich. He can feed his kids. But can he protect them from the reach of Facebook?

The USA just decided apparently to abolish "Net Neutrality" making the public Internet beholden to large, established corporations. This is bad news for individuals and small businesses.

What we need is a new internet, a grass-roots one, ad-hoc, created by volunteers.

Many years ago when WiFi was new, there was one such attempt I seem to remember called "Consume the Net." I never had the money to buy the hardware at the time, but it sounded like a great idea. The problem in those days was getting any sort of broadband connection was difficult and expensive. You could get a 56kbps POTS modem, sometimes ISDN (64k * 2) or cable (500-600kbps) if you were very lucky and ADSL was just coming out. WiFi was already running at megabits.

Now we have a different set of problems to work around, but the technology is ubiquitous, cheap and mature.

It would we cool to have the equivalent of open access points on this new co-operative internet that you could scan for and join if you promised to behave.

Any ideas?

The Guardian has a story about some Harry Potter stories written by Botnki's predictive text keyboard (complete with link to github).

        “He saw Harry and immediately began to eat Hermione’s family. Ron’s Ron shirt was just as bad as Ron himself.

        ‘If you two can’t clump happily, I’m going to get aggressive,’ confessed the reasonable Hermione.”

So not much worse that the original.

ITER fusion project lies about the dates, budget and power levels

Roy Moore Emerges from Self-Imposed Exile to Chat with 12-Year-Old Girl

Trump Group Sends 12-Year-Old Girl to Interview Roy Moore Ahead of Alabama Election

Millie in Alabama (5m49s)

Roy Moore seemed delighted to be interviewed by a friendly, innocent, and untainted young reporter. He touched her at 4m49s into the video.

What Does North Korea Want? Dennis Rodman Says He Has Secret Message From Kim Jong Un for Donald Trump

Note that PotCoin T-shirt from June.

Dennis Rodman's North Korea trip is backed by a digital currency for weed

Racial dispute at beloved bakery roils liberal college town in Ohio

The three students were arrested after punching and kicking the white shopkeeper. The 18- and 19-year-old students said that they were racially profiled and that their only crime was trying to buy alcohol with fake identification; the shopkeeper, Allyn Gibson, said the students attacked him after he caught them trying to steal bottles of wine.

The day after the arrests, hundreds of students protested outside the bakery. Members of Oberlin's student senate published a resolution saying Gibson's had "a history of racial profiling and discriminatory treatment."

Few colleges put the "liberal" into "liberal arts" more than Oberlin, which in the early 1800s became the first in the country to regularly admit women and minorities. But it also more recently has become, for conservatives, a symbol of political correctness gone awry and entitled youth.

News articles in 2015 quoted students decrying the school dining hall's sushi and Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches as cultural appropriation. The divisive, voice-of-a-generation actress Lena Dunham, famously a 2008 Oberlin alumna, was quoted in Food & Wine magazine as saying, "The press reported it as, 'How crazy are Oberlin kids?' But to me, it was actually, 'Right on.'"