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A parody website with embarrassing photos of Joe Biden is outranking his official campaign page on Google

The internet snafu suggests the Biden campaign is having early difficulty with its digital operation. That could pose trouble for the 76-year-old as he competes in a field that has already proven to be savvy with new tools for online outreach and fundraising.

The problem has also emerged despite the Biden campaign's prolific spending on Google.

An online tracker maintained by the progressive digital advertising firm ACRONYM shows the Biden campaign has spent more than $360,000 on Google platforms, racking up more spending on the site than all the other candidates in the crowded field except Sen. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

Google search

joebiden.info

joebiden.com

The informative parody website doesn't come with an annoying popup like the official one does.

The parody website presents a number of Biden's past positions:

In 1996, Senator Joe Biden voted for the Defense of Marriage Act which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. This law also prevented states from recognizing same sex marriages.

Senator Joe Biden voted for the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 which initiated the “3 Strikes and You’re Out” policy which has resulted in many people spending life sentences in jail for minor crimes.

In 1982, Senator Joe Biden initially voted for a constitutional amendment which would have allowed states to overturn Roe v. Wade – the Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion.

In the 1970s Joe Biden stated that “I have become convinced that busing is a bankrupt concept.” He actively worked to oppose busing as a way to desegregate schools. Biden even wrote letters seeking the support of people who thought schools should be segregated by race.

Senator Joe Biden, who at the time was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted for the resolution to authorize military involvement in Iraq. The Iraq war resulted in the death of 4,424 US military members and cost taxpayers $2.4 trillion.

Harsher mandatory minimum sentences for drug use, civil asset forfeiture without a conviction, and imposing death penalty for drug related murders – this is Joe Biden’s legacy. He voted for both the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and its 1988 counterpart and claimed George H. Bush’s war on drugs was “not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough.”

Daily Show segment from 2015 (5m5s)

Previously: Joe Biden's #MeToo Adventure Continues

Since the story has already hit the HoF, I assume you lot are relatively aware of what went down with aristarchus and myself regarding his "control the narrative and push other discussion down the page with lots of top-level AC posts that nobody can tell are all by the same person" tactic and me modding the posts Spam for it.

Well, martyb/Bytram gave me a good chewing on and reversed the mods because that particular type of spam isn't covered in the moderator guidelines. And he's absolutely correct. I maintain that it definitely should be and something covering it may very well be added to the moderator guidelines soon but it was not there when I did the moderating.

We'd barely finished discussing it in a private, unlogged staff channel when Azuma Hazuki was out in the main channel assuming that I did the moderating and that I wouldn't be held accountable for it even though she got mod banned for misusing the Spam mod by myself earlier. She actually had something of a point mixed in all the angry. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. So I mod banned myself.

Feel free to have a good laugh at me and look for a story on the moderator guidelines in the next month or two.

I heard someone talking about The English Channel?

Then I realized. My cable package does not include The English Channel!

Is there somewhere it is available streaming online? (for free, of course, because socialism, and/or entitlement)

If I lived in England and did not get The English Channel I would be so mad I would swim South all the way to France!

(for extra credit one could try swimming North all the way to France)

One of the gifts that Jasmine gave to me was introducing me to The Arkells. Her parents got her tickets to see them live and I was forunate enough to be invited to go see them with her.

I had never really listened to them before meeting Jasmine and she was a big fan of them. Initially I thought they were only so-so. I went to the concert and they blew me away. I started listening to them at work, and I freaking love them!

They are currently on tour for their Rally Cry album, which can be listened to here: YouTube.

I think these guys deserve to be the next Tragically Hip. They are great representitives for Canada and I think they make great music. Just putting this out here because I think they are underrated and awesome.

My favourite song at the moment: Show Me Don't Tell Me.

Check them out! You might like them too.

Intel to Support Hardware Ray Tracing Acceleration on Data Center Xe GPUs

No confirmation on the first-generation Xe client or integrated GPUs, but I will be surprised if the "enthusiast" tier doesn't have it.

Another thing to look for: will the implementation be dramatically different from Nvidia's approach? Will Intel need to dedicate a portion of the die for ray tracing?

Japan's 'revolutionary' Emperor Akihito to abdicate, leaving imposing legacy for his son

When Emperor Akihito abdicates Tuesday, he will become the first Japanese monarch to do so in more than two centuries.

Akihito, 85, will step down after more than 30 years on the Chrysanthemum Throne.

His reign has seen Japan continue its post-war modernization and win a bid to host the Olympic Games in 2020, but has also been marked by lows such as the economic crash of the 1990s and severe natural disasters.

He is widely revered for bringing the imperial family closer to the people, and has also won respect for his efforts to heal the nation’s post-World War II wounds. In a sign of Akihito's popularity, a record crowd packed into the grounds around the Imperial Palace in early January for his final New Year's public appearance.

This imposing legacy, combined with shifts in the nation’s politics and rising regional tensions, leave Akihito’s eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito, facing numerous challenges after he assumes the symbolic role May 1, experts say.

Knives found at Japan prince's desk days before abdication

Police in Japan have launched an investigation after two knives were found near the school desk of Emperor Akihito's 12-year-old grandson, local media report.

The knives were discovered on Friday in a classroom at a junior high school attended by Prince Hisahito.

Police are probing CCTV footage of a man trespassing on the school grounds.

Prince Hisahito is set to become second in line to the throne after Emperor Akihito's abdication next week.

Police believe the unidentified man caught on camera, who was dressed in blue and wearing a helmet, posed as a construction worker to access the building at Ochanomizu University.

Prince Hisahito and his classmates were in another part of the school when the knives are believed to have been planted.

Security ahead of coronation stepped up after knives found in Japanese prince's classroom

The two kitchen knives, which had been taped to either end of a stick and whose blades were reportedly painted pink, were discovered balanced between Hisahito's desk and his neighbor's, Japan's Asahi Shimbun reported. Nothing indicating a motive, or a claim of responsibility was left with the contraption.

Each desk has the name of its occupant written on it, making the prince's desk easily identifiable, the newspaper said.

A knife for both the prince and his neighbor. Is it symbolic, or were they meant to fight each other to the death with them? I'm sensing good anime potential in this. Or pay-per-view blood sport with kidnapped constitutional monarchs/offspring and other elites. #CringeWorthy

1968, or so they claim, Otis Redding did 'Sittin' on the dock of the bay'. I missed the anniversary, and just stumbled over the tribute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ca5QoXSe18

Great song, of course. But only after I sat on the docks of dozens of ports did I truly appreciate it. Like seafood, the song goes best with the smell of brine, and the smell of life in all stages of development and decay in your nostrils.

But, TBH, I didn't arrive directly on that tribute page. First, I landed on this page, produced by playingforchange https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es3Vsfzdr14 The title of the video page is 'Sittin' on the dock of the bay | Playing for change | song around the world

Catchy title, ehhh? I almost closed it, but the initial image of an old black dude sitting in the street intriqued me. Go ahead, give it a listen. The images from around the US and the world are a treat, as are the various sounds of the artists.

I won't list any more videos - I just give you the link to https://playingforchange.com/ and you can explore all you like.

I wonder though . . . Playing for Change makes me think of our MDC. Wonder if he ever went out to Westport, and played Otis? https://parks.state.wa.us/284/Westport-Light
Maybe - even city boys sometimes wander out to the lonely places. It's a great place to take your offspring, and let them get their feet wet, while you embellish some sea stories for them. (Unfortunately, when I had my son there, the upper levels of the lighthouse were closed. But we did get to see a lens really close up!)

After listening to several offerings, by several artists, you may want to listen to the "original", that we all listened to when I was starting junior high school. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyPKRcBTsFQ

Rest in peace, Otis. And, rest in peace, Michael David.

Apologies to anti-Youtubers - that's where I landed today. Enjoy!

I'll finish by summarizing what really angers me about this "social contract". First, as I mentioned, it's not really a contract nor is it usually invoked as such, but rather to excuse coercion. Any real contract would have provisions for a) honoring promises made in good faith and rejecting those made in bad faith, b) protecting the future of society, particularly of future generations, and c) apply equally to all, not just marginalized protesters who have good reason to dislike what's going on.

Second, it's commonly invoked to excuse tax collection for venal or short-sighted reasons. Sure, it's nice that older generations voted themselves a hefty pension and health services at the expense of younger generations (a near universal phenomenon in the developed world). But that dishonesty should be rewarded with a severe cutback to the benefits, not disruption of young peoples' lives and the decay of the society. Similarly, we're seeing most countries shifting to debt loads that are at least as large as their GDP (a crude measure of the size of the economy), again a glaring sign that the electorate isn't thinking about the future.

Third, it's telling that most advocates of the social contract can only point to simple things like roads or police as benefits of social contracts while the actual expenditures cover far more. If you can only point to 5-10% of government expenditure as a benefit (usually with a horrid inefficiency in benefit for the cost), then that's a strong sign to me that the government in question should be radically shrunk, perhaps as part of said social contract. Yet somehow the social contract is that we should pay our taxes, not that we should fight hard to reduce the government burden on our lives.

I think it's telling that social contract advocates can easily state what I should give to the contract, but have a hard time coming up with concrete examples of what I get from the contract. It's telling for example, that the link above was to a post rationalizing why there was some sort of "bargain" in place to presumably prevent the sort of parent/child problems mentioned in the story (and prevent pension fund looting as well).

In summary, I refuse to call this a contract, because it's not on so many different levels. Instead it is your social expectations which need not be either reasonable or honored.

Now, let's consider the matter of the "Rule of Law". A particularly poetic bit comes from end of some boilerplate in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

As an important aside, this document makes a huge appeal to the "social compact" in its preamble. The difference is that they wrote it down which is very different from most such appeals to the social contract as an intangible thing.

The bolded text above illustrates the fundamental dichotomy that the lawmakers of the time were concerned with. In rule of law, the law is written down and communicated via an established process with alterations possible in a consistent way. Just as important, everyone is beholden to the law equally. In rule of man, well, some dude decides what the law will be that day. Maybe they'll do so with great foresight and gravitas, but history is chock full of those who didn't.

Anyway, let's briefly consider the virtues and drawbacks of rule of law. The obvious virtue is that since the law is written down, it's not hard to figure out what's allowed or not. You don't have to worry about breaking laws that someone invented on the spot. It's a saner, more stable, freer society as a result.

The drawbacks? The primary one is that law need not be just or fair. There's plenty of stuff when applied to everyone benefits some groups inordinately.

In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread. -- Anatole France

Technically, rule of law, but someone gets screwed.

Another problem is once you can write down rules, you can write down lots and lots and lots of rules. The developed world is an evolving example of how this can lead to a giant morass. Nor is there any foreseeable end to rule writing particularly given how such rules can interact with each other in unpleasant negative synergy, leading to rules to fix rules to fix rules.

That brings us to the conversation about rule of law that I linked above. I was accused of equating "legal with moral" even though the complaint was about rule of law. The subsequent discussion devolved to claiming that rule of law is amoral because the laws that comprise it are amoral. Somehow the immorality of arbitrary tyranny via rule of man was ignored.

This I find is a sadly common occurrence. People who laud the intangible social contract often heap scorn onto its written instantiation as rule of law. But rules that are concrete are vastly superior to vague and unspecified rules that aren't - particularly when the harm from and penalties for violating the [intangible] rules can be capricious or even nonexistent, often depending on the mood of the person that day. Such grotesque and unfair inconsistency should be avoided.