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#ConfessYourRussianConnections
Alright, I'll confess.
In 1978, our ship docked in Venice, Italy. Docked nearby was a Russian tour ship. Little did we boots realize that the tour ship was a cover for something far more important.
Our crew was formed into ranks, and marched over to the tour ship our first night in port. We were all hypnotized by Russia's Hypnotoad, and given the agenda of the future. Russia was preparing, already, to cave in on the Cold War. But, they were also preparing their revenge.
During the briefing, we learned that the Russians had a tame Orangutan in a sleeper cell in New York. The Orangutan was to be Russia's "Trump card", so to speak. All of us were informed that the Orangutan would one day run for President of the United States, and that we would recognize him when the time came.
Almost all American servicemen were briefed between the years of 1970 and 2010. And, all of us veterans were prepared to vote Trump when the time came. A lot of civilians, too, of course, but all of us veterans voted Trump. Well, except for a few whose hypnosis didn't work very well.
__________________
Alright, I was shooting for funny. My story isn't really all that funny though. What's REALLY FUNNY is, a lot of progressives will believe my bullshit story. Yeah, there WAS a Russian cruise ship in Venice. That's where this story's connection with reality begins and ends.
U.S. Space Corps
Op-ed at War is Boring. Found at NBF.
Black Guns Matter
Tesla Driver Saves Volkswagen Driver, gets free repairs
Tesla Owner Who Sacrificed His Model S To Save Another Driver Gets Surprise From Elon Musk
Mmmh, that sweet good publicity. It's even better than bad publicity.
Chevy Cruze peak range: 702 miles on 13.5 gallons of diesel
New diesel Chevy Cruze can go an estimated 702 miles on a single tank of fuel
The 52 mpg highway fuel economy numbers apply to the six-speed manual transmission diesel Cruze, which gets 30 mpg on city streets. The car also comes in a 9-speed automatic transmission version, which returns 47 mpg on the highway and 31 mpg in the city with start-stop technology regulating the engine.
fraud phone call from the IRS
This one is a first for me. The IRS has never called me before - either for real, or as part of a scam.
"This phone call is to inform you that you have been named in a lawsuit by the Internal Revenue Service. If you wish to settle the claim against you before the suit is filed, you should call 6466326448. Thank you, the Internal Revenue Service."
I wish I had recorded it, to be sure that I got the phrasing precise, and the phone number accurate, but there it is, very close to what I heard. Note that neither my name, nor my wife's name was used - no names at all. Some mysterious "you". I used Google Talk to try calling the number, and got some tones, and a message that the number is not in service.
Funny that they didn't repeat the phone number - even scammers know that people don't always have a pen and paper in reach. I would think the scammers would want to make sure that the victim knows what number to call, so he can be properly scammed.
Ahhhh - looking at the telephone, I see that I got the number wrong - it is 6466321448. Dial that number, and I get a busy signal. I know it's the busy season, but, doesn't the IRS have like unlimited phone lines coming in? Gonna try a couple more times, just to get an idea how the scam works . . .
entering the number into Google leads me to this page, http://mobilecallertracker.com/phone-search/6466321 and 2/3 down the page, I find the number. So, the IRS callback number is a mobile phone? Wow - THAT is interesting!! I've heard that landlines are pretty much obsolete, but the IRS is all mobile now?
Well, still busy - I don't want to spend my day trying to scam a scammer. Maybe I'll try a couple more times later today.
Suggestions, anyone? I suppose I should inform my local sheriff's office of this call - maybe they will ask the local radio stations to warn their listeners - or something.
https://www.irs.gov/uac/stay-vigilant-against-bogus-irs-phone-calls-and-emails
https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/contact_report_scam.shtml
Online complaint made - I guess I've done my civic duty of the day.
Why does the U.S. still let 12-year-olds get married?
Mod journal flamebait!!!
Why does the United States still let 12-year-olds get married?
This is an opinion piece in WaPo written by the founder of a nonprofit. archive.is link because I figured out WaPo has a 5 article/month limit paywall.
While most states set 18 as the minimum marriage age, exceptions in every state allow children younger than 18 to marry, typically with parental consent or judicial approval. How much younger? Laws in 27 states do not specify an age below which a child cannot marry.
Unchained At Last, a nonprofit I founded to help women resist or escape forced marriage in the United States, spent the past year collecting marriage license data from 2000 to 2010, the most recent year for which most states were able to provide information. We learned that in 38 states, more than 167,000 children — almost all of them girls, some as young 12 — were married during that period, mostly to men 18 or older. Twelve states and the District of Columbia were unable to provide information on how many children had married there in that decade. Based on the correlation we identified between state population and child marriage, we estimated that the total number of children wed in America between 2000 and 2010 was nearly 248,000.
Turns out R2D*2pa$tramimacaronomy is doing just fine stateside, for the moment...
On the word "fake" when applied to "news"
Merriam-Webster defines the adjective fake to mean "counterfeit, sham." The noun is further defined as follows:
one that is not what it purports to be: such as
a : a worthless imitation passed off as genuine
b : impostor, charlatan
c : a simulated movement in a sports contest (as a pretended kick, pass, or jump or a quick movement in one direction before going in another) designed to deceive an opponent
d : a device or apparatus used by a magician to achieve the illusion of magic in a trick
The dictionary glosses fake among a set of synonyms which "mean a thing made to seem other than it is," further specifying the nuances of fake: "fake implies an imitation of or substitution for the genuine but does not necessarily imply dishonesty."
All of these uses have a common sense of something that is deliberately constructed to stand in for something "genuine." When someone presents a "fake ID" to get past a bouncer at a bar, the implication is that the person is showing credentials that are known to be false and in fact were manufactured to be so. Deception is not required for something to be called "fake," but merely an attempt to simulate something "real."
When the debate over "fake news" erupted a few months ago, it was first targeted at news that fit this common everyday English definition of the word fake. The concerns expressed early by Facebook, Google, et al. were over the use of deliberately fabricated news stories that knowingly contained false and made-up claims. The standard example was Buzzfeed's report of Balkan teenagers producing made-up news stories for profit.
There are various motivations to fabricate news stories. Among them:
(1) Profit from ads
(2) Propaganda (inciting followers of a cause to be moved or outraged by a story made up to target and play off their beliefs and biases)
(3) Hoaxes (just doing it for the "lulz")
(4) Satire and parody (standard example being The Onion)
As more and more stories came out on this "fake news," it became apparent that a lot of the stuff in the first three categories here seemed to be aimed at conservatives and Trump supporters in the past election cycle. Not all of it, certainly, but a lot of it.
So, a new counter-movement started to protest against the proposals to police "fake news," and the first thing this movement did was to redefine an English word.
Fake would no longer imply an intent to create something false and pass it off as genuine. Now it could mean simply "inadvertently erroneous" or even simply "biased." Once this new usage slipped in, it became suddenly pervasive. A major "mainstream" news source doesn't do enough fact-checking for a particular story? It's branded as "fake news." Does the story have a slightly sensational or biased headline to get attention, but the story is completely factual? It's "fake news."
Did this redefinition of "fake" originate among the actual "fake news" sources themselves, in an attempt at self-preservation? It's unclear. But the new usage rapidly spread among conservatives who wanted to attack CNN or the Washington Post or the New York Times. Left-leaning folks joined in and similarly started branding Breitbart and other right-wing sources as "fake news," even when the targets were merely presenting a viewpoint difference or bias, not literally making up facts and claiming them to be true.
From my perspective, this is NOT a small matter. The distinction between bias and unintentional error vs. outright fabrication and deliberate lies is important. The recent furor over "alternative facts" is simply another stage in an attempt to blur this distinction.
While we should rightly criticize news sources -- whatever their "bias" or however they might "lean" politically -- for bad fact-checking practices, outright bias, and other poor journalistic practices, most of the "mainstream" news sources acknowledge when they make actual errors of fact. They print retractions. They print corrections. Sometimes they may not come quickly enough for our taste, and again that should be criticized. But it is different from actual "fake news."
We witnessed a redefinition of an English word in the past few months, and few people seem to have noticed. The implications of its redefinition are also disturbing and Orwellian. And while this redefinition seems to have originated on the Right (or perhaps even among the fake new fabricators themselves), it has spread to the Left as a convenient way of criticizing news sources they don't like. It is a symptom of division, and it's an unproductive way of shutting down discussion. Rather than debate the substance of a story, one can just claim, "Oh -- I don't pay attention to MSNBC/Fox News/whatever, because it's just fake news." And the debate is declared over, in sort of an anti-argumentum ad verecundiam.
Can fake ever be corralled into its old meaning again? I don't know. But whatever we call the distinction between reality and fabrication, it's an important one.
Elizabeth Warren Silenced on the Senate Floor
Micron 2017 Roadmap
Micron 2017 Roadmap Detailed: 64-layer 3D NAND, GDDR6 Getting Closer, & CEO Retiring
Worth a look, but not a submission just yet.
