william.scherk

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Blog Entries posted by william.scherk

  1. william.scherk
    Glorp Glorp Glorp. Madame Macron is a pedophile. They never stop. Everyone knows that.
    Elsewhere on the blog ...
    Here is the promised video+audio of Milo Yiannopoulos discussing his youthful sexual activity, through the lens of a provocative gay man, with material from two podcasts, one internet radio show, and a press conference ...
     
  2. william.scherk
    I want to recommend a book I just started reading last night: "Suspicious Minds," by Rob Brotherton. As is usual, I read first the chapter that stuck out -- Chapter 5, The Paranoid Fringe. It takes a useful critical look at the seminal article by Richard Hofstadter -- "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" -- and also runs to ground a plausible origin of 'tinfoil hats.' 
    The book is written in a wry conversational tone, and is not on the surface a ''scholarly" read thick with endless footnotes, but it also contains a very useful reference list by page number -- as well as a full index at the back.  (My copy is from our local library, but I am going to order it from Amazon so I always have it on hand as a reference book.)
    Here is an excerpt from the first page that might whet OLer's appetite for more ...
    In a fit of recursion, I include this bit of commentary from earlier this month. It suggests that I am bound by ingrained prejudice/s, which may or may not be true ... yet leaves the door open to further friendly discussion.
    -- for those who like to check out reviews before purchasing or borrowing from a library, here's a selection -- which I thought remarkable. Remarkable in the sense of "how many reviews do not mention Donald Trump?"
    New York Times review by Adrian Chen
    Inside Higher Education review by Scott McLemee
    Brief Scientific American review by Maria Temming
    -- for the benefit of Dear Leader, I found the book is available at his local library too!

  3. william.scherk
    "Are you overwhelmed at the amount, contradictions, and craziness of all the information coming at you in this age of social media and twenty-four-hour news cycles? 

    Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies will show you how to identify deceptive information as well as how to seek out the most trustworthy information in order to inform decision making in your personal, academic, professional, and civic lives.

    • Learn how to identify the alarm bells that signal untrustworthy information.
    • Understand how to tell when statistics can be trusted and when they are being used to deceive.
    • Inoculate yourself against the logical fallacies that can mislead even the brightest among us." 

    The author of the book is Donald A Barclay, librarian, who gave an interview to Publisher's Weekly last September. This excerpt mirrors a part of the preface, which I will dictate and post below. Dude sounds like a dang Objectivist here, if a plodder ...
    -- cross-linking here to a dedicated Front Porch topic thread "Fake News," and to a "fake news" OL-internal-search page of this blog, "Friends and Foes." There are at this moment 732 items in the "Fake News" phrase search returns of the whole of the Objectivist Living community.
    The subtitle to Barclay's book is "How to Find Trustworthy Information in the Digital Age."
  4. william.scherk
    I thought Caroljane and Michael had some interesting  brainstorm results, laid out below. I also had some storms of creativity ... which I will add once I finish furiously scribbling notes on a break by the river. We have secretly kept everything green behind our fencing, despite the water-restrictions. I hate when Israel steals our clouds all summer.
    My basic notion is weather weapons, weapons of war, that is what the protagonists come to be up against, discovering and destroying the military-industrial-scientific projects that have been used to manipulate weather events in aid of endless war. 
    The thing is, it is a Deep kind of thing that our heroes have to get at. My favourite character-in-mind so far is a refugee from an intelligence agency. He is justifiably paranoid about his design of a master database. He knows too much, courtesy of his eidetic memory.  But which of his fears of rogue action are true?  Is he really just one of thousands on The List, the Kill the Designers list?
    In my flight of fancy we would get to fabulous settings, some of them mirroring or paying homage to Atlas Shrugged. Glaciers, underground CERN-style secret facilities. Low earth-orbit nuclear 'climate helper' satellites, that thousand screen command room deep underground. The 'database cities' of the INTEL surveilance future. On supersonic 'chemtrail' secret weapons.
    I'd also keep the political shenanigans sort of in your face but slightly out of focus, save that just as in Atlas Shrugged we are in a kind of alternate era where implausible events have already taken place.  One of the questions the protagonists learn to ask is, "Does the President Know?"  
    In my characters I want a 'rescue team slash commando force' to coalesce so I am looking to ex-military intelligence people, disparate people from a disbanded training unit, who have made the transition out of the forces for successful contract or independent careers. I want them to be bonded somehow conceptually, as a Protect Whistleblowers and Defectors unit, in the end. As if they all swore an oath and the oath comes in handy. Meaning the team our hero assembles or acquires should have a point of identity in common, to make the whole shelf of sinister secrecy and secret agent of technology stuff plausible.
    I need a bad-ass name for the Giant Computer Cloud that eats snow and steals clouds from nations and regions, thus 'false-flagging' weather manipulation events that may be possible in the next thirty-odd years. If Rand could have a free-energy motor, then we and the Frankensteins of CERN-7 can have gravity-enhancers, dark-matter sinks and sleeves and other theoretical devices almost ready to go. This on top of a semi-secret Space Programme where local weather is enhanced, altered, made wet or dry or whatever to punish Mexico.
    Somehow we got to stick the Vatican and on-three-continent catacombs in there. I want to avoid the nightmare pace of State of Fear, by having characters sleep and eat and so on. Not too much, just enough so that they don't seem freaky.
    So, plausible or wildly not -- Iranians can't get used to Israel-CERN-rogues-hidden-hands stealing their snow and clouds.  Things is gonna blow up if we don't stop the sinister secret organization from carrying out its plans.
    And Caroljane gets to write all the terse sex scenes.
     
     
  5. william.scherk
    The work history of the folks in the Robert Mueller team is reported on by the Daily Beast's Betsy Woodruff.  For those unspooked by a relatively quiet news front on the special counsel's activities, and for those who are curious about credible/non-credible implications of the activities. And maybe for those who use "Muh Russia" unironically ... (& for those who may have forgotten the details of the inquiry's frame of reference: the Rosenstein order establishing his authority)
    The DB article's subheadline slug:
    To probe alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, the special counsel has essentially built his own miniature Justice Department. Meet the experts he’s recruited.
    Here is an excerpt from the conclusion (emphasis added):

  6. william.scherk
    Some thoughts from the author of 'The Righteous Mind,' Jonathan Haidt (see OL mentions here), at Spiked online: 
    The Fragile Generation
    -- my favourite conceptual creep is with the weasel-term "Fake News."  Where the species-genera distinction is obscured mightily.
    On an unrelated note, "Hate whomever you want. It's your right."  Lauren Southern bashes back at micro-aggressions from the folks at Reason TV.
     
  7. william.scherk
    This is no longer a placeholder.  Some 'on the record' wild guesses are already out -- notably our Bob Kolker -- so  I too am going to publish a prediction/analysis, knowing full well I might be picking through bird bones on November 9.
     I think Donald Trump will lose the election on November 8th. I have some definite reasons why. I thought to post the reasons here, even if I am shown to be gawdawfully wrong later on. How 'off' will my analytic take be? Only time will tell. 

    Reason? Reasons?
    Donald Trump lost because of the Republican Lady Vote, ultimately. He could have rallied a few more Latinos and African-Americans and other visible minorities to his base within his party's grasp, but that wouldn't have mattered as much as a seizing and a hold on Educated Lady votes.
    That is the main reason he lost, looking back at me from the crystal ball. Ladies.
    By state, he didn't capture the ladies of the Philadelphia suburbs, which cost him. He failed to capture the urban-suburban college-educated lady vote in Ohio and lost more crucial electoral votes.  He failed to capture the conservative educated ladies in Florida in enough numbers to beat Romney's showing in 2012  He failed with the ladies of Utah.  He failed with the ladies of North Carolina. He didn't get the crucial lady vote in states he needed.
    There may be nuance, and other subsidiary reasons rooted in Mr Trump's behaviour and the challenges every Republican faces in terms of hostile and adversarial media.  There may be ground-game reasons, money reasons, biases galore, party mutiny and backstabbiness, ghost-voting, sinister plots and precinct rigginess beyond the pale, but when the totals were officially-certified in places Trump had to dominate to be the Winner, he fell short with the ladies ...
     
    -- with my Red Hat on, my reasons all turn on treason, or behaviour just-shy-of treasonous, by a panoply of bought and paid for agents against democracy.  Not with a centre anywhere in particular, no grand plot, just a functional-structural bias on every dimension against Mr Trump. In the whole landscape of media small and large and fringe and newsworthy in themselves, it was ultimately Bannon and Trump against the world's sleaziest big-audience manipulators.  That built-in structural disadvantage was key. Allied structural impediments were important but secondary and amplified by his own party's elite class, whether in the party itself or in positions of prominence and power in Wall Street and Washington.  
    That covers treasonous, bought, biased and elite party elders and candidates. Where were they when he needed them?
    Those factors 'conspired' in a sense to depress turnout among previously likely voters.  The ticket-splitters and the stay-homers of the GOP great coalition of voters gave Hillary Clinton an extra advantage that was totally undeserved, a side-effect of elite 'treason' against the candidate.
    Finally, with Red Hat still firmly on, Trump lost because of loathing, not rational fear, not reason.  The supine media and the fractured, corrupt party, and the 'got' functionaries of Clinton Inc put a false mark upon him and triggered an hysterical emotional reaction. They stoked phobia, hatred and division, and blamed Trump.They stoked loathing of the man and excused their complicity in feeding the hate.
  9. william.scherk
    Mick West at Metabunk.org has published a book!  It's called "Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect."  The early reviews at Amazon.com are brutal.

    I publish a fair-use excerpt from the introduction to the book published last month at Salon: How to pull a friend out of the conspiracy theory rabbit hole | It’s not a blue pill or a red pill, but a poison pill
    I've added highlights to parts of the excerpt that might be helpful to OLers struggling with the entailments of conspiracy-ideation --in friends, family, and perhaps in themselves ... as those of us who have read the Rob Brotherton classic understand ... "Its not THEM, it's US" ... no one wing of political or social groups is more vulnerable to the harms of conspiracy ideation than another.
    "Try to figure out my tricks."  What good advice ...
  10. william.scherk
    The article "Cognitive Ability and Vulnerability to Fake News" appeared at the Scientific American website on February 6th. Its subheadline is "Researchers identify a major risk factor for pernicious effects of misinformation." 
    The article makes for interesting reading, whether you consider 'fake news' a classifier for broad swaths of the information landscape, or whether you consider 'fake news' to be particular items that are inaccurate, infused with partisan bias, subject to grotesque editorial demands, or otherwise not adequate to your needs.
    Excerpts:
    ... you can guess what happened next.
    If you seek verity, verily you must verify ...
    To that end, that of critical appraisal, one dear to the heart of all Objectivish people, the magazine has another useful (or familiar) set of verification rules of thumb:
    Six Tips for Identifying Fake News 
    -- this is presented at the site as an MP3 sound file, which I link to here:
     
    Note on audio files: the code to insert an audio file is dead easy if you have a little knowledge of HTML. Any modern browser will return a little player like that above -- given the code format below. All you need to do is make sure the file to be played is MP3, the web standard.
    <audio controls src="http://www.somesite.com/soundfile.mp3"> -- to insert similar audio file code on OL in your edit box, click on the "Source" button up under "Content" at the top of the edit box. This reveals the underlying HTML.  
  11. william.scherk
    My second test is also awful ... long, choppy, echoey, but I fear not [added February 2]
    _______________________________
     
    I have been fussing with technical impediments for a few days -- with the end of the fuss a more-success-than-fail test of streaming video live from Chilliwack. It is still awful, laggy, popping here and there, distorting audio, skipping frames, refusing to play video so I can hear it ... but with some more fussing and rehearsal, and more script cards, and more drilling, this can work. Expect this thread to be locked from time to time as I replace the content with the actual live event URL. This is a recording ...
    Yes, it is even more awful than I feared, but still a success. The echoes can be fixed by disabling the mic when listening to playback of embedded videos. And the awful disparities in volume can be finessed. 
    > I want to recommend a neat little standalone application that lets a podcaster/livecaster play various sound files. It's called Jingle Palette. A screenshot of the thing:

    As can be seen in the labels, I had audio excerpts from video, text-to-speech items, and some radio-stingers.  All at various wrong sound levels ...
     
  13. william.scherk
    The two major national parties in Canada are the Liberals and the Conservatives. The third national party is called "The New Democratic Party" or NDP.  The party has just selected this guy, Jagmeet Singh as their leader ... Jagmeet Singh wins NDP leadership race on first ballot
    He will become the first Sikh to lead a national party.

    Singh attracted some national and international attention for how he dealt with a finger-wagging heckler at one of his leadership campaign meetings last month. A video went viral and most likely contributed to his win ...
    Of course, not everybody is enamoured of the turban-sporting socialist lawyer and martial artist, not least the folks at Canada's Rebel Media. Here is a counterpoint to the self-absorption of the left ... which is having a Trumpgasm over Singh and the symbolism of his win.
    And one for the ladies ...

  14. william.scherk
    A weird story that will probably continue to simmer for the remaining months of the 2106 2016 Presidential election:  what are Donald J Trump's ties to Russian interests?  How can the purported ties be established in fact? Is there any record that can be examined?  Would Trump tax returns show something hinky or surprising in this regard?
    The biggest headline is that experts named and un-named have found the fingerprints of the Russian state on the Wikileaked DNC emails.  That the supposedly "Romanian" 'Guccifer' was a Russian FSB agent. That is no surprise. What is surprising is how common-sense rational inquiry flies out the window, and how unusual are Mr Trump's policies in contrast to the bipartisan stance that views Russia as a non-democracy opposed to Western values.  
    The Russian "Connection" with Trump takes three main forms:
    Russian Investment in Trump's real-estate ventures (rumoured and real) Russian Interests represented by Ash Carter Carter Page, a close Trump advisor on foreign policy/Paul Manafort's oligarchy-lobbying in DC USA/Russian policy changes under a Trump promise (ie, most significantly on NATO). A few things stick out in my mind: the very specific way Mr Trump denied he has investments in Russia (without the corollary "I have no Russian-money investment in any of my projects and plans")**;  the actual NATO/Russia policy changes Mr Trump has promised to put in action.  The common-sense understanding that this is a weakness for the Trump campaign, not a winner.  A slow drip kind of weakness.
    A funny side-issue is Mr Trump's nomination for a Pulitzer Prize to the National Enquirer. Put that worthy news magazine's attention on Ted Cruz's father's involvement in the JFK assassination in perspective.  Today, multiple lines of evidence suggest a corruption in the Trump machine, a back-door 'understanding' with the Russian point of view.   It's the stuff of tabloids, and yet it could shake out true.  If the roles were reversed (a Russian 'nod' to a Democratic candidate, etc), the drips would be Front Page News. That a  Democrat refused to clear up the record by releasing tax returns would be scandalous, if not proof of the corruption of/meddling in American democracy by foreign interests.
    [a CBS4 News 'exclusive' may not appear in all browsers. Here is the link to the breaking interview with Mr Trump: 
    CBS4 News Exclusive: Trump Denies Ties To Russia
    July 27, 2016 1:09 AM By Jim DeFede ]
    ____________
     
    ** '“Is that the theory? I haven’t heard that at all,” Trump told the Miami station. “I mean I haven’t heard that. But I have nothing to do with Russia, nothing to do, I never met Putin, I have nothing to do with Russia whatsoever.”
    Trump went on to say he has no outstanding loans with Russian banks or Russian investors.
    “Absolutely not,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”'

    I predict this issue will hang and hang and drip and drip and become a millstone about  The Candidate's Neck.   His suggestion today that the FSB continue to probe US computer networks is not the kind of thing we have heard before in an election campaign. 
    I will of course revisit my prediction in the months to come.  I smell smoke. 
    Is Trump a Russian Stooge?
  15. william.scherk
    There are times when I miss the Objectivist Living stalwart "Adam Selene." I am definitely going to miss his wonkish, passionate opinions on the coming mid-terms. I put this blog entry up to have a place for OLers who are interested in tracking the campaigns, the shoddy and unconvincing polls, and the final night of returns.  With the disbanding of President Trump's "voter fraud" commission** we will have no executive guidance on where or how various states are vulnerable to rigging or other hinkiness.
    In among the news-hoopla today, a few reports that stand out. This from The Week: A record-breaking 31 House Republicans won't seek re-election in 2018
    A whopping 31 House Republicans will not be seeking re-election in November, NPR reports, including Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), who announced his impending retirement from Congress on Wednesday. The 2018 GOP exodus is a new record: The last time there was such a massive departure from Congress was when 28 Democrats left in 1994, and Republicans subsequently seized control.
    Most significantly, Republicans in states won by Hillary Clinton are leaving in droves. "Vulnerable House Republicans would clearly rather call it quits than stand for re-election with a deeply unpopular agenda hanging over their heads," Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Tyler Law told NPR.
    [...]
    Democrats would need to flip 24 seats to take back the House, with the Senate being more of a long shot; in the upper chamber, Democrats have to defend 25 seats and pick up an additional three in order to take back the majority. A Washington Post/ABC News poll from November found that hypothetical Democratic candidates are favored by voters against their Republican counterparts 51 percent to 40 percent.
    One of my favourite election handicapping sites is Decision Desk HQ, a relatively-nonpartisan group of wonks and dweebs. Their DDHQ 2018 House Midterm Forecast is a good place to come up to speed on the challenges and excitement ahead.
    The 2018 House Midterm Election is bound to be one of the more interesting in recent memory. With Donald Trump in the White House, infighting on both sides of Congress, and an American public that is bursting at the seams we have a recipe for a perfect political storm. Keep your eye on this page, which houses our forecasts for all 435 congressional districts, and stick with us as we attempt to answer the ultimate questions: who will win majority control of the US House of Representatives?
    Here is an image from that page:
    http://www.thecrosstab.com/data/forecast-2018/leafletmap/index.html [Guy keeps 'fixing' his blog layout. He now works for the Economist]
    https://www.thecrosstab.com/project/2018-midterms-forecast/
    Click on the image above to go to the fully interactive version of this image, where you can zoom in and examine each race's details and present-day forecasts. Eg, 

    -- another very good site is Ballotpedia. Here is a link to their comprehensive 2018 elections page.
    ___________________
    ** a welter of reports on the controversial commission and its end can be accessed here. Click the following for a snapshot ...
    Prediction:  surprise surprise!  
    Countdown clock.
  16. william.scherk

    "Anger Studies"

    By william.scherk,

    The Real Roots of American Rage | The untold story of how anger became the dominant emotion in our politics and personal lives—and what we can do about it.
    Anger, Averill concluded, is one of the densest forms of communication. It conveys more information, more quickly, than almost any other type of emotion. And it does an excellent job of forcing us to listen to and confront problems we might otherwise avoid. 
     
  18. william.scherk
    Over on our sister site, I had occasion to pull the nose of Catholic Thinker Bill Tingley. I have prepared an MP3 of that screed, and hope it gives value to my fans.
    "Bill Tingley and The Catholics Vs Them, They and the Other"
    Original post here, with the fatuous, unfocussed and demented comments of the Glorious following its appearan ce.
  19. william.scherk
    Bloomberg has a short Trump-whisperer item on the President's supposed impatience with negotiations to "update" the North American Free Trade Agreement.
    Trump’s Impatience Emerging as Biggest Threat to Nafta Agreement
    Some of you may have read the earlier report in which he instructs General Kelly that he "wants tariffs" ... while his weepy loser staff won't bring him tariffs.
    That report could be 100% shit, and since said tariffs were to be imposed on China, not perhaps pertinent. The Bloomberg story could be shit too, yet the President has been clear since the campaign that NAFTA is the shittiest deal the USA has ever signed.
    The upshot of the story is his purported wish to withdraw from the trade deal. That kind of talk gets Canadians antsy, since these are among the biggest trade flows on the planet, somewhere around the trillion dollar mark. Or so the could-be-lying bean counters tell us.
    Whither NAFTA and the USA-Canada relationship? I don't believe Trump wants to punish Canada as much as he does Mexico, but in the end, why not? Why not punish Canada for fucking you guys over?
    This is a boring topic, trade between the two giant geographies, and my belief that compromise will occur may turn out to be falsified. 
    Is Bloomberg under the giant umbrella FallSnooze?
    Zzzzzzzzzz ...
  20. william.scherk
    The Hill reports the 'breaking' news that the White House has approved the public release of the MEMO. The MEMO was crafted by staff of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).
    From an earlier report ...
     
  21. william.scherk
    Readers will have seen this week one tyrant near the end of his reign -- Mugabe in Zimbabwe, who will likely be impeached next month -- and may have speculated on what the ruckus in Saudia Arabia portends for the family autocracy there (setting aside humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen).
    I've been following the activist Iyad el-Baghdadi for quite a while on Twitter. He was jailed and expelled from Saudi Arabia and found refuge in Norway, after having become a stinging thorn in the side of autocrats throughout the Arab world.  As he added entries to his "Arab Tyrants Manual" his relative fame/notoriety/danger grew. Readers here may be interested to know of his self-identification as an "Islamic Libertarian."
    Long story short, he has launched a new project that I like the looks of ... he is wicked smart, incisive, funny and informed. Here we get a close look at Saudi Arabia's failures as a regime. Not as much zany fun as an hour with Loren Lockman, but hey.
    Here's the Soundcloud embed:

    Here I add a striking video that depicts the relentless economic development of the alternative Saudi Arabia, the jewel of the Emirates, Dubai. 
     
  22. william.scherk
    When Two Tribes Go To War ...
    Taking this topic out from the conspiracy thread here at Friends and Foes. I  want to look at how we discern tribalisms, membership, shibboleths and associated markers. 
     
    Define: William's tribe. Define: Michael's tribe.  
    List: core beliefs of Michael's tribe (sacred cows)
    List: core beliefs of William's tribe (sacred cows)
    Once a core belief of Michael's / William's tribal affiliates is identified, plug the details into the above quote.
    Denote, clearly: a core premise/belief of each of the two tribes identified above.
    Provide at least one example from OL of each tribe's unquestioned core belief. Ask each of the tribe members whether or not they actually hold the identified belief.
    Once a/the "core belief/s" of the respective tribes are identified, set up a "premise-checking" operation.
    For another time.  
    Again, can we put a name to it? Can we define William's Tribe so that there is no mistaking what you mean?
     
  24. william.scherk
    This is the latest part of a series of videos uploaded recently by the Ayn Rand Institute, some of which are repackaged audio files (of which some are not always dated precisely). 
    A careful listener may hear the hint of approval she would have for a President Trump, who is said to have dined with her in 1977 ... just after her secret affair with Pierre Elliott Trudeau came to a sad end.
    Qui eu percipit accusata. Nam ex perpetua forensibus reprimique, mei sale mucius te. Ei postea sanctus nam. Natum suavitate pertinacia sit ea, quas fugit ius ei, an augue utroque abhorreant qui.
    Dicunt multa. Quia similes sunt.
     
     
  25. william.scherk
    My homespun header sung to the tune of something from Paint Your Wagons, I think. The headline at Phys.org is "Modern humans inherited viral defenses from Neanderthals." Click and go, but someone go first for Peter and give him an all-clear, thanks.

    We sometimes talk about viral things and sometime talk about Neanderthal and sometimes we talk about Neaderthal and Rand.  This is my half-assed attempt to knit together a proper blog post. Since I can't socialize the means of content-production, I quote from the forum itself:
    Musical interlude.
    Who knows who he was Listing at:
    Jerry Biggers and WSS scolding each other politely.  Just off stage right, Jonathan.
    An on-ramp to Point of Inflection, regarding our present ability to make conclusions about prehistory.
    A kind of stew of Neanderthal and history and Rand and Brant and Bob. Mood generally sunny with an occasional sharp gust:
    Gentle guidance, away from epistemological swamplands:
    A sly comic confection and call to order from Jerry:
    I will try to populate this thread with a few other standouts from over time.  Who wants all our Musings on the Missing Link linked here too?
    Yours truly, minor content provisioner.