In light of, ah, recent events, ProPublica helpfully reminds us about their Sept. 26 article concerning Donald Trump's apparent zeal to bring back "seditious libel" laws, which would prevent our media from criticizing Dear Leader. Sadly, you know as well as I do that the "liberal" media has shit the bed of our democracy so badly, with its thirst for constant drama and its enabling of stupid ideas and stupid people, that many good Americans aren't rooting for them against Mr. Trump, and may not even care if he cuts them off at the knees. Maybe if the "liberal" media does its damn job, things might get better.
Michael P. Lynch at the New York Times reminds us of the most deleterious effect of all the "fake news" you can get on the internet these days: not that it convinces good folks of false things, but that it confuses good folks just enough so they don't accept truth, and makes good people simply throw up their hands and walk away from their duty to discern the truth. Indeed, I'd argue that Donald Trump throws so much fecal matter at the wall for precisely the same effect -- to confuse you, wear you down, and make you give up. (However, I remain skeptical that "information bubbles" are really as damaging as the "liberal" media likes to tell us -- these "information bubbles" do, after all, decrease the "liberal" media's power to create their own information bubble which would include everyone.)
Davey Alba at WIRED discusses how Facebook's recent problems accurately tracking advertising metrics has "expos(ed) cracks in the basic assumptions about the superiority of digital advertising." I'm no expert in this subject (ahem!), but counting clicks on Facebook pages more or less as clicks on your original website seems like a pretty basic mistake to make. It would be best (also ahem!) to get your business outside the Facebook bubble somewhat, even if one out of five inhabitants of planet Earth check in every day -- or to use Facebook to maximize and facilitate contact with actual people outside Facebook, which is always (it's seemed to me, anyway) its best use.
Ho hum, Donald Trump alleges that the only reason Hillary Clinton has received (at this writing) 2 million more votes in the popular vote than he did is that "millions" of people voted illegally. I guess Jeff Sessions will hunt those millions of people down, except, of course, that he won't -- in fact, I can imagine a time when I might actually feel sorry for Mr. Sessions because, like Tha Bush Mobb's Justice Department, he won't find more than a couple dozen, though that'll make his boss look bad. And, ah, didn't Mr. Trump say the election was fair after all those anti-Trump protestors took to the streets? Apparently he thinks the truth is whatever he wants it to be, whenever he wants it to be -- why, it's just like the Bush Mobb, except perhaps more obnoxious.
Finally, Yale history professor Timothy Snyder writes about "What You -- Yes, You -- Can Do to Save America from Tyranny." It's an inspiring 20-lesson list, one that admits the possibility that a Trump Administraiton would "plan" a terrorist attack "in order to consolidate power" (I suppose he'd do better at that than Mr. Bush did, particularly since his Administration will be more densely-packed with evil people!), but also reminds us that there is much we can do to "(s)et a good example of what America means for the generations to come."
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