Or as we call it around here it is a day ending in day!
More seriously Twitter seems to be deluged by bots signing up to follow the President’s personal and/or official accounts and, at least for now doing nothing. There are also widespread reports of people who are not following the President being signed up to follow the President’s personal and/or official accounts without their permission. They are also apparently following other elites and notables like Secretary Clinton, President Obama, even Ellen Degeneres.
From the white hat hacker known as the Jester.
@realDonaldTrump #FLASH Multiple people now reporting their account followed @realdonaldtrump without them doing it. Check ur account.
— JΞSŦΞR ✪ ΔCŦUΔL³³º¹ (@th3j35t3r) May 30, 2017
@realDonaldTrump ^^^ PSA: I'm currently blocking Trump bots. You can auto-block them all now and in the future by subscribing here >> https://t.co/ivakWBbnja
— JΞSŦΞR ✪ ΔCŦUΔL³³º¹ (@th3j35t3r) May 30, 2017
@cheeseheadlucy @20committee @TheRickWilson Just found the same thing… pic.twitter.com/FYY16pKitf
— M.H. (@AmaniNaUpendo) May 30, 2017
@Sources_CloseTo @unitedMongrels Right. Obama's up at about 50/minute; Ellen DeGeneres about 40/minute. Someone tweeted new accounts automatically follow famous accounts
— Cheesehead Lucy (@cheeseheadlucy) May 30, 2017
@cheeseheadlucy @Sources_CloseTo @unitedMongrels These bots are all following DJT, HRC, BHO, Ellen, Kim K, etc. Explains the linear increase for everyone
— The Cold/Civil War (@donewithgopntx) May 30, 2017
No one is quite sure what it means or what is going on (after the jump).
I wonder if this smells to anyone else like nation-state level stuff? That's a whole lot of fake phone numbers to generate as well… https://t.co/As97TUs9Jf
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) May 30, 2017
@realDonaldTrump << account has gained over 5 million followers in less than 3 days. Mostly bots. He's getting ready for something.
— JΞSŦΞR ✪ ΔCŦUΔL³³º¹ (@th3j35t3r) May 30, 2017
Concur w/ @th3j35t3r Russian Cyber warfare support ramping up for @POTUS? Key intelligence indicator of impending major political activity. https://t.co/87dpvdw7LB
— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) May 30, 2017
This study found that bots can bias perceptions by creating an appearance of grassroots support, when in reality it's artificially generated pic.twitter.com/gqpFczpN8A
— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) May 30, 2017
13. @selectedwisdom addressed the issue of bots in his Senate testimony in March, including the keywords/phrases they use to blend in. ? pic.twitter.com/oi8ORPQmff
— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) May 30, 2017
Gin & Tonic
If someone who worked at Twitter actually cared, they could alleviate this.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: They won’t do anything:
Corner Stone
What it is ain’t exactly clear.
ThresherK
including the keywords/phrases they use to blend in
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: Twitter is scared to death to discourage any new account signups. Real or otherwise. Got to keep that stock price afloat until they can sucker someone into buying!
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: I appreciate their not violating user anonymity (pseudonymity) but to assert that they can’t tell a bot from a legit user is to ascribe to them an ignorance that would likely upset their engineering staff.
Frankensteinbeck
@Adam L Silverman:
This could not be more screaming bullshit. Twitter favors alt-right types heavily, ignoring their harassment and banning people who insult them.
gene108
The machines of gained sentience. Only explanation.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: @Frankensteinbeck: I’m not agreeing with the explanation, I’m just posting the explanation.
Bobby Thomson
@Frankensteinbeck: yep.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Don’t advertisers pay based on metrics? If said metrics set ad rates while incorporating faked Twitter accounts that would 1. make advertisers very angry 2. get the SEC interested. Oh wait, who’s SEC chair these days? So just #1 I guess.
Adam L Silverman
@gene108:
encephalopath
This sounds like that sort of thing that would make certain database tables so big that the whole of Twitter will just stop working.
It will slow down the collection of certain data sets such that Twitter will no longer function. I’m not a database expert or anything, but it seems to me that requests are going to start timing out if this continues.
TenguPhule
@gene108:
Skynet woke up.
ruemara
Well, it should be interesting.
Jeffro
Wait…are you guys saying my 2,450,000 new followers this week aren’t real?
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
I wonder sometimes if they’re playing dumb because they don’t want to tip their hand about how they detect and deal with bots. I wouldn’t be surprised if they passively blocked bot accounts from affecting things like trending hashtags. While they gain by having an apparently busy and important app, they lose big if they get a reputation for letting people manipulate their numbers with bots. So they want to be able to block bots in practice while not letting anyone know exactly how they do it so the people running the bots have a harder time bypassing their protections.
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: Only Baud! has that kind of drawing power.
@Adam L Silverman: It’s almost like they COULD just ban all bots, but instead they’re explaining why they don’t want to ban only pro-Trump bots. Sigh.
dm
@Roger Moore: There’s also the problem that if they exert any “editorial control” they lose the defense of being a common carrier, and risk becoming responsible for anything said on their medium.
Facebook tiptoes around this problem, too.
(Or so I might speculate — I don’t use either platform, so there are no doubt aspects of their behavior that I’m not aware of.)
JMG
@Roger Moore: Everything I have read about Twitter in the business press leads me to believe they can’t execute any strategy and are prisoners of their customers. It’d be out of business already if it weren’t how highly engaged political people (especially reporters, which is also true in sports) are with it.
Mike in DC
It would be nice if they could at least flag these accounts as “possible bot” accounts.
jl
PR campaign to intimidate Congress as serious investigations and requests for info begin?
Flood Cognressional twitter feeds with retweets of Trump wisdom?
My best guess, but seems kind of thin. How many bots will send e-mails, write letters or show up at offices and town halls.
Or maybe flood twitter streams to discourage people from supporting Congress?
Roger Moore
@MisterForkbeard:
They don’t want to ban all bots because some bots are actually useful. For example, John Cole has a bot that automatically tweets new posts on Balloon-Juice. Other people have created bots that do things like monitor every time somebody from a particular IP address range edits Wikipedia. I subscribe to a bot that reports every time there’s a problem with the LA Metro public transit system so I know if there’s going to be a problem with my train.
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: Or maybe they just don’t give a shit and the only thing that matters is cash flow.
Amaranthine RBG
@TenguPhule:
Skynet will never be woke, my friend.
Lapassionara
I know I should not have to ask, but who is Kathy Griffith, and what terrible thing did she do today?
Amaranthine RBG
@gene108:
But then they did the most stupid thing imaginable …
Corner Stone
@Lapassionara:
A stand up comedian, actress and performance artist. And not a damn thing.
Bill Arnold
Dunno if true, but it should be true:
America’s leading nickname for crystal meth is “Donald Trump”
(Apologies if this is a dup.)
Also just because (two weeks old, FWIW),
Trump’s Dumps: ‘Making Dumps Great Again’
ruemara
@Lapassionara: Beheaded a fake Trump. And she’s a comedian known for doing whatever she feels. Normally I’d say First Amendment rights, but I fear for her safety after this.
Adam L Silverman
@Lapassionara: She’s a C list comedian who tweeted a picture of herself drenched in fake blood, holding a chef’s knife covered in fake blood, holding a mannequin head with a wig that looks like the President’s hair drenched in fake blood.
debbie
Kind of stupid to think pushing up the number of followers will result in newfound respect. Unless I’m missing something.
TenguPhule
Perhaps it would be a bad time to mention that last night’s nightmare wasn’t the regular nuclear holocaust.
It was being pursued by an army of Paul Ryan killer cyborg clones.
dmsilev
@TenguPhule:
A certain amount of redundancy there.
TenguPhule
@dmsilev:
To my knowledge he hasn’t started literally ripping people’s faces off in real life. Yet.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Hmm…I wonder what Fox News will be talking about nonstop for the next two weeks?
Let’s go look…
My bad, it was only the third story on their website, after the US anti-ICBM test and Flynn “cooperating” with the Senate investigation. It’ll be the top story in 3…2…1…
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
That’s always a real possibility. My brother worked as a lead in the QC department- don’t laugh, it did exist for at least a little while- and didn’t think the place was very well run.
One possibility we should keep in mind is that this doesn’t have anything to do with trump (or Obama, Ellen, Kim Kardashian, etc.), but that somebody is simply trying to make massive numbers of bot accounts for some non-political reason and wants them to look superficially plausible by having them follow some of the big names on Twitter. I don’t know that it’s a likely explanation, but it’s one that we should entertain as a possibility until we see what all these bots do.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
To be concise, D-List. She’s fearless, I’ll give her that.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic:
Bots are not against the terms of service.
ETA: for the record, I run two
ruemara
@Major Major Major Major: But they should be.
Aleta
@ruemara: I fear for her safety after this.
Yeah, no kidding. And career. I could see Trump’s guys getting her corporate blacklisted or airport security listed despite all the HBO, Bravo, Emmys, Grammy and all. Because high time to hit back at all the comedians for their power.
Cheryl Rofer
@JMG: If they were prisoners of their customers, they would eliminate the bots. Also the harassment of women.
Major Major Major Major
@ruemara: Why? It’s not Facebook, there’s no expectation of real non-pseudonymous humans. It’s what the check mark is for.
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
I keep googling “Kathy Griffith” and all the results give me “Kathy Griffin.” Are they two different people? Most of the answers and descriptions I’ve seen on this thread also seem to conflate them.
Oatler.
There should be an alert when H.O.W.A.R.D. is present.
Roger Moore
@Cheryl Rofer:
If you aren’t paying for the service, you aren’t the customer; you’re the product. It’s the people paying for ads who are the customers.
Steeplejack
@Lapassionara:
It’s Kathy Griffin, and here you go.
Cheryl Rofer
Or Trump’s people are buying bots to keep their boy happy with big follower numbers. Although that doesn’t explain the other things.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: Twitter also doesn’t care. On balance, the jackals who howl about e.g. men’s rights are more their customers/products than the women who get howled at.
chris
@SiubhanDuinne: Here you go. See the video, tho you may regret it. The butthurt wingnuts are a plus.
https://twitter.com/search?q=%22Kathy%20Griffin%22&src=tren
Cheryl Rofer
@Roger Moore: The people paying for the ads aren’t interested in non-buying bots.
ruemara
@SiubhanDuinne: Kathy Griffin!
@Major Major Major Major: TBH, even some of the humans aren’t that human. I just think that bot accounts should have a different tier of membership. Just a clearer separation between real & marketing stuff.
jl
@Roger Moore: Maybe the Russians/Trumpsters are a step ahead and are programming the bots to buy stuff.
Edit: look out for runs on ethernet connectors and chips?
dr. bloor
@debbie: Yeah, I’m no fan of the powers that be at Twitter, but anyone who (a) attempts to derive insights about the universe from Twitter, or (b) thinks that Twitter should have much of a protective/editorial responsibility for those folks is kind of missing the point.
Patricia Kayden
@Lapassionara: Beheaded Trump. Apparently Rightwingers forgot all those effigies of President Obama being lynched.
Major Major Major Major
@dr. bloor: I agree that the point people miss is that Twitter sucks and is stupid.
zhena gogolia
OT, but Angie Dickinson is hot in Rio Bravo.
dr. bloor
@zhena gogolia: She’ll always be Pepper Anderson to this teenage boy.
Timurid
Leak Thirty was pretty dead today. :(
Barbara
@Roger Moore: Maybe someone is doing it to see if they can. It wouldn’t be the first cyberuser in the history of the cyber to do something like that.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
In some ways, it reminds me of the struggle to get smoking banned from restaurants. Owners were worried about offending existing customers who smoked, so they resisted like crazy any attempts to ban smoking and predicted they would devastate their business. What they didn’t see, though, was that there were lots of potential customers who were avoiding going out to eat because they couldn’t stand cigarette smoke, and banning smoking actually helped business by making restaurants more friendly to non-smokers. Twitter is so worried about scaring away dudebros that they’re completely missing all the potential users who the dudebros are scaring away.
Major Major Major Major
@Timurid: the deep state took a PTO day what with the long weekend and all.
p.a.
I can’t wait for my tip and ring copper expertise to be marketable again! bwaaa haaa haaa *curling moustache*
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
That’s different because reasons.
Barbara
@Roger Moore: I think it’s more like liquor companies who do want people to drink responsibly but also realize that it’s the irresponsible drinkers who drive the bottom line.
Patricia Kayden
Ms. Griffin just apologized for her beheading joke. Rightwingers will forgive her when hell freezes over.
sharl
Here’s something posted at Buzzfeed about 15 minutes ago, fyi. I don’t see anything that adds significantly to what Adam posted in the OP. Also, their formatting really sucks:
No, Donald Trump Did Not Gain Five Million New Twitter Followers In Three Days
So there; make of all that what you will. Twitter hath spoken!
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: @Barbara: I like both of these analogies but I think Barbara is right-er.
Corner Stone
@Timurid: “I’m feenin’ baby! You got something for me? I just need a little…a little something to get me over. You know what I’m saying? C’mon, baby! I’m hurting here!”
germy
wApO
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
I eagerly await Trump’s tweet in response.
PaulWartenberg
If my account ends up getting forced to follow trump’s, I will sue Twitter forever for every penny they got.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Roger Moore: Yes; I subscribe to a local traffic bot and a weather alert bot. There also some that do absurd narrative games–there’s one produces tweets which are essentially a Dadaist impersonation of the Delphic Oracle, and another that imitates overwrought fiction.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Adam L Silverman:
A very stupid act by Kathy Griffin. She’ll enrage the wingnuts in a way that is non-productive and will only invite derision and push back. To me, it’s akin to putting a Democratic candidate in rifle cross hairs on a poster.
Major Major Major Major
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): somebody at work found a bot that tweets deleted Wikipedia articles, which was hilarious. “List of people without names”, “list of things that taste like chicken”…
I’m following Real Time WW1 right now which tweets world war 1 like it was breaking news 100 years later.
J R in WV
@Roger Moore:
Not long ago, after the R-nuts took over the WV legislature, they started out to remove the health department’s ability to ban smoking in public places. The bars and restaurant owners went crazy, as their business has swelled since smoking in their establishments ended.
So after about 2 days, the Republicans forgot about freedom to smoke poisons in public, as management fought back hard.
We were traveling to Arizona not long ago, and headed west through KY into MO, instead of down into Tennessee and across Arkansas. We stopped for lunch in a big nice looking place near Branson. Sat down, ordered food in a mostly empty place. Guy sat right next to us, in a place with 90 empty tables, and fired up a cigarette… disgusting!
If I hadn’t been sure it was illegal, I would have got up and left. Regardless of being hungry. Poison in my air. And he picked out a table right next to other people, in spite of there being hundreds of empty chairs in the place. Probably 4 or 5 tables out of 80 or 90. Revolting behavior. Deliberate contamination of our breathing air while we tried to eat food.
The food wasn’t terrible for road food, but the smoke ruined it. Will never travel for pleasure in Missouri, ever.
bago
Goddamn, Twitter uses a lot of database technologies.
https://www.quora.com/Which-database-system-s-does-Twitter-use
MazeDancer
Kathy Griffin issued an excellent, full-out apology.
Terrible idea what she did with the inexcusable violent image. A Medusa wig might have helped make it a kind of turn-table “art”. But it was still grim, dreadful violence.
Comics probably make this horrid mistakes all the time. But doing it on Twitter is different than something wretched one night on one stage.
Gelfling 545
@TenguPhule: Well, naturally he’d want to keep that sort of thing quiet.
sm*t cl*de
@ThresherK:
We are authentic humans! I am eating cheeses and cooked meat! Hey! Let’s build a really big thing! I’m repeating your opinion because I want you to like me!
http://oglaf.com/humans/
Major Major Major Major
@bago: that’s not very rare for a huge web application. Balloon-Juice uses at least two. At work for less than a million users we use at least six, off the top of my head.
Mnemosyne
@J R in WV:
Yep — bar and restaurant owners in states that implemented smoking bans are now the biggest proponents of those bans, because it turns out that they’re actually good for business. Not only do they get more customers coming in, they have less employee illness and absenteeism, so they have reduced operating costs as well.
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: Do you think they’re paying attention?
FTFNYT:
Hmmm… Er, nobody could have predicted??
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
efgoldman
@TenguPhule:
What, did they bore you to death?
Mary G
Batsignal for Adam and Cheryl – know anything about this person? Credible or BS or who knows?
RepubAnon
@Gin & Tonic: Wait until the bots start re-tweeting links with malware mixed in…
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
I don’t know. Looking it up, the top 10% of drinkers are responsible for about 75%(!) of all alcohol consumption, so it’s almost impossible for liquor companies to survive without them. My impression is that the dudebros make up a much smaller percentage of all twitter users, both in terms of number of users and number of tweets.
To make another analogy in the alcohol/drinking field, it’s like a bar that becomes the hangout for a biker gang. The gang are good customers in that they buy a lot of beer, but they pick fights with random customers and will get in major brawls if a rival gang shows up. The owner has to decide if he wants to keep their steady business or hire a bunch of bouncers to throw them out in the hope that the bar can become a higher-class place that attracts even more customers.
Major Major Major Major
@RepubAnon: the Jester did that one time.
The Dudeist
@jl: As a hardcore Trump critic on Twitter, I can say that all these bots are designed to drown out all the criticism that must perturb him. I’ve noticed of late if me and 100 others post criticism to his new tweet all kinds of pro Trump posts show up. This is to assuage his fragile ego.
TenguPhule
@germy: Someone scrubbed their documents, sounds like.
Steve in the ATL
@Roger Moore: OMG I have so much childhood trauma from sitting in airplanes where people were smoking….
Roger Moore
@J R in WV:
Possibly silly question: wouldn’t the bar and restaurant owners have been allowed to decide whether to allow smoking in their own businesses, or was this another one of the Republicans’ classic “businesses should be free to decide how to do things until we don’t approve of their decisions” kind of free market?
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
Their hands sprouted bio-mechanical claws complete with giant buzzsaw attachments. Which they used on bystanders.
Then they were climbing up the walls of the building I was looking down from like deranged robot spiders as their limbs and necks bent in ways humans are not supposed to.
I woke up at that point.
eclare
Happy to report eclare! Live from Memphis is now available in both electric and acoustic versions.
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
Have you considered getting professional help?
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: I just feel like Peter Thiel would be more appropriate.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore:
Can’t afford it.
The whole “Yes, I’ve had horrible nightmares every single night since 11/8/16” doesn’t exactly lend itself to fixing. And I’m buggered when it comes to using most drugs for sleeping, side effects are too awful.
Corner Stone
No puppet! No puppet! You’re the puppet!
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone:
What did Shitler do this time?
sukabi
Speaking of Twitter…I used to be able to view the linked tweets in these posts on Twitter, but now clicking on a tweet gives me the Twitter message “you are not authorized to view these tweets”
I don’t have a Twitter account, but prior to the other day had no problem reading tweets / tweet threads … Now I can’t.
Corner Stone
Reporters still don’t get it. They still miss what the truth was about the 2016 election. This is fucking pathetic.
Major Major Major Major
@sukabi: all tweets or some tweets?
Frankensteinbeck
@MazeDancer:
I disapprove of that kind of humor in a political environment this highly charged. If it were just tacky, that wouldn’t be my business, but too many people are tense enough to be looking for validation for violence. It’s an unusual turn that our side are reaching that point as well.
Mary G
@eclare: Yay! Sad to report that the tree in the parkway that caused me to spend thousands of dollars on replacing main drain line has now ruptured the incoming water line under the sidewalk, so water was running down the street and meter has had to be turned off.
Good news is, nice man from the city left me the key so we can turn it on temporarily for shower & such. Gotta find a new plumber & find more money.
Corner Stone
Dammit! I was going to change the channel with TRMS started but now I see Joy Reid is hosting! Sonofa–
MomSense
I just checked my account and discovered that I was following potus and real Donald trump without having done so myself.
WTF Was twitter hacked or complicit?
TenguPhule
@Frankensteinbeck:
Door was opened by the right against President Obama.
Nobody bothered to ever close it.
TenguPhule
@MomSense:
Yes.
Corner Stone
@Frankensteinbeck: Violence or thought(s) of violence is acceptable if it comes from the right.
I’m fine with graphic expressions of the 1st amendment and wish she had not apologized. But that’s her choice and her career.
eclare
@Mary G: Oh hate to hear that, missed some details…is it a tree on your property? Had to replace outgoing pipe 15 years ago, yes, lots of money. My sympathies.
sukabi
@Major Major Major Major: until a couple of minutes ago it was all tweets… Now it seems I can actually read them on Twitter… ? glitch or what?
Shalimar
@West of the Rockies (been a while): It is as horrible as putting crosshairs on someone’s picture, maybe worse, but Kathy Griffin is not a politician. She has no responsibility to maintain civilized public discourse. She’s a comedian who benefits from any publicity.
Still right to apologize, since she made the mistake of posing that way in the first place.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Same here. Fortunately I just made a drink, so I’m set for the A-block.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
Bots a real problem on Reddit where they can inflate the number of subscribers to a subbreddit. They can also be used to constantly upvote posts so they appear on r/all. The “front page” of Reddit
Major Major Major Major
@sukabi: that pretty much sounds like the quintessential glitch.
jl
@The Dudeist: So, it’s part of Trump’s new ‘communications strategy’?
Trump’s razor strikes again?
TenguPhule
Wall Street Apologists are petty bastards.
I’ve got nothing fit for print here.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I think Maine was the first state to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. Nothing spoils a night out like cigarette smoke.
Tonight I had Giffords Chocolate ice cream and wine for dinner. Not a proud culinary moment for me but enjoyable.
Peale
@TenguPhule: he’d had enough of what, exactly?
TenguPhule
@Peale:
This.
Again, every response I have to this is not fit to print.
Shalimar
@Peale: Of everyone treating little girls like they are human beings too, apparently.
MomSense
@Mary G:
So sorry, MaryG.
Mary G
@eclare: It’s the city’s tree and they will cut it down if I ask, but it is a nice one. Going to ask them to have their arborist come out to allow us to cut some more roots. They were planted in the 20s, which is a long time for SoCal, and most people have gotten fed up, but it’s big and the shade is nice in the summer. Also, I have to pay for the replacement tree, which must be at least 10 or 15 feet tall, which is $$$.
This is what I get for laughing at Cole and his old house troubles.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
Huzzah! Glad you got your power back.
chris
@MomSense:
Best part of being an adult.
MomSense
@chris:
INORITE! I may even take up day drinking.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Another Scott: I can believe it. Twitter seems to me like a giant megaphone, especially with a lot of media pushing it on their platforms. It really has become something like a public utility. It’s not well regulated though.
Which paves the way for loudmouth narcissists like Trump to gain the attention of millions and also harass those they don’t like into silence
TenguPhule
Wapo Breakdown of the Fox “News” schrodinger’s explanation for Kushner
They’re getting snarky over there.
eclare
@Mary G: Sounds like plan. I love the shade and to look at trees, but yes, they can do some real damage and can be expensive to maintain. The things you learn when you quit renting! Hope you find a good and honest plumber.
eclare
@Steeplejack: Thanks! Got A/C cranked…
Another Scott
ScienceDaily:
Beware the bots…
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: I’m starting to think we might not have the right legal structures in place to deal with the internet, or more specifically the web, appropriately. Internet tubes as common carriers makes sense, but it’s clearer and clearer that the web isn’t really ‘like’ any of the things we’ve dealt with in the past. And I’m the last person you’d expect to hear this from.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: I miss Giffords! I made some Frozen Mango Yogurt with Mint, it was good. Next I want to try kulfi (Heavy Cream based tradition Indian icecream)
Kathleen
@p.a.: You might appreciate this little country ditty I wrote in 1984 (I’m An Analog Girl In A Digital World). You have to be old school Telco to get the puns:
I’m an analog girl
In a digital world
I can’t seem to make connectivity.
You tell me I’m your ex
‘Cause I’m under “DSX’d”
You say we’re not on the same frequency
When we first met you stole my heart
I was “hooked” on your “wink start”
There was no “sine” you’d “wave” good bye to me
But as I was mesmerized
As I looked into your eyes
You were checking out the “bauds” in your “bit stream”.
chris
@MomSense: That’s the spirit!
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s so good! My friend just moved and gave me her ice cream maker so if you have a good recipe please share! I want to find a coconut custard recipe but I love mango, too.
Morzer
@Peale:
Being repugnant without getting attention?
Ruckus
@chris:
Then the worst part of being an adult is having to live on a fairly strict diet, which doesn’t include ice cream (sob!), chocolate, salty foods, snacks, cookies, cake, pie, and anything that looks like or tastes like any of the above.
raven
@Ruckus: We’ve been doing South Beach for a month. We went out for an anniversary dinner and ate just a bit out of bounds.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes the world is changing rather rapidly. Look how much the world changed in the last hundred years, then compare how much it changed in the last fifty, now compare to the last fifteen.
sm*t cl*de
@TenguPhule:
The real wazzcock there is the original ‘Charging Bull’ sculptor who reckons that locating another sculpture in its vicinity allows people to see it other than in the way he intended, and people having unauthorised art interpretations is a copyright violation.
chris
@Ruckus: O if only that were so!
That said, sorry for your troubles.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: Does Giffords still make the orange pineapple flavor? I used to love it.
Ruckus
@raven:
I have to be careful not to go out of bounds at all. My diet is medically called for, for a number of different reasons. On the other hand, it’s OK because smell and taste have almost entirely escaped me. Fun times.
TenguPhule
@sm*t cl*de: And you have to just shake your head at his balliness, when his original statue was illegally placed there by him in the first place.
hovercraft
@Mary G:
That sucks, but at least he left you key. Sorry, as a silver lining that’s pretty thin ; (
@TenguPhule:
WTF is wrong with these, what kind of people are so threatened by a little girl that they have to literally place a dog next to her to piss on her? It’s a fucking bull! Ghouliani pitched a fit over some Jesus picture involving shit, it was disrespectful so he sued, but the effigies of Obama were fine, Kathy Griffin cuts off Twitler’s head and that is beyond the pale and she gets death threats, and now this. I wish they’d make up their minds, is free speech okay or not? Who is being “politically correct” now? Personally I don’t like the effigies or the beheading, but people have the right to do it, they can expect a visit from the SS but as long as they aren’t a threat, it’s a free country. Either no one gets “sacred cows” or we all get to be disrespectful, and we all get to call you petty, or crass, or insecure.
SiubhanDuinne
@eclare:
Power back on? YAY!!
Ruckus
@raven:
BTW, slob that I am I didn’t say, Congrats on the anniversary!
hovercraft
@SiubhanDuinne:
Woo hoo!
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
Free speech is for straight white men only. Everyone else’s free speech is granted on a conditional basis.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
Not sure. I usually grab the chocolate or black raspberry but I’ll try that flavor next time.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Actually isn’t free speech now only as free as you are able to pay for it?
Peale
@TenguPhule: oh ffs. The bull doesn’t own that space. The only reason it’s still there is that people decided they liked it. He foisted that bull on the public. If people decide they like the little girl, it will stay. I doubt they’ll go for pissing dog.
Plus it’s not his fight.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@hovercraft: A very small little man would do what he did. My dad told me about it a few minutes ago and he thought it was funny. I was not amused. I don’t think he thought much beyond “dog peeing on leg=?”
raven
@Ruckus: Ah, sorry, One of my friends had throat cancer. He’s recovered well but he can’t taste. We’ve had some interesting conversations about how not being interested in food and not being interested in booze are similar. Nearly all social gatherings are based on the two and it’s a challenge to enjoy them.
eclare
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks! Told my boss (also no power) today I would have been a shitty pioneer.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Ruckus: Freeze Peach means freedom from criticism now
hovercraft
@Mnemosyne:
Dammit, I keep forgetting I’m only 3/5 ths of a person, or am I just a rib? It’s so confusing.
p.a.
@Kathleen: wink start! boy I hadn’t even thought of that in, well, decades! I still have the handbooks for set modification, most of the last multi parties were ring side- isolate the black ring lead?- but I had a few tip sides, sometimes 4 party. Those poor old folks were forced over, and Vz is doing the same now: go fios or find another carrier.
hovercraft
@Mnemosyne:
Dammit, I keep forgetting I’m only 3/5ths of a person, or am I just a rib? It’s so confusing.
Barbara
@sm*t cl*de: That is a bold interpretation of copyright protection, especially since nothing was actually copied.
Mary G
This press release from San Diego Indivisible describing Darrell Issa’s miserable month of May explains a bit about the state of mind that had him on the roof today. Cheered me right up. He stacked the audience for his town hall on Saturday which should backfire but good. I hope to be outside on my scooter with my sign.
hovercraft
@Ruckus:
Actually I believe the Alaska Grifter defined it for us back in 2008, free speech is when “conservatives” say whatever they want, and are protected from any and all criticism, if you do criticize you have violated their first amendment rights. If you are a “liberal”, please note that any and all speech by you is subject to any and all criticism up to and including taking your words out of context and applying pretzel logic to make them offensive. Your welcome.
eclare
@Mary G: You all are clearly getting in his head, good work!
dmsilev
@hovercraft: Perhaps you’re 3/5s of a rib?
sm*t cl*de
@Barbara:
The
sculptor’swee gobshite’s claim is that having fly-tipped a lump of bronze in a public place, he now has an absolute right to control how passers-by interpret and criticise it. And this extends to prohibiting anyone else from altering its context by dumping another lump of bronze in the same public place. You have to be a corporation to get away with egregious crap like that.As a bumptious, censorious act of asshattery, it is tailor-made to provoke Popehat to new heights of creative invective.
Frankensteinbeck
@Major Major Major Major:
I agree. Alas that the internet gained its power precisely as half the voters in our country turned into a suicide cult. Otherwise, I’m sure it would be much better regulated by now.
@hovercraft:
That depends. Having listened to evangelical preachers, I am coming to the conclusion that liberal women are descendants not of Eve, but of Lilith. That means you’re technically made of clay just like Adam, and his full equal, which is why you’re evil and must be destroyed.
(I’m assuming, because of the rib comment, you’re female.)
Schlemazel
@Ruckus:
How long has that been going on? Radiation treatments for cancer killed most of my taste buds & about 1/2 of my saliva glands 5 years ago. I could taste almost nothing for over 2 years then, slowly that part started coming back. Its still not perfect but it is a whole lot better than it was.
Major Major Major Major
@Kathleen: reminds me of Bad Connection by Yazoo.
Frankensteinbeck
@hovercraft:
This can be hard to explain to people not familiar with how bigots, narcissists, assholes, abusers, and the handful of conservatives who don’t fall into those groups think. The idea is that they are normal. They are correct. The world resolves around them. Rights only apply to them. It doesn’t make sense to apply rights to other people. You might as well talk about the color of a painting in a dark room. For example, freedom of religion only applies to Christianity, because only Christianity is actually truly a religion, because the others are lies and superstition. Only conservative opinions are valid, so freedom of speech only applies to them. If liberals disagree, then we are wrong and it’s only a question of figuring out how. The Other cannot have rights, because the Other is always disqualified. Although even that doesn’t quite describe it. It’s a kind of blindness. Rights are things they have, and there isn’t even a question of whether the Other has rights.
Fair Economist
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Wow, that’s an interesting reference. Trump might dislike that outcome.
ThresherK
@sm*t cl*de: Hee hee. I’ve only got a bit into Oglaf but it’s on my list of comics to read more of when I get time.
I was going for the classic 30 Rock bit with Steve Buscemi.
Ella in New Mexico
@Adam L Silverman: meanwhile, I got some kind of “11 hours and 59 minutes” warning about my responses being possibly inappropriate after I told Donald J. Trump Junior he was a rotting bag of pus and to go fuck himself instead of killing endangered wild life.
Let’s just say I’d had a couple of shots of some really good tequila…?
No One You Know
@Frankensteinbeck: That’s brilliant, and helpful. I’ve never thought about it like that.