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Cal Tek
Cal Tek's Journal
Cal Tek's Journal
November 23, 2018
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November 22, 2018
Well, at least he still has Trump's vote!
Putin's popularity plunges as Russian voters rage over pension reforms
Source: CBC
Jonathon Gatehouse · CBC News · Posted: Nov 22, 2018 2:10 PM ET
Vladimir Putin's popularity is plummeting as Russian voters rage over government pension reforms.
A new poll, published today by the independent Levada Center, finds the Russian president's approval rating at 56 per cent, a five-year low. And the survey makes it clear that the public is increasingly unhappy with the direction the country is heading in.
Sixty-one per cent of respondents told Levada that they hold Putin "fully" responsible for Russia's problems, with another 22 per cent saying the president is "somewhat" to blame.
If an election were held today, just 40 per cent said they would cast a ballot for the man who has led them since 1999.
Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/national-today-newsletter-putin-tijuana-migrants-funerals-1.4911423
Well, at least he still has Trump's vote!
November 22, 2018
These three videos add up to almost 50 minutes. By all means, feel free to bookmark and watch them later. But DO WATCH THEM!
Meet the KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News
OPERATION INFEKTION | THE NEW YORK TIMES OPINION SECTION S1 • E1
OPERATION INFEKTION | THE NEW YORK TIMES OPINION SECTION S1 • E2
The Seven Commandments of Fake News | NYT Opinion
OPERATION INFEKTION | THE NEW YORK TIMES OPINION SECTION S1 • E3
How Disinformation Is Taking Over the World | NYT Opinion
The New York Times
Published on 20 Nov 2018
These three videos add up to almost 50 minutes. By all means, feel free to bookmark and watch them later. But DO WATCH THEM!
November 22, 2018
The sad part is that, in Mississippi, she probly still wins.
Cindy Hyde-Smith Stumbles In Senate Debate
MSNBC
Published on 21 Nov 2018
The sad part is that, in Mississippi, she probly still wins.
November 20, 2018
FOX "News" or Facebook: I still can't make up my mind which one has done more harm to the country.
Facebook Betrayed America
By ALEX SHEPHARD
November 14, 2018
Seven months ago, Mark Zuckerberg sat before Congress and said he was sorry about the fake news and the data breaches—and that it wasn’t really Facebook’s fault. The company’s founder and CEO had been hauled before Congress to answer for what became known as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a political consulting firm harvested Facebook data to sow electoral discord to help elect Donald Trump. Zuckerberg, appearing contrite before members of the House and Senate, insisted that Facebook’s flaws stemmed from the company’s commitment to free discourse and improving the world. “Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company,” he said. “For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring. ... But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well.”
But a New York Times report published on Wednesday tells a different story. While Zuckerberg was sitting doe-eyed before Congress, insisting that Facebook only wants to connect people, his company was in fact imitating some of the worst behavior on Facebook to counter the barrage of negative stories the company was facing.
Zuckerberg may have insisted that all of the criticism of Facebook was a byproduct of the company’s core mission, but a crisis PR firm contracted by Facebook linked the site’s critics to George Soros, the liberal Jewish billionaire who is often at the center of right-wing attacks and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. At the same time, top executives, notably Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, were discouraging the company from investigating Russian activity on the site.
This response exposes the hypocrisy at the center of the company: While Zuckerberg was promising to return to the company’s utopian vision of bringing humanity closer together, it was doing everything it could to sow division, all in order to steer clear of negative coverage and eventual regulation.
https://newrepublic.com/article/152253/facebook-betrayed-america
November 14, 2018
Seven months ago, Mark Zuckerberg sat before Congress and said he was sorry about the fake news and the data breaches—and that it wasn’t really Facebook’s fault. The company’s founder and CEO had been hauled before Congress to answer for what became known as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a political consulting firm harvested Facebook data to sow electoral discord to help elect Donald Trump. Zuckerberg, appearing contrite before members of the House and Senate, insisted that Facebook’s flaws stemmed from the company’s commitment to free discourse and improving the world. “Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company,” he said. “For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring. ... But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well.”
But a New York Times report published on Wednesday tells a different story. While Zuckerberg was sitting doe-eyed before Congress, insisting that Facebook only wants to connect people, his company was in fact imitating some of the worst behavior on Facebook to counter the barrage of negative stories the company was facing.
Zuckerberg may have insisted that all of the criticism of Facebook was a byproduct of the company’s core mission, but a crisis PR firm contracted by Facebook linked the site’s critics to George Soros, the liberal Jewish billionaire who is often at the center of right-wing attacks and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. At the same time, top executives, notably Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, were discouraging the company from investigating Russian activity on the site.
This response exposes the hypocrisy at the center of the company: While Zuckerberg was promising to return to the company’s utopian vision of bringing humanity closer together, it was doing everything it could to sow division, all in order to steer clear of negative coverage and eventual regulation.
https://newrepublic.com/article/152253/facebook-betrayed-america
The Punctured Myth of Sheryl Sandberg
By ALEX SHEPHARD
November 16, 2018
It’s been five years since Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, published her manifesto, Lean In, urging women not to sell themselves short at work or doubt their ability to balance a family with a career. Though controversial, the book was a mega-bestseller, selling more than four million copies. It spawned a mini empire, with 40,000 mentoring circles and annual campaigns, and turned Sandberg into a celebrity executive: the face of a new brand of professional feminism.
Lean In was published when Sandberg was 43, and capped her impressive rise in the professional world. She began her career working closely with her mentor, Larry Summers, who taught her at Harvard. She worked with him at the World Bank and, later, at the Treasury Department. From there she went to Google, where she led the company’s online advertising efforts. In 2007, Sandberg met Mark Zuckerberg at a Christmas party, and he convinced her to jump ship.
The Facebook founder tasked Sandberg with a daunting goal: Make the company profitable. It took her just two years to do so. In 2017, Facebook made in $40 billion in advertising revenue, and today the company’s market capitalization is $400 billion. Sandberg also brought a corporate professionalism to the company. If Zuckerberg was the baby-faced tech visionary, Sandberg was lead adult in the room, taking care of Facebook’s economic and political needs. She has been so successful that she was rumored to be the frontrunner to lead the Treasury Department if Hillary Clinton had become president.
That sterling reputation took a serious blow this week. A report from The New York Times shows that, while Sandberg was building her global brand, she was using aggressive and underhanded tactics at Facebook. As the company faced increasing criticism and pressure over its handling of fake news, election interference, data abuse, and the incitement of ethnic violence and genocide, she embraced a strategy to suppress information about Facebook’s problems, discredit its critics, and deflect blame onto its competitors. She berated her security chief for being honest about the extent of the Russian campaign on the site. And she employed multiple crisis PR firms that spread fake news as a defense tactic, in one instance tying critics to the liberal billionaire, George Soros, a frequent subject of anti-semitic abuse online.
https://newrepublic.com/article/152320/punctured-myth-sheryl-sandberg
By ALEX SHEPHARD
November 16, 2018
It’s been five years since Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, published her manifesto, Lean In, urging women not to sell themselves short at work or doubt their ability to balance a family with a career. Though controversial, the book was a mega-bestseller, selling more than four million copies. It spawned a mini empire, with 40,000 mentoring circles and annual campaigns, and turned Sandberg into a celebrity executive: the face of a new brand of professional feminism.
Lean In was published when Sandberg was 43, and capped her impressive rise in the professional world. She began her career working closely with her mentor, Larry Summers, who taught her at Harvard. She worked with him at the World Bank and, later, at the Treasury Department. From there she went to Google, where she led the company’s online advertising efforts. In 2007, Sandberg met Mark Zuckerberg at a Christmas party, and he convinced her to jump ship.
The Facebook founder tasked Sandberg with a daunting goal: Make the company profitable. It took her just two years to do so. In 2017, Facebook made in $40 billion in advertising revenue, and today the company’s market capitalization is $400 billion. Sandberg also brought a corporate professionalism to the company. If Zuckerberg was the baby-faced tech visionary, Sandberg was lead adult in the room, taking care of Facebook’s economic and political needs. She has been so successful that she was rumored to be the frontrunner to lead the Treasury Department if Hillary Clinton had become president.
That sterling reputation took a serious blow this week. A report from The New York Times shows that, while Sandberg was building her global brand, she was using aggressive and underhanded tactics at Facebook. As the company faced increasing criticism and pressure over its handling of fake news, election interference, data abuse, and the incitement of ethnic violence and genocide, she embraced a strategy to suppress information about Facebook’s problems, discredit its critics, and deflect blame onto its competitors. She berated her security chief for being honest about the extent of the Russian campaign on the site. And she employed multiple crisis PR firms that spread fake news as a defense tactic, in one instance tying critics to the liberal billionaire, George Soros, a frequent subject of anti-semitic abuse online.
https://newrepublic.com/article/152320/punctured-myth-sheryl-sandberg
FOX "News" or Facebook: I still can't make up my mind which one has done more harm to the country.
November 20, 2018
"New Blood" is great, but why get rid of "Old Blood" that's still effective? And have no doubt: Pelosi can still punt asses into the Potomac!
The Truth Behind the Toothless Rebellion Against Nancy Pelosi
By ALEX SHEPHARD
November 20, 2018
On Monday, 16 conservative Democrats took their shot at Nancy Pelosi, who is expected to easily win the speakership when the 116th Congress convenes in January. It’s an odd, futile rebellion, one that underscores the incoherence of a lot of Pelosi’s critics, particularly in right-leaning districts.
One problem, among many: An alternative to Pelosi is never named. Ohio Democrat Marcia Fudge is considering a challenge, but she didn’t even sign the letter. The letter itself fails to mention specific criticisms of Pelosi’s past performance, or of the aims she has set for the next Congress. It does not say what the conservative antagonists, who are decidedly to the right of their fellow Democrats and more likely to vote with President Donald Trump, think a Democratic-controlled House should try to accomplish.
Instead, the letter falls back on a familiar gripe: that Democrats need younger leaders and that means replacing the 78-year-old Pelosi. “Our majority came on the backs of candidates who said that they would support new leadership because voters in hard-won districts, and across the country, want to see real change in Washington,” the letter reads. “We promised to change the status quo, and we intend to deliver on that promise.“
It’s true that Democrats should develop the next generation of leaders. Pelosi herself has acknowledged the need for “new blood,” saying, however believably, that she would have stepped aside if Hillary Clinton had won the White House in 2016. But the protest against Pelosi is more about the San Francisco liberal’s unpopularity, particularly in the purple rural and suburban districts represented by letter-signers like Ohio’s Tim Ryan (who challenged Pelosi for the role of minority leader two years ago) and incoming freshman Abigail Spanberger of Virginia. And it ultimately says less about the strength of Pelosi’s position than the weakness of conservative Democrats as we head into the 2020 presidential cycle.
https://newrepublic.com/article/152342/truth-behind-toothless-rebellion-nancy-pelosi
"New Blood" is great, but why get rid of "Old Blood" that's still effective? And have no doubt: Pelosi can still punt asses into the Potomac!
November 20, 2018
I'm not much of a believer myself, but Stephen rocks!
Stephen Colbert on faith, God and politics in the age of Trump
America - The Jesuit Review
Premiered on 15 Nov 2018
6:26-16:49
I'm not much of a believer myself, but Stephen rocks!
November 20, 2018
I saw a music video some years back. The song was "She Ain't Pretty, She Just Looks That Way." I don't know the name of the band that recorded it, else I would have posted that video too.
Ivanka Trump Busted For Extensive Use Of Personal Email
I saw a music video some years back. The song was "She Ain't Pretty, She Just Looks That Way." I don't know the name of the band that recorded it, else I would have posted that video too.
November 19, 2018
We have been listening: Trump, the Retardlicans, and their carbon-lovin' owners have not!
WaPo: Nature has something to tell us. It's time we listened
By John McKinney
November 16
Not so long ago, California wildfires knew their place. They burned wilderness areas, national forests and remote, sparsely inhabited canyons far from population centers. Sometimes cabins would burn, even homes when sparks flew and landed on the wooden shake roofs that were still allowed back in those days.
Now our wildfires know no bounds.
Unlike hurricanes that are christened in alphabetical order, and decided upon in advance, fires are named for the places where they start — the Woolsey Fire and the Camp Fire, most recently — and are much closer to homes than ever before. Their flames sweep through natural spaces and leap from exurb to suburb and burst into neighborhoods, taking lives and incinerating homes. They burn with a ferocity and randomness that is horrifying for those in the fire’s path and gut-wrenching for the millions watching them broadcast in real time.
Friends and family end up on television, struggling to express their losses as well as their gratitude to first-responders, though they have lost everything but the clothes on their backs.
This year, the loss of lives and the destruction of the built environment are unprecedented. So, too, is the loss of the natural world, the place where I have spent so much time and, as a nature writer and chronicler of hiking trails, shared nature with as many people as I can. Nature has something to tell us. It’s time we listened.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/nature-has-something-to-tell-us-its-time-we-listened/2018/11/16/d4c00d86-e917-11e8-b8dc-66cca409c180_story.html?utm_term=.66456a5e254e
We have been listening: Trump, the Retardlicans, and their carbon-lovin' owners have not!
Profile Information
Name: Cal (short for last name)Gender: Male
Hometown: Havre de Grace, MD
Member since: Fri Nov 16, 2018, 04:25 PM
Number of posts: 41