Category Archives: culture

Facebook Revamp?

Posted on by
Reply

Christopher Mims had a piece on this, that Facebook MFWIC Mark Zuckerberg says he’s interested in doing.  Mims opened his article with an important question:

So here’s the multibillion-dollar question: is Mr Zuckerberg willing to sacrifice revenue for the well-being of Facebook’s two billion-plus users?

Unfortunately, his piece centered on the potentially addictive nature of Facebook (among other virtual, interactive social media).  Important as money is to running a business, and important as addiction is to handle, Mims missed a number of larger questions—which bear on addiction, but not exclusively so.

  1. making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent Whose definition of “time well spent?” Is Facebook going to dictate that to its users?
  2. encourage meaningful social interactions Whose definition of “meaningful?” Is Facebook going to dictate that, too?
  3. push us away from harmful ways of using the service Whose definition of “harmful?” Will Facebook dictate that to users, going beyond the possibly addictive nature to other definitions convenient to Facebook?
  4. steps include [what] Facebook…believes will reduce engagement on the service, including hiding click bait and fake news Whose definition of “click bait?” Of “fake news?” How will Facebook prove it’s not merely censoring? It already has been exposed as having an unbalanced coterie of “content moderators” who censor what they personally view as unacceptably conservative.

All of this, also, elides Facebook’s well-known lack of concern for user privacy, invading it at will for “business” purposes.

Porch Dogs

Posted on by
Reply

Some of you may be aware of the protests in Iran, protests that are growing in size and becoming subject to increasingly violent attempts at suppression by the Iranian government.  “Some of you” because the NLMSM isn’t talking much about the protests.

It turns out that Iranian women are playing a prominent leading role in those protests.

  • a young Iranian woman standing atop a container and shedding her hijab…while simultaneously waving it as a flag
  • a woman confronting security forces and proclaiming “Death to Khamenei” while crowds around her join in
  • Another woman was seen on tape declaring “You raised your fists and ruined our lives. Now we raise our fists. Be men, join us. I as a woman will stand in front and protect you. Come represent your country.”

And on and on.  These women are risking their freedom, such as it is in Iran, risking arrest, beatings, perhaps their lives just to be in these protests, much less to lead many of them.

But, where are the Western “feminists” who were willing—anxious, even—to protest loudly against the inauguration of a President of whom they disapprove, protest against the perceived evils of Civil War heroes of the Confederacy, against sexism and sexual harassment and assault in the halls of Hollywood and Congress?

Never mind that these protests all were conducted wholly within the safety of a nation that proudly protects the freedom to speak one’s mind, to protest against government or any other ill, real or imagined.

Where, now, are Linda Sarsour?  Elizabeth Warren?  Nancy Pelosi?  Kathy Griffin?  Kamala Harris?  Kirsten Gillibrand?  Amy Klobuchar?  Debbie Stabenow?  Debbie Dingell?  Madonna?  Amy Poehler?

Others, like Catherine Ray, Federica Mogherini’s spokesman, has uttered only bland platitudes about rights to peaceful protest and free speech.  The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy herself has chosen, so far, not to speak at all in her own voice.

What are these women, safe and sound in the bosom of the United States and Europe, saying and doing in support of those Iranian women?  Not much.

Susan Rice, ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) National Security Advisor and UN Ambassador, says the timidity is proper:

Stephen Miller, the author of the piece at the link, wants to know why these modern “feminists” don’t speak up or act concretely in support of those Iranian women.  I have a different bit of advice: stay up on the porch, ladies.  It’s safe there.  Real women are taking action.

Even porch dogs yap, though.

A More Bipartisan Senate?

Posted on by
Reply

Senator Doug Jones (D, AL) was sworn in on Wednesday, and he claimed to be “starting fresh” and wanted to be the voice of reason.  Buried in that WSJ piece, though, was this unadorned comment by the piece’s author, Siobhan Hughes, and that is the point of this post:

Democratic leaders started 2017 expressing a desire to find common ground with Mr Trump, and ended the year so alienated from the legislative process….

They alienated themselves by rejecting all efforts at bipartisanship.  A couple of interviews at the end of the year gave the Progressive-Democrats’ game away.  Congresswoman Debbie Dingle (D, MI) said that she wanted bipartisanship and was anxious for Republicans to work with her.  Senator Ben Cardin (D, MD) said that he was interested in bipartisan solutions and he wanted Republicans to work with him to achieve them.

Not a syllable of interest in these Progressive-Democrats, or their fellows in either House of Congress, in their working with Republicans.  It’s strictly one-way.

A Caliphate Has Collapsed?

Posted on by
Reply

That’s what Renée Rigdon, Tristan Wyatt, and Karen Leigh would have us believe in their recent Wall Street Journal piece.

It’s true enough that the Daesh—that JV team of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) estimation—ran through the Iraqi “army” a few years ago, exploded through Syrian territory, and wound up controlling a significant fraction of Iraqi and Syrian land.  Their physical expansion was stopped in the immediacy of the situation only by Iraqi Kurds and the confused and fractious condition of Syria.  It’s also true that under President Donald Trump, a US-refurbished Iraqi army allied with those Kurds and local militias, with the support of an unleashed US-led coalition of air forces, recaptured nearly all of Iraqi territory in very short order while that same coalition of air forces supported a US-led coalition of rebels (albeit of at best dubious provenance) have disinfected most of Daesh-held Syria.

However, it’s naïve to suggest that the Daesh’s “caliphate” has crumbled, as the article’s title claims.  The Daesh, like its forerunner al Qaeda, is a polity that is first and foremost a network entity.  It has physical nodes existing parasitically in a broad swath of nation-states, ranging from western People’s Republic of China through northern Africa.  It has cells throughout Europe and in the United States.  These nodes and cells are connected via the Internet and the world’s cell phone network.

All that’s happened with the physical rollup of the Daesh in Iraq and Syria is that this terrorist polity has been freed from the shackles of geography.  Now our battle must shift to the virtual world; it’s far too soon to cry Victory.

Heads up.  Be very heads up.

The EPA Failed Again

Posted on by
Reply

Quite apart from the pseudo-science that the Environmental Protection Agency’s previous Administrator, Gina McCarthy, so cynically used to rationalize her agency’s rules, and the frequent eschewing of the cost effectiveness analysis that’s supposed to underwrite or block Agency rules, the Obama administration personnel in management positions in that facility have routinely and for the duration ignored basic security rules and practices.  According to the EPA’s Inspector General,

Hundreds of contractors holding important information security jobs at the US Environmental Protection Agency have for years been working as high-level operators of its computer systems without the appropriate security background checks—a situation the agency is still scrambling to correct.

During all that time, the agency apparently did not even have a complete list of all the “high-risk” positions where detailed background investigations of outside contractors were required.

Among the IG’s findings:

As recently as last February,

nearly 70% of 484 contractors carrying a special, embedded-chip card allowing “elevated access” to EPA computer systems for their work still had not gotten their higher-level background checks.

In one sample,

five of nine contractor personnel were given sensitive access to EPA computer systems without strict background checks, even though they had worked for the EPA “for over five years.”

And

  • “a lack of oversight by responsible offices” within EPA to confirm that background investigations were initiated and eventually completed when contractors got the supposedly temporary right to special access cards
  • conflicting totals among various EPA offices about how many working contractors would require high-level background checks
  • a “breakdown in communication” among various EPA computer system managers and oversight personnel over verification of the checks
  • a refusal on the part of one EPA bureau to provide a listing of personnel who did not even have the special computer access cards but nonetheless still had privileged access to EPA computers.

Note to the IG: offices don’t do anything; the personnel manning those offices do things.  Name names.

Regarding that fourth bullet, it’s a mystery to me why the management personnel running that bureau, blatantly insubordinate as they are, haven’t been fired for cause.

Come to that, the management personnel in those other bullets also should have been fired long ago for their failure to perform, whether deliberate or not.

It’s also a mystery to me why those without the required background checks or clearances haven’t had their accesses canceled.

This is one more reason to abolish the EPA altogether.