Posts

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Fun With Twitter™

Never been much of a Twit, myself. I tend to agree with Dave Chappelle on the topic – it’s just a digital bathroom wall. But now that Fuckbook’s insidious business practices are finally out in the open, it’s time to pivot. I’ve been using the Twitter for my own algorithm and engagement testing – but the only real goal is delivering depraved insults to selected individuals.

Youtube could be a legitimate service, if they cleaned it up. I deleted my Fuckbook account years ago when it started getting really shitty. Twitter came into focus when the Orange Fuckwit began leveraging it for his misinformation campaign(s) in an epic thumb-nose to Democracy and the Rule of Law. Smart people always knew the only reason these platforms exist is to monetize personal user data without the owner’s consent.

The 1st phase of this little exercise demonstrates how quickly they nail the marketing vectors. I might be Twitter’s least active user. I follow nobody and block everything. My last logon before today was 2 weeks ago. The only football stuff I’ve done online this season were NFL.com to see the schedule reading nothing, and one streaming service (on which I do not even have an account) watching games. It’s no big stretch to imagine what happens when those algorithms get tweaked and applied in even more targeted fashion.

Even more concerning: how and where’d they get a low-interest fan’s info with just a few weeks of minimal online NFL activity that never even touched their platform? We used to call it triangulation in the missile targeting business. In the data-mining business, the payoff is like the Ferrari ultimately produced from stuff taken out of the ground.

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Health Status Update (for VA purposes)

Curious how all our previous messages disappeared from the system before I logged in to send this today. Doesn’t appear real secure. They were already either relieving themselves of me, or perpetuating the cover-up.

I will be an inactive VA participant going forward. There’s no longer much doctors can do for me.
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Pond Shutdown 2021

We had the first trouble-free pond season this past summer. There were no leaks, algae blooms, predator attacks or other problematic issues like we normally experienced in previous years. The liner will be properly finished and leak-free for the long haul next year. Algae control was simply a matter of installing a UV light in the sump. Waiting for the Herons to finish migration and keeping the surface covered with water plants effectively thwarted them and the raccoons.

A fourth problematic pond issue was also solved just a couple days ago. Last year I tried putting in a few 1000-watt heaters to hold the water temperature up into October. That was pure folly. It worked, but nearly doubled the electric bill in just two weeks. So I found that running hot tap water into there for an hour raises the water temperature about 6°F. I think the basement water heater is probably more efficient for this purpose than the aquarium heaters. Wish I knew the safe cutoff temp-difference point for moving the goldfish.

We still have at least another couple weeks of warm weather coming, but with temps dropping into the 40’s overnight, the water gets too cold this time of year. The issue is too much of a temp swing transferring them from outside to inside. I can get them within around 6-7° now, then I siphon some tank water into the bucket and let them wait a few minutes to adjust before chucking them into the basement aquariums.

There may come a time we let them hibernate and run it year ’round. Just need to determine how it might be possible to reliably prevent a hard freeze in sub-zero temps.

The population count is around 40 now.

Some of those hazy-looking shots are wildfire smoke. The last pic shows the filter material pulled out of the sump. It takes awhile to get it all hosed down and put away, but not real difficult, overall.

That water tested cleaner than the aquariums. Probably better than tap.
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A Day Late, and a Dollar Short

With little more effect than Zucky’s offerings over the years. Youtube finally decided enough was enough and started restricting vaccine misinformation. Yay. How long you think they might allow the next propaganda-infused threat to humanity to fester before taking action? I bet it’s until they can no longer get away with ignoring and deliberately overlooking it. Marketing profit dollars rule until the problem becomes existential. Until then, the corporations will continue raking it in.

Social media is a tool often leveraged for evil and a primary driver of today’s societal decline.
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Memelicans

I guess Boebert didn’t get the memo. Her impeachment submission somehow went meme-less. Maybe it didn’t rise to even that level. But MTG is leveraging the new repug lawmaking tactic to the hilt, schooling legislators in D.C.

Goes a long way towards explaining cognitive shortcomings apparent in legislators across the country. To paraphrase Seth, Boebert really seems more like somebody who passed out on Boone’s Farm at the bonfire and woke up in Congess. That’s the education and cognitive level we’re dealing with here.

Not presenting to a room full of 2nd graders. She’s getting paid to do this shyt.
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It’s Out of Control

Once again… “…designed to replace the 1990s-developed Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program, which notoriously faced a series of severe cost overruns and schedule delays, with the final satellite in that constellation only to be launched in 2022.”

We’ll see. We knew it was off the rails back in 2004 while I was working systems security at the Boulder facility when the original LEO constellation was cancelled. Even then, it was hard for a technically competent engineer to imagine how the integration effort for such a system could ever succeed at scale.

Guess we’ll try again. If there is one thing certain, this government does not learn from it’s mistakes.

I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles…

I was wrong about GEO-6, assuming it would not even finish getting built. Now waiting to see if it flies.

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Abbott Caught the Abortion Car

Credit to Beau on the perfect analogy for Texas’ new abortion bounty law. These idiots need to realize why their voting blocs seem to be dwindling. Abbott just turned damn near all the women in Texas against him – with the possible exception of a handful of brainwashed elderly grandma holy rollers.

Fuck Abbott and anybody who agrees with him.
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Professional Insane Dipshit

I been wondering in what pigeonhole of the low-info legislator matrix to shove Ghomert. Couldn’t quite figure what flavor of willfully-ignorant racist cretin he was. As usual, Trey reliably delivered:

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Damn Russians are Persistent

Can’t figure out why the Russians are so interested in my web site ever since the 2016 election. Everything’s political, but WTF do I know?! I guess the Trumplicans must be paying them well.

Quite the little cyber-crime operation they have setup over there. Russkies outnumber all the world’s other spammer, scammer, and other digital n’ere do wells put together aimed at me these days.

Inside Russian Hacking Culture. “Let me say that we know very well the insides of the software used on many websites,” Kovalyev said. “And so we know where the holes are. But you make it easy by not fixing even what you can fix. And so we visit. Hello!”

That’s like a mugger bragging about where to find all the darkest, smelliest corners of the NYC subway.

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Go Rover!

Randall’s on a roll…

When does space exploration become a high-level controversy?