Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

This really is a full service blog.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

We still have time to mess this up!

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

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Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    Jerzy Russian

    I for one welcome our new simian overlords. They can’t be any worse than our current overlords.

  6. 6.

    Origuy

    I just keep headphones plugged in. Unless I’m actually listening to something, I rarely notice autoplay.

  7. 7.

    MazeDancer

    Ever since you did the Sitemeter tweaking, the auto-plays stopped for my viewing. They were constant before that.

    No auto-plays happening now, either. On Mac with Firefox, if that gives any useful info.

  8. 8.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Please (please) discuss ways to make that go away in the comments.

    Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

  11. 11.

    Chuckles

    If @MazeDancer is right, Tim F., you might just need to do a hard refresh (Ctrl-F5 or Ctrl-Shift-R or Command-Something-Something) to get the old versions of scripts out of your cache. I haven’t noticed getting ads like that, though I haven’t been here every day, and I keep my speakers muted 90% of the time.

  12. 12.

    gogol's wife

    Mistermix did a whole thread on this the other day.

    I’m not getting it right now at the office, but I was still getting it at home (Mac, Firefox and Chrome) as of yesterday. I’m not in the office as much so I’m not sure whether it happens here or not.

  13. 13.

    gogol's wife

    I do love the fact that for some people, this took the form of the ghost of Ted Cruz screaming “We shall never surrender!” over and over again. Seems like poetic justice.

  14. 14.

    Schlemizel

    I am using the latest Firefox & nothing else, I am not getting this fine “feature” tha the rest of you see to be. I am a lucky boy

  15. 15.

    shelley

    Oh, so that’s where that ‘Never surrender’ came from. Half the annoyance was wondering just what the hell it was supposed to be refering to.

  16. 16.

    Ruckus

    @Chuckles:
    Rebooting has been the answer from just about day one with computers. And a hard reboot at that, not just a refresh. I’ve had many problems that wouldn’t go away with a refresh that are cured with a reboot. All though trying a reboot doesn’t hurt and usually takes less time. And now that we have more memory and background processes and scripts and autoplay ads and……. it seems even more appropriate to reboot at least every once in a while.

  21. 21.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Donald: I think it has to do with what browser you’re using, on what OS. Also, I’ve had this problem with auto plays on Atrios’ site (the Colbert Report clips just start up without hesitation) but that may have more to do with server side issues on the site (Sitemeter has been mentioned in various places) that must be dealt with by whoever manages a particular site, which we’re seeing Mistermix and TimF attempting to address.

    Shorter, this shit is complicated.

  22. 22.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @shelley: Ted Cruz imagining that he’s Winston Churchill. No problem, Rafael. We’ll take no prisoners when we storm Festung Cruz.

  23. 23.

    Citizen_X

    Please (please) discuss ways to make that go away in the comments.

    Everybody email Cole to bitch about it. That usually gets some kind of reaction.

  24. 24.

    MattF

    @Villago Delenda Est: There’s a specific Flash problem that needs an OS/browser fix– for me, OS X + Safari, the Safari extension ClickToPlugin blocks all Flash media and only plays it when you right-click and select ‘Load Flash.’ There are also site issues that were discussed in the old mistermix thread below.

  26. 26.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Donald: Because what ad is served in the ad box varies depending on your browsing history. When I decided to have a look, I had to refresh a brand-new, no-history-available browser install several dozen times to get the first one.

    The video source is TubeMogul. TubeMogul has been serving video ads through Google’s ad engine for a while now, I assume with Google’s collusion. It looks a lot like the promoted YouTube videos Google started mixing in with their ads a while back.

    The one Tim is seeing, assuming it’s the same one I’ve seen, is not actually a Planet of the Apes ad. It’s a PopSugar video “report” with a roll-in ad. All the ones I’ve seen are PopSugar reports.

    Changing the 300×250 ad box to another size would probably also get rid of them. The banner size used at the top, say. I never had a video served in the larger ad spaces.

    This has been happening elsewhere, so I’ve starting recommending blocking TubeMogul at the firewall. Non-video ads can still come through.

  27. 27.

    Tommy

    @Villago Delenda Est: Well that and also maybe some malware on your computer. I work with computer for a living and it is something that happens to me. If you have a computer and spend much time on the Internet it is something you get.

  32. 32.

    different-church-lady

    Never had a BJ autoplay while using Flashblock. Might there be a way to disable ads that use Flash at the server level?

  35. 35.

    JPL

    @KG: hmmm Both of you need to read the comments since the boss posted before you.

    Mistermix tried to fix the problem on Saturday and it appears that he did for some. I am on a pc and use chrome and it pops up. Maybe Mistermix doesn’t think that PC
    users are worthy.

  36. 36.

    Tommy

    @different-church-lady: I do web sites for a living and I don’t actually know. You would think. None of my clients have ads on their sites. But clearly John is a member of a few ad networks. Those ads are served to this site. John has no control over them.

  38. 38.

    sharl

    I heard it just once – I think – and only about three syllables exited my speakers before it was shut down. Weird…

    [Running Firefox on PC with Win-7, with NoScript installed/blocking a bunch of stuff.]

  39. 39.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @JPL: I’m running AdBlocker on a Chrome/Windows machine and no problems here. So there’s something going on besides “it’s a PC”!

  40. 40.

    different-church-lady

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Am I the only one who reads things like “It’s a PopSugar video report with a roll-in colluding with Google” and thinks, “WHY DON’T YOU PEOPLE GET LIVES AND STOP ANNOYING US WITH YOUR GODDAMN DUMB TECHNO TOYS AT A NICKLE A CLICK?”

    I mean, what the fuck is a PopSugar and how can so many internet users be so goddamned idiotic that they can actually make money being a PopSugar?

  45. 45.

    JPL

    @Villago Delenda Est: Maybe it’s Obama’s fault! I’ve used ad block but have avoided shutting down ads for this site. I’m rethinking my decision. The mute button helps but sometimes I stream MSNBC.

  46. 46.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @JPL: Well, blaming Obama for someone leaving the commode seat up is the default approach, so I’d run with that, it’s got plenty of legs.

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @different-church-lady:
    It’s the volume. A nickel a pop isn’t much. Even 50K or maybe even a couple of hundred thousand pops a day adds up, especially considering the capital cost of involvement. Don’t know how many of the 6 billion or so people have a computer and how many billions less will get the ad but it’s not an insignificant number. And of course you have all the add-on stuff to stop this. And the world goes round and round.

    Reminds me of the pet rock. Absolutely useless idea (and much less annoying!) but I’d bet someone made money on it for a while.

  48. 48.

    WaterGirl

    @MattF: I am not having these problems, but I installed ClicktoPlugin last week at someone’s recommendation. I disabled it yesterday – it’s nothing but a pain in the behind.

    I have used ClickToFlash for years, and it is wonderful. Anyone not using ClickToFlash should go install it right now.

  49. 49.

    Villago Delenda Est

    OT, but Noisemax piqued my morbid interest:

    Jon Voight Slams Cruz, Bardem for Israel-Bashing

    I was thinking “Cruz? Rafael Cruz the hearthrob of authoritarian fuckwads all over the country?” But no, apparently Penelope Cruz said something that offended wingtard dipshit Voight, by daring to question Israel’s current campaign of genocide against the Palestinians.

  50. 50.

    Percysowner

    Adblock will stop all ads, but then Balloon Juice loses out on revenue. Flashblock keeps videos from auto loading, which is nice.

  52. 52.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @different-church-lady:

    I mean, what the fuck is a PopSugar and how can so many internet users be so goddamned idiotic that they can actually make money being a PopSugar?

    *giggle*

    My sentiments exactly.

    PopSugar is a website that does fluff entertainment reporting.

    TubeMogul is a company that specializes in video ads. They buy adspace from Google to run their ads.

    From what I’ve seen this weekend, PopSugar has paid TubeMogul to promote their site. TubeMogul is doing this by having some of PopSugar’s videos play on other people’s sites via Google ads. The idea is that the reports will intrigue the viewer enough to go to PopSugar to see what else they’re covering.

    A roll-in is an ad that plays before a video that you want to see.

    If you don’t want to block all ads or all videos, you can try blocking tubemogul.com at your firewall or router. Or get the geeky grandkid/neighbor/co-worker to do it.

    Otherwise, we wait until the person who controls the Google ad account finds out why this is going on and whether there’s a way to opt-out.

  54. 54.

    sharknado22

    @JPL: “Mistermix tried to fix this…..”

    You can stop right there. This is the same guy who breathless posted every single day how he was convinced Sarah Palin was running for President in 2012.

  56. 56.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    Oh, and FlashBlock may work for now, but the player TubeMogul is using had been working on a way to get around it.

    By failing over to HTML5. Others are frantically trying to figure out a way to block it, with limited success so far.

  64. 64.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Roger Moore: I don’t use it, because I’m too paranoid to let JavaScript run on my machines willy nilly, and that works so far. I just know I was seeing quite a bit of discussion about how to block the HTML5 that suggested it was an unsolved issue.

    Most viruses that I’ve cleaned up in recent years came from dodgy ads on legitimate non-pr0n sites. I don’t trust ’em.

  66. 66.

    Chickamin Slam

    My current ads are Vintage Vietnam army fatigues, Lifelock, Toyota, and Diet Snapple.

  67. 67.

    Amir Khalid

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    Javier Bardem is Penelope Cruz’s husband. They and many other Spanish movie people signed an open letter, published in a Spanish newspaper, that criticised Israel’s actions in the current Gaza crisis and demanded an end to the violence. Nothing different, I imagine, from the sentiments expressed here by so many of us.

    The Bardems say that their intent was humanitarian rather than political, and maintain that they are not antisemites as claimed by Angelina’s dad and Jackie Mason.

  68. 68.

    sharknado22

    Really no excuse for not running ad block plus these days. It blocks so much crap and results in sites loading faster. It’s pretty much essential as far as I’m concerned.

  69. 69.

    Schlemizel

    @Ruckus:
    Last I heard there are slightly more than 7 billion people on earth & about 3 billion of those have Internet access. I’d be happy if I could get them all to give me a penny.

  70. 70.

    Schlemizel

    @sharknado22:
    How do you support BJ then? Sites I care about I unblock so they can earn the maximum from my clicks. It’s the least I can do – and never let it be said I didn’t do the least I could do.

  71. 71.

    Amir Khalid

    @sharknado22:
    I stopped running Adblock here at John Cole’s request (he said this site depends on the ad revenue). But I had to activate it again because it was taking forever to load, and would cause Firefox to hang.

  72. 72.

    Amir Khalid

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    John Hinckley wounded James Brady when he, Hinckley, tried to kill Ronald Reagan. Brady devoted himself to gun-control activism after that, and if I recall correctly actually managed to get some laws passed. There’ll be ammosexuals dancing on this man’s grave.

  73. 73.

    sharknado22

    @Schlemizel: You can disable it for individual sites. If you are so concerned about someone elses blog site buy 100 cat calendars.

    If the idiots administering this site insist on posting annoying ads that autorun with audio on that is not my problem. It has happened before and I guarantee you it will happen again. If Cole thinks he can send an email to an ad company and get them to stop doing something that earns them a few extra pennies a month he’s dillusional!

  74. 74.

    Elie

    I continue to get a variety of auto-plays including G-3 cell phone and other… no Planet of the Apes though

  77. 77.

    Trollhattan

    @Amir Khalid:
    Sad, but true. Brady and especially Sarah Brady have been on the side of the angels on gun control ever since. Considering how he was robbed of much of his mobility, it must have been especially tough to soldier on for so long.

  78. 78.

    Elie

    I continue to get a variety of auto-plays including G-3 cell phone and other… no Planet of the Apes though. These are extremely annoying but in light of some of the arguments upstring about supporting the site, I am trying to endure. Its not just this site.

  80. 80.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Amir Khalid:

    Yes indeed, he and his wife Sarah were tireless advocates for gun control. The “Brady Law,” named in his honour and signed by Clinton, asked for a short (five-day?) waiting period for background checks, and sent the NRA into a frothing frenzy of Second Amendment crazy.

  84. 84.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @sharknado22: Actually, Google allows you to block a certain number of companies from advertising on your site. You can also opt out of things like showing YouTube videos that the owner had paid to promote. I’m hoping that there will be a way to opt-out of these, now that the ad account owner is available.

    @Elie: Are you letting them run to their conclusion? The ones I’ve seen had a standard commercial (Chicken of the Sea and Starbucks, IIRC) followed by the Planet of the Apes or Kendell and Kylie reports.

    FlashBlock or blocking the ad’s origination with a firewall should let the static ads through. I haven’t been home to verify this, though.

  87. 87.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Amir Khalid

    : and maintain that they are not antisemites as claimed by Angelina’s dad and Jackie Mason.

    Hey, they criticized the racist, militarist Likud state. Of course they’re antisemites. Geeze, get with the program. If you call Bibi a babykiller, which he objectively is, then you’re obviously an antisemite. Duh.

  88. 88.

    Royston Vasey

    How to turn off the autoplay in the browser. Thanks C&L!

    Chrome:
    Disabling autoplay videos and media in Chrome is simple. First of all you need to type “chrome://chrome/settings/content” into the URL bar. Then all you need to do is scroll down to the plug-in section, and select ‘click to play’.

    Firefox:
    Disabling ads/videos in Firefox is a little different from the process in Chrome. The first suggested way to stop Flash content from playing is to enter Firefox’s configuration settings by typing “about:config” into the URL bar, accepting the warning, then entering “plugins.click_to_play” into the search box and toggling the settings. However, we experienced limited success with this method.

    If this technique doesn’t work for you, we suggest downloading the add-on Flash Block. To install this all you need to do is Google search “Flash Block Firefox” and install/enable the add-on, and then restart Firefox. Make sure you download from a reputable source. All Flash content will now be click to play, until you disable or remove the add-on.

    Internet Explorer:
    Stopping videos, Flash media and autoplaying adverts in Internet Explorer is the easiest the three. Simply go to Tools, Safety and then click on the ActiveX Filtering option. This will then put a tick next to the option, indicating that filtering is enabled.

  89. 89.

    dianne

    I’m not getting that – I’m getting Netflix’s advertisement regarding the last 6 episodes of “The Killing” which we already blew through in 3 days. I used to say it’s the best crime series I’ve ever seen but I now say it’s the best series I’ve ever seen period. Even more riveting than “House of Cards”. It’s important to start at the beginning, though. The first 26 episodes are about one crime and the next 16 are another.. Anyone who has Netflix should give it a try. The two main characters have done some of the best acting I’ve ever seen.

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