Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

This blog will pay for itself.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

No one could have predicted…

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

He really is that stupid.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Everything Is Illuminated Iterated!

Open Thread: Everything Is Illuminated Iterated!

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As reported in the Washington Post:

On the night of the Paris attacks, Rurik Bradbury noticed an inevitable and tiresome trend popping up on Twitter. “I think I saw a professional news organization tweet about the lights of the Eiffel Tower being turned off in memory of the victims,” recalled Bradbury, the New York-based CMO of a software company. In the fog of war, and in the pursuit of virality, someone had mistaken the Eiffel Tower’s ordinary 1 a.m. darkness for a moving tribute.

Bradbury fired up the Twitter account of his alter ego, @ProfJeffJarvis. He used the well-known parody account, which makes fun of tech jargon and media “thinkfluencers,” to write a deadpan tweet about the icon of Paris going dark.

It was a perfect imitation of the serious tone and hastily assembled expertise that was filling Twitter all night. And it became Bradbury/ProfJeff’s most popular tweet by many orders of magnitude. By Sunday, nearly 30,000 people had retweeted his utterly fake news, which he’d written to prove that people will fall for anything….

In an e-mail, Bradbury explained why the rapid sharing of anything vaguely inspiration-shaped after a tragedy was so unsettling to him.

The social media reaction to a tragedy is a spaghetti mess of many strands, some OK but most of them useless…. [T]he part that feels the most useless to me is people’s vicarious participation in the event, which on the ground is a horrible tragedy, but in cyberspace is flattened to a meme like any other. Millions of people with no connection to Paris or the victims mindlessly throw in their two cents: performative signaling purely for their own selfish benefit, spreading information that is often false and which they have not vetted at all, simply for the sake of making noise…

More at the link (including the perfect capper).

A more earnest take, from a different WaPo reporter, “Is posting support for Paris on Facebook narcissistic, or heartfelt?”:

We were in Paris, more than a mile from the attacks, enjoying a quiet Friday night dinner at an Alsatian restaurant, just as people on vacation do. Our first indication that something bad had happened wasn’t the sound of gunfire or explosions, but the buzz of a text from a family member back home: “Are you ok?”

We hurried out of there, and 15 minutes later, safe in our hotel room, my husband updated his Facebook status. I did the same.

As the night wore on, I was prompted by Facebook’s “Safety Check” feature: A message on my app asked, “Are you OK?” I marked myself safe. It got more than 100 likes. And that’s when I started to feel guilty. Did broadcasting my safety imply that I had actually been in danger, inserting myself into a tragedy I didn’t witness? Or was it just an efficient way to tell friends and family not to worry?…

Me, I think it reinforces Cole’s objection to ever adding ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ buttons to the Balloon Juice comment section!

Reader Interactions

97Comments

  3. 3.

    David Koch

    PPP Poll – National — Nov 16-17

    Trump……………….26%
    Carson……………..19%
    Cruz…………………14%
    Rubio……………….13%
    ¿Jeb ?……………….5%◄

  4. 4.

    MomSense

    I’m thinking of “fostering” a dog. He’s a 7 month old hound dog with the sweetest eyes you’ve ever seen. I feel a bit lovesick since I met him a few days ago.

    Taking my hellion to meet her to see if they get along. He is much bigger than she is which is good.

  5. 5.

    Amir Khalid

    Unless we have evidence to the contrary in a particular instance, we should assume people are being respectful. When people ask on FB if we’re okay, we should answer truthfully. If someone mistakes the normal 1am turning off of the Eiffel Tower lights for a sign of mourning and we know better, we should correct them politely. Do people get too sentimental on the Internet? I guess so. But then people have a way of getting too intensely … well, everything, on the Internet. I wouldn’t really bother harrumphing about it; that would just be me getting too intensely disapproving about it.

  7. 7.

    David Koch

    PPP Poll – National — Nov 16-17

    Democratic Nominee:

    White voters

    Clinton…………….50%
    Sanders…………..36%

    Black Voters

    Clinton…………….70%
    Sanders…………..13%

    Latino Voters

    Clinton…………….84%
    Sanders…………….8%

    ¡Ay, caramba!

    I guess if you’re going to run for president, it’s not a good idea to repeatedly vote against immigration reform.

  8. 8.

    randy khan

    Not entirely related, but they also turn the lights off on the Washington Monument late at night. They seem to do it after the last scheduled plane into National Airport.

  9. 9.

    HumboldtBlue

    @pat:

    Why the fuck does he care how people express themselves when it comes to a fucking tragedy? People react in all sorts of ways when it comes to extraordinary events and we now have the digital power in the palm of our hands to communicate immediately with whomever is connected to the same digital format.

    You know what’s fucking absurd, scary and fucking downright inexcusable? The reaction of our political leaders to a mass murder committed thousands of miles away, that’s the real fucking disgrace here, not individuals taking advantage of technology undreamed of 50 years ago to contact friends family and whoever the fuck else is connected to them that they are OK in the midst of a mass murder event.

    This shitbag does what he criticizes others for doing but the smug fuck thinks he’s teaching a lesson. Fucking prick.

  13. 13.

    bystander

    I found myself thinking of posting a pic of our French bulldog with the bleu blanc rouge overlay in solidarity with Diesel, the bombsniffing dog killed in the St. Denis raid. I then realized that however much I enjoyed thinking it through, it was sure to look like “I Haz Flag.”

    Thanks for listening.

  14. 14.

    RSA

    @Amir Khalid:

    Unless we have evidence to the contrary in a particular instance, we should assume people are being respectful.

    I do that. I think the Internet has done a lot to discourage sincerity, but it’s still worthwhile.

  17. 17.

    trollhattan

    @David Koch:
    Is Carsmentum flagging? Don’t recall where he was last week. Cruz being in lock goose-step with Rubio bothers me a lot more than whatever Carson and Trump may be doing at the moment. It’s like finding out yes, they really do want to go out for tire rims and anthrax. With Ted Bundy.

  20. 20.

    Roger Moore

    @pat:

    Wait, so this guy tweets something that is not true and expects everyone to know that?

    He posted something false with a well-known (to its followers) parody account. The problem is that once it gets to people who don’t realize it’s a parody account, the joke is lost. You’ll see the same thing with The Onion, The Borowitz Report, and the like. Naturally, it’s worst when it’s a satirical account for a different culture, where people don’t know the popular satire sites by name and can’t recognize the style of satire as easily.

  22. 22.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Amir Khalid:

    Also, many people don’t necessarily have a good grasp of the geography of areas they don’t live in, which is why my mother-in-law calls us anytime she hears there was an earthquake in California, even when it happened 500 miles north of us. So, frankly, it only seems polite to reassure one’s friends and relatives that a scary far-away event did not affect one.

  23. 23.

    Brachiator

    I think that the navel gazing, intellectual masturbation and snarky pseudo-sophisticated dismissal of how people reacted to the events in Paris makes negative commenters look like the tools that they are.

    Some want to dismiss the need or the sincerity of the response, and it seems to hide a deeper need to want to try to dismiss or belittle the attack itself. If you don’t like clumsy, but harmless attempt at social media grief, just ignore them. Or read a little Shakespeare.

    The weight of this sad time we must obey;
    Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
    The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
    Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

  24. 24.

    Cacti

    I declined to use the French tricolor on my Facebook profile, because it felt suspiciously similar to “wear your American flag lapel pin to strike a blow for freedom” nonsense.

    If you want to help, donate to a relief fund or something similar. If you want to do nothing but feel good about yourself, change a profile picture or wear something on your lapel.

  26. 26.

    Peale

    I opted not to change my profile pic on FB to the tri-colored theme and I’ve felt smugly self-satisfied ever since. I’m not one of the rubes.

    I’m sure my lack of concern wasn’t noticed. Which makes me more satisfied that I have the types of friends who don’t notice. Much better friends than most I have chosen. So I’m doubly self-satisfied now.

  27. 27.

    kc

    Bradbury criticizes people for being “performative” on social media, but then his suggestions for how they can be helpful involve people being performative in a different way.

    Anyway, people on Twitter got busy performing and signaling their Muslim-loving goodness or Muslim hating machismo before the bodies stopped hitting the ground.

  28. 28.

    kc

    @HumboldtBlue:

    This shitbag does what he criticizes others for doing but the smug fuck thinks he’s teaching a lesson. Fucking prick.

    I’m turning my Twitter avi into a pile of shit to symbolize my disgust with the guy.

  29. 29.

    Amir Khalid

    @trollhattan:
    Well, Dr Ben’s still in second place behind The Donald. Polls vary on how much of a lead he has, though, and one or two polls have even given him a tiny lead over The Donald.

  31. 31.

    kc

    @Cacti:

    If you want to help, donate to a relief fund or something similar. If you want to do nothing but feel good about yourself, change a profile picture or wear something on your lapel.

    If you want to be a douchebag, assume that people who change their profile pics aren’t doing anything else, and lecture them on what to do.

  34. 34.

    Cacti

    @kc:

    If you want to be a douchebag, assume that people who change their profile pics aren’t doing anything else, and lecture them on what to do.

    And whatever you do, don’t mention to the vacuous gesture crowd that their gestures are vacuous.

    It makes them awfully prickly.

  38. 38.

    kc

    Actually, I didn’t do the flag thing myself.

    I do hope you told your FB friends/family who used their profiles to express sympathy what vacuous asshats you think they are.

  40. 40.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    On the other hand, I have a friend who moved to the UK about 25 years ago. We fell out of regular touch, the way people do, but after one of the bombings in London (can’t remember now whether it was an IRA event or the attacks of 7/7/05, and it’s irrelevant anyhow) she berated me for not contacting her immediately to find out whether she was safe — despite the fact that she lived in Nottingham and I had no reason to believe she was anywhere close to London. And she wasn’t, of course, just thought that everybody she knew in the States should phone and email her.

  42. 42.

    Brachiator

    Wow. There seem to be a lot of changes to the site, down time with new looks. Is Cole going to sneak in a color theme that includes the French tricolor?

    Zut allors!

  44. 44.

    Mnemosyne

    So my reply button is gone …

    Cacti:

    And whatever you do, don’t mention to the vacuous gesture crowd that their gestures are vacuous.

    The people who are tricoloring their profile photos on my Facebook feed are the same ones who rainbowed their profile photos when gay marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court. So are all public gestures of support automatically bad, or only the ones you don’t like?

  45. 45.

    Germy

    Please ditch the paged comments or provide an option to view all on one page.

    But to write a new comment, one must scroll to the top.

  48. 48.

    jl

    As an another example of sadly misunderstood non-signals, Rubio tried to explain the importance of using the term ‘radical Islam’ and how it is really important but actually not offensive at all. And he ended up comparing Islam to Nazi Germany. That deserves some kind of award, I think.

    Clumsy Boy
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/clumsy-boy

  49. 49.

    Mnemosyne

    Also, the fact that the comments paginate after 20 (at least on the mobile site) ain’t gonna work here where comment threads routinely go over 100 or more. You need to have a much larger threshold.

  52. 52.

    Alain

    That was just a test. I’ll try again another time, likely during the day tomorrow. I’ll note folks’ reactions from just now and see what I can do to increase the limit, etc.

    The thing that’s supposed to be so great about this plugin is that it auto-refreshes the comments. So no need to reload the entire page!

    Anyway, enjoy your return to “normal” comments.

    Sorry for the confusion.

    – Alain

  53. 53.

    Keith G

    I used to thing the discussing politics using Twitter was the most senseless thing to do. That actually may take a second place to people discussing the twitter-based political noise that they encounter.

    Okay, did ISIS attack and destroy the comments system?

    I bet this is just a temporary “change in progress” phase, but golly, does it suck 4 realz. I hope the end result is nothing like this.

  54. 54.

    Brachiator

    @David Koch: Trump and Carson are still in the lead, despite the stumbles of Carson and the outbursts of nuttiness from Trump? Amazing.

    And no matter how hard Jeb tries to butch it up, he just sinks back down into the low ratings numbers.

    I’m surprised that GOP presidential contending war mongering has not given any of them a boost. Or is it too soon to see any effect?

  55. 55.

    jl

    @Alain: I like either version of comments. Just as long as the comment doesn’t get etted up and thrown away into everlasting FYWP limbo.

  56. 56.

    opiejeanne

    The comments are not numbered. The replies to earlier comments are out of order and the link back to their previous posts doesn’t work. The counter said 48 responses but between the two pages I’m pretty sure it’s only displaying about 25. Too lazy, didn’t count.
    I’m using Safari and have had no problems with all of the various changes up until just now, although I may have missed a couple when our power was out for 22 hours this week.

  57. 57.

    Germy

    @Alain:

    Anyway, enjoy your return to “normal” comments.

    Can we just stay with the normal comments? I didn’t like the new version at all.

  58. 58.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Alain:

    It was refreshing automatically, but it put your new comment at the very top, so it was hard to figure out where you were in the conversation, especially if you were replying to someone on the second page.

  60. 60.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I’ve decided the congressional vote on screwing refugees is like voting for daylight savings time as an energy measure or to repeal Obamacare because freedom. It’s a symbolic action that won’t solve any problems, but will help the congresscritter’s election chances. These folks cannot tell the difference because a measure that’s effective and one that just makes them and their voters feel better.

  61. 61.

    Amir Khalid

    @Iowa Old Lady:
    I think an unwanted comment system was loaded, inadvertently, by whomever was tinkering with the site. At least I hope so. I certainly never want to see that abomination again.

  62. 62.

    Cacti

    @Mnemosyne:

    The people who are tricoloring their profile photos on my Facebook feed are the same ones who rainbowed their profile photos when gay marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court. So are all public gestures of support automatically bad, or only the ones you don’t like?

    I’m sorry to tell you that the 20 bumper stickers plastered on the back of the car aren’t making any difference in the world either.

  65. 65.

    Alain

    Ok, to answer a few – the numbers etc. would return, AFTER I know it works. I’m not going to deal with all that customization for this plugin until I know it works and works well and doesn’t bring the site down to a crawl. So it’s possible that you may have a day or two of testing without some niceties while we observe the back-end performance.

    Glad to hear from Mnemosyne that it was refreshing automatically; did anyone else see it do that?

    And Mnemosyne, were you in the graphical site view or the text-browser on your iPhone?

  66. 66.

    Cacti

    47 House Democrats have voted on halting the placement of Syrian refugees.

    Gives us a good gauge of how many on the D side would be cowed into going along with fascism, should we end up with a President Trump.

  68. 68.

    Bill Arnold

    I’ll try again another time, likely during the day tomorrow. I’ll note folks’ reactions from just now and see what I can do to increase the limit, etc.

    If I miss it tomorrow, here’s an early reaction. Hate it. Also, I had to ctrl-+ 3 or 4 times to see the contents of the comment fields at the top, and even then only the top 1/2s of the characters were visible (firefox on windows 7 if it matters). I had reduced the font size previously, to fit enough comments on a screen to not be completely irritated at the absurdly low text to whitespace ratio.

  69. 69.

    Alain

    @Bill Arnold: That was a mistake in the base formatting for the plugin, and since it wasn’t documented, I had to figure out what and where to edit. Those fields will be normal and usable for the next iteration of the test.

  70. 70.

    Keith G

    @Brachiator:

    I’m surprised that GOP presidential contending war mongering has not given any of them a boost. Or is it too soon to see any effect?

    Isn’t that already baked in the cake?. Carson and Trump have already walked out on that ice (mixing metaphors) and hunkered down weeks/months ago.

  73. 73.

    Cacti

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    So people should never make public gestures of support for anything political. No campaign t-shirts, no bumper stickers, no Facebook memes. No public political statements, ever.

    Good to know.

    If I just changed my profile pic to an African kid, I’m sure that will stop Kony any day now.

  74. 74.

    kc

    @Alain:

    That was just a test. I’ll try again another time, likely during the day tomorrow.

    Try again? Why? Can’t we just . . . not?

  76. 76.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Alain: it also put the comments in reverse chronological order, which is interesting in a Memento kind of way but still a pain in the ass to read. Also, too, do we really need a captcha feature?

  78. 78.

    Mandalay

    I’m sure this won’t stop the Republican candidates from demanding that we build the wall, but it will make them look even more ridiculous…

    More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S.

    More Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico from the U.S. than have migrated here since the end of the Great Recession, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from both countries. The same data sources also show the overall flow of Mexican immigrants between the two countries is at its smallest since the 1990s, mostly due to a drop in the number of Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S.

  79. 79.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Alain: I didn’t see an auto refresh. However, the site froze constantly, making it impossible to scroll through comments. That’s probably what it was.

    Do not want.

  80. 80.

    Marc

    Re comments: oldest first please; it makes it impossible to follow a thread if people are responding to things that you have to click through multiple buttons to see. Or a newest / oldest option for sorting.

  83. 83.

    Anne Laurie

    @Alain: Yes, 20 comments are too few for pagination (I’d set it for 50, since that seems to be a threshold on this blog). Further, because my eyes aren’t as good as they were 20 years ago, I have my screen (PaleMoon browser) adjusted to give me big fat type, but those ‘trial’ comments showed up in a very tiny unreadable font. DO NOT WANT, sorry.

    I don’t think people actually mind hitting ‘refresh’, except when the site keeps undergoing mini-dropouts. And those drop-outs will stop once the new design is stabilized, right?

  85. 85.

    Mandalay

    Is there a worse country on earth than Saudi Arabia?….

    A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a Sri Lankan woman to death by stoning, after she confessed to committing adultery.

    The woman, a mother of two from Colombo was sentenced by a court in Saudi Capital, Riyadh.

    The woman reportedly confessed before court to committing adultery with another Sri Lankan expatriate worker.

    The Sri Lankan male worker who is involved in the case has been sentenced to 100 lashes.

    I’m not too freaked out by the stoning aspect; that’s no worse than what we do: strap someone to a gurney, give them a drug cocktail, and hope it works. But the disparity in sentences between the man and the woman are mind blowing, and the idea that any state should kill anyone for committing adultery is barbaric.

    Forget Cuba, Iran and Noth Korea….does any politician have the stones to start going after Saudi Arabia? The regime there is vile and evil.

  87. 87.

    Mandalay

    @Cacti:

    47 House Democrats have voted on halting the placement of Syrian refugees.

    Which is precisely why Hillary Clinton and President Obama really need to immediately shut the fuck up reciting that moronic cliche “That’s not who we are”.

    Their own party is showing them that that is exactly who we are.

  88. 88.

    kdaug

    Stupid giant balloon-man pics at the top of every post? Poof-gone.
    Bold in blue, not just links? Not anymore.
    ETA: Huge block re-stating a short version of the post directly beneath it? Obliterated.

    Progress. I’m grateful. Keep it up.

  89. 89.

    Cacti

    @RaflW:

    When this latest spasm of fear passes into history, as they all do, it won’t be President Obama who ends up hanging his head over his response.

    Contrary to the article, I think he could read the mood of Congress just fine. He just chose to take a measured, humane, and principled stand in spite of it. Because a good leader sticks to their principles, even when others are afraid to.

  90. 90.

    RaflW

    @Cacti: Totes agree. I’m just sick to f’ing death of the commentariat who manage to make a moral failure by Congress into a failure by Obama.

    She’s getting raked over the coals in the article’s comment section, but I suspect she’ll care approximately zero about that.

  91. 91.

    Steeplejack

    @Brachiator:

    Hope you see this. I believe you were the one who wanted to see a good print of Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn? TCM is running the movie at 6:00 a.m. EST tomorrow (Friday), and I’m sure their print is among the best available.

  92. 92.

    Steeplejack

    @Alain:

    I think auto-refreshing comments are a solution in search of a problem. If I come to a post that already has 50 comments, I am quite content to read through those 50 before feeling the need to refresh the page. Plus, if I reply to a comment, the page gets refreshed anyway.

    In an auto-refreshing scheme, the page will (presumably) be updated every time someone posts a comment, which means I could suffer any number of interruptions (refreshes) as I read the thread. If I’m at comment #33, it doesn’t really help me that #59 and #60 have just been added.

    Plus I have to believe the back-end load is greater to auto-refresh after every new comment rather than to do a refresh when requested by the reader.

  93. 93.

    Matt McIrvin

    @trollhattan:

    Is Carsmentum flagging?

    Here’s the big board of Republican primary polls.
    Hard to say for sure but by eyeball, I’d say that Carson may have peaked and is at least no longer gaining on Trump. I expected big swings after the Paris attacks but it doesn’t seem to have hugely affected the race; looking at individual polls you can be fooled by big swings that are just noise.

  94. 94.

    opiejeanne

    @Alain: Right after I posted my list of complaints (the only time I’ve complained about the new formatting) it straightened out and it looks great. I like it and don’t mind having to refresh to see new posts.

  95. 95.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Alain: Thank you so very much for all your hard work, as well as your gracious responses.

  96. 96.

    J R in WV

    @Alain: If you have to do paging for comment volume, please make the page break at like 100 or 150…

    If it can’t handle 200 comments it isn’t really very good, is it? Look at Lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com sometime they get a lot of comments, and I see them break at a couple of hundred. But I don’t know if they’re WordPress or not, and whether that would be good, or not.

    Thanks for your work on the site!!

  97. 97.

    rikyrah

    uh huh

    uh huh

    ………………………….

    Feds charge worker of Cook County Court Clerk Dorothy Brown

    WRITTEN BY CHRIS FUSCO, ROBERT HERGUTH AND PATRICK REHKAMP POSTED: 11/20/2015, 01:31

    A lower-level employee of Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown has been charged with lying to a federal grand jury “investigating the purchasing of jobs and promotions” in the clerk’s office — including a lie about whether he had spoken to Brown after he was rehired.

    Sivasubramani Rajaram, 48, of Glenview, was rehired by Brown after he allegedly loaned $15,000 to Goat Masters Corporation, a company whose president was Brown’s husband, Benton Cook III, according to the indictment. Rajaram was charged with one count of making false declarations before a grand jury, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

    Brown and Cook have not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing, though the FBI last month seized Brown’s county-issued cellphone as part of the investigation. Shortly after that, the Better Government Association, Chicago Sun-Times and FOX Chicago TV revealed that Goat Masters was listed on federal subpoenas involving the circuit clerk’s office.

    http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/1118573/employee-cook-county-clerk-dorothy-brown-charged-feds

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