Folks,
I’m working with Master Programmer Major Major Major Major (only his hubby can call him Master Master Master Master!) to add the missing button we need so that we can use one uniform set of buttons for both desktop and mobile site.
There are, of course, a few other things I’m working on. I’m trying to squeeze in as much as I can over the next week, but competing time-suckers may mean that some things trickle out more slowly than I’d like.
That said, Open Thread!
My fault folks – some mis-config between test server and the live server. I’m killing test server and rebuilding so it doesn’t happen again. My apologies.
Gin & Tonic
Better a Master Programmer than a Master …
Alain the site fixer
@Gin & Tonic: debator?
Alain the site fixer
@Gin & Tonic: debtor?
Gin & Tonic
@Alain the site fixer: Something like that.
Casey
Hi Alain, there is probably something I’m doing wrong, but I can’t get the desktop version to work on my ipad for the last few days. The button on the bottom to choose this just reboots the page, but continues to mobile format. My tired eyes can’t read that format. Any ideas? Thanks!
MattF
@Gin & Tonic: Did you know that this particular joke goes back to Jonathan Swift? In Gulliver’s Travels.
Steeplejack (tablet)
Sean Spicer press conference on the cable channels now.
Alain the site fixer
@Casey: I’m not liking the iPad-specific site; let me disable it and try in like 2 minutes. Let me know here if you saw a difference; it should reset the toggle switch as well.
Alain the site fixer
Ok I turned it off then back on. For me all seems ok. I am still not thrilled with the tablet mobile site layout but that’s a different thing. I’m going to tweak that momentarily.
Gin & Tonic
@MattF: That’s why I come here — for the education.
Alain the site fixer
@Gin & Tonic: well that, and the unending saga of John Cole.
Oatler.
I love those scroll buttons on my laptop! Needs more booby pix tho.
Buzz N. Skeeter
Hi Alain,
Is it possible to have buttons or links that go to previous / next post?
kthxbai
Roger Moore
@Oatler.:
I hope this will tide you over.
lollipopguild
Faster Faster Faster Faster!
lollipopguild
@Roger Moore: Nice boobies!
Scout211
@Casey:
Did you clear the cache? That worked for me at one point.
Oatler.
@Roger Moore: More pussy pix! oh wait I take that back
Shell
CNN has been claiming the Travel ban decision is “imminent” for the past 18 hours
The Moar You Know
@Steeplejack (tablet): Wish I cared. Probably Preznit Carrotface got his weiner jammed in his hair dryer, so we’re declaring war on Chinese hair-dryer manufacturers or some stupid shit like that.
Alain the site fixer
@Roger Moore: bless you – that’s one of the biggest things I miss from the MWO/MHO days. Boobies! :)
vheidi
Dear Alain, thank you for all that you do for the jackals. That being said, I find the scroll buttons on the lower right of the mobile version intrusive and unnecessary. (Samsung 7 Android). Anyone else?
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore: OK, I admit I winced and looked round the room to make sure no one was watching when I clicked the link. Then blew my cover by guffawing.
Baud
@vheidi: I’d prefer two buttons — jump to bottom and jump to top.
Alain the site fixer
@vheidi: would they be better on the left side of the screen? Or at the top right?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
For me “Sean Spicer Press Conference” will now always mean Melissa McCarthy attacking a reporter with a podium. I’ve got a fever and the only cure is more podium attacks!
The real SS, meh. Who cares? Sooner or later you guys will pass on the most egregious lies, and it’s not like there’s any other content.
Yarrow
@Baud:
Agreed. The other buttons are superfluous; you can accomplish the same task by scrolling.
Francis
I continue to request that clicking on a blogroll item open in a new window.
? Martin
I heard a pretty interesting theory about the presidential race, presented from a business/marketing perspective.
The argument is that under the old economy (pre/early internet) distribution (getting product onto store shelves) was your biggest constraint and because of the limits of shelf space, products were designed to have a broad appeal but not necessarily to be really good fits for individuals in a way that would make them passionate about the product. Old rules were to be good but boring and noncontroversial.
The internet changes that because places like Amazon have infinite shelf space. You can create a product tailored to a much narrower market and reach that market because you aren’t being crowded out by the large mass-market products and instead of relying on being non-objectionable, you can rely on getting really passionate customers that will accept an online order over taking it off the shelf at Target.
The argument is that you see that with media now – with narrowly tailored podcasts able to compete against bland and generic radio and TV, and with social media driven outfits like Buzzfeed competing against the NYTimes that was really designed around a non-objectionable reporting style that could be sold across the country where it was competing with the local paper. However in order to get consumers excited about these new products, they need to break established norms for how to operate. The old norms were designed to minimize objection to the product while the new products are trying to elicit passion, and the old norms don’t allow for that.
The argument extends to politics, that Trump tapped into a similar theme – breaking norms in order to reach voters that were diaffected by the anodyne centrist politics of before (every candidate would pivot to the center, but nobody could trust if they were pivoting away from a true position or to one, in both cases leaving the candidate untrusted). Where messaging was constrained by ad buys, which Trump didn’t have as much access to not being favored by the party, he could push his message through Twitter and by breaking political norms in his rallies (which got free air time) The networks, only caring about viewership and not caring if you were watching for passion or horror, delivered what Trump needed – free distribution. Trump didn’t cater his message to the mass market – he catered to a narrow market that was just large enough to be viable and relied on a large primary field to let him carry a minority of republican voters early on, which would inevitably grow as candidates dropped out (and choice limited). In the general, voters were constrained by the limited number of people on the ticket. Where Clinton played the old rules of being non-objectionable, Trump played by the new rules of getting enough of a passionate base to carry. One corollary to this is that the Democratic primary may have played out differently if there had been more viable candidates – it may have forced Clinton to break more norms herself, or given Sanders more opportunity to do so himself. It’s also a lesson for 2020 – don’t look back at what worked in the past. Put aside the idea that we need an identify politician, that we need someone from a swing state, etc. Instead, we need something of a rule-breaker, who will be outspoken and will be able to generate energy from the electorate. Sanders tapped into some of that, but I don’t think (for whatever reason) that he was sufficiently well-rounded to pull it off entirely. I don’t know who in the Dem dugout can play that role. Maybe Warren. Maybe Harris. But neither is obvious. But whoever it is, they should grab this protest moment by the neck and ride it for all its worth.
It’s an interesting theory and while not complete, I think there’s a pretty important lesson in it.
Alain the site fixer
@Yarrow: some folks have said they love the down/up buttons – mobile users I expect. I hope to keep them; moving down or up one page at a time is a nice feature for folks that want to quickly scan a post/comments. Once we get it working, I expect I put together a brief survey to get folks’ ideas. I prefer such empirical data vs comments in one post during just a few hours, but please don’t hesitate to speak up about them or anything else!
vheidi
Neither for me – they are on top of the text, so obliterate the bottom <inch , necessitating more frequent scrolling. Changing the location wouldn't matter. @Baud a much more frequent commenter, I defer to him.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack (tablet): I was not watching it but read somewhere that he said he hoped that if Coretta SK was still with is she would support Sessions?
That did not happen, right? I read something wrong somewhere. Had to have.
Alain the site fixer
@vheidi: Really? Are you on a mobile device, using the mobile theme, or mobile device with desktop theme, or something else?
? Martin
@Yarrow: I agree as well.
Page up/down isn’t really that useful. On desktop, clicking in the well above/below the scroll bar (or there’s a default page/up down scroll bar element) achieves the same thing. On mobile, the direct interaction model of scrolling also achieves the same thing because you have so much greater control than on desktop.
Baud
@Alain the site fixer: They do take up real estate. It would be worth it for me to have the two jump buttons for long threads. It might be helpful if the buttons were semi-transparent.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Francis:
Just right-click or (on a tablet or phone) press and hold the link. The context menu will pop up and let you open the link in a new tab or window.
Major Major Major Major
Hey, what if we made an option to hide the buttons? Down by the mobile/desktop toggle at the bottom.
Edit: and I agree that only top/bottom, on mobile, are what I want.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Corner Stone:
No, he pretty much said that. I had to leave the room to take care of the aneurysm I was about to get. The crazy was coming fast and thick.
Yarrow
@Alain the site fixer: Thanks, Alain! Appreciate your work. On my phone (an old Android) the buttons obscure the text on the bottom right corner. I have to avoid hitting them and scroll up and down above them. That’s why I’d prefer just the two. I think the buttons aren’t visible on my Kindle. Not sure but will have to go check the next time I use it.
A poll is a good idea. Catch more people and get more input with that.
Iowa Old Lady
I don’t think we fully understand how out of touch even seemingly coherent people can be. At the demonstration I went to on Sunday, the woman next to me was shocked when a friend and I filled her in on Pence’s anti-LGBT and forced birther policies. This someone politically aware enough to be at a demonstration.
I listen to “Ask Me Another” on NPR and this weekend, one question was something like what Revolutionary War site is often mistakenly Identified as a battlefield rather than a site where Washington’s troops spent the winter. The first answer proposed was Gettysburg.
It reminded me of my first teaching job at an open admission business college. For some reason, I asked a class who ruled England during the Elizabethan (hint, hint) Age. The first answer I got was Caesar.
These folks are not aware of the details of the DAPL or anything else, and Trump, who says the pipeline decision wasn’t controversial, is their king.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack (tablet): But he couldn’t have said that out loud, right? No one walked to the podium and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, threw him to the ground and started kicking him like it was the World Cup?
Major Major Major Major
Remember Robert Gibbs? I always liked him.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@? Martin:
Also (desktop or mobile), you can click the time stamp beneath a commenter’s nym, which pulls that comment up to the top of the screen, effectively accomplishing the same thing as page down (because people are really reading comments, not pages). Then, if you need to go back, you can hit the back button to (mostly) replicate page up in the same way.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Corner Stone:
Read it and weep.
Calouste
Alain, can you put the buttons horizontally at the bottom instead of vertically? It doesn’t matter if there are one or three buttons on a line, the line is unreadable anyway, but three buttons side by side would make fewer lines unreadable.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Steeplejack (tablet):
The press briefing was like a microcosm of Trump’s administration. Each new turdball dropped before people had time to finish processing the one that came seconds before.
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
Thirded.
On my iPhone, the “jump to top” button seems superfluous since I can do basically the same thing by clicking the address bar, but I’m not opposed to it.
Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)
Avoiding my life a bit today, got caught up in Norma Rae. First thought, fuuuck this was released in 1979 & it’s still speaks to me.
hovercraft
Three Dimensional Integration
By Josh Marshall Published February 8, 2017, 3:06 PM EDT
I’ve been saying for months that the language of ‘conflicts of interest’ for President Trump is entirely inadequate and frankly silly. The concept of a conflict of interest is one that speaks to a situation in which an overlap or conflict between an individual’s personal and professional or public interests makes it impossible for that individual to act in an ethical manner or to appear to be doing so. It has no meaning when the actor – in this case, the President – is openly using his office for personal profit. In other words, it has no meaning when the President refuses to recognize any difference between his public responsibilities and his personal and familial business interests, the state and himself. He recognizes no conflict. Indeed, there isn’t one. President Trump is openly using his office to become the billionaire he always wanted to be. And now his Press Secretary has said as much.
Just a few moments ago, Sean Spicer said that Nordstrom’s decision to drop Trump’s daughter’s eponymous clothing line constitutes a political attack on the President and he is within his rights to retaliate.
Here’s Spicer:
I think this is less about his family’s business and an attack on his daughter. He ran for president. He won. He’s leading this country. I think for people to take out their concern about his actions or his executive orders on members of his family, he has every right to stand up for his family and applaud their business activities, their success … There’s a targeting of her brand and it’s her name. She’s not directly running the company. It’s still her name on it. There are clearly efforts to undermine that name based on her father’s positions on particular policies that he’s taken. This is a direct attack on his policies and her name. Her because she is being maligned because they have a problem with his policies.
This is just the clearest statement of what has been obvious for months. President Trump sees the United States and his family businesses as a fully integrated entity because he is President. Remember, just a few days ago the President’s wife argued in court that a disputed and subsequently retracted article damaged her ability to take advantage of the business opportunity of being First Lady. That literally means that her public office is a thing of specifically quantifiable monetary value to which she has been wrongly deprived and for which is seeking compensation. He is the state. He is the business. That may sound dramatic and even hyperbolic. But look at Spicer’s own words. They’re not.
As I’ve been saying, stop talking about ‘conflicts of interest’. Those are guide rails meant to help ethical people to stay ethical or unethical people put on a show of it. There’s no show here. Trump is openly using the Presidency as the world’s greatest marketing opportunity. Happily, there are some signs his efforts to punish companies that don’t enrich him and his family may be backfiring. But that’s irrelevant to the question of intent. He’s openly doing this. The only question is who helps him and who refuses to accept this as a normal state of affairs.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Iowa Old Lady:
I had college student once who’d never heard of Adolph Hitler. The name meant absolutely nothing to her.
hovercraft
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
How did she get into college, she obviously had no previous education?
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
I know everyone hated him because he was too snarky, but he was my favorite.
ETA: I find it interesting that the speechwriters have been the most outspoken alumni, the spokespeople not so much.
rikyrah
thanks for all the work on the site.
I absolutely love the new buttons????
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones):
Your avatar name is a LeGuin reference, yes? Tombs of Atuan? Been a long time since I read it, but it is a good book.
Mnemosyne
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
My BFF’s husband had heard very little about the Holocaust and was horrified by Schindler’s List, but that was because both of his parents were immigrants from Germany and they didn’t want him to think badly of his relatives there, so they protected him from finding out.
(His dad was in the Hitler Youth, apparently, but since the war ended by the time his dad was about 10 or 12 years old, it was more like the Hitler Cub Scouts.)
Iowa Old Lady
@hovercraft: You shouldn’t need education to have heard of Hitler. Movies, TV, pop culture in general alludes to him plenty. What you have to be is oblivious, and an amazing number of people are.
To be fair, we all are. On Friday, I couldn’t have told you who was slated to play in Sunday’s Super Bowl.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@hovercraft:
How could IOL’s student be so confused geographically, politically, historically, and chronologically?
“Your scientific illiteracy makes me shudder.” (Anyone?)
eclare
My US rep, good guy who boycotted the inauguration, is having a town hall this Saturday morning. Usually they are at a library or his office, this one is at a high school. Wonder how big a crowd he expects? Starts at 10, don’t know what time I should get there.
hovercraft
@Iowa Old Lady:
Agree, there are enough Hitler references that you should know via osmosis, but a cursory jaunt through history should make you aware of Hitler. Not knowing the details of a sporting event is not ignorance, it is willful denial of an event that has been marketed as an ever more important event each year, it’s not.
ChrisH
I’m no lawyer but it seems to me Nordstrom’s could sue Donald over this and really feels like impeachable territory for POTUS to attack a company to try to benefit his family financially.
hovercraft
Conway Runs Out of Her Own Congressional GOP “Outreach Meeting”After they Dare to Ask her QUESTIONS!
By Heavy Mettle
Wednesday Feb 08, 2017 · 12:11 PM EST
Seems things aren’t going so well over there on Capitol Hill between The White House, and Congressional Republicans. Kelly Anne Conway in her outreach campaign to Republicans on the Hill wound up running away from them when they — OHMYGOD — asked her QUESTIONS!!
Seems they’re not thrilled about having to take “so many calls” from their constituents about the horrid Betsy deVos with no backup or support from the WH. Good job, liberals keeping the heat on! Now keep it up with Jeff Sessions.
I can understand her needing to run out of meetings with Democrats, or the press, but her own party? LOLZ. Guess she couldn’t steam roll them with alternative facts
One of President Donald Trump’s top advisors went to Capitol Hill in hopes of reassuring uneasy Republican lawmakers about their role in the government — but the visits reportedly didn’t go so well.
Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump’s senior advisors, and Boris Epshteyn, who’s in charge of the surrogate team, met Monday morning with about 100 communications staffers for GOP senators, reported Politico.
The Trump administration claims the meetings ended with an ovation for Conway, but three sources told the website a very different story.
Conway boasted about the successful introduction of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch last week, but the congressional staffers grilled her on the record number of calls their bosses had received about education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos.
“We said it would be nice to get some cover on this because we’re taking the heat on our own,” a communications director for one GOP senator told Politico. “But there was radio silence.”
Conway abruptly ended another meeting, where she dismissed the concerns of voters about DeVos, after a congressional staffer asked her about a “Saturday Night Live” sketch ridiculing White House press secretary Sean Spicer.
The staffer asked Conway if she’d laughed at the sketch, the website reported, but a source said her face “turned to stone.”
A senior White House official told Politico that Conway did not comment on the SNL sketch and insisted that her face did not turn to stone.
Seriously, this is hilarious. White House officials have their completely own reality where Conway received an OVATION, and then are forced to make statements to the tune of “oh no, her face did NOT turn to stone”. For realz!
Gin & Tonic
@hovercraft:
NYSE:JWN dropped briefly after his Tweet but spent the rest of the day rising more or less without interruption, and closed the day with nearly a 5% gain from the low point a minute after the Tweet. A 5% gain in one day for an NYSE stock is quite significant.
Mnemosyne
@eclare:
I would definitely show up if your schedule permits — it would be awful at this point if Democrats got bored and Tea Partiers started taking over the meetings.
Iowa Old Lady
@West of the Rockies (been a while): It was pretty stunning. I don’t like to make fun of students because punching down, etc. I guess I think this needs to be fixed but I have no idea how and maybe it’s not possible.
MattF
@hovercraft: Imagine– Conway lied to the R Congress members, and they didn’t lap it up! I could suggest now that the particular audience could tell they were being lied to, but… that might be considered mean.
randy khan
@Buzz N. Skeeter:
I don’t know about mobile devices, but on my desktop there are arrows on the right and left that let you go from one post to the next or previous post.
Alain the site fixer
@Francis: it doesn’t work in Mac and iOS for folks with a default setting. So it works for all or we get lots of error reports…..
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@hovercraft:
I’d have loved to witness that! Conway is exsanguinating in front of our eyes.
Larkspur
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Yes, I will now only ever see Melissa McCarthy when I look at SS. Also I initially read “podium attacks” as “polonium attacks”. Just for a second, but it made me shiver.
eclare
@Mnemosyne: Oh I’m going! I just wonder what time I should get there…..The high school where he is having it is huge.
ETA: I think any Teahadis would be shouted down. District is about 65% African American and went about 80% for Hillary. TN-9.
J R in WV
@Roger Moore:
And how did I know there would be blue-footed boobies?
Must admit I didn’t know about green footed boobies, nor red-footed!! The things you learn on Balloon-Juice!!!!
J R in WV
@Alain the site fixer:
So I looked up MWO/MHO on Google, and got:
Still don’t know what YOU were talking about, but LMAO-ROFL Best Google evah!
amk
Go to bottom for mobile site will be useful.
Casey
Hi Alain,
Whatever you did fixed my ipad view. Thank you so much!