Sorry-not-sorry

Since I am still playing catch-up with this cockamamy preso-to-video, let me leave you on this intra-hurricane Friday with Facebook’s response when I tried to tell them that I don’t really need (nor do I want) them to remind me of my “memories”.

But they lie. They may not show me this specific mashup, but when they say “manage preferences” they mean “we’ll give you the impression that we give a flying whatever what you want and we’ll continue to dish up whatever we think will serve our purposes.”

Because they never give you the option of opting out of all their little “suggestions”.

Oh, well. It’s Friday, and so far we are not under water.

No thanks for the memory

You know, for supposedly having some of the brightest algorithm-designing minds in the world, Facebook spends a lot of time screwing the pooch when it comes to delivering what their customers want.

I mean, it’s one thing for them to try out the SoMe equivalent of pumpkin spice latte, just to see if people either individually or collectively will take them up on it. It’s another thing entirely to keep trying to foist their “suggestions” on me, especially since I take every opportunity to tell them I do not want [whatever], I have never wanted [whatever] and I will never want [whatever].

But they’re the online freaking Energizer Bunny. They just keep popping this crap back up.

Viz.: their “memories”—an indiscriminate kludge of graphics you’ve uploaded during some arbitrary period of time. Every time they serve this up to me, I click on the make-it-go-away arrow and tell them I don’t want to see it. They, like a four-year-old, wait until they think I might have forgotten, and they serve it up again.

Here’s what they suggested I might treasure revisiting, from July—with the expectation that I’d be so dag-blamed ecstatic at seeing it I’d immediately share it with my acquaintances, so they could not only ooh and ah at it, but be inspired to also dredge up some mashup of “memory” and share.

Like some ghastly chain letter.

Now, here’s the thing: They served this up in August. Is it their premise that I’m so gaga that I need reminding what July was like two weeks into the next month? Or are they implying that I lead such a dull life I’m entirely capable of not recalling July once I’ve turned the calendar page over?

I can’t believe they pay people stupid money to come up with this crap, and keep doing it even after I’ve told them to cut it out.

Family plannning

I spent most of the evening fighting with inadequate equipment to produce a voice-over narration for a slide show in aid of a competition I by default cannot win; ergo don’t have much for you today.

So I’ll just leave this with you, courtesy of an ad campaign for condoms in Brazil:

Eye of the butterfly

Google Nest and Elf-on-the-Shelf—step aside. There’s a new nanny-cam in town, I am very creeped out to discover. And even creepier is its über-fey name: Butterfleye.

Ugh.

Being able to “keep an eye” on somewhere you don’t happen to be at the moment is like the car phone of the 21^st Century: it’s a tremendous status symbol. It proclaims at maximum volume both an overwhelming obsession with your possessions (real or imagined) and the indisputable fact that you almost literally have money to burn.

I discovered the existence of this iteration in a “sponsored post” (read “ad”) on Nextdoor-dot-com, offering $50 off the hardware. (Making it $150 for the cheapest single-unit kit. If you want to store your home spy video longer than 12 hours, subscriptions range from $9.95 per week to $29.95 per month for the cheapest version.)

Here’s how they word their full come-on:

“What’s the worst thing about being away from home? Not knowing what’s actually happening. Check in on your home and live stream 24/7 from anywhere in the world with a Butterfleye wire-free security camera. Butterfleye provides real time, accurate alerts whenever something of concern arises. We keep your home secured while you are at work or enjoying life. Package theft and home burglaries are on the rise, homes with a security camera are much less likely to be targeted. 26 million Americans were victims of package theft in 2016. Butterfleye easily mounts to your front door and can tell you exactly when the package was dropped off and if there is anyone snooping on your porch (no wires, simple installation). Put your mind at ease and know everything is okay.”

Around here, I’m thinking you’d get a lot of nocturnal wildlife, like deer, raccoons and opossums for your technology purchase.

I’m not discounting the fact that there are some valid cases for wanting to install security equipment. Package theft…meh. But checking on whether your teenagers are throwing nightly parties while you’re on your 20^th Anniversary Mediterranean cruise, or verifying that your cat is, in fact, getting up on the kitchen counter in clear violation of House Rules while you’re at work—yeah, sure.

Although what, precisely, you’re going to do about either of those crimes post facto, I do not know. Certainly the cat is not going to be impressed that you “caught” her.

Yes, I’ve had a look around the Web, and front-door parcel theft is a thing, although apparently it’s concentrated in the Bay Area. And we are headed into peak package-delivery season, and I’m missing having a concierge at the highrise sign for deliveries and keep them in a secure room for me. But I’ll struggle on without spy cameras.

As an aside, photos of the “team” behind Butterfleye look like mug shots after a gang raid. On the one hand, they don’t give me a lot of confidence in their probity, but on the other, if anyone understands chicanery, I’m thinking it’s this group.

Gratitude Monday: the laborer is worthy of his hire

I don’t know when, exactly, it became Received Wisdom that anyone whose income is derived from salary or wages instead of from investments is a chump. Possibly that started during the Reagan administration, but it certainly has achieved wide circulation in the past 15 years.

We see it all the time in the commoditization of labor in all forms, from bus boys to software engineers, who across the board put in work weeks that would have sent unions out howling on picket lines just 50 years ago. At the lower end, they work two or three jobs to earn a subsistence living; at the upper they risk being replaced by offshored equivalents if they don’t chalk up 60-hour weeks on a regular basis to meet ludicrous schedules.

And all along the way they are ridiculed and demonized as being, at heart, slackers, moochers and unimaginative losers. (If their skin pigmentation contains higher quantities of melanin, then the opprobrium is proportionately greater.) Because if they had any gumption at all, we’re told, they’d have either inherited some wealth, managed hedge funds for obscene fees, or come up with the Next Great Thing (“the Google/Uber/iPhone of [whatever]”) and sold it just after some overhyped IPO and moved on to something else.

In the Valley They Call Silicon, the big dogs all call themselves Serial Entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists fall all over themselves to throw money at them for their next big cookie-cutter thing. The people who do the actual building may or may not make a couple hundred large if they happen to be there when lightning strikes; but they can equally find themselves looking for another job if the serial entrepreneur in a neighboring building’s cookie-cutter thing goes IPO first.

(As for the people who clean the offices, deliver the snacks in the stocked kitchens and drive the corporate commuter buses—they’re all contractors, working for a series of interchangeable vendors with no concern for health, safety or proper accounting practices. The vendors don’t care who the contractors are; the client companies don’t care who the vendors are. All that matters is who’s going to cost the least.)

Because it’s all about the short-term big payoff, not about long-term growth. Only slackers, moochers and unimaginative losers think about long-term commitments; winners aim to take it all. Now.

This being Labor Day, the serial entrepreneurs, investment bankers and trust fund babies are doing whatever they do in their substantial cushion of comfort. The workers are marking the official end of summer, maybe barbecuing or hitting the retail sales. I’m thinking about the generations of men and women who literally put their lives, their subsistence (no fortunes for these folks) and their sacred honor on the line so that workers could receive fair wages for their labor, so that they could perform that labor under safe working conditions and so that they could build pension plans that meant they wouldn’t have to work literally to death.

These were radical notions 150 years ago—the very idea that sharing out some of the proceeds of productivity with its producers was just cray-cray. But those radical notions—and the radical men and women who fought for them—brought the United States to its zenith of innovation and prosperity. When the labor tide rose, so did everyone’s boat.

Sadly, that tide has receded. We are continually being told that American companies cannot compete in the world economy if they have to think about the welfare of their employees. In their minds (as always), welfare = unearned largesse, AKA the dole. No, every penny that doesn’t go to executive compensation must be pinched to the limit by longer hours, tighter budgets and lower taxes. Unless we want all those jobs manufacturing goods and providing remote services to go overseas. This current administration, comprising as it does Goldman Sachs execs, CEOs of oil companies and alt-reich racists and misogynists screaming about turning back the tide of immigration, is only marginally more open about this kind of contempt than Republicans have been since little Newtie’s Contract with America.

I think we’ve hit a situation where a small percentage (say, one percent) of the people have been eying that goose that lays such beautiful golden eggs, and they’re convinced that there’s a simple way to release an immediate gush of gold by applying this cleaver to its neck…

And I’m probably just being contrary when I say that I perceive something flawed in that strategy. But I do not see how an economy can grow if you strangle the buying power of those who actually build it. Just this last week we read so many stories about working stiffs—from cops to hotel housekeepers and bakers—literally risking their lives to show up for work and keep things going for their neighbors and customers in Houston, while the obscenely wealthy sat it out in their multi-million-dollar enclaves. They're chumps, right, Osteen? 

In the meantime, I am (as always) grateful to the people who fought for the value of labor in real life-and-death struggles for decades in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, and for those who continue that fight in these gig economy times. Mother Jones, Wobblies, resisters and all of you—thank you.

You can keep your hat on

Jeez Louise—further to my post yesterday, you may recall this tweet:

Well, it turns out that the Kleptocrat repurposed the text for a post on Instagram, showing him looking intently through the brim of his $40 hat at a meteorological screen, probably in Austin.

No doubt it’s his idea of what being presidential looks like, which would be why he appended the tweet text and tossed it out to the Web.

Only—Jeez Louise. Here are some gems from but a single thread on Twitter, starting here:

And then it just flowed. Several around the hat:

A few positing what Li’l Donnie Two-Scoops might be saying or doing whilst looking presidential:

One or two surprised that the Kleptocrat is on Instagram:

And a few rejigging the screen:

Surprised there aren’t more of this genre, tbh—seems like low-hanging fruit.

And I’ll leave you with this little earworm:

You’re welcome.

The horror and the devastation

A few images from the Kleptocrat’s response to the devastation in south Texas this week. I don’t think I need to add much commentary—the pictures, as they say, talk plenty.

Primarily, this visual conversation is around whether or not Li’l Donnie Two-Scoops responded appropriately as a president. Or even as a human being.

Spoiler: No on both counts.

What is bizarre—but, sadly, no longer surprising—is how Klepto-supporters chose to defend his behavior. Not one, but many. Viz.:

Now, their umbrage is somewhat vitiated by the fact that their Great Satan was not, in fact, president in 2005. (I have not, so far, seen any of them retort some kind of time-stretching rebuttal to those who’ve pointed this out. But it’s early innings yet.)

Here’s another one, directed at the Knuckle-Dragging Set’s second-greatest target:

The fact that—again—the Obamas were not in the White House in 2005 is again a trifling consideration. Evidently so is the fact that the photo is of Condi Rice, and not Michelle Obama. I suppose one strong, articulate, educated black woman looks like all strong, articulate, educated black women?

Now, here’s some reality—which, of course, shall never penetrate the protective shield of ignorance and animus that surrounds the KDS:

And the actual president, post-Katrina:

And President Obama after Superstorm Sandy:

Juxtaposed against the Kleptocrat in his visit to Corpus Christi:

And, speaking of Li’l Donnie Two-Scoops’ post-Harvey Texas photo ops (modeling his merch), here’s where he touched down: Corpus Christi and Austin. Not only is neither of these places Houston, where the hurricane hit, they are hundreds of miles away from the scene of the catastrophe. (Houston to Corpus Christi: ~200 miles; Houston to Austin: ~170 miles.) He flew to Corpus Christi, and then 200 miles from Corpus to Austin, just to avoid having to look at the actual devastation.

This did not, of course, deter him from announcing that he'd seen up close the "horror and devastation" of Harvey.

Oh, well—this itinerary did spare Melania the risk of getting those white sneakers muddy. So, there’s that.

Okay, but it wouldn’t be a Kleptocrat moment without Twitter snark. So here you go:

And, finally, when he arrived in Austin, here’s what awaited him:

Disaster relief--not

You will be aware that the Kleptocrat traveled to south Texas yesterday, primarily because he couldn’t stand a natural disaster detracting from headlines he holds to be rightly his. And because he could, he took his current trophy wife with him—possibly to show those famously vapid Texas trophy wives that they got nothin’ on him.

I happened to catch a couple of photos of the Klepto-couple as they were leaving the White House. Two things struck me: Melania was heading off to a flood disaster in cigarette slacks and stilettos, and Li’l Donnie Two-Scoops was clutching his latest butt-ugly $40 crap cap in a death grip.

Well, as you might expect, SoMe went ballistic about Melania’s footwear. I reckoned somewhat mildly that she might take advantage of the flight on Air Force One to maybe change her shoes, and indeed she did: she emerged wearing sneakers, which were a definite improvement over the stilettos. Although they were white, so possibly not the best choice for an area that might be expected to be muddy. But still an improvement.

(She has to wear a cap that says FLOTUS? Seriously?)

Her husband was still a douchebag, however.

Anyhow, I’m not going to go into the low-rent performance the Kleptocrat put on in Corpus Christi—other than to say of course he made it all about him. He always does.

However, a couple of memes emerged from this little junket, so Imma just gonna leave these with you.

Last of the summer whine

I popped by Trader Joe’s yesterday afternoon to pick up some milk, and I was kind of nonplussed to find the parking lot as full as on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I mean, it’s not that jumping on Saturday mornings; I barely got a place to park.

(And, seems like all attempts to park between the parallel demarcations were lost somewhere. Honestly—people just splayed their Range Rovers and Kias any which way and abandoned them to go in the store.)

When I got to the checkout, I asked Linda, the cashier, and she said that yesterday was first day of school, so every mom in Reston was apparently taking the chance to shop sans spawn for the first time in three months. I asked if wine sales spiked, and we had a few giggles about Mom opening a second bottle when the little ones came home screeching about all the amazing things that happened at school.

I bring this up, because the BBC published this list of what a certain Kleptocrat might have shared to the class about what he did on his summer vacation. (Of course this twit is on vacation all year round, but we’ll limit it to the last three months for the sake of the construct.)

You have to imagine him standing at the front of the class, hogging the entire show-and-tell time and pouting when the other kids would rather check Instagram than listen to him.

Also—this list doesn’t mention all his golf trips, or bankrupting the Secret Service on account of all the golf trips. Nor does it mention him suiting up for photo ops of him in a completely empty conference room “leading a call” on Hurricane Harvey (totally a product placement for his latest run of butt-ugly trucker hats) while contributing nothing to the mobilization of relief agencies to the scene. 

His vast expanse of pristine table was at Camp David, and it was his first visit to the presidential retreat. My take is that John Kelly, his career USMC chief of staff, frogmarched him there for the weekend to avoid the optics of his fat arse waddling around a golf course while South Texas went under for the third time. He did tweet several times; bizarre non-sequiturs that were focused on what an amazing storm Harvey was (will we at some future time be treated to assurances that he has the best hurricanes, the biggest storms in history?) and yet another reference to how big his 2016 election win was.

He threatened to fly out there today for more photo ops, probably in hopes that he’ll head fake Robert Mueller and his team of investigators who every day are turning up more slime from the Kleptocrat and his minions. As if the people of Texas have not already suffered enough.

Man—I should have bought a half-gallon of wine instead of milk.

Gratitude Monday: the dog days

You know—we are well and truly in the dog days of summer, and yet for almost a week we here in the District They Call Columbia have had the most beautiful weather. Instead of temperatures and humidity adding up to a triple-digit heat index, it’s been more like high 70s-low 80s and practically no humidity at all.

I worked from home Wednesday through Friday, waiting for Comcast (don’t even ask) and a flock of electricians to come give estimates on various fixes needed about the place. And—mirabile dictu—I had the patio door and upstairs windows open all day, every day; no air conditioning needed.

It was wonderful listening to the birds out by the feeders during the day, and to whatever it is that makes night noises. (Even though at times I had to increase the volume on my TV to drown out the critters.) If you have not experienced a summer along the Mason-Dixon Line, you don’t know what a blessing this is.

So that’s my gratitude for today. Even though I’m still waiting for three of the five quotes to come in, I’ve had nearly a week of perfect summer weather.