“I also don’t get when they call them neo-Nazis. What does the “neo” part mean? Something innovative and new? It’s just Nazi. They wear 88 pins, they chant German Nazi slogans. If it sounds and looks like a Nazi, assume it’s a Nazi. One more thing — they call Trump a Nazi-sympathizer. Why be so generous. What distinguishes a sympathizer from an actual Nazi?”
— Dave Winer
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan calls Donald Trump “Woody Allen without humor.” Ouch.
“The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive. It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity. Continue reading
You might have seen a story about an embarrassing recording from 2016:
“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post.
I don’t care much about the exchange but I would like to know more about how the recording was made. Surreptitiously, one would think. Perhaps a smartphone in a jacket or shirt pocket? Doesn’t sound like the sort of gab-fest reporters would be invited to so it was one of The Boys. Did he know something embarrassing would be discussed? Did he record every such discussion… just in case? And if one guy is doing this, doesn’t it follow others would as well? Every question spawns three more.
Are there meetings where the Alpha Dog demands everyone put their phones in a basket which is placed in another room? Does everyone get a pat-down?
I started the recording app on my iPhone and put it in my pocket (mic up), to see what kind of audio quality I could get. Not bad. Good enough to end a career.
Let’s say I turn on a small jamming device that prevents recording within a 10 foot radius. Could someone on the other side of the room capture so
“Agency,” Mr. Gibson’s next novel, which Berkley will publish in January. The story unfolds in two timelines: San Francisco in 2017, in an alternate time track where Hillary Clinton won the election and Mr. Trump’s political ambitions were thwarted, and London in the 22nd century, after decades of cataclysmic events have killed 80 percent of humanity. In the present-day San Francisco setting, a shadowy start-up hires a young woman named Verity to test a new product: a “cross-platform personal avatar” that was developed by the military as a form of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, characters in the distant future are interfering with the events unfolding in 2017, through technological time travel that allows them to send digital communications to the past.”
New York Times book review »
“I wonder if TV will now help us undo the damage they unwittingly begat. Perhaps by having a Trump-like character get what’s coming to him. Put him in Archie Bunker’s chair, and see what happens.” — Dave Winer
Hard for me to imagine Aaron Sorkin isn’t hammering away on his MacBook at this moment. I’ve been thinking in terms of a tell-all book or movie (Primary Colors, Game Change, etc) but a TV series would have a longer life span. Gotta be HBO or Netflix or Amazon to properly portray the monster. Stay tuned.