In case you’re wondering why I’m not out getting skewered, you won’t believe this story. Last Friday I went to the Providence website to confirm my biopsy. While I was there I noticed an unknown surgery at the hospital scheduled for Wednesday. So I called the hospital. The scheduler figured out that my anesthesiologist was scheduled for Wednesday. I suggested scheduling the anesthesiologist on Tuesday with the biopsy, since I wouldn’t be there Wednesday. She told me that she has corrected the schedule, and that they would see me Tuesday. However, she had moved the biopsy to Wednesday by mistake. On Monday the hospital called for some last minute clarification for my Wednesday biopsy. I told them it was Tuesday. They realized the scheduler’s mistake, but could not change it back. I told them I have no ride home Wednesday, so I have to reschedule the whole thing. I called to cancel my TriMet Lift bus and learned that they had scheduled me to go to the wrong place. Is Republican Incompetence spreading or what?!!? ARGH! hugs to all.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:40 (6:02 average). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Congrats to WWWendy, Patty Monster, and Squatch for winning their games. Had I only started Jackson and benched Mahomas, I would have won. Kudos to WWWendy for the week’s high score.
Standings:
Kudos to WWWendy for leading the league.
This coming weekend is the last in our regular season. After that, we have three weeks of playoffs. Stay tuned. I’ll post the brackets with next week’s report.
Short Takes:
From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Schiff: Intel Cmte. To Release Impeachment Report To Public
The reason the Fuhrer’s lawyers have no defense is simple. They have no defense. The miserable thing, however, is that with Bought Bitch Moscow Mitch and the Republican Reich controlling the Senate, the Fuhrer needs no defense. RESIST!!
From Washington Post: Attorney General William P. Barr has told associates he disagrees with the Justice Department’s inspector general on one of the key findings in an upcoming report — that the FBI had enough information in July 2016 to justify launching an investigation into members of the Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is due to release his long-awaited findings in a week, but behind the scenes at the Justice Department, disagreement has surfaced about one of Horowitz’s central conclusions on the origins of the Russia investigation. The discord could be the prelude to a major fissure within federal law enforcement on the controversial question of investigating a presidential campaign.
Barr has not been swayed by Horowitz’s rationale for concluding that the FBI had sufficient basis to open an investigation on July 31, 2016, these people said.
This is exactly what we expect from Barrf! RESIST!!
From YouTube (a blast from the past): somebody to love-jefferson airplane
Here in the CatBox, my dinner yesterday was superb, but today, my heartburn is very severe. Since I have a long day tomorrow with my needle biopsy, I decided to go back to bed and get all the rest I can. So, except for a brief Personal Update tomorrow, I’ll see you Wednesday and be back in the saddle then. Oh God It’s Monday Hugs!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:44 (average 5:08). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Religious Ecstasy:
What a shock!
Short Take:
From YouTube (a blast from the past): The Times They Are A-Changin’-Bob Dylan
It’s a busy day here in the CatBox. WWWendy is coming, and we’re having our Thanksgiving Dinner. So I’m hurrying to finish. This is my only article today. Ellipsoid Orb Hugs to all.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:51 (average 5:31). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoons:
Short Takes:
From Raw Story: Nurses and doctors from the United Kingdom’s National Health Service are planning to lead a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump next week amid mounting concerns about potential privatization of the U.K.’s decades-old public healthcare system.
The Stop Trump Coalition—which helped organize massive protests against the U.S. president when he visited the U.K. in July 2018—said in a statement Friday that “the health workers’ bloc will tell Trump ‘hands off our NHS,’ as concerns intensify about a trade deal letting U.S. firms muscle in on the health service.”
It’s not enough that Trump and the Republican Reich are keeping millions of Americans from receiving public healthcare. They are also fighting to take it away from the rest of the world. RESIST!!
From Huffington Post: Nearly 4 million Americans would lose food stamps if the Trump administration institutes its overhaul of eligibility requirements and other aid rules, according to a new analysis of the impact of the possible changes. Millions of others would lose some food subsidy benefits.
Seventy mayors in August called on the Trump administration not to enact the changes, noting that 85% of the benefits go to households with a child, an elderly person or someone with a disability.
Every taxpayers’ penny Republicans take from a poor, hungry child is a penny they can give to a billionaire. RESIST!!
From YouTube (a blast from the past): Zombies – Time Of The Season HD
So, what’s my opinion about abortion? Well, I’ll tell you what. It doesn’t matter. First, I have no intention to do any more reproduction. Second, as romantically involved as I’d love to become, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how. And most important, the only people, whose opinions do matter, are pregnant women, and then, only insofar as their own bodies are concerned. However, I will share the opinion that a woman’s right to choose is under assault by the Republican Party like never before.
Abortion is still technically legal in America, but more than 19 million U.S. women live in areas with less than one health center or provider for every 1,000 women in need. This is largely because clinics have been hindered by Targeted restrictions on abortion providers (TRAP), which limit abortion access by forcing clinics to comply with absurd rules that are cumbersome and medically unnecessary. This obvious targeting of abortion providers, which has undoubtedly contributed to 275 abortion clinics closing since 2013, begs the question: If the constitution really does protect a woman’s right to choose, how can lawmakers get away with these blatant attacks on choice?
The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which affirmed a woman’s right to choose, is often referred to as “the law of the land.” However, it’s actually a Supreme Court decision, not a law, and that distinction is incredibly important. As Trump politicizes the court with his promise to appoint anti-Roe justices, the ruling is vulnerable. As writer Megan McArdle put it, “what the Supreme Court gives, the Supreme Court can take away.” To make matters worse, Roe is already built on shaky ground. The 1965 case Griswold v. Connecticut, which provided the precedent for Roe, concluded that bans on using contraception are unconstitutional because of a right to privacy, as implied by an amalgamation of constitutional amendments. For Roe v. Wade, the justices decided that if the right to privacy supports the right to contraception, it should apply to abortion as well. As journalist Adam Liptak describes on The Daily, Roe’s lawyers believed it was too soon to argue for reproductive rights on the basis of equality, forcing their argument to rest, instead, on a right that isn’t explicitly stated in the Constitution. Ironically, the argument that won Roe v. Wade also made the decision especially precarious.
Roe came under further attack in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, which allowed states to regulate abortion before viability with one stipulation: these regulations can’t place “undue burden” on the woman. Unfortunately, the decision fails to define what “undue burden” means, allowing legal wiggle room for the TRAP laws of today. Anti-choice activists have capitalized on this vulnerability by using the loopholes created in Casey to pass legislation that has limited clinics or forced them to close by imposing ridiculous requirements on them. Take, for example, the last abortion clinic in Missouri, which is currently hanging on by a thread because the state government refuses to renew its licensing. The intention of these laws is ultimately to have them challenged in the courts until a case reaches the Supreme Court, presenting the justices with a clear opportunity to overturn Roe.
If the U.S. wants to truly solidify the right to an abortion, therefore, we have to codify Roe as the actual law of the land. This would protect the right to choose from the shifting politics of the Supreme Court and severely limit a state’s ability to restrict abortion. It would also move repealing Roe into the hands of Congress and an electorate where 77% of people oppose overturning Roe…
It’s a chilly day, here in the CatBox, and surprisingly, I was able to find the material I need for articles today. Tomorrow is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb. My Broncos play the Chargers. It won’t be televised here, because my Bronco’s stink. May the divine Orb shine its blessed light on your team, unless they zap with electricity. Tomorrow is a WWWendy day as well, and we shall do chores, de-stink the funky TomCat, and celebrate our Thanksgiving. Therefore, please expect no more than a Personal Update from me tomorrow. Weekend Hugs!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:22 (average 5:13). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
About the last thing I am is a social media expert – well, in fact, it’s not even on the list. I am aware that a “tag” is not the same thing as a “hashtag,” and that’s about as far as my knowledge goes. But since we got into the subject of tags this week, I thought this information might be interesting – even if you never use, or at least never create, either one.
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Political hashtags like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter make people less likely to believe the news
Whether you’re a conservative or a liberal, you have most likely come across a political hashtag in an article, a tweet or a personal story shared on Facebook.
A hashtag is a functional tag widely used in search engines and social networking services that allow people to search for content that falls under the word or phrase, followed by the # sign.
First popularized by Twitter in 2009, the use of hashtags has become widespread. Nearly anything political with the intent of attracting a wide audience is now branded with a catchy hashtag. Take for example, election campaigns (#MAGA), social movements (#FreeHongKong) or calls for supporting or opposing laws (#LoveWins).
Along with activists and politicians, news companies are also using political hashtags to increase readership and to contextualize reporting in short, digestible social media posts. According to Columbia Journalism Review, such practice is a “good way to introduce a story or perspective into the mainstream news cycle” and “a way to figure out what the public wants to discuss and learn more about.”
We tested whether people responded differently to the presence or absence of political hashtags – particularly the most widely used #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter – in news articles published on Facebook by major news outlets, such as The New York Times and NPR.
We randomly showed each person a news post that either contained or excluded the political hashtag. We then asked them to comment on the article and answer a few questions about it.
The original news post was identical to the one the right, except for the bolded #MeToo followed by the text description. For the control condition (left), we excluded the hashtag in the post text, as well as the phrase ‘#MeToo Prompts’ in the headline. Eugenia Ha Rim Rho
We discovered that political hashtags are not a good way for news outlets to engage readers.
In fact, when the story included a hashtag, people perceived the news topic to be less important and were less motivated to know more about related issues.
Some readers were also inclined to view news stories with hashtags as more politically biased. This was especially true for more conservative readers, who were more likely to say a news post was extremely partisan when it included a hashtag.
Similarly, hashtags also negatively affected liberal readers. However, readers who identified themselves as “extremely liberal” did not perceive social media news content about gender and racial issues as partisan, regardless of hashtag presence.
Political moderates
What really interested me was the reaction from people in the middle. People who identified as politically moderate perceived news posts to be significantly more partisan when the posts included hashtags.
In fact, in their comments, politically moderate respondents who saw news posts with hashtags were more suspicious about the credibility of the news and focused more on the politics of the hashtag.
The news post on the right is identical to the original news post published on Facebook, except for the bolded #MeToo hashtag in the post text, which was not included in the original version. Eugenia Ha Rim Rho
For example in the hashtag group, politically moderate people repeatedly mention the hashtag without substantially engaging with relevant social issues:
“The #MeToo topic is turning into something like the Kardashians. You can’t look at the news without both of them headlining things. It is an important issue, but I am getting tired of seeing it over and over.”
By contrast, when hashtags were absent, readers were more likely to discuss the core ideas and values the hashtag was originally meant to represent.
“Giving a platform and voice to victims via social media is a great way to share one’s experience when one is to uncomfortable to do so publicly. Some people are too afraid to report any harassment or assaults due to being labeled a liar so I’m glad there’s a way to keep track of these instances without them going unheard.”
The language used by participants from the hashtag group in their comments was more emotionally extreme. Even those who seemed to be in favor of the hashtag movement used aggressive language to convey support of the movement and referred to those against it as “You idiots,” claiming, “there’s a reason why [#MeToo] f****-ing exists, dimwits!!”
Fostering better online discourse
These findings show that politicians, activists, news organizations and tech companies cannot take common social media practices for granted.
Even a simple practice, like branding a social topic with a catchy hashtag, can give off the impression to the public that hashtagged content, even news content published by major news companies, is hyper-partisan or untrue.
If we want to build and sustain healthy discussions online, then we need to start questioning how such practices influence the democratic health of the internet.
Using a hashtag can rapidly draw audience attention to pressing social issues. However, as our study shows, such viral momentum may be detrimental to online discussion around pressing social topics in the long run.
================================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, perhaps this information is more useful to those who are “influencers” or even wannabe influencers, than to ordinary people. On the other hand, we who are the “influenced” are, I believe, assisted to make better decision when we are aware exactly how we get influenced – what those who want to influence us are hoping to achieve with various techniques. Help us stay alert.
The Furies and I will be back.
And P. S. I realize I posted at odd times last weekend, since I was traveling. But if you missed either or both of these two links, you owe it to yourself to look now:
It’s a very lazy day, here in the CatBox. Yesterday, I enjoyed my dinner. The dawg was delicious! This morning my inbox was full to overflowing. Unfortunately, half was political donation SPAM, half was Black Friday Sale SPAM. Virtually none was new news. Therefore, this is my only article today, and I’m taking the day off. TGIF Hugs!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:05 (average 4:26). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Short Take:
From YouTube (a blast from the past): The Rolling Stones – Paint It, Black (Official Lyric Video)
