on news media bias

TL;DR: it's common for us to blame modern american problems on "the media".  it's a convenient way to blame someone else for a problem that is actually, in fact, 100% caused by us.  the media are funded by advertising, whose rates are set by audience size.  the media in fact provide us what we want, not necessarily what's true.

 

is news media biased?  i mean, you sure about that?

if so... seems to me the bias is much more in those who consume the information, not as much in those who produce it.

lately it seems the more important measure of the success of a news outlet isn't the proportion of it which is factual, rather it's the ratings (tv, radio) and circulation (print).

if so, then these two thoughts above seem to fit pretty well.

if anything, an unethical news media outlet who shows bias, is not necessarily biased toward a political position idealistically, rather they create and support their bias based on what their audience wants, and what will attract more audience.

isn't that odd? i mean, the president repeats this all the time, and those on the right are happy to parrot it. meaning, he asserts that fox news is a better news media outlet because their ratings are higher. that cnn and msnbc are "failures" because their ratings are low.

keep in mind that when it comes to tv and radio, you get high ratings when you produce content that people like, show people what they want to see, and tell people what they want to hear. in the entertainment industry, that's how it has worked for centuries.

and when it comes to the news, as our country becomes more angry and fearful through manipulation, more and more, what people want to hear isn't necessarily what's factual, rather what they want to hear is anything that reinforces what they already believe, or what they want to believe.

this tendency is anti-american.

when it comes to americans who lean politically to the right, there seems to be a growing group who consume and exchange ideas like this:

when they are exposed to a news story or editorial opinion that...

• ...conflicts with what they already believe:

--they get to work seeking out plenty of information from contrary sources, regardless of the credibility of the sources, using whatever energy and critical thinking is necessary, just until enough is found that allows them to discount and dismiss the conflicting information.

• ...concurs with what they already believe:

--they accept that information as truth and pass it along without question. as for doing research to seek out whether it's true or not, that's a waste of time. of course it's true and credible, regardless of the source. it supports what is already believed. how could it be wrong? that would make them wrong, and they’re not wrong, because they already know they’re right. duh.

one sign of bad citizenship (not to mention bad science) is when one uses effective critical thinking skills only when opposing ideas that conflict with their position, but then sell out their critical thinking skills to their political party when exposed to ideas--any ideas--that seem to make their position more solid. regardless of source, support, or facts.

not only is it bad citizenship, it actually makes one more susceptible to media outlets that are seeking to manipulate rather than inform.

perhaps i'm biased, but conservatives seem to be more susceptible to manipulation this way. they put a lot of stock in hollow symbolic patriotism, and choose time after time to ignore real patriotism. the kind that actually rolls up its sleeves to fix things that are broken, to improve this country in innovative ways that the world can (and does) copy.

those in right wing media often lie to make their point. when football players kneel to protest and draw attention to injustice, the right chooses to lie by framing this as an assault on the flag and our soldiers. (i'm waiting for someone, anyone, to find any evidence that athletes kneel to protest our flag and soldiers. nope. conservatives are happy to believe the lie, since it helps make them feel better about themselves, and they can avoid having to walk in anyone else's shoes). i mean, in a way, football players who kneel are actually sacrificing themselves quite a bit for the greater good, in an attempt to make this country better.

as for those who sign over their critical thinking skills to their echo chamber or political party of choice, yeah, i'm thinking maybe that's less patriotic than those who sacrifice themselves to draw attention to injustices.

personally, i never kneel before the flag, and never kneel for the national anthem, but that's my choice, for my reasons, and it's actually consistent with conservative principles to respect each citizen's path of being a citizen, and each citizen's path following what they understand their role is in serving and improving their country.

the problem with conservatives is that they love freedom until someone uses that freedom to be free in a way that doesn't harm anyone else, but still gets under the skin of what conservatives believe is acceptable behavior.

conservative idealism is a strong thing for the future of our country.
but today's conservatives, in. actual. action. are a toxic joke to the american experiment.

next time you see a football player kneel, maybe try, for just a second, to think that maybe what's on their mind at that moment, is that they're trying to make america better.

or you can continue believing what the media tells you, when you know that the only thing they want, is for you to keep watching.

on being in a trumpist's shoes

TL;DR: there might actually be rational reasons to support trump. the article below is an attempt to put myself in their shoes and see how it feels, in an attempt to understand where magas are coming from.

 

NOTE: i contend that a big reason for the large and growing divisiveness of our american political climate stems from people talking too much and listening not enough. as i mentioned in my last article, the problem isn't that we're divided per se, rather the problem is that we have no right to be divided before we truly understand the perspective of those who think differently than us.

your media bubble of choice will completely invent a caricature version of your opponent for you to attack. it's easier to win a debate with a strawman edge-case version of your opponent, than the otherwise valid ideas of your opponent.

so for this article, i'm going to try to write this as if i'm a trump supporter. i'm going to do my best to really understand why they feel the way they do, and more importantly, try to show where the natural end result of what they all want would be taking us.

ok here we go...

ahem... (pulls on a kanye west styled red #maga hat)

the american people have spoken!

duty, honor, standards, ethics, morals, pragmatism, cooperation, are nice, and well-meaning.

these values that john mccain laments are gone or eroding from our culture. and yes, all of these value have their place at certain scales of human interaction. but these values, as the basis of a national political structure, they've all failed us. the corruption of the pre-trump conventional political structures (one obvious example being the clinton machine) have all failed us. trump is achieving results by replacing these values with business principles that actually work: loyalty, winning, self-interest, profit, identifying and crushing enemies, and a political shift that is bending toward giving the president more power, to accomplish more, by eroding the outdated three-branch checks-and-balances model. 

meaning, just like someone who is president, ceo, and chairman of a company, whatever trump wants, a trump-supportive congress should simply provide (rino's and lefties need to just get out of the way), and a trump-supportive supreme court should simply declare constitutional. at that point, they become three branches in name only, and just make everything more efficient by allowing The Leader *we chose* free rein to move this country toward the vision we pulled the lever for.  

(hmm, this is starting to smell like something. eh, nah, let's keep moving.)

while the donald has serious personal flaws and suffers from some toxic psychological issues, so what? blah, blah, yeah, we all do. anyways, the undeniable fact is, it took a trump to disrupt the entire corrupt disfunctional system, and show us through his life, and now his term, that the pursuit of happiness is measured by Results, everything else is secondary. the jury is in: the ends are more important than the means, period full stop. trump's moves toward isolationism are working, and so are more americans. recent economic metrics show that very clearly. 

as for those around the world who dismay over america's evolution away from a loving and giving beacon of freedom, well, they really should let that one go. maybe that was all true, or maybe it was just something cooked up by the America Inc marketing department, but in the end, let's be clear, america is now fundamentally disinterested in anything outside our borders that doesn't generate us a profit. win-win is a kumbaya illusion. fact is, in the end, we have enemies who will not shed a tear if america collapses like rome. in fact, many would party. and i think we all know who they are: hint, they've been invading america and europe for decades, infesting us, playing the long game. so to prevent this requires that we understand that survival depends on winning, nothing more. it's simple folks.

1. if we don't win, we lose.

2. we cannot let anyone want to win more than us, else we lose.

3. we cannot win without forcing that opponent to lose.

4. history will judge us as right, because history is only written by winners.

as for foreign policy, these countries need to start looking out for themselves. figuring out who they are and what they want to be. we are no longer anyone's role model, and we can no longer afford to foot the bill to police the world. foreigners can continue benefitting from our products, services, and technological innovations, but they can do so by continuing paying for them. and when they have resources we need in order to sustain our winning, we will pay for them, or find a way to take them. sounds rough, but check history, folks. it's really been the only way it has ever worked. you know i'm right.

americans are speaking loud and clear. today's results are what we want. today. as for our concept of a long term view, that's what quarterly reports are for. that's it. anything beyond that has too many variables to control, and too complex to waste time thinking about. as for the old core principles for maintaining the foundation of freedom so that future generations decades and centuries from now have place where they can be free. sorry, that is no longer important to us. today's results are on us. tomorrow's results are someone else's problem.

everything above, while billions across the world, many within our own borders view as a disgusting way to run a country and lead a world, is how business has worked for centuries, and not many have had a problem with it. trump is showing us now that while a business approach has always been looked down upon as a basis of international geopolitics, it actually works in this realm too.

i don't think trump hates kim jung-un, i think he envies him and aspires to be him. or maybe it's both. the problem with kim is this: his failure stems from the fact that his family built a dictatorship on top of a structure that is completely unproductive. 

as for putin, trump is obviously inspired by him. putin took an cultural and physical infrastrcture built up for almost a century by communism, and replaced the top tier with a layer of capitalistic oligarchy. it's working out pretty well for him, unconstrained by a pesky media, human rights constraints, or a shackling constitution. communism built for him a cultural and political infrastructure that ended up giving him total authoritarian power.

the foundation trump inherited was even more productive than russia, which should work out even better. 

trump's problem is that he has his own unique constraints kim and putin never had to deal with. there's an american independent media who digs into and exposes everything, dammit. putin doesn't have to deal with that shit. not to mention a pesky constituion that gives him so much less power than putin has. 

so the first war is against the media. repeat your claims of fake news so often that it eventually sticks. as a result, people distrust the media, probably more than we ever have. i mean, to trump, the best measure of a media outlet isn't their truth ratio, it's their ratings. well, you don't get ratings by telling truths, you get ratings by telling the audience what they want to hear. so, two years into that war, it's going really well. majority of americans don't trust the media. 

next up, second war is against federal agencies and civil servants. they control too much and are politically motivated. get your citizens to not believe anything they say. that one's going well too. 

the last war is on a US constitution that provides him almost no power. i can hear him now:

"[trump voice]

hey folks, this old constitution?
is on its third century, amirite?
it's time we all grew up don't you think? 
what would it hurt for us to take a look at this thing? 
maybe rewrite it so that it reflects modern ideals? 
look people, even jefferson said that this thing isn't etched in stone, the quote on his monument about the little boys pants not fitting as a man or something like that. 
or was it his coat?
i don't remember. not important.
anywho, 
this constitution here? 
so outdated, so sad really. 
no one in the world is dealing with something this old. 
it's holding us back. believe me. 
ok, so let's go with jefferson on this. 
constitutional convention, who's with me?
i mean, right after i get this judge confirmed.
you know, the party guy, who's pretty sure i can't be indicted while in office?
maybe the constitutional convention can help me with the after office stuff too.

[jimbarry takes the #maga hat off]

yep, that's coming. ask trump supporters, as much as they love the constitution (or rather, their cherry picked version of the constitution; kinda like their cherry picked Bible) if they'd want to see a constitutional convention to rewrite it from scratch. i bet most of them would.

don't the trumpists see that a congress and judiciary that rubberstamps what the president wants pretty much turns him into a third-world dictator? no? really? no? hmmmm, ok.

eww... ok, that was interesting. i feel grimy.

on political divisiveness, part I

TL;DR: it makes perfect sense that we as americans aren't always going to agree on how to deal with issues that affect us and sustain our society.  but when we disagree without empathy, we lose the ability to work together, and put our energy into fighting rather than resolving.  freedom is selfish, and to some degree it should be. citizenship is unselfish and we should all make that a priority from time to time too.

 

here's a huge problem i have with many of today's social media fueled conservatives. in short, they're dishonest:

in order to boost their own snowflake self-esteem, fuel their confirmation bias, and avoid the inconvenient trappings of cognitive dissonance that we all should feel from time to time (because none of us know every goddamn thing), those in the center mass of the today's political right, find the most extreme nutcase people (socialists, mainly) and ridiculous extreme behavior of the far edge lunacy of the left, and prop those up, with spotlights and all, presenting it as the center mass majority of the left, and thus get to rest easy in your assertion that it's their own position that's the only reasonable path for this country to progress forward.

meanwhile...

here's a huge problem i have with many of today's social media fueled liberals. in short, they're dishonest:

in order to boost their own snowflake self-esteem, fuel their confirmation bias, and avoid the inconvenient trappings of cognitive dissonance that we all should feel from time to time (because none of us know every goddamn thing), those in the center mass of today's political left, find the most extreme nutcase people (fascists, mainly) and ridiculous extreme behavior of the far edge lunacy of the right, and prop those up, with spotlights and all, presenting it as the center mass majority of the right, and thus get to rest easy in your assertion that it's their own position that's the only reasonable path for this country to progress forward.

then, those with internet troll-like tendencies, spout their one-sided horseshit, chasing it quickly with declarations of great lament about how this country seems more divided than ever.

yeah, perhaps it is. and if so, then it's exactly your intellectual dishonesty that's doing it.

• if you talk more than listen.

• if the source of your frustration ends up with you asking yourself "why don't more people think like me; they must be idiots".

• if you don't for a second, try to understand the position of the other person, ignoring what your chosen news media bubble tells you what they want you to know about that other person.

• if so, then you (not "them") are the cancer that is splitting this country.

if you're confident in your position, here's a challenge:

regardless of which political "side" you're on, try this. write down 10 reasons why you think those on the "other" side believe the way they do. and none of the 10 can be reasons fed to you from your bubble, but real reasons that real people have for believing that their values are those that are best for the country. because not only should you be able to; it should be easy.

because if you cannot do this easily, then you are this country's divisiveness. then you are to some degree an enemy combatant of this nation. you are dishonest if you don't even take the time to understand your opponent before you decide that they are your opponent.

but what about hypocrisy?

a lot of dishonesty here... and don't even get me started with those who believe their highest purpose of fueling and debating their side is to expose hypocrisy from the other side. i mean, if exposing hypocrisy per se is a valuable service (and it can be argued that it does bring exposure that leads to corrective action), then why are some only interested in exposing hypocrisy from the other team? if hypocrisy is bad (and it is), and you've chosen the path to expose it (good on you), then expose it. everywhere.

but if you're only interested in exposing the other team, while ignoring your own, well, isn't that itself an example of the hypocrisy you hate so much?

if you think that maybe this shoe fits, then perhaps the rest applies...

i guess perhaps one might think, well, who am i to affect an entire country?
well, yeah, no one individually can, really.

but then, there's that saying about how no drop of rain blames itself for the flood.
well, that's part of what citizenship is. one does what's best for the country, in all ways big and small, above and beyond what's best for *my team*.

if you've chosen a team, and to change your mind later feels like an admission that maybe you've been wrong all along about some things, and that causes you to ignore those thoughts. that's cognitive dissonance.

if you stand for the flag and anthem, and have contempt for those who don't, that's fine. most of us do. but it takes more than standing for the flag, acting like a patriot, acting like a citizen. putting on a show, and being angry with those who refuse to be actors like you. no. standing for the flag is supposed to be symbolic of your actual behavior, it's not just for show. it's not so that you can act like a patriot when the anthem plays, but then turn around and live your life as an american tearing this country down.

why don't we all derive more strength and more purpose, not by more tightly clinging to what we previously decided, but by realizing that the more we learn, the more we realize how much we still have to learn. and that changing one's mind from legitimate new information is a strength, not a weakness. it's exactly the philosophy that drives science and has advanced us as a society and as a species. it advanced us all the way from banging rocks together, to banging moon rocks together.

"my team" territorialism is best left to the reptiles and lower mammals.
let's allow the escapism of sports feed that vestigal remainder of our dna.
let's not allow it to resist our evolution as humans.

if you enjoy the benefits of being in a society, then occasionally your words and actions should reflect and support the good of society.

freedom is selfish, and to some degree it should be.
citizenship is unselfish and we should all make that a priority from time to time too.

america isn't just about freedom. it's also about citizenship. they balance. and we as a nation advance united.

on browser detection with javascript

wow. when it comes to using javascript to build custom web applications, if there was one thing i thought would be easy to do is have the app figure out what browser type is being used. nope.

many years ago when i first starting learning javascript, detecting the browser was pretty essential, because at the time browsers varied widely in how they implemented javascript. some behavior was different, some appearance was different, and on some browsers, some aspects of the language weren't supported at all. and this was long before handy libraries and frameworks like dojo and jquery.

these days? much, much better. but even still, occasionally you run into an issue, and if the limitation or bug is inside someone else's blackbox, you reverse-hack a workaround.

here's what i ran into, above.

drawing some of my own graphic labels on the map. i need the labels to sit on polygon masks that i'm also creating. the yellow masks up there always draw fine, but the labels vary.

so, come to find out that on some browsers (chrome, opera) the labels draw fine, on other browsers (msie, firefox, safari, edge) the label itself draws too low. luckily the API i'm using, i can apply an offset to juke the label to make it look better, but i need to know at runtime which browser is being used so that i can tell it how far to juke, if at all.

so i start googling around, and ran into some samples of varying age, and varying usefulness. not good enough to cover all my bases. some written for entirely different purposes, or otherwise mucked up with regex, or accounting for possibilities so exhaustively, to make the end result internationally bulletproof, but for me 90% unnecessary and tough to wean back.

then i figured javascript frameworks might help. i looked into things like jquery.browser (which its own doc says it's deprecated all over the place with no new references) and dojo/has and dojo/sniff, still issues left and right, then scope issues with wanting to have some of this code outside the AMD loader require statement, but probably my inexperience with those contributed to the problems. i need to learn how to wrestle with dojo better.

i even found this little gem on twitter:

rock solid advice no doubt, but feature detection doesn't really apply in my case since i'm not trying to call certain features or install extensions, etc. i just need to know the browser, so that i can go do my thing with the labels. i also tried an example that used ducktyping, which i suppose is a flavor of feature detection (trying to determine what something is, by testing what it can and cannot do: i.e., if it walks and quacks like a duck), and ran into more exceptions than things that actually worked. at any rate...

so i finally went brute force and found that the dom's own navigator class has a .userAgent property that contains a lot of gobbledyguk, but enough there to do some string parsing.

browsers like opera, firefox, and safari, no problem. the .userAgent returned by those browser has enough uniqueness to it.

the example above is what chrome browsers return, and while this string contains *both* the words "chrome" and "safari", the safari browser's has "safari" but not "chrome", so if i check for "safari" first, then overwrite that with "chrome" later if the browser is chrome, then i'm good. (i guess i could've used a switch condition with some fall-through), but at any rate, here's what i ended up with:

and since no workaround is so nice that microsoft internet explorer can't find a way to toss a wrench in, guess what... the javascript inside IE doesn't support the string object's .includes method!! argh. so i tried .indexOf and other similar methods, to no avail.

so i'm making my kludge a little kludgier and i'm deciding to avoid the problem for now by assuming that if i don't proactively find the other browsers, i can reactively assume "msie". i'm sure that won't hold up in the long run, but until i find a better way, i'll see how far i can get with it. oh, and don't miss the forced use of try...catch, because if you try to call .includes on an IE browser, the whole thing craps out.

i'm all ears if anyone out there has a better way to do browser detection. i'm better just about anyone reading this does. (hopefully)

end result:

on college being free

TL;DR: the solution to the student loan crisis cannot be sustainably solved by making college free, but it can solve many problems at once by heavily regulating student loan interest.  the set of problems solved by this approach are many: college has value and value should be paid for, students still have skin in the game, banks still make enough money to cover the cost of administering the loans, and it allows the 40-50 year earnings of graduates to be used productively, driving the whole economy, and not simply funnelled back to banks at rates that go many times further than the money originally loaned.

 

make something free and watch people treat it like it has no value. 

an education from college, university, trade school, or apprenticeship is a thing of value. it prepares young people with the mindset and skllls they need to be productive. that productivity has value, therefore the education that got them started down the path has value as well. after our constitutionally guaranteed primary and secondary educations, up to the age of 16-18 or so, young people have several choices on what to do next to prepare themselves for the rest of their life path. 

it’s an essential part of their commitment to their own life that they invest in themselves. to reap the greatest rewards, requires the greatest investment of time, effort, and yes, money, the latter is of course compensation for the time and effort educators provide. 

individual and society, a shared commitment

a college or trades education beyond high school should cost the student a fair amount of money, along with the commitment of time and effort to the learning process. while it benefits society to have the highest educated and skilled workforce possible, society’s collective commitment to the process shouldn’t include footing the entire bill. that teaches future parents nothing about savings, and tells students and everyone else in the process that an advanced education is owed to them, or worse, that it has no value.

fix student loans, you fix a lot of problems at the same time

the problem with student loans today is that the interest on them creates a cycle where a monthly payment they can afford doesn’t even cover the interest. 

the student keeps paying, a lot, for many years, and the balance due continues to go up. in the end, after 20 years, the remaining balance is written off (who knows who eats that, probably taxpayers), and the student is left to pay full taxes on the written off balance, often to the tune of 4, 5, or even 6 figures. 

meanwhile the banks have for decades extracted the maximum profit possible.
in other words, schools, students, and taxpayers are the losers. banks are the only winners.

it's sort of like how trump has done business. leverage finances to build something big, generate as much revenue as possible, pull out as much profit as you can, run the business until it starts losing money, protect yourself using very legal bankruptcy laws (those laws, btw, bought and paid for by the businesses who abuse them, so that, hey, at least it's all "legal"), walk away, and let the government and taxpayers clean up the mess. "privatize gains; socialize losses", yep, this is the person we elected to clean up government, and run it like a business. nice huh?

ok back on topic...

possible solution

is there a solution where banks still make money, students invest in themselves, and taxpayers pay much less than they do now? i think so.

here’s what government can do

the government should invest in the cost of advanced education by going back to heavily regulating the interest that banks can charge for student loans. i’m no financial wizard, and who knows if this is true, but in this digital age it’s hard to believe that it would cost a bank more than 1% annually to administratively process the maintenance of a student loan. that 1% could be regulated by the federal government, who could at the same time provide incentives to banks for writing loans based on quality and quantity.

rather than pouring out billions annually in grants to students, pour a fraction of that into subsidizing the 1% interest to the banks for 10 years.

here’s what students can do

they can now afford to pay for their entire education themselves. 

they can use parents’ savings, money they earn while attending school, or when those fall short, taking out 0% interest loans that cover tuition, room, board, books, and fees. 

after 10 years of 0% interest, whatever balance is left, the student can continue paying, and tack on the 1% going forward. incentivizes them to pay off the loan sooner.

what might happen as a result:

• moving from grants to interest subsidies, government costs for student tuition might go down considerably
• government can eliminate tax deductions for student loan interest
• students pay for their own education fully; they own the whole thing, paid off at 0% interest in a time frame they can
• banks stop profiting billions off the backs of students, unchaining them from the financial industry revenue stream. i’m all for banks investing and making money. just go do it somewhere else. 

on trump's racism

TL;DR: while trump may not be a racist, to them he is "their guy".  he has been very effective at using "draw your own conclusions" marketing principles to tap into that large bloc of voters that other politicians had previously worked hard to distance themselves from. 

 

is president trump a racist? i don't know. if there's evidence out there, it doesn't seem to be blatant, or show him to be one any more or less than your average rich white guy from his generation.

i think i do however understand why he walks, talks, and quacks like a racist.

is there evidence of racism? not much

i do believe that if the left-leaning news media who are could have found evidence of this over the past two years, they would have already.

i also believe that the right-leaning news media who (around the time that jeb, mario, and ted had high-hopes and money in the game) could have found evidence of this, they would have already.

so... given that there have been a lot of powerful people, with powerful money, on both sides of the aisle, with incentive to bring him down, and failing to find racist beliefs or actions, i tend to believe that the jury is still out on this one.

and, if you do find any evidence of this, during his decades of adult life, i bet you'll find that what might look like racism, is probably motivated more by green, than by black, brown, or white.

so...

so why did we elect him?

to drain the swamp, right?

hillary represented the best (worst?) example of a corrupt political empire, bought and paid for by the american financial sector. so, for the first time most of us can remember, americans were given the opportunity to destroy a corrupt political machine with one pull of the lever. we got to elect someone who wasn't a career politician. we specifically and purposefully elected a businessman. we elected a shrewd, savvy, independent, outsider, fuckyou entrepreneur.

but to win, he still needed votes, and to earn votes he needed to create enough value.

how do business people create value?

they create it in lots of ways, but here are two of them:

1) by dominating competitive markets
2) by exploiting untapped markets

for decades, it has been easy to see that trump is motivated only by finding potential value, adding value, then extracting value.

...because trump isn't a politician. remember?

right? i mean, that was the whole point of the campaign, and probably the most common reason given by people who voted for him.

objectively defined right and wrong are out, ethics are out, honesty is out (unless you can make a buck on it). all that stuff is replaced by loyalty and winning. he built businesses as cheaply as he could, then extracted as much personal value as he could until bankruptcy ended the party, at which time, he took off, taxpayers were there to pay the bill and clean up the mess. "hey, that's just smart business, folks"

how did trump use business value to crush the establishment GOP?

when there were over a dozen candidates in the GOP pool of possible nominees. trump ended up winning the nomination not because he competed better and harder during the campaign, and not because his vision of a great america was better defined and articulated (because his vision was actually more vague and less defined than the others, more emotion than logic, more fear than facts), rather, he won the GOP nomination because he refused to play by the same rules as the others. instead, he invented a new more exciting game, and then won that game because he was the only one playing.

the day the GOP shot themselves in the foot in front of a nation

omg do you remember? because if you don't then i'm all too happy to remind you. there was this debate. there had to have been 10 GOP dweebs on the stage. they were all unified in their demand that trump concede to their whim of declaring that he will support whoever the nominee ended up being. i've never before seen, and i hope never will see from now on, a more pathetic display of cowardice by a collection of accomplished successful politicians as this group who asked such a bullshit question. they were each so smugly convinced that it was them who would be the nominee,  but all so convinced that trump would not be, but that they were at the same time fearful that trump would magnetically split the party.

holy shit.

this was the moment THIS former republican lost ALL respect for the intellectually bankrupt emotionally manipulative republican party.

it was actually at that moment that it became obvious to the rest of us that trump would actually be the nominee. i mean, i still believed hillary would win the general election, but it was at that moment that i lost my last remaining respect for the GOP. this being the party i had been a registered member of, and idealistic true believer of, from 1981 to 1996.

you conservative fools. you let down your guard, and the idiot trump checkmated you all.

and you all. pricks all of you. when it came to hosting the republican national convention in 2016, which of you actually convened with your own party? bunone of you. none. of. you. proves you cared more about yourselves than your country. more about yourselves than your party. and more about yourselves than understanding what motivates the citizens who your fearmongering and tea party enabling fed and fostered, and finally grew up and blew up in your face.

i'm embarrassed to say that i was ever a member of your party. you used patriotism to manipulate good people into voting against themselves. you stuffed your pockets with wall street billions while redirecting hatred toward the poor of us who needed only a tiny percentage of that.

this was the election when it was jeb bush's "turn". it was ted cruz' "time". it was marco rubio's "below the zone" leapfrog. omg. freakin' amateurs. playing by the old rules. and now they're home sitting on their hands.

so what does this have to do with racism and white supremacy?

yeah, how about them white supremacists?

politicians normally avoid these folks, because their ideas are morally bankrupt and typically toxic to a sustainable political career.

but... when it comes to leveraging untapped markets to his profit and benefit, trump is a genius. and the angry white supremacists turned out to be a big pool of motivated voters who rose up and tsunami'd him into the white house.

...so to sum this up:

in other words: trump may not be a racist. but he pandered to them. they gave him the edge he needed to win office. and any actions (or inactions) by trump that look racist are nothing more than not biting the hand that feeds him. especially because he will need these "good folks" again in a few years.

so even if he is not a racist. he bought, paid for, and owns the racist voting bloc.

to the white supremacists, trump is "their guy". they know it. he knows it. and as an untapped market, as a huge pool of votes that no one ever wanted before, but still have plenty of value. so basically, tapping into that pool is a business move, not a political one.

but now he owns them, and like it or not, you are the company you keep.

the question then is: are you a racist if you befriend racists? not necessarily, but then, if winning is the only objective, that's not the point.

on hurricane harvey, maps, and you

are you into maps?

the storm is gone, but relief and recovery will take years, and americans far away still need help.

in addition to donating to reputable charities, would you like to do some hands-on work that helps, but can't get to houston, or at this point don't want to get in the way? here's a way you can help remotely.

in short, you can get online and contribute your time and effort creating and verifying basemap data for the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project.

what is OSM? well, think of it as the wikipedia of maps. it started back in 2004 with the goal of using crowdsourcing to map the entire world. at first it was interested in mainly in mapping streets, but in recent years has grown to map a whole lot more, whether it be mapping trees within parks, locations of places to get a coffee, or even mapping departments within retail stores.

...and just like wikipedia, anyone can edit it, and the crowd verifies to keep it correct. in the end, it's a living, breathing map, and changing every day---just like the world around us.

one of the most productive uses of OSM in recent years has been "humanitarian mapping". the 2010 earthquake tragedy that struck in haiti was its true coming-of-age as a valuable tool. actual data on this varies, but let's just say the OSM team on the ground and remotely transformed haiti from a country that was mostly not mapped, to one that was, and in great detail.

and that ever growing OSM basemap was used by first responders, non-profit organizations, command center briefings, media support, the general public, and many, many other uses.

interested? want to at least check it out, and maybe get involved?

1) first, go to OSM and click "Sign Up" to create a new account

2) click "Edit", then "Edit with iD", then "Start the Walkthrough" in order to learn how to use the editing tools. it will hand-hold you through the steps. i think you'll find it very easy and straightforward. the tutorial takes maybe 10-15 minutes to get thru.

3) go to tasks.openstreetmap.us, choose a task that needs work, and follow the instructions

apparently lots of work needs to be done with getting buildings added to the map; you can just use your mouse to draw them by tracing on top of satellite photos. there's also a lot of verification work to check stuff that others did, not just with buildings, but also streets, parks, and the location of public safety facilities.

i've been editing OSM maps on and off for years, and just picked up a task and did some work on it yesterday. there's a long labor day weekend coming up. great opportunity to put in some hours.

if you want to try it, and have ANY questions with this stuff, or get stuck or whatever, contact me directly, or comment below and i can help you.