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The Quarterly Report – September 2018

As the news-cycle screams forward with ever-more velocity, here is your San Francisco quarterly report – a condensed look at all the really important things going on around San Francisco over the last three months. Perhaps this sounds presumptuous, but I think as a species we often have a difficulty slowing down and observing and taking note of what is going on around us and documenting these events and changes.

Politics
San Francisco elected London Breed as new mayor. She is the first African-American woman to be mayor. So far so good, but her election was one were the progressive side of the San Francisco Democratic party was left eating their lunch. As often the case, some pretty clever politicking ruled the day as Ron Conway surely pulled some switches with some big cash and clever strategies. Often in politics if there is no news that is good news and people are simply doing their jobs but you never know. It will be interesting to see how long the big open smile on London’s face will keep smiling. City politics always gets controversial in San Francisco but things are pretty much the status-quo. Homelessness everywhere. The Tenderloin full of junkies and shopping carts for storage and portable closets. Skyscrapers leaning evermore one direction and lots of cranes all over the place building condos and stadiums.  The Golden State Warriors stadium is being built in record time. Seemingly two feet above sea level and that place will have a shelf-life of twenty years or until the next iceberg melts.

The usual op-ed writers dig into familiar positions. The latest is Tim Redmond bashing Heather Knight.  I think that what really needs to happen is for BART executives to draw straws to get the job of cleaning the 16th Street BART station for a year . That would get people a bit more focused at the top and they could make a reality TV show about the whole thing and make millions. They could call it “Strange Smells” or “Altered States of Vomit.”

Weather
The fire season was pretty much on fire this summer. There were so many fires you kind of lost track. I am wondering if the next time I go up to Lake County there will be any trees left at all. I am sure there are still burns going on now as it has not rained yet. A few months ago, in San Francisco you would wake up in the morning to white ash dust sprinkled lightly all over your car. This is getting so common now that you hardly think twice about it.

We are heading into our Indian Summer weather but so far the North West winds have continued to blow and we have had just a few warm days. It really is anyone’s guess what kind of rain we get this year. I have always been of the mind that our water supply comes down to five really good storms that last about three days each and dump all that snow up in the Sierra. This happened in January 2017 but last year was pretty dry overall. Mother nature does always bat last even though we think we are omnipotent, she always has her way in the end.

Baseball
Speaking of batting, while the San Francisco Giants are almost in last place the ever-scrappy Oakland A’s are looking to be heading to some sort of playoff birth. I have not followed them this year but, being the fair-weather fan I am, will watch and root for them down the stretch. Barry Zito do you still have that curve ball?

Tech Industry and Google Buses
Here they are. A gaggle of Google buses. In the mornings they leave. In the evenings they return, pushing there way back into the city. Raising the rents and making it impossible for people not on the same pay-scale to live San Francisco. I hear this sort of tech-commuting is happening in other cities as well.

Here is a gallery of Google buses for those who are interested on what they look like up close. What is interesting is that they have no advertising on the sides. Sort of ironic as most the people in the buses are in the end working to market and sell something. You would think they would have the imagination to leverage the situation but then again perhaps they prefer to try to be incognito. Pretty sneaky.

Sunsets are Beginning
One of the things that keeps people living in this golden state are the sunsets. The fog is starting to push back and we are starting to get those great autumn golden colors and magical light with its sharp, crisp shadows. Hopefully by the next report I can talk about all the great rain storms we will be getting.

Until then.

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Epiphanies from Hotel Stebbins

On vacation for a few weeks. Out of the fog and fires of California it was good to be in Wisconsin for a family reunion then Minnesota for a week, working out of my sister-in-law’s house in Minneapolis. Ninety degree weather made for great working conditions, shorts and a t-shirt – the fan set to “hi” blowing the air around. Lots of recreation on water – a pontoon boat ride, canoes, sailing and kayaks. Much enjoyable visiting with family and old friends. My sister even got married and we had a nice memorial for my mother who passed away five years ago.

For a few nights we stayed in a hotel room in Algoma, Wisconsin at Hotel Stebbins, one of the oldest hotels in Wisconsin. I highly recommend Hotel Stebbins as the rooms are nice and it is pretty darn cheap. Also you are downtown and close to the beach, winery, antique shops and brewery.

“I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.”
– Molly Ivins

In all of the rural areas of the Midwest it seems as though people have gone flag-crazy. You see them flying up and down main streets in the front of most houses. It seems that all the Trump banners of 2016 have been replaced with American flags. I am not sure why people are now so obsessed with this symbolic emblem of our country but perhaps it is a sign of insecurity. I always liked the Molly Ivins’ quote “I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.” which would be wise to post on large billboards in these fly-over states. Indeed, it would be good to hand out copies of the United States Constitution to all these flag waving mid-westerners for they surely need a refresher course.

In the hallway of Hotel Stebbins was a whiteboard with what were called “epiphanies.” Seeing as it is Sunday and a day of reflection, I post some of them here. Good stuff!

Never argue with an idiot, people watching won’t be able to tell the difference…
– Unknown source

You must do the thing which you cannot do
– Eleanor Roosevelt

Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.
– R. Scott Fitzgerald

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent
– Eleanor Roosevelt

Work hard in silence. Let success be your noise.
– Unknown source

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes
– Oscar Wilde

It always seems impossible until it is done.
– Nelson Mandela

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
– Helen Keller

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San Francisco Jury Duty – A True Story

Mission 14x bus to 6th and Bryant Street

Called into jury duty after deferring once. I took the Mission 14x bus to 6th and Bryant Street. On the first day the vague details and outline of the case was explained. On 6th Street and Market in front of the Baltmore Hotel a murder had taken place in 2012. A man with a gun shot another man and there was an accomplice. Both defendants were African American males around the age of 25. Both were large, dressed in button down shirts and ties. One of the defendants seemed to have at one point been beaten as one of his eyes was at an unnatural skew.

The middle aged Asian judge was a rather playful fellow who talked incessantly about food and providing a lunch of sticky buns for all the chosen jurors  and that “wasn’t it great we were not at the dentist!” He tried hard to make jokes but the humour fell a bit flat. Good thing he is a judge and not a comic. He then proceeded to demonstrate his prowess in three Chinese dialects and said that if you were Chinese American and did not understand English it was not an easy way out.

5 Spice Chicken for Lunch – Reading Time – Really Bad WIFI

During the jury selection one of the defendants lawyers went to great lengths to try to find if people had implicit bias. It was interesting to hear from the diverse potential jurists and their takes on implicit bias which lead to the discussion of racial profiling. Concepts of data and metadata as relating to phone calls was brought up and interestingly the prosecutor seemed quite naive about such concepts. Let us explain. The actual call is the data. The time, date and location of the call, which the phone company surely knows, is the metadata. There surely is more to data and metadata in this case but that is the basics.Two younger folk in the technology industry were released. A few others were released due to past histories.

Mission 14X bus to 6th and Bryant Street

A few people called as potential jurors seemed quite intelligent. A few lawyers, a retired Professor named Brown who had written a book about police conduct in Los Angeles filled the room with interesting observations.  A few people related to police officers in the case were dismissed. A funny old Latina grandmother a bit hard of hearing and maybe with a screw starting to come loose upstairs admitted that because years ago her purse was snatched by an African American see could not trust “those blacks.” At one point people laughed and she shushed them which made it even funnier. She was dismissed.

Lunch in the Park on Harrison – Rain but Some Sun

We are down to the final jurors and the alternates and the judge states that juror selection is coming to an end. It is looking like the 80 or so people left in the room will not be on the jury. I am starting to relax and thinking how cool the whole process has been – how interesting the conversations were and how nice it was going to be to be in a building that actually had ventilation. For some reason the entire wing in this part of the Hall of Justice had no air. It was hot and the air was stale – a bit sufficting really. And just when I started to think how the poor ventilation systems probably made for some interesting escape attempts from the county jail I heard “Paul Lyons” and then there I was – “In the box.” Out of all the people in the room, I was the last juror called. I picked up my bag and took my seat.

Of course there is a list of questions on the board that I had to answer – occupation, family and years in San Francisco. The first defense attorney read my answers to the questionnaire that I had filled out a week earlier.

“I find it odd that the judge seems compelled to bribe the potential jurors with promises of food. I think that jurors should be paid a fair wage for their service.”

That is all that I had written thinking that I would never be called. The room burst into laughter.  I did not realize that I had used the words “bribe” and “judge” in the same sentence – not exactly prudent.

Next, the second defense attorney started grilling me to which the prosecuting attorney for the first time actually objected to a question – “Objection Your Honor!” – that I do not now recollect. Everything started moving very fast. I do not remember my exact answers to the next questions at that point but I remember stating that “the jury process, while not perfect is a good thing and the best that we have. I played my cards very close to my chest.”

Other recent seated jurors were asked similar questions. Due to the questionnaire we had filled out a week prior, one of the questions was about the ability to be comfortable with seeing photos blood and of gruesome scenes. Paradoxically the rather tattooed and pierced woman sitting next to me stated that she was “uneasy about looking at gruesome photos of blood” but in the end confessed that she would get over it and be a willing juror and could handle it.

A few minutes later the three lawyers and the judge dismissed themselves to the chamber in back  and came out soon after to swear in the three alternates none of which were me. In other words, I was dismissed.

A truly strange, interesting but edifying experience. Time to write the judge an apology letter and thank him for his service. I will mail it to him in May, long after this trial is done.

PROLOGUE

The two men in the trial were convicted of murder. Let it be known that the jury was quite diverse. There were three black people on the jury – one a black woman over 65.  An Asian man. People of all ages. The evidence must have been clear. I read online that the San Francisco district attorney expressed that both of the men would “spend the rest of there days in jail.”

The whole thing is a sad story. Two boys born into a society where the cards were stacked against them. A stupid series of decisions. A culture of poverty, probably struggling schools, violence and revenge.  I cannot help but think that the real crime goes much deeper. It is a crime against humanity – a failure of humanity.

 

 

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Zorba the Greek and Thugs, Leeches, Shouting and Playing Piano in the Lobby

“ Mr. Fintiklis, 39, declined to comment, but he has made several notable — and provocative — appearances at the hotel in recent days. On one evening, following a verbal confrontation with Trump employees, he and his entourage of about a dozen people retired to the lobby and had pizza delivered from a restaurant on the property. Then Mr. Fintiklis played music from “Zorba the Greek” on the lobby’s baby grand piano while his friends sang along.”

From N.Y. Times – Thugs, Leeches, Shouting and Shoving at Trump Hotel in Panama (March 3, 2018)

This story in the Sunday N.Y. Times seems like the perfect material for either a documentary or a piece of historical fiction. We are at a point where in the world of politics, reality is stranger than fiction. Imagine Mr. Orestes Fintiklis, a young millionaire in a tussle with Trump and he uses art (playing a song in the hotel lobby) as a way to state his position. If this was a proposed screenplay it would never make the cut – too unbelievable. I like the fact that this really rich guy takes pleasure in playing the piano and singing songs from the mid-twentieth century. Imagine the party eating probably Dominoes pizza in the lobby hanging around the piano singing songs while the security in military garb and armed with AK 47s stood guard. What a bizarre scene.

Perhaps the movie would be called Orestes the Cypriate.

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Observations on the Word “Feminism”

“According to Merriam-Webster’s “feminism” was the most searched-for word in its online dictionary, up seventy percent from 2016. But who in 2017 needed to be told what “feminism” means? Upon searching, these people would have learned from Merriam-Webster that “feminism” is “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.” Some number of them where probably relieved to learn that it is still just a theory.”

From The New Yorker – Jan 8th, 2018 – Talk of the Town – Words of the Year (Louis Minead)

There are some words that are confusing by their very sound and came to life in a way that in the end does not serve humans or the word well. “Feminism” is one. “Net neutrality” is another.  Wordsmiths and politicians conjure up others. Citizens United, the law that allows corporations to be treated as citizens is another and should really be called Corporations United to Screw You Over. But once a word takes life it is hard to undo the confusion and damage.

The reason why people were probably looking up “feminism” is because for many it conjures up an image of the feminine – perhaps lipstick and high-heels, but originally it was not meant to mean that at all, but I digress and am “mansplaining”  – a word that is quite good and accurate – way better than “feminism.” But I hope the people who looked up the word “feminism” are satisfied with the Merriam-Webster’s definition. That is how I have always had it defined in my head.  Equality. Maybe it should be “equalitism,” but that almost sounds like a mathematical theory.

It is strange that the UCLA feminist magazine and website Fem is staffed entirely by woman. https://femmagazine.com/about/staff-2015-2016/. I think it may have to do with the confusion about the word “feminism” and perhaps a feeling by men that they are not welcome. Surely nothing could be further from the truth. One of my friend’s kids that is off to college joined the  school’s Latin Dancing Club and is loving it. Very few men and a lot of woman who are eagerly looking for dancing partners. Smart guy.

Anyway, this little essay ,Words of the Year, is extremely well written and also pretty funny. I have been exposed to the New Yorker since I was young. When I was a little kid, I would eat my bowl of cereal and page through the single pane cartoons and never get a single joke. Now I look at the cartoons and marvel at how they came up with such great ideas. Usually the Talk of the Town is all about the dreary state of politics. It is good that they mix it up from time to time.

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Why Facebook Really Sucks

Over five years ago I wrote a piece for this publication called THE VAPID STATE OF AFFAIRS – FACEBOOK AND THE NEW NARCISSISM (MAY 26, 2012). In it I mused over the Facebook IPO and whether it would survive as the revenue model was all in advertising and market share. I have never clicked on a Facebook ad in my life and I do not even remember what they are about except recently they have become a bit more aggressive as I am suppose to go to Kelly Slater’s surf camp next summer. Yeah right. I was wrong. Subliminal messaging is a gold mine. The new narcissism has now elected a narcissist buffoon as president of the United States of America. As a nation we are becoming less intelligent and self-absorbed by the second.

I have always been skeptical of Facebook and it’s privacy policy, the algorithm that determines my feed and just the weird way that Facebook has made it so it is actually more difficult to contact your “friends.” In this post, I will outline the features of Facebook that really suck. No one talks about this much but it is time to shine some light on this strange company, actually a monopoly,  that has crept into the private lives of so many people.

7 REASONS FACEBOOK REALLY SUCKS

  • 1984 and Rewriting of History: Probably the #1 reason Facebook sucks is that Facebook will delete your posts if you are critical of Facebook as though they are  “thoughtcrimes” controlled  by the Thought Police as described in the novel 1984. I have experienced this first hand on Facebook.  A few years back I made a post explaining that Facebook was a for-profit corporation and that the space is actually not public but private and while they try to appear public the key motivating factor is profit and money. It made for a lively discussion on Facebook and (not that I care) got more likes and interaction than I had ever seen for a post of mine. When I tried to find that post months later, it was wiped from the site. Creepy shit. Mark Zuckerberg’s plea that the platform promotes democracy is just plain horseshit. Stop deleting posts that are not out of line if they happen to intelligently critique you or one of your allies.
  • Mental Health: Your feed is like a lab rats sugar water bottle feeding you spiritually non-nutritious waves of energy. Harry Shearer calls it the “envy machine.” “Good grief! Look at Charlie  Jones on vacation having such a good time and his dog is just adorable.” “What the hell am I doing in this cubicle thinking about picking up that flea medicine for Fido.” In the hospital mental health wards in a few years there are going to be people with Facebook addictions and 12 step social media recovery groups.  People who feel let down that people simply did not read their posts. My 23 year old son says that the site should have a warning when you log in similar to cigarette products. WARNING: THIS WEBSITE CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR MENTAL HEALTH. IT HAS KNOWN TO CAUSE DEPRESSION, ANXIETY AND UNPREDICTABLE NEGATIVE REACTIONS. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.
  • Terrible contact system: Contacting people on Facebook is obfuscated.  Do not even get me started with Messenger. It crashed my android phone.  By being able to control your method of contacting other people you are giving Facebook incredible power. How many people, your “friends” on Facebook do you actually have a mailing address, email or phone number for?   This is strange and devious.  Why can’t you just leave your phone number and email address on Facebook and get on with your life? These are your “friends” Here’s my number. When you are in town give me a call. I have left my phone number in a post and it is always wiped from the system.
  • Privacy: The sick concept of making money off of peoples’ intimate life experiences starting with your birthday. Why would users waste so much time contributing content to a website that could disappear in a flash or simply hold your content ransom? What happens in thirty years when you want to find something or someone you connected to on Facebook?  Will you have to pay to obtain the information you created? I simply do not trust it with any of my information. As they say, it is free and you get what you paid for.
  • All the bad parts of high school on steroids: Facebook is a bit like those cliques in high school but unlike in high school, you really have no idea who is in your clique. This is just creepy. Your feed comes up steering you psychologically in directions not of your choosing. It is like a carnival ride.
  • Facebook does not work for promoting local events If you play in a band Facebook is terrible as a platform for promoting an event.  You can invite people. Make a link to the event. It hardly ever works to get people out. The other problem is that your friends are all over the freaking world end up being the people who get more excited about your “local” event so promoting an event is pretty much useless. I get the feeling that the local people do not even see your post about the event.
  • San Francisco General Hospital This is something that is not written about in the news much, but it is the phenomenon of tax-dodging tech billionaires either building hospitals our making wings of hospitals and then having their names on the the front of the hospital. San Francisco General Hospital after Mark Zuckerberg gave 75 million dollars to the hospital is now called Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center and the hospital had to go through the hoops of changing the actual acronyms of the hospital to ZSFG. What a jerk. “I will give you this money but only on the condition that you change your name and jump through these hoops.” Zuckerberg’s wife is a doctor/resident that works in that hospital. In essence he was simply making for better working conditions for her and twisting city higher-ups around.  This becomes even more disgusting when you realize that Facebook for many years has been avoiding paying taxes and offshoring capital.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2013/02/19/tax-increases-why-facebooks-billion-dollar-income-isnt-taxed-at-all-by-irs/#49d7aba0d92c

Benevolent player for the betterment of humankind? I think not. Just the same old greedy capitalist.  Giving money to public institutions should not make it so your name goes on the front of the building. Photos of the all the signs they had to change coming soon.

Now I could post this little piece on Facebook but it would be gone in a few days – dragged off in handcuffs to the great Facebook digital trashcan.″

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Scheer Intelligence – Danny Goldberg: In Search of the Lost Chord

I cannot say I have read this book In Search of the Lost Chord but I have been really getting into this podcast. Robert Scheer, the veteran columnist from the LA Times and editor and producer of Truth Digg. The guests that Robert Scheer gets on the show are all surely friends of his but he still manages to keep their feet to fire and Robert asks some direct and often challenging questions. Here are some quotes from this interview.

Bill Graham also liked to get paid including in the 60s and he’s an example of somebody who balanced.. wasn’t perfect but the good outweighed the bad. I mean if you expect perfect people, you are going to be disappointed. Even Doctor King had some human frailties.

Danny Goldberg

When you bet on artists its a good bet and that’s the one thing I feel good about. I’ve always tried to put the artists I work with first and they have taken care of me.

Danny Goldberg

I have to say that it is a moment of sadness reading your book because San Francisco is gone. It’s gone not just in the sense of the summer of love its gone as the baudy town of honky tonks.

Robert Scheer

To check out the whole interview, go to http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/scheer-intelligence/danny-goldberg-in-search-of-the-lost-chord

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San Francisco Pride Parade 2017

June 25th, 2017 was the day of the big parade for San Francisco Pride – a celebration of diversity. For many years I had not paid attention to this event, usually trying to avoid the traffic congestion associated with such a large crowd in town. This time I had relatives and family marching along with the California Bluegrass Association Pride float. Below are mostly photos of California Bluegrass Association Pride float but I could not help myself to get photos of all the “diversity” and “causes.”

Intact Genitals are a Human Right
Intact Genitals are a Human Right

I vaguely remember the Gay Pride parade as being in the Castro but that was years ago. This year it was amazing how many sections were corporate – VISA, Google, Facebook, Workday, Wells Fargo, Intel, Bloomingdale’s, Levis just to name a few. These were all pretty tame in terms of visual presentation and you just had to wonder about the concept of punching the clock for your corporate job and walking down Market Street for your gay pals at VISA – how tame.

Foreskin is not a Birth Defect and It’s Not Your Mother’s Penis 

Signs at the SF Pride Parade

How times have changed as there are surely a few old timers in the gay community scratching their heads about the irony of success. Unlike a lot of parades the music in the Pride Parade is not really the showcase. When there is music it seemed to steer towards a prerecorded sort of night club drum and bass thing. Strange I never heard “I Will Survive,” Tina Turner or even Tony Bennett. There is a musical history to this movement.

Nevertheless, here were some truly interesting and bizarre groups. My favorites where the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” (just the name is awesome), Church Ladies for Gay Rights dressed in loose-fitted old fashion dresses,  and the many church groups marching.  -The group against circumcision – Foreskin is not a Birth Defect and It’s Not Your Mother’s Penis was an interesting juxtaposition to the many medically altered people marching.

California Bluegrass Association Pride Float
California Bluegrass Association Pride Float

Then the California Bluegrass Pride Float came by. The float was truly awesome with the rainbow colors and a sort of front porch theme. The band was picking some fast fiddle tunes when they went by our spot. I am not sure if bluegrass has been played in many parades but the high register of the instruments and the lack of brass and drums make it a bit tricky to garner much impact.  It sounded a bit like bees a buzzin’.  But overall it was truly great to see some headline acts participating on the float – veteran Laurie Lewis along with members of the band Front Country.

While in the San Francisco bluegrass community there are actually very few openly gay people,  you could tell it was pretty special for Brandon Godman who came to San Francisco after being outed and discriminated against in Nashville. Brandon is an amazing fiddle player and was welcomed into the San Francisco musical community with open arms. In San Francisco, people are usually not discriminated against for who they love and choose to sleep with. Just ask the Church Ladies for Gay Rights standing up for others in their community. Women have been shit upon and pushed around since the beginning of time so look out –  the Church Ladies got your back!

[ CLICK ON IMAGES + ]

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Where is Janice Raymond?

The Internet has a strange way of broadcasting value and worth. A forty-year-old book about transgender issues can be a cornerstone of critical thought at the time but then gets misquoted and passed off as old fashion. Today the book is out-of-print but fetches around $100 used on Amazon for a used hard cover edition. You have to wonder why the publisher does not make another printing? Modern books read like pop self-help books, quoting daytime TV shows and sourcing checklists of acceptable pronouns. The Transgender Empire written by a “radical lesbian feminist” (how did she ever get that label?) is both academic, historical and cuts to the chase and journeys deep into the topic. Below is just a short quote from the 1994 reprinting.

The medical model is also a disease model. And here exactly is the rub. If transsexualism is treated as a disease, then does desire qualify as disease? As Thomas Szasz asked in his New York Times review of The Transsexual Empire, does an old person who wants to be young suffer from the “disease” of being a “transchronological, ” or does a poor person who wants to be rich suffer from the “disease” of being a “transeconomical”? Does a Black person who wants to be white suffer from the “disease” of being a “transracial”?

All these questions, of course, raise larger social and political issues and remove these conjectural “diseases” from the medical/psychiatric framework.

From The Transgender Empire – Janice Raymond
Reprinted in 1994 by Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10027
Originally published in 1979 by Beacon Press
Copyright © 1994 by Janice G. Raymond

Download the pdf

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Open letter to Robert Thompson of NewsCorp

This is an open letter to Robert Thompson of NewsCorp. There is no link on your webpage on how to contact you so I thought I would write a letter. Sort of “old-school” don’t you think? I recently read Fake News and the Digital Duopoly in the April 5th version of the Wall Street Journal. Found it on a cafe table. Great op-ed, and I agree with everything in it. Clear and crisp writing and the article shed much needed light on lots of things.

Fake News and the Digital Duopoly
Google and Facebook have created a dysfunctional and socially destructive information ecosystem
Robert Thompson – Wall Street Journal

“publishers will routinely and selectively “unpublish” certain views and news.”

Robert Thompson – Fake News and the Digital Duopoly Wall Street Journal

I posted a piece on Facebook that was critical of Facebook and Google, the gist of which was just making sure all my “friends” know that Google and Facebook are private companies and that the space is NOT public and that they gather and mine your intimate personal history starting with – of course your birthday. This post of course disappeared from my history a few months later… never to be found again.

Your business model can’t be based on both intimate, gradual details about users and no clue whatsoever about rather obvious pirate sites.

I hate to tell you Mr. Thompson. Google and YouTube are the pirates. YouTube is one massive landscape of unlimited counterfeit movies and music. That should be the first thing addressed. It is called the revising of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It is wishful thinking that this will happen by the sense of goodwill and altruism of YouTube.

Read about it here –

https://sfjournal.net/blog/breaking-news-after-over-8-years-googles-content-id-system-is-still-in-beta/

 

and

 

DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT 18 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

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BREAKING NEWS! We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite – Temporarily out of stock.

$45.73 on amazon.com

Temporarily out of stock. Order now and we’ll deliver when available.

Great to hear that vinyl is still the go to medium! Booker Little on trumpet is completely amazing! This is an album that I am not familiar with that is perfect for these times. It is truly incredible that it is over 50 years since this was made. It gives you the feeling that in present times we are moving backwards

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Insist!

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The U.S. Constitution and White House Interpretations

On the new United States President’s website https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/constitution is a page about The U.S. Constitution. What is strange is that it is not the actual U.S. Constitution but an interpretation of The Constitution – so inconsistent with the strict constructionism or originalists so popular with conservatives these days. Is Scalia rolling over in his grave? Why would the U.S. Constitution be presented on the whitehouse.gov website this way? It is actually a form of disinformation or what is often now called fake news. Kids, remember to always refer to the original source not some hack’s interpretation of the document.

Let’s do a comparison.

First Amendment

Actual U.S. Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Trump’s Whitehouse Website

The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So far pretty good, but why not just publish the actual text and not how to think about the text. Then things get weird.

Second Amendment

Actual U.S. Constitution.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Trump’s Whitehouse Website

The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.

In Trump’s version there is no mention of the “well regulated Militia.” As always, people see what they want to see and disregard the rest. What we are witnessing here is what George Orwell called “Newspeak.” A simplifying of words, meanings and vocabulary.

You can read the novel 1984 or see more information at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak.

Welcome to 2017. A few years late, but we finally made it to that totalitarian state.

Read the source!!!

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Nine Out of Ten

In San Francisco, 9 out of 10 people voted for Hillary Clinton. That is remarkable. Did people in San Francisco think Hillary Clinton was the perfect candidate? Probably not. But what they did do was take their responsibility to vote for someone who was a decent human being who spoke in complete sentences.

While there have been many downright creepy and dim-wit presidents, mark 2016 as when the United States of America elected someone who did not even pretend to be a gentleman or show social graces in any way. Reagan, the Bushes, secretive and criminal like many, but at least they appeared civilized. Now we are a barbaric tribe who is becoming more illiterate every day. There was a time when people would read and think about the Bible. Obviously in the Mid-West and South, this is a thing of the past.

On January 20th, Trump will take the oath of office.

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

– Section 1:8

I do hope that between now and then he will read and study the Constitution of the United States. Please pay particular attention to these few details.

Section 4
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

I particularly like this little ditty that has been trampled upon in the last 20 years.

8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

And that freedom of the press thing will be good to go over.

Article [I]
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And now what all the Evangelicals that voted for Donald Trump have been waiting for – the religious posters. Hang these up in your kitchens and above your bed just to remind yourself how incredibly inconsistent you are in your beliefs. This courtesy of the Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-vs-jesus-christ_us_5798e188e4b0d3568f85724a