[These are actually quite tasty, just dunk them in tea first. Your teeth will thank you.]
Tarred and Meta-ed in the Blogosphere
There's a blogger in town, his name is Andre Walker. His field is politics, and he's known (among other things) for aligning with the local "pro-business black powerbase" Democrats in town (I call them "Atlantans"), particularly Vernon "Snuggles" Jones. In addition to writing for his own blog, Walker wrote for other blogs, most notably Peach Pundit. As it turns out, he's a
And with that, the local blogosphericals (blogospherians?) are Various reactions, notes and introspection follow:
Conflicts at WorkThis bit of eventuality has brought at least two rivalries to the fore: "Progressives" vs. "pro-Business" Democrats, and One-way Journalism vs. Community Journalism. "Progressives" will attempt to mute Walker (the "pro-business" shill), as part of the overall struggle for influence within the Democratic Party. Observe the head-nodding comments from the Loaf: I’m glad he’s been called out on it at length again and I’d say that CL would face a massive decline in quality with the addition of Andre. --"Josh" Have to agree with Josh - Mr Walker blogging for CL would negatively affect both the credibility and quality of CL online presence. --"CatherineAtlanta"{Insert Donald Sutherland still from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, here.} Community Journalists, aka "Bloggers" in the Web 2.0 sense, are kind of like the younger sibling that measures itself in terms of his/her older sibling. They've relied on social structure to form a substitute for the (relatively) fixed, organizational structures of news outfits, and a key part of this social structure is honesty. There's a critical interest in identifying and classifying shills as such, but the overall. One-way Journalists are pointing, laughing, and angling. In Edelstein's case, he closes the second CL article (linked above) with the "anonymity" red herring, and drops this cowpie in the middle of the column: I’m writing so much about this today because it’s plain interesting the way people (and by that I mean both readers and posters) are sorting through the ethical issues tied into blogging, journalism and where people are now getting their information. Sometimes, bloggers reflexively accuse journalists who also write in print of arrogance or of failing to understand the new medium. That may be true a lot of times, but bloggers do themselves a disservice when they respond angrily and defensively anytime critical issues are raised. As for Andre? I hear Fox News is hiring; he'll fit right in. |
| posted at: 14:30 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Best yogurt additive: thyme and honey, cucumber and dill, or vanilla and sugar. |
| posted at: 14:14 | permanent link to this entry |
[As crossposted from Rowland's Office] What AtlPaddy said, with the exception of Dwarf House. If they hadn't installed the latter-day Golden Calf (oh, delicious irony), I'd buy Chik-fil-a at the game. Otherwise, I'd gladly take a refund for having to put up with Mark Owings this season. Regarding Free agents...meh, except for Garland and Dempster, who should be too expensive after winning the pennant and possibly the Series. Trade Soriano (good riddance). Francouer is now a test of the "rocked boat" rule. Under JS, dude would be traded for Kenny Lofton and a bag of baseballs--not necessarily under pressure of trade deadline, but definitely during the offseason. This will be something to watch over the next few days/months. Keep Blanco. I say this, even if he's a significant fraction as lazy as Soriano in the field. Kotchman made two good plays tonight; he's a legit 1st baseman. That's a hell of a lot better than I thought we'd get in a trade. Pitching Julian Tavarez is what I used to refer to as "throwing in the Righetti". It's like throwing in a white towel, but you get beaten up anyway. |
| posted at: 10:44 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Krispy Kreme doughnuts are kosher. |
| posted at: 17:08 | permanent link to this entry |
While The New Yorker was out earning a much-deserved thrashing for its poor choice of cover art, I was enjoying a nice, long weekend of running mouths, playing frisbee golf, drinking beer, acquiring sunburn, and generally soaking in some rural/small town goodness. I left at sunset, returned at sunset, and found out something highly interesting. As it turns out, Oxford, Mississippi doesn't allow chain stores to conduct business in some close proximity to their town square. This makes the town square at least somewhat free from capital poisoning, a feature that has in turn, allowed economic activity and development to flourish. The fact such a rule has been allowed to exist in the United States, in this era of capital poisoning, in a Red State no less, is simply astounding. |
| posted at: 17:02 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| An oldie, but still one of the best: Project Gutenberg. |
| posted at: 16:25 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Wetnaps: with, or without, alcohol? |
| posted at: 13:59 | permanent link to this entry |
It's that time again: I'm starting to fade to gray...my current WA stands at .419.
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| posted at: 16:29 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Jean-Antoine_Houdon's works are currently on display at the High (including the Diana and Washington sculptures pictured in the wikipedia link). These exhibits alone, are worth the price of admission. |
| posted at: 16:29 | permanent link to this entry |
| As I accidentally found out today, crape myrtle blossoms aren't poisonous to eat. Additionally, I thought I'd put this up earlier, but it seems I haven't. Someone rewrote the bubbles of Marvel Comics' Civil War series. NSFW text, but given the original artwork, I can see how this rewrite is an improvement. |
| posted at: 23:56 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Cachaca. |
| posted at: 19:55 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Good news: There's a tropical storm within 500 miles of the southeast U.S. Bad news: It's heading |
| posted at: 16:04 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Today's idiocracy smackdown (nsfw), brought to you by And I Am Not Lying. |
| posted at: 17:58 | permanent link to this entry |
Of Online Communities and Assembly
[I posted the following on a discussion thread involving the use of multiply-sourced logins to evade community moderation, and might be cross-posted elsewhere. Cleaned and Corrected, this version should be the first part of several.] Online Forums are assembliesThe "trolls with {fake} alternate logins" problem is really one of defending three of the most critical freedoms we have in this country: speech, press, and "peacable" assembly. Online forums, as long as they've existed, have removed the requirement of geography--and to a lesser extent, time--from these assemblies. As internet access has spread, forum access has gone along, forming clusters of assembly between disparate people around the globe. Regardless of basis, wherever assemblies are found, there is usually honest discussion; where there is discussion, thought and consensus will eventually follow. Out of these assemblies, societies and cultures form. For the past 30+ years, these new assemblies have been established without regard to geography, and the benefits of these assemblies are being applied likewise. Trolls vs. AssemblySo, how do trolls and "alts" factor? The utility assemblies produce, as measured in knowledge, reason, satisfaction, among other effects, drives an equally large market for interfering with such assemblies. Depending on the natures of the antagonists and their target assembly, This is the same market that has produced, throughout history, innovations such as reporter killings, press seizures, false accusations of assembly members, "opt-out" spyware, speech hecklers (e.g. Code Pink), sharia's rules against images of Mohammed, "anarchist" plants in peaceful demonstrations, party "whips", fire-hosing of marchers, election rigging, "targeted marketing", egging/pieing of speakers, and forum trolls. While the examples I've mentioned come from a diverse set of people and cultures, their goal is topologically the same: to interfere with legitimate assembly, via different means. Where the cronies in the Ministry of Information control a publication's content, the "speech hecklers" minimize the useful podium time for speakers, and the muslim rage mobs set embassies alight as a warning to cartoon-publishing nations, the online troll seeks to disrupt the natural flow of conversation through visual and/or logical pollution. It's a matter of educated guesswork as to what motivates a troll; it can be paid with tangibles and/or credibility by an interested party (a 'shill', as I call them), or gratified for filling some psychiatric desire. While the nature of an interrupted discussion can be an indicator, it's a vague indicator at best, making pattern analysis necessary to estimate a troll's motivation. Troll ControlRegardless of motivation, the troll seeks to interfere with assembly, and should be rightly despised for doing so. However, such unamericans exist, and control of such unamericans is a measure of forum robustness. In an online community, the strongest tools for "troll control" are active server-side effects (e.g., alt-linking, comment/thread/user tagging, anonymous posting), and passive user-side (e.g., ignore a user, trusted party lists, block/allow images from x, nesting) effects. Each additional capability makes a job that much more difficult for trolls. |
| posted at: 17:03 | permanent link to this entry |
Primary Day in the Plantation State: Get off Your Ass and Vote.
Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel disqualified one of these two candidates on residency concerns. Can you guess which one? Detailed explanation and discussion of the roles of Sec. of State's office and the judiciary may be found here. It seems that Secretary Handel has overruled the designated judge's ruling to perform this disqualification; and is allowed to do so. Georgia's a plantation state, and Karen Handel is a watergirl. And speaking of rigging an(other) election, can you pick out the shill(s) from this Democratic Senate Debate lineup? Creative Loafing has been harping on him for over a year now, but I don't think Vernon "Snuggles" Jones is the plant. I feel the guy is too pro-business (and conservative, actually) to reprise Mark Taylor's role as shill in November. However, I can't really find a quality candidate here, and that makes me a bit sad. I'm leaning toward voting for Knight, but there's a bit of a Bob Roberts quality to this guy that gives me the creeps. And speaking of plantations, there's the Dunwoody question. It seems that Dekalb's half of unincorporated "prosperity" will join the Plantation Movement that carved up Fulton over the past few years. For a while, I thought they were more civilized than this, particularly after Sandy Spring's adoption of the Second Commandment ("You shall have no other community before me"). Tomorrow's vote will likely confirm my mistake. |
| posted at: 05:28 | permanent link to this entry |
Snark Check: Financial Edition
I got a good chuckle out of this anonymous post on an online forum, which fairly well rounds up the political jibber-jabber that resulted from this week's Fed bailout news. I believe the anonymous poster is following up his/her original anonymous post (in italics). This should be pasted to the inbox/monitor/forehead of most people who run the "rich bankers" line regarding FNMA/FMC.
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| posted at: 05:10 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Chase Utley speaks on behalf of the rest of us. (NSFW Audio/Text). |
| posted at: 04:21 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Atlanta's art scene has blog coverage, via Art Relish. |
| posted at: 02:11 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Adventures in hardtack: [These are actually quite tasty, just dunk them in tea first. Your teeth will thank you.] |
| posted at: 15:17 | permanent link to this entry |
Presenting: FAILcaccia. (This is why it's good to have a steak handy. :) |
| posted at: 20:07 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Another useful weblet, handicapped by delivery as a Flash module: A whitenoise generator. |
| posted at: 02:14 | permanent link to this entry |
Slashdot has the news of how spammers-in-disguise AVG's anti-virus software is "protecting" its users by prefetching the URLs found in each page. Mainly, they're exponentially increasing the bandwidth required to navigate the Web, and incrementally increasing the bandwidth costs of servers. The thread is a good read, as it provides several methods of detecting and handling HTTP requests from these miscreants. However, I fear the only thing that will actually stop these guys is to throw them in jail on an interference charge, and/or successfully follow a class-action suit to recover bandwidth costs. As for my little corner of the world, I was wondering where all these random hits were coming from. I thought it was just some form of malware, but now that I know this is look-ahead malware, there's a silver lining at hand. I can assume (with 90% confidence) that the hits from this malware are search-engine based (the referer text is blank, so I have no real indication); so the vast majority of this traffic is from search engine hits. By filtering out those malware hits that were followed by legitimate traffic, I have a measure of unfollowed search engine queries. This extra dimension of navigation is interesting, and it reeks of the evil that is Advertising/Marketing. With this agent, AVG can provide a summary of search results not followed, providing the hookers-and-blow set a previously invisible metric. The criminals have at least a secondary motive for gumming up the pipes. |
| posted at: 21:57 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Low Country Boil. |
| posted at: 01:13 | permanent link to this entry |
[originally posted at ATLMalcontent, regarding the recent non-charging of a man for shooting two robbers of the house next door, and is still WIP.] I see the gun lobby shill has shown up late to the thread, having moved at the speed of Google. Posting in their wake feels somewhat like making tea with hand-me-down bags. Still, this sounds like one of those football cases, where details are buried or rejected, for fear of spreading independent thought. That being said, some notes:
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| posted at: 11:18 | permanent link to this entry |
It seems the local Critical Mass had its balloon popped (or at least, pinched) last weekend, after being written up in the local paper. So, the argument that appeared at Shelbinator last month, has expanded into minor controversy, with extra exposure over at CNN. There are a couple of underlying points with this train wreck in-progress: First, the timing of this conflict is an indication that City Hall (and/or APD brass) moves with the AJC's news cycle. Second, I see this situation getting worse before it gets better, as self-indulgent members of each tribe will alternately bait and attack each other, followed by much whining and pablum. |
| posted at: 11:17 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Atlanta Braves: Major league baseball, minor league marketing. |
| posted at: 11:16 | permanent link to this entry |
