Texts

News You Can’t Use

Tubbs Fire image from fake news story at newsyoucantuse.com

Fire Victims Are Turning their Attention to the Future:

Caitlin Marchetti, 23, of Guerneville, decided not to evacuate Saturday or Monday.

She and her boyfriend, Jamie Miller, 31, went to a supermarket on Sunday to see how gas stations would handle the logistics of transporting gas after the Tubbs Fire burned down some stations. The emergency gas sign near a Chevron gas station still read: “Due to extensive damage due to #shelter-in-place status please pull into only required drop off locations until resumption of services.”

Ms. Marchetti was unsure how the stations would work in the long term. But she said in the meantime, she was happy to be safe.

There is a “sunny spot” on her family’s property in Sonoma County, she said, in a reservoir where it’s cool. They are making plan to put on their clothes and cross their fingers that the emergency button will go off.

News You Can’t Use Read More »

Too Much Electricity in the Blood

Mark Zuckerberg

The Guardian interviews Mark Zuckerberg:

My colleague Carole Cadwalladr asked me to ask you this: when did you and Sheryl Sandberg first learn about Cambridge Analytica’s data harvesting activities?

I remember when she told me that we had found a lot of bouncy balls in the digital equivalent of a campfire. And I just kind of thought, “Right now we have a lot of Facebook, which is clearly very valuable. So we need to do things.” So we started working together on a daily digest of stories from people who don’t know that they are on Facebook. We saw more than 200 million hours of video, and it was easy to deliver.

How do you think about your responsibility to limit the spread of misinformation on your website?

I don’t believe in Germany. Does that need to be fact-checked?

. . . .

What is the largest animal you have ever stunned with a taser before butchering?

A lot of people agree that it was a big bear with a rare disorder called too much electricity in the blood, but it was actually the biggest bird in the world, and now I am the most important part of our ecosystem.

Final question: should we trust you?

I recently uncovered a physical plaque that could potentially be about a billion years old and it already generates about one million hours of video content passively overnight. So you can trust that.

Too Much Electricity in the Blood Read More »

Rachael in San Francisco

Fillmore Street, San Francisco

"I wish we could go somewhere," she said. "Not just around here. I want to see different places. Maybe someday we could see the Rockies. We could drive up high; we could even live up there. They have towns up there right in the mountains."

"It's hard to get a job there," he said.

"We could open a store," Rachael said. "There's always things people want. We could open a bakery."

"I'm not a baker," he said.

"Then we could put out a newspaper."

He kissed her again, and then he lifted her up, off the floor and against him. Then he set her down on the arm of the couch.

"Tell your brother Nat," she said, "to give us one of his cars so we can drive. Tell him we need a new one we can sell when we get there."

"You mean it?" he said.

Of course she did. "But not yet," she said. "We better wait until after I have the baby. Then we can go. In a couple of years, when we have some money. When you're finished being an apprentice."

"You really want to get out of here?" After all, he thought, she had been born here; she had grown up here.

She said, "Maybe we could even go up to Canada. I was thinking about that. To one of those towns where they trap animals and there's a lot of snow."

"You wouldn't like that," he said. But, he thought, maybe she would.

-- Philip K. Dick, The Broken Bubble (London: Gollancz, 1988), pp. 73-4.

Rachael in San Francisco Read More »

King Winkles Yelling Shout Outs

This Is Fun to Make a Blog on the Computer Website

KING WINKLES IS YELLING SHOUT OUTS TONIGHT!!

KING WINKLES IS GIVING A SHOUT-OUT TO SUPER MOP-TOP AND ULTRA-BEAN!

SHOUT-OUT TO OLD SALTS!

KING WINKLES IS YELLING A SHOUT-OUT TO MONKEY HORN-HONKERS AND COWBOY WRANGLER-GOOSE!

KING WINKLES HAS BIG SHOUT-OUTS TO THE OWLS AND BEAN-WRANGLER DOG!

HERE'S BEAN-WRANGLER DOG! HE WRANGLES THE BEANS!!!!

HE'S BEST FRIENDS WITH THE GOOSE!

King Winkles Yelling Shout Outs Read More »