March 19, 2018

Message auto-removed

March 18, 2018

Movie Scenes Removed for the (STUPID) Director's Cut

This scene was deleted because Spielberg wanted Mickey Mouse and boring internal views of the Mothership at the end.

Without it, we don't know why the blistering hell Neary is checking out the site where he ends up encountering the first craft.

Look, I've got more than a dozen of these, convincing me that studio execs are very often smarter than the artiste, but I'd really like to see your examples, too.

March 18, 2018

Full Real Time: watch before it gets taken down

A few ads, but still the whole show.

March 18, 2018

Mick Mulvaney: Dark-hearted leprechaun of St. Paddy's Day evil

From Salon

ANDREW O'HEHIR
03.17.2018•1:30 PM

Fighting back against the small-minded, self-interested, anti-historical right-wing tendency in what is left of Irish-American culture is the definition of a futile struggle. Some of us persist anyway. That created a bond between me and my former boss and former colleague Joan Walsh, now a Nation columnist and CNN commentator, that in many ways outlasted our disagreements about Hillary Clinton or the Democratic Party or the American left: We knew we both understood the tormented social and political odyssey of the Irish in America on a painful and personal level. (Joan’s 2012 book, “What’s the Matter With White People?,” includes some fascinating historical and anecdotal material on that subject.)

I met the legendary 1960s activist Tom Hayden exactly once, at a lefty conference about a dozen years ago in St. Louis. We talked for less than 10 minutes, but that was the subject: Hayden had written a book in 2002 called “Irish on the Inside” (which I had reviewed) that attempted to reclaim the progressive Irish-American tradition and to some extent anticipated contemporary debates about “whiteness” as a constructed (and destructive) social category. By the end of our conversation Hayden addressed me as “brother,” and we parted with what today might be categorized as a bro-hug. At the time it just felt like recognition that we were fellow travelers on a lonely road.

Hayden died about two weeks before Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, which at least meant he didn’t have to confront the rise to prominence of Mick Mulvaney, the dark-hearted leprechaun of the Trump White House, who single-handedly combines all the worst propensities of Irish America in one shamrock-festooned package. Mulvaney didn’t even make the list when I published a St. Patrick’s Day lament in 2014 about the grotesque and stereotypical character of Irish identity in America, as personified by Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. (That article got me lots of “fan mail,” let’s call it, from the middle-class suburban regions of metropolitan North America. People in Ireland, meanwhile, mostly seemed to enjoy it.)

Various commentators, myself included, have observed that the Trump White House, at least in its early iterations, featured the biggest infusion of Celtic DNA since JFK: Mike Pence, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway and John Kelly are all primarily of Irish ancestry, without even getting to congressional enablers like Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy. But none of them flaunt it half as ostentatiously as Mulvaney, the head of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (and also the interim head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), who showed up last St. Patrick’s Day apparently dressed as the Lucky Charms leprechaun. A budget that cuts taxes on the rich and also eliminates meals for poor kids and elderly people: It’s “magically delicious”!

https://www.salon.com/2018/03/17/raise-a-glass-with-mick-mulvaney-dark-hearted-leprechaun-of-st-paddys-day-evil/

Top 'o the warning to ya!

March 17, 2018

Something people think is/was/will be a Big Deal that YOU Don't Give a Shit About

For me, it's the British Royal Family: real welfare bums, unlike the truly needy people conservatives are always bleating about!

March 16, 2018

Facebook apologises for search suggestions of child abuse videos

Source: The Guardian

Fri 16 Mar 2018 06.17 EDT

Facebook has been forced to apologise after it spent hours suggesting bizarre, vulgar and upsetting searches to users on Thursday night.

The social network’s search suggestions, which are supposed to automatically offer the most popular search terms to users, apparently broke around 4am in the UK, and started to suggest unpleasant results for those who typed in “video of”.

Multiple users posted examples on Twitter, with the site proposing searches including “video of girl sucking dick under water”, “videos of sexuals” and “video of little girl giving oral”. Others reported similar results in other languages.

Even after the offensive search terms stopped being displayed, users still reported odd algorithmic suggestions, seemingly far from what Facebook would normally offer, such as “zodwa wabantu videos and pics” (a South African celebrity) and “cristiano ronaldo hala madrid king video call”.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/facebook-apologises-child-sexual-abuse-offensive-autocomplete-terms

---

Sure, it was a "glitch," right, Zuckie? That goddamn site is poisonous, and I'm proud I do not have an account!

March 16, 2018

Pie in Trump's Face

Note: Not an actual news report. Actual title may differ. In fact, it does!

March 16, 2018

White House won't say if Putin is a friend or a foe

Source: CNN

By Dan Merica, CNN
Updated 2349 GMT

Washington (CNN)White House press secretary Sarah Sanders wouldn't say Thursday whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was a friend or a foe, telling reporters: "Russia is going to have to make that determination."

The comment came on the same day the Trump administration announced it is enacting new sanctions on Russian individuals indicted last month by special counsel Robert Mueller. Though President Donald Trump has recently admitted that Russia meddled in the 2016 US election, his administration has been far more hard and direct with the nation than the commander in chief.

Asked directly if the Russian President was "a friend or a foe," Sanders dodged.

"I think that's something that Russia's going to have to make that determination," Sanders said. "They're going to have to decide whether or not they want to be a good actor or a bad actor."

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/15/politics/white-house-putin-friend-or-foe/index.html

---

This ain't rocket science, Sarah: Putin is a friend of Trump and a foe of America. Just like Trump himself.

March 14, 2018

Nikki Haley: Russia Responsible for UK Poisoning