A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
Tyler, the Portly Politico on “Bitter Greens”: “Some Garden of Eden vibes: http://blog.jonolan.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/1/nggallery/bitter-greens/04.jpg” Apr 23, 15:23
Tyler, the Portly Politico on “Bitter Greens”: “HA! I'm impressed. Well done, jonolan. When it comes to barely-clad women, you're the Mozart of beauty appreciation. ; D” Apr 22, 11:05
There’s a lot of times when this seems like it should be the message one gets when the thought police at Facebook decide to censor someone. Sadly, they don’t even have a need for it though. They can and have repeatedly applied whatever interpretation and scope of their existing rules to silence individuals that they and/or the Democrats find problematical. And, unless one has enough clout and reach to make a public spectacle out of it, there’s no recourse. Also, and even worse, is that limiting the reach of someone’s opinion, e.g., shadow banning, is “shadowed” for a reason. It’s a silent death of thought since it’s very hard to recognize that it’s happened to a particular victim in most cases.
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 15th, 2023 at 5:00 am and is filed under Announcements.
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Yesterday, April 25, 2022, Multi-billionaire and the richest single individual in the world, Elon Musk outright purchased Twitter for roughly $44 billion. When your net worth is $264.6 billion USD, you get to do that, and the Democrats’ government can’t do much about it and is unlikely to even try. 😉
Twitter As We Know It Is Over… Maybe
So, if Elon Musk does all, most, or even a significant fraction of what he claims his plans are for renewing and rebirthing Twitter – and, since he’s taking it private, there’s nothing stopping him from doing so – the Twitter that we either love or loath is likely over.
Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.
Read Musk’s statement very carefully. Three words in the 1st sentence of it are very, very important, and firmly grounded in US case law. Those words are, “digital town square.”
As I’ve written before, the SCOTUS has already ruled twice that social media platforms are the modern age’s public or town square and are, as such, bound by the restrictions of the 1st Amendment.
Social media allows users to gain access to information and communicate with one another on any subject that might come to mind. With one broad stroke, North Carolina bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge. Foreclosing access to social media altogether thus prevents users from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights.
So, Twitter is now poised to be transformed into an actual platform for the free exercise of speech… if Mr. Musk actually follows through on his pledge. And truly, the only real thing that could prevent him from doing that is if the market will not bear it and Twitter’s federally limited number of stockholders find this too painful to tolerate. That seems more than little unlikely given people’s addiction to social media in general and Twitter in specific.
Now, it’s true that word of Musk’s now essentially fulfilled intent to buy Twitter spurred certain sorts of users, including some high-profile ones, to “say” #GoodByeTwitter, we’ve all seen, heard, and/or read about that sort of promised exodus before. 😉 So I doubt there will be much in the way of financial fallout from the buyout and proposed changes.
So, the ball is in Elon Musk’s court. Elon Musk’s new platform will largely be whatever he wants it to be. He owns it after all. I’ve some hope for it, but that hope is seasoned by long experience.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 26th, 2022 at 10:10 am and is filed under Society.
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Google E-A-Ts Freedom, free speech, and free thought by using its algorithm to down-list – effectively de-listing and therefore silencing – many sites and articles in potential readers/viewers search results. And, make no mistake this is a deliberate act on their part to perform both social engineering and kingmaking/regime change upon the world at large.
What Is E-A-T And How Is It Used Against Us?
Canonically, E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This concept originates from Google’s Search Quality Rater guidelines and it became well known if poorly understood after the infamous Medic Update in August 2018. E-A-T is one factor that Google uses to evaluate the overall quality of a web page.
Now supposedly Google is only being strict with applying E-A-T to what they define as YMYL (“Your Money or Your Life”) sites, articles, and/or webpages. But, as can be seen below, what Google considers YMYL is very broad, comprehensive, and includes most topics that people might have differing views upon and/or those topics which are in contention.
Google’s Definition of YMYL Content (Click to Enlarge)
As you can see, E-A-T is used by Google to control the reach of a vast swath of what many people, groups, and organizations would normally write about and almost all of what they would consider important to write about.
Expertise
Expertise comes down to how knowledgeable or skillful someone is perceived by Google’s algorithms when it comes to the particular subject that is the main content (MC) of that is being graded. Essentially, it is posting content that Google’s systems agree with as being accurate, informative, and engaging.
Authoritativeness
Authoritativeness is Google’s way of defining whether or not a content creator/publisher has the proper credentials or associations to write upon the topic in question.
Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness is Google’s composite measure of how transparent your site in general is and how good its reputation and the reputation of any cited sources are among viewers.
~*~
So, Google is now using a combination of variants of the Genetic Fallacy, Ad Hominems, and the Association Fallacy in order to quasi-demand that YMYL content adheres to their chosen variety of Argument From Authority. And, of course, failure to abide by their Magisterium means that your content will not be seen by many people at all, keeping your ideas, positions, and viewpoints “safely” out in the empty wilderness where they won’t cause issues for the orthodox or popular ideas that Google supports and promulgates.
Hence, I’m telling you, those few individuals that will be able to find this article, that Google E-A-Ts freedom, of speech and of thought by actively denying voices they disagree with the reasonable chance of an audience. And by denying that potential audience access to “dangerous” ideas.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Society, Technology.
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As Americans have witnessed and all to often been subject to in recent years, the Democrats and their media outlets are more than both willing and capable of enforcing Gleichschaltung. And, as every sane person fully expected, it’s growing worse and more overt since the Dems overthrew the American government and installed the Biden-Harris regime.
And, it’s not something that could happen here; it is something that is happening here! For far too long, in willful blindness to the Democrats’ ever-increasing encroachment upon the fundamental rights and mores of our nation, good citizens have looked on and did nothing as the Democrats and those sorts who support them have chipped away at the foundations of America.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2021 at 8:09 am and is filed under Politics, Society.
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Yep, Ole Hillary crawled back out whatever dank hole she nests in between ill-thought screeds and proclaimed that, “[If the Dems]…are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.” This, coming at a time when Republicans being shot, stabbed, doxxed, beaten, mailed ricin, run out of restaurants, and they and their families sent rape and death threats, has most Americans rightly outraged and concerned with her and other prominent Leftists’ calls for insurrection, violence and mob rule.
Rather than focus on the violence – with 70 million American patriots under arms, we can be deal with the Dems’ threat and in the process cull their voting base enough to geld them as political force – I think we should, instead, focus more on Hillary’s promise of “civility” if we allow them to regain any real power. This is because their sort’s definition and enforcement of “civility” is a far worse and more lasting danger than any violence they will perpetrate.
Americans need only look to the Dem’s constituencies to see and understand what “civility” means under their rule. The concerted banning of American voices on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube clearly show us what type “civility” their sort will demand. Or we, the People can merely look to what their Fake News industry chooses to report and how they choose to editorialize that reporting. Or one can simply look to what is happening almost daily in the failing, degenerate remains of America’s colleges and universities.
“Civility,” when demanded and enforced by Democrats is always nothing less- or other than the censorship via law or extra-judicial measures of anyone whose opinion is apologetically different from their orthodoxy – an orthodoxy predicated upon the dogma of Political Correctness which is, in turn, predicated upon the narrative of “Social Justice.”
And that, Ladies and Gentlemen of America, is what we must fight against, be in via the ballot box, in the streets, or from the rooftops. It isn’t even about Making America Great Again; it’s about keeping America alive and recognizable as the nation she was born to be.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2018 at 10:30 am and is filed under 2018 Elections, Politics.
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jonolan on “Bitter Greens”: “Why yes, it does.” Apr 24, 06:16
