Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, September 7, 2024
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24 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Some very detailed and worthwhile writeups regarding the Russian influence operation:
“Bulwark”
“Kuo”
“Kuo_again“
@charontwo:
Silverman at BJ had some stuff on this also in last night’s Ukraine thread.
or “Skyview(Bluesky)“
@charontwo:
@charontwo:
Thanks for the links. As depressing (to me) as these are, I really appreciate the opportunity to go down a different rabbit hole than the one I frequently pick on (bad) nights like this one. Allez!
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I just started reading Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter, who is also on this stuff:
“Link”
Beginning paragraphs:
Etc. of course.
@charontwo:
About what I expected. As a Cold War baby, I’ve always been aware that The Great Satan America is/was the target to bring down. For as long as I can remember, I’ve said I always knew the Republic would fall, and since St. Ronnie, I’ve hoped it wouldn’t be in my lifetime. I’m still hopeful, but far from optimistic.
The link earlier this week about the ability to destroy our faith in photographic evidence paired up with this is my head. Since my cancer diagnosis in 2011, a significant part of my legal “career” has been photographic documentation of legal issues. Construction defect/remediation, accident sites, and the like. I’ve had to testify under oath that my evidence isn’t manipulated and accurately reflects the situation. The perception or argument about “truth” is now been pushed far enough that I’m forced to hang it up, and go back to shooting mountains, flowers, and artists with my Canon.
This Russian business seems to be another aspect that roils together in my muddled “3am meds” mind.
Not phrasing this clearly, I fear, but that’s just the nature of how tonight’s been.
@charontwo:
https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1832222842705862717
Fox News video in that tweet. The chyron:
“Trump overtakes Harris in Nate Silver forecast.”
Adam Silverman had something to say about Nate Silver in that Skyview link I posted.
@charontwo:
This is so odd. Nate’s forecast has had Trump ahead for some time, at least a week.
Random news from Texas:
Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales predicts GOP will lose control of the House
Liz Cheney says Dick Cheney will vote for Kamala Harris, and she will support Democrat Colin Allred in Texas Senate race
Apparently Liz Cheney hates Ted Cruz also. But then again, who doesn’t.
Mayorkas: Texas’ immigration policies have wreaked havoc and disorder
Mayorkas is a good chunk of the reason immigration goes so poorly against Democrats. He is politically clueless.
The world’s largest iPhone runs on Android. (advance the video to 4:33).
I wonder if they’ll do anything with it, past getting the Guinness record. Mabe they can build an equally large Android Phone, and compare the two.
I expect we will hear a great deal of huffing and puffing about the sanctions that Hunter Biden incurred as a result of his crimes. Does anyone know what penalties have been levied on other tax evaders and others on gun applications infractions? I’m sure that he is not the only violator of these laws.
WaPo wrote an article about Harris having unhappy former staffers that is strikingly similar to news stories about Hilary Clinton’s “over preparedness” in 2016 and Amy Klobuchar being a demanding boss in 2020. It included such damning facts as Harris read and annotated every document she was given and expected you to be prepared to answer questions about it, and she asked why about any event placed on her schedule. Somehow, being a boss who’s on top of things and expects the same of her staff is a problem when the boss is a woman. /s
@Kathy: FWIW, both Android and iOS are derivatives of UNIX, nowadays largely through the open source LINUX and other open source variants.
It’s a little know fact that UNIX’s descendants have largely won the operating system wars of earlier years. MacOS, iOS and Android are all variants. In the automotive world QNX, a real-time POSIX compliant variant reigns supreme. And virtually every router, printer, access point, doorbell, thermostat, and on and on use LINUX distributions.
I think my favorite lie in the English language is:
Meanwhile I’m waking up with a skinned left knee, a skinned right palm, and a bunch of confused/annoyed texts from friends.
At least this French House playlist is giving me life.
@MarkedMan:
I just like the irony of having an iPhone run on Android.
Speaking of which, you just can’t leave a laptop unused for a year or so. The same happened with a work laptop. It takes a while to install all updates. Far more than a couple of hours between getting home and bedtime. On the plus side, Office is running. OneDrive isn’t, but I can save and retrieve to/from OneDrive through Word. That’s as Weird as a bunch of Republiqans.
Also, I made a Win10 installation flash drive for the desktop. When I tried to remove it from the laptop, it took more force than usual, and then the metal cover on the tip of the drive broke off from the rest. Now I need to use another,,,
Starliner did land successfully and empty.
Well, empty of people. It did carry back the crew’s spacesuits, and some ISS detritus.
Regardless of what NASA says, when your ride goes home without you, and takes your clothes to boot, you are so stranded.
@Monala: Klobuchar threw staplers, binders and other office supplies, and there were stories about making someone eat salad with their hands or something.
I think that case might be different. She might actually be a terrible boss.
Harris just seems competent and detail oriented, even if we believe the worst about her. I don’t think I’ve even heard about her micromanaging people, just being entirely capable of understanding details and wanting to understand them.
@Gustopher:
My Dawg, @Beth, I’ve worked for that lawyer!!!!! (and sadly, many times in my “career.”)
@Beth:
While I (vicariously) feel your pain, at least you can take comfort in the knowledge that this didn’t involve a walk of shame into the lobby of your law firm this morning, or a call to your staff from the PLF asking for confirmation of your (drinking) problem. Both of which I’ve witnessed. Still, sounds like you had at least a good time, if not a very good time.
@Kathy: It’s hard to compete with free in the long term. For years Windows made attempts at owning the embedded space (embedded operating systems are ones that don’t present the operating system to the user, like microwave ovens, watches and streetlights). If I remember correctly I inherited two different products, one based on Windows NT Embedded and the other on Windows lighter weight embedded OS (cannot remember the name. Windows Embedded? Real Time Windows?) Both were incredible pains to work with and both ended up with Microsoft simply ending support. They can get away with that for short lifetime products but it’s just not on for products customers keep and continue to buy for 10+ years. Meanwhile there were tens of thousands of programmers around the world steadily improving Linux for the embedded world.
@MarkedMan: I expect the OS you were dealing with was not Windows CE, but that had the amazing shortened name of Wince.
@Gustopher: It was! Windows CE! If I remember correctly, twice in its short lifetime they changed it dramatically enough that it broke everything deployed. Microsoft had no effing idea of what that market needed but some genius there decided that they needed to take that over too. But, as I said above, over the long term it’s hard to complete with free.
Re-watching Homicide: Life on the Street. Such an amazing cast, but any time Andre Braugher is on-screen he’s the only guy you see.
@MarkedMan:
Do you suppose Windows still exists only because MS won’t release a Linux version of its Office suite?
@Kathy: Oh, the desktop versions of Linux are rubbish from an average user point of view. Everything kinda sorta works and will just be fine if you download this library, but then that breaks this other thing, but that can be fixed with the proper instructions which you can get from this dormant-for-four-years wiki, which assumes prior knowledge of twelve other commercial products. After spending your entire day and night installing patching upgrading and searching, you’ve accomplished nothing whatsoever of any real work, and on top of that everything you just went through was for the last version of the application and the new version has been taken over by three rival groups of amateurs, so the next time it breaks you’re going to have to decide which clown car to get in before you start the process all over again.
Oh yeah, and the reason Microsoft will never release a Linux version of anything is because Linux desktop users would rather spend endless evenings going through this crap rather than pay a single penny for something with actual support.
@MarkedMan: Linux mint allows for a windows/ios level of experience with auto updates and an install so easy a computer novice can do it. The UI is easily configurable for a familiar control scheme based on other modern OSes.
For a few decades now there have been linux flavors that are incredibly easy to install and use. I just preferred Mint for reasons you probably wouldn’t understand based on your difficulty understanding basic computer stuff.
Your ignorance is astounding.
Here’s a whole repository of MS releases on linux.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/linux/
It’s funny how you cry about Apple shit talkers only to see that you are a Linux shit talker. Take some of your own advice sometime.