Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

That Cambridge Analytica Facebook thing

I wouldn’t have known the niece was in Memphis for the MLK memorial without Facebook.

My wife has never been on Facebook. Occasionally, she had considered joining, as it would be a way for her to be part of interest groups with some of her teaching colleagues. In fact, I’m friends on the platform with some of her teaching buddies.

But she said, correctly, that she could not fit Facebook into her busy schedule. And indeed, it can be a time suck. Someone criticized me on FB recently for making some point then not arguing it to death. But, as Carly said, “I haven’t got time for the pain.”

Although it is true that I generally cannot just let an item with false information, posted by someone I know IRL, go unchallenged. Usually it’s about the death of someone who isn’t dead, or died a dozen years ago. Or something about autism and vaccines from a shady website I’ve never heard of.

My wife also worried about issues concerning privacy, VERY correctly, as it turns out. I mean, I wasn’t worried about sharing my views – hey, I have a daily blog – but even
Neil J. Rubenking of PC Magazine was surprised by things the social networking giant knew about him.

Still, the Cambridge Analytica data debacle led to changes in procedures. The problem for Mark Zuckerberg now is having to sit before the U.S. Congress and explain how 87 million Facebook users’ data got in the hands of a third party app, and whether there are other entities out there with similar data mined from them. He was slow to apologize, and only after stock prices started plunging.

I understand why more than a few people I know IRL have decided to abandon the platform over this. In my cost/benefit analysis, I still like reconnecting with old friends and remembering birthdays. For instance, I wouldn’t have known the niece was in Memphis for the MLK memorial without Facebook.

I’ve discovered people with common viewpoints, and more than a few with divergent ones, none of whom, BTW, I’ve convinced of anything.

The thing is that, yeah, something else could, and maybe should, rise up and replace Facebook. From 2007: Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly? (HT, Dan.) But it isn’t going to develop overnight.

I guess I’ll stick around on Facebook for now, even with the invitations for Candy Crush, et al. that I studiously avoid.

The small joys of life: a new dishwasher

That could NEVER have happened with the previous, clanky dishwasher.

We bought our current house in May 2000, about 51 weeks after we got married. But it took about 60 months before we could afford to buy a new dryer, refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher, no two in the same calendar year. All the kitchen appliances were by General Electric.

The washer is still fine. The stove is OK as long as you lie to it; if you want 350F, better to set it at 375F. The freezer door has not sealed entirely correctly since 2007, when I hit my head on it; to be fair, I didn’t expect someone to OPEN the freezer door while I was getting something from the main part of the refrigerator.

The new dishwasher, though, was how was a disappointment pretty much from the start. The biggest pain was the silverware section. It was attached to the appliance’s door, and one really couldn’t put in the knives, forks and spoons from that angle. One COULD remove the contraption, but it wouldn’t stand up on its own, so we had to wedge it between the kitchen faucet and the wall.

We would start to wash the dishes, but forget the silverware constantly, maybe a third of the time the first year. And one couldn’t put the knives in the back row of certain sections, because the rack then wouldn’t attach to the door.

Ultimately, though, the machine stopped working altogether. More correctly, it ceased cleaning the dishes well, and left water settled on the bottom of the appliance, which we had to suck up with a Shop Vac.

Then, for about a month, we gave up and started washing all the dishes by hand. This was fun at first – it was my primary task as a kid – but ultimately tedious. My wife and daughter went shopping and picked out a new dishwasher.

So I was overjoyed when the Bosch brand machine of dishwasher was installed. An hour a day regained for me! The only problem is that it’s SO quiet that I have inadvertently opened it while it was operating. That could NEVER have happened with the previous, clanky dishwasher.

And one of the best features – no, I have not been compensated for my kind words – is that top drawer you can see, I hope, where the large serving spoons and carving knives and spatulas can reside. It’s kind of cool.

I was having lunch with couple near-relatives recently, and we decided that we can tell we’re getting old when we write about our appliances and our lumbago.

National Muslim Soup Kitchen Days: volunteer April 28-29

The Muslim Soup Kitchen Project plans to serve and distribute over 1,000 meals in Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, NY.

The National Muslim Soup Kitchen (NMSK) Day is a time for people from all faiths and backgrounds to join their Muslim sisters and brothers in service to people in need. In addition to providing nourishing hot meals for fellow community members, it provides an opportunity to get to know people from a wide range of backgrounds, as well as make an important statement about standing, and serving alongside, with our Muslim friends and neighbors.

The Muslim Soup Kitchen Project, the organizer of this third annual NMSK Day in the Capital Region, plans to serve and distribute over 1,000 meals in Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, NY. There are many opportunities to help from food preparation on Saturday, April 28 to packaging, driving and serving on Sunday, April 29.

Please use the following links to find out more specifics, and to sign up to volunteer:

Cooking

Onsite

Driver

Night before

If you can, support NMSK Day through financial donations.

For additional information, please visit the Muslim Soup Kitchen Project website or on Facebook.

And please spread the word!

Nostalgic for good old days of local news on TV

Tell local Sinclair stations and their advertisers know that you are boycotting both as long as the “must-carry” material appears on their news broadcasts

Liz Bishop, near the lower right, in front of the CBS 6 logo
When I was growing up, occasionally there would be an editorial produced by the general manager of a television station to discuss a vital issue of the day, such as whether to build a new bridge.

The words he said – it was virtually always a he – came from that local broadcaster, someone who lived in your community, not NYC or LA or DC, and had greater potential for trust and accountability. The editorial was well labeled and set apart in the local news broadcast, usually at the very end.

The Federal Communications Commission was very concerned about any one company having too much dominance in any local marketplace or nationally, and it had strict limits on radio and television station acquisition.

That was then. In August 2017, The Guardian ran a story This is Sinclair, ‘the most dangerous US company you’ve never heard of’. Michael Copps, the George W Bush-appointed former chairman of the FCC, said those words.

So did John Oliver, host of HBO’s weekly satirical show Last Week Tonight, when he introduced an 18-minute segment on Sinclair in July 2017, as he noted the dreadful “must carry” requirement the company has been imposing on its 173 local news stations across the country to “parrot right-wing propaganda” and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

The current regime’s FCC has aided Sinclair’s expansion. Jared Kushner, son-in-law-in-chief, said back in December 2016, “We struck deal with Sinclair for straighter coverage.”

Now, the broadcast group’s proposed merger with Tribune Media is in the spotlight. If this unprecedented-in-size agreement is approved, it will have control of local TV stations reaching 72% of the country, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, the nation’s three largest media markets. “The FCC chair Ajit Pai — who single-highhandedly has sought to kill Net Neutrality — is under investigation by the FCC’s inspector general for greasing the wheels for Sinclair.

What has caught the nation’s attention recently is this viral video put together by Deadspin “showing news anchors all over the country forced by Sinclair to parrot the same canned scripts attacking their own profession.”

It was heartbreaking to see Liz Bishop, the longtime anchor of WRGB, Channel 6 in Schenectady, NY, one of the oldest stations in the country, on the Deadspin video. It appears that their contracts make it too expensive to quit. It is difficult for staff to fight their overlords.

What to do? Write to the FCC and members of Congress, opposing the Sinclair/Tribune merger. Write to your local Sinclair stations and let them and their advertisers know that you are boycotting both as long as the “must-carry” material appears on their news broadcasts. Lessee, what else?

N is for nativism versus immigration

“Illegal” immigration has always been a red herring.

There have have always been nativism movements in the United States. Seldom has been as blatant as it’s been the past year and a quarter. In February 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director L. Francis Cissna announced that the agency changed its mission statement from:

“USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system.”

To now:

“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.”

The aspirational angle has been lost.

By contrast, “During the 1940s, America basically underwent a nationwide sensitivity training program. Zoe Burkholder, a historian of education, writes… that a ‘forced tolerance’ movement had begun frothing a decade earlier as educators feared that scientific racism—the pseudoscientific ‘Master Race’ theories brewing in Germany—could waft overseas.” A reasonable worry, evidently.

Thus the story about the Superman pic shown. (Hey, wasn’t he an illegal alien?) What I do know is that the current regime’s attitude is troublesome.

Fran Rossi Szpylczyn notes: “The part where Jesus says to welcome the stranger is not a suggestion, it is a directive.”

The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein writes that Ronald Reagan “not only celebrating the concept of welcoming people from all sorts of places during his kickoff of the fall campaign, but arguing that it was immigrants who helped build the country and it was the dream that they embodied that was what made America great.” The GOP icon didn’t believe in nativism.

In other words, the US Needs ‘sh*thole’ countries, not the other way around. “America’s prosperity and security are greatly dependent on the goodwill and cooperation of other nations, developed and emerging markets alike.”

That would include chain migration, or family reunification.

Read former President Obama on immigration from September 2017

A pastor friend of mine noted recently, “I am thinking this morning of good people, great Americans I know, who have come here from Haiti, [various African countries], Pakistan, Philippines. These Americans contribute to the greater good of the US… [they] have worked hard, learned to live in an often-less-than-friendly new place, raised strong families, and sent their kids to college so they can also contribute to society… You ARE the American People.”

As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting.

The Weekly Sift guy nailed it when he wrote about The Real Immigration Issue: “‘Illegal’ immigration has always been a red herring. The more fundamental question is whether the United States will continue to be a country dominated by English-speaking white Christians.” Will nativism continue to push back?

For a brief historic perspective, read Becoming a Citizen: Naturalization Records, 1850 – 1930

For ABC Wednesday

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