ThomStratton.com

I often look at the “Trending” section of my Facebook page and wonder what people are smoking. But I understand that what is trending is not always (okay, ever) going to be what’s important to me. At least “top shares” or “top linked” is an objective measure that makes some sense. But according to a recent article in Gizmodo, there are actually people deciding what goes on that list, and that it’s manipulated more often than we realize.

“Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,” said the former curator. This individual asked to remain anonymous, citing fear of retribution from the company. The former curator is politically conservative, one of a very small handful of curators with such views on the trending team. “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.”

As the article goes on to explain, it’s difficult to pin any culpability on the company itself, except perhaps in who it hired to curate the feed, but at the very least this article should shed doubt on Facebook’s objectivity. Your Trending feed is being determined by something or someone that is not guaranteed neutral any more than individual reporters are neutral or news agencies are neutral.

Several former curators said that as the trending news algorithm improved, there were fewer instances of stories being injected. They also said that the trending news process was constantly being changed, so there’s no way to know exactly how the module is run now. But the revelations undermine any presumption of Facebook as a neutral pipeline for news, or the trending news module as an algorithmically-driven list of what people are actually talking about.

A social media platform doesn’t have to have sinister intentions to use their power to manipulate our access to information. Far too many people these days are completely unaware of their bias, and so can make sure you see only what they want you to see without even realizing they’re not as objective as they believe. Critical thinking is…well, critical these days, and often the first person we should question is ourselves. But next should be our primary sources of information. Are they truly neutral? Are they really giving you the entire picture or just the part they want you to see?

More and more “news” these days is not really news, but merely commentary–and with less and less effort made to disguise that fact. They’ve found that we don’t really question any more so much as look for the talking head who expresses the ideas we want to hear in the manner we most enjoy hearing. Is it any wonder we have kids in colleges freaking out when they encounter an idea they don’t like?

…or a time-out. I’m not sure which.

Social media seems alive with anger, frustration and despair. It’s like the day after the last two or three presidential elections, only without the cheering from the other side. No one is happy right now, it seems, and we’ve not even reached the actual election yet.

But I don’t care. There’s nothing I can do about who either party chooses as their candidate. I did my part, and as usual, it matters not at all.

So instead, I’m going to choose to be happy anyway. There is still good in the world, little acts of kindness, and abundant beauty:

A group of teenage girls got together to clean the home of a mother struggling with both an autistic child and her own depression.

A friend of mine just went through a heart attack and is now home from the hospital, still alive and as ornery as ever.

My dog, even though he’s getting old and stiff, will still act like a puppy and beg to play Fetch whenever he sees his favorite ball.

People are still willing to risk their lives to help total strangers.

David Bowie left behind a rather cool and beautiful surprise in his last album cover.

There are a lot of beloved celebrities who haven’t died yet.

There is still chocolate in the world.

I have friends who are doing well, and other friends who are struggling, but we can all count on one another for kind thoughts/positive energy/faith and prayers any time we ask.

We’re able to take amazing technologies completely for granted.

And some things will always be funny–without harming anyone:

I had no idea Physics Girl could sing! And she joins with Malinda Kathleen Reese!

And since it’s Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you, etc.), there’s this Star Wars medley mixed with science parody:

And this…is just all sorts of awesome!

Yup, I’m a nerd. And proud of it!

I just realized I never posted a follow-up to my gripping, compelling series on my experiences with the Utah caucus system, and I know from the sheer volume of emails that you’re all just dying to read it. So for all you (non-existent) people:

The most interesting thing to come out of the caucus process was to make contact with my local State Representative. He was running unopposed, and so didn’t really have to put up much of an effort. And yet he held several events to get to meet delegates and find out who we are and what our concerns are. He described us as “The House of Representatives for District 32”, and wants to keep in touch over the next two years of our tenure. I guess time will tell how serious he is about that, but it was impressive nonetheless, considering how little anyone other unopposed candidates wanted to even acknowledge our existence.

The Big Event was the County Convention, held one Saturday morning a few weeks back. I got there early, having been warned about how bad parking can get. It was held at a local high school I’ve been to on a few occasions for book signings (Brandon Mull draws quite a crowd!), which was one of the few places big enough to hold such an event. Before the meeting proper the candidates were given a space in the school gymnasium to set up booths and meet delegates. About the only one that I could find and/or showed much interest in talking to me was the one mentioned above–who remembered my face, if not my name as I walked up. After a few minutes I decided to go stake out my seat in the main auditorium.

The first several hours were devoted to preliminaries and procedural stuff, like instructions as to what would be happening. We also said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the Star Spangled Banner–and believe me, hearing both done by 2200 people (out of 2600 possible delegates) at once is a spine-tingling experience in itself.

Then came the cheerleading. Most all of the national level (ie. US Senators, Representatives, Governor, etc) and county-level officers came to report on their efforts. So many of them were subjected to standing ovations for simply walking into the room, and it made me a little uncomfortable. I decided that, as I was there representing everyone in my precinct and as I couldn’t know how they personally felt about each officer, I’d best keep my own feelings out of it and just sit there, clap respectfully, but not otherwise give any sign for or against what they had to say. At least that’s what I told myself. It was a convenient out, but frankly their pandering and specific wordings designed to elicit cheers got old really quickly. Yes, yes, we’re all for broad things, and the opposition is against anything good in the world. I get it. Give me details and context or shut up.

I did come away from that determined to do some more research, as I realized I was only getting one side of the story and I didn’t want to fall victim to Stockholm Syndrome. That said, it was kinda cool to be in the same room as some of these people I hear about regularly in the news. But cool doesn’t get my vote. I’ll be checking the issues and the stances on both sides before the elections this fall, and weighing each on their actual merits, not their celebrity factor, thank you.

If you’re sensing a little hostility in my report by this point you’re probably not wrong. Cheerleading does start to grate on my nerves after a while. I doubt the other party’s convention was any different.

After the main meeting ended those delegates in districts with actual contested races got to break off into their individual districts and vote for whatever races they needed to decide. I went and ate lunch, as I was not in one of those districts. The next session I did need to go to, though, as we had a number of delegate seats for the State convention left to fill for precincts that didn’t get enough turn-out on caucus night. We worked through that rather quickly, chose our three, listened to our State Representative again, and a few other unopposed candidates that wanted to drum up our support for the fall election, and called it a day.

On the way out I did get to chat with the Utah Speaker of the House, who was a missionary in the same area I was in Australia over twenty years ago (never, ever would have expected that future for him back then). But by then I’d pretty much had my fill of politics and was happy to get home and get started on replacing our garbage disposal. I understand the state convention can go on even longer–in which case I’m glad I didn’t go to that one.

So my responsibility as a county delegate is completed for another year. It was an interesting experience, certainly, and I’m not sorry I was involved. I am, perhaps, a little disappointed with some of the delegates who didn’t show, but that’s not worth getting bent out of shape over. I did my duty, and that’s what matters.

I stole this idea from Malinda Kathleen Reese, a Youtube celebrity who takes Google translations of songs and then videos her own cover using those odd translations. Following her suggestions, I took a verse from a well-known song of my era, entered it in the left-side panel, then selected a random language to translate it into on the right. I then took the results of that, pasted it into the left, and then picked another random language and repeated this several more times through about five different languages. Can you identify the result?

It is 5:00 on Saturday. Class people joined. He was an old man sitting next to me, who loved his daughter tonic. I said, “Son, can you play the piano, I’m sure you will do it, but the pain and clarity, and I understand that if a man called the strong ones? .. “

I’m sure the first line, which is hard to mistranslate, gives it away. But without that it becomes much trickier. Let me try another one, taken from English to Afrikaans, to Maori, to Galician, to Luxembourgish, and back into English:

I heard the beat goes night
But heard only whispers of some quiet conversation
It was the race 12:30
TV and examines moonlit stars giving me Cut
I have an older along the way,
Hoping a long-forgotten words or current career sing
He said to me, as if to say:
“Hurry boy, were you”

It will take a lot for me to get away
There is nothing that a hundred men or more could be work
I bless the rains in Africa
It will take a long time, if we have not done (and
uh)

Anyway, it’s kinda fun. In the case of Ms. Reese, she invites fans to send in translations every month and she uses them for a song. This one was kinda fun:

This one made me laugh. The video spoofing is as much fun as the odd translation, if not more so. Take that, Miley:

She also does more serious covers, and does a pretty good job of it. She’s got a rather enjoyable voice:

In an interesting, painful video, two female sports reporters get to pull a selection of nasty online comments directed at them and have them read to them by regular guys who did not write them in a Jimmy Kimmel-style “mean tweets” video. The result is painful and awkward and, while getting the point across, also manages to miss the target.

For one, this level of “dialogue” is common everywhere on social media and online commentary. And while it’s additionally unfortunate that women have to put up with this for just doing their jobs, it’s unfortunate that this happens at all, to anyone.

But somehow, I don’t think having innocent guys–who are clearly decent guys because they are visibly bothered by what they’re asked to read–reading these posts is fair. It’s asking them to take responsibility for someone else’s despicable trolling, and that’s not fair. It would be much better (and much more difficult, obviously) if they could get the actual people who wrote the posts and get them to take responsibility for them to the target’s face. I suspect the reaction would be similar to what we see here, but much more useful. It’s the actual posters we need to shame, not random men or male-kind.

But the over-all point here is quite valid, and applicable FAR beyond the scope given here. There are nasty people everywhere online. Even those who are not anonymous and who are communicating openly with their “friends” tend to forget they are speaking to real people who may relate to the group being commented on. We wouldn’t have these types of conversations face to face. The world would be a much better place if we could learn not to be mean just because we can’t see the person. But that doesn’t seem to be the direction we’re headed.

Last night I dreamt that there were entire sections of our house I’d never noticed before–and that other people were living in them and paying rent to the previous owner. That other people were living in our house or that I’d never noticed extra floors to the house before didn’t bother me, just that the former owners were still collecting the rent.

My subconscious must be telling me I should have been an architect, as this house and many other buildings in my dreams are really, really cool, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen them before. This one I confess to a little twinge of disappointment when I woke up and realized that wasn’t really our house. And that was just the interior. I suspect the landscaping was incredible.

“If that’s all you’re known for, that’s not a bad thing at all.”

My hat is off to this gentleman. Respect and patriotism are not in vogue any more, but I can’t help but think we’d be in better shape as a nation if they were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJe2Ew-rhx8&feature=youtu.be

We’ve probably all seen the Holderness family’s videos at one time or another. Whether you find them corny, campy, funny, or meh, it at least seems like they’ve got a good family dynamic going on. And while we can expect they’re only going to show their best faces to the world, it seems like, for the most part, the parents have a good relationship.

Well, recently I found they have a blog, and that they published their own lists of marriage advice. I reckon it’s worth a look. Some highlights:

2. If you think you are doing half the cleaning, you are doing like 20% of the cleaning

6. DVR sports games. you can get through them in like a third of the time, which makes

watching sports less annoying to her. On that note…

7. Trying to get her into sports so she’ll watch it with you will never happen.

2. Be nice: I always thought it odd when spouses/partners/friends saved the worst version of themselves for the people they love the most. You’d smile when greeting an acquaintance; give the same courtesy to your partner.

4. Learn his/her brand of crazy.  Penn gets overwhelmed on Sunday nights and Monday mornings. There are so many things we want to accomplish in the week ahead and it’s dizzying. He gets antsy and is not at all like his golden retriever self (see above). I know it will pass. I know he’ll come back to me by Monday afternoon at 1:30. He gets annoyed if I constantly say to him, “It will be okay, we got this!” Sometimes I just smile, turn around, and let him work through his stuff. That’s how I deal with his crazy.

5. Enjoy daydreaming. Penn and I love where we are in this life. But we love playing the “In five years…” game. What will we be doing on this day in five years? Where will we be living in five years? What kind of job will we have? It’s fun.  Try it.

There is more, but this is a good sample. Some of this is just another way of saying things we’ve heard before, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good advice.