Hold the presses! National news! “Starbucks barista in Philadelphia alledgedly mocked customer’s stutter”

Hold the presses! National news! “Starbucks barista in Philadelphia alledgedly mocked customer’s stutter”

This is a LOCAL story at best. The news media continues to damage itself into irrelevancy by promoting local click bait trivia stories into a national conversation: A barista at a Starbucks cafe in Philadelphia is accused of mocking a man with a stutter. Source: Starbucks barista in Philadelphia alledgedly mocked customer’s stutter This is not national news. This is creative writing by a trivia reporter designed to hook an emotional response. Emotional nonsense news is perfect for sharing on…

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Smart TVs track everything you watch, and link that to your computer and smart phone connected devices too

Smart TVs track everything you watch, and link that to your computer and smart phone connected devices too

Once enabled, Samba TV can track nearly everything that appears on the TV on a second-by-second basis, essentially reading pixels to identify network shows and ads, as well as programs on Netflix and HBO and even video games played on the TV. Samba TV has even offered advertisers the ability to base their targeting on whether people watch conservative or liberal media outlets and which party’s presidential debate they watched. …. Samba TV can also identify other devices in the…

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Fun with statistics: When survey results do not mean what you may think they mean

Fun with statistics: When survey results do not mean what you may think they mean

Gallup poll found that 52% of Americans say they were extremely proud to be American in 2016; 51% in 2017 and 47% in 2016. Gallup says this is a record low. Source: In U.S., Record-Low 47% Extremely Proud to Be Americans At the very, very bottom of the press release, in slightly greyed out type, we read that the results had a sampling error of + or – 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Let’s rewrite the 2016-2018…

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Did Kurt Cobain predict in 1993 that Donald Trump would be President? No.

Did Kurt Cobain predict in 1993 that Donald Trump would be President? No.

I just unfollowed the person who posted this item today. It’s not true. He should have known better than pass along such silly propaganda posters. Several online meme debunking web sites have branded this as false (and Snopes here). The meme was created by a Facebook page called “Trump Train” in July of 2016. Cartoon character Lisa Simpson, of The Simpsons, did in actual fact, predict President Trump all the way back in 2000. For some reason, she is never quoted…

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“What you see is all there is” messaging

“What you see is all there is” messaging

Much propaganda messaging relies on showing us only a limited view of a story. Our quick acting thinking (Kahneman’s System 1 thinking style) jumps to a conclusion based on what we see, and usually fails to consider that there might be more to the story. Hence, this form of propaganda is “What you see is all there is”. Here is the example that went viral on social media. Here on Twitter, this video clip has been viewed over 3 million…

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By design: BBC-“Social media apps are ‘deliberately’ addictive to users”

By design: BBC-“Social media apps are ‘deliberately’ addictive to users”

Source: Social media apps are ‘deliberately’ addictive to users – BBC News Their primary purpose is mind control, creating platforms for the dissemination of propaganda intended to persuade you to adopt someone else’s agenda (including buying products, services and ideologies). There is not much mystery here – it’s their business model!

Google is misleading people about “we don’t read your email”

Google is misleading people about “we don’t read your email”

Google has been a little more careful than Facebook when it comes to protecting your privacy. For example, the company stopped using contents of user emails on Gmail to personalize its ads back in 2017. But if you’re not careful about granting permissions in Gmail to third-party apps, your emails could still theoretically fall into the wrong hands. To check which third-party apps you’ve allowed to access your Gmail, go to myaccount.google.com and click on “Apps with account access.” In…

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#Facebook bans posting of Declaration of Independence

#Facebook bans posting of Declaration of Independence

Really. A small newspaper in Texas was posting excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, leading up to the 4th of July. Until Facebook tagged their posts as offensive hate speech. Seriously. History, especially the ugly parts, will be removed, just like in George Orwell’s 1984. We don’t need to burn books anymore, as in Farenheit 451. Now we just delete the electronic copies. History, gone in a flash! Source: Facebook Algorithm Flags, Removes Declaration of Independence Text as Hate Speech…

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WSJ: #Google let’s most any software company read your #Gmail

WSJ: #Google let’s most any software company read your #Gmail

Software developers scan hundreds of millions of emails of users who sign up for email-based services. Disclosures are often buried in user agreements. Source: Tech’s ‘Dirty Secret’: The App Developers Sifting Through Your Gmail – WSJ They also let employees of those companies personally read your email: this is “common practice”. As already suggested on this blog, they data mine the hell of our emails, logging your purchases, financial records, travel records and more. For companies that want data for…

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Part 7: We should all be like Denmark, remember?

Part 7: We should all be like Denmark, remember?

Occupy Democrats is an online, social media-based, for profit publisher of emotion laden political propaganda posters targeting those who view themselves as left wing. In 2016, Occupy Democrats used social media to distribute this propaganda through shares and likes. Every claim on this widely distributed and shared poster is essentially false – or two that are highly misleading at best (see links below for excruciating details.) Note their last item: SHARE if America should follow their lead! Occupy Democrats wants…

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