Why Is No One Reading?

Sunday thoughts……

I have read many blogs, especially new bloggers, that ask the same question time after time…..”why is no one reading my blog”?

Some want their thoughts to be instantly accepted by all people…..or they cannot understand why others do not enjoy the same things that the author likes?

I wish I had good advice on how to make your blog more popular but as one can see I am not tearing up the blogsophere with my blogs…..so I will bow to more experienced bloggers…..

I did find an interesting article that answered some of the questions that bloggers have abodut the popularity of their blogs….

Some excellent thoughts……

Online traffic is one of those things you’re not supposed to talk about.

But anyone who writes online and proclaims, “I don’t care if anyone reads me,” is a liar.

If you didn’t care if anyone read you, you wouldn’t write online. In fact, you wouldn’t write at all.

1. You’re boring.

One thing that’s remarkable is how many people think they are writing about something interesting when they are not. How many times have you lost track of what someone is saying when they are talking to you in person? Unfortunately, you can’t just walk away in real life if you want to be polite. On the internet, you can walk away with a click if someone fails to interest you. This happens all the time.

If your idea of being interesting is writing about complex tax codes, what your cat ate for breakfast (unless it’s Maru), or how much you bench pressed, you may be boring. It all depends. The fact of the matter is that it’s not the thing, it’s the relationship to the thing, and when it comes to writing, it’s not the subject, it’s your relationship to it.

It’s hard to say what my most popular post is thus far at this blog because Forbes has changed the way things are calculated, but currently the post at the most-read spot is: “9/11 Stories: ‘No One Talks About That.‘”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/susannahbreslin/2011/09/26/heres-why-no-one-reads-your-blog/#698563ca7c58

Like I said…I am NO expert so I have to bow to others that are mo better at writing a blog than me…..

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–26Dec19

Lots has been written about the problems we all suffer if we use the internet….the tracking of our visits, etc….

If you are worried then you need to read this article I found….

Here are some mildly terrifying things I learned when I recently did an online privacy checkup: Google was sharing my creditworthiness with third parties. If you want Target to stop sharing your information with marketers, you have to call them. And, my favorite: If you would like Hearst, the publishing giant, to stop sharing your physical mailing address with third parties, you have to mail a physical letter with your request to the company’s lawyers.

Cool cool cool.

I was inspired by this story my colleague Kashmir Hill wrote this month about the company Sift, which collects your consumer data and analyzes then scores your transactions.

Me?

I do not care that they track me. I do no business on-line that could be used against me…..I am an old radical so I am use to watching what I do or say for the government is listening. (COINTELPRO).

Bernie is doing what all politicians do….promise.

Vowing to take on the telecom giants that have monopolized the web for private profit, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday unveiled a $150 billion plan to make the internet a public utility, break up and tightly regulate corporate behemoths like Verizon and AT&T, and provide high-speed broadband for everyone in the United States.

“It is outrageous that across the country millions of Americans and so many of our communities do not have access to affordable high-speed internet,” Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said in a statement. “Access to the internet is a necessity in today’s economy, and it should be available for all.”

Sanders vowed that, if elected president in 2020, he will ensure that every American household has affordable and high-speed internet by the end of his first term.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/06/vowing-deliver-high-speed-broadband-all-sanders-plan-would-enshrine-internet-public

I like the idea….but this is a non-starter…..big business will, never allow such a move.

Just thought you might like to know.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

The Death Of Local Journalism

I use to read my local paper it was an excellent source of news and opinions from around the area……it is now about 5 pages and is printed in a city 180 miles away…….the paper is in essence……dead……dead….dead…….

Now it is more about the ad dollar than the news……I would wager that this is a similar occurrence around the country.

The rise of social media and the internet has done what rival papers tried to do for decades…….killed local journalism…..and in-turn has fed the rise of the divisiveness of the nation……

In May 2017, former Republican Rep. Leonard Lance crossed party lines and voted against the GOP health care repeal, a proposal deeply unpopular with voters in New Jersey’s 7th District, which he had represented in Washington for nearly a decade.

A year later, Lance again joined Democrats to oppose the Republican tax cut bill. Although he supported portions of the bill and its overall intent, he decided to vote against it because it would hurt the ability of his wealthiest constituents to deduct the value of their state and local taxes.

Put simply, Lance was doing what a member of Congress is supposed to do: look out for the individual needs of the people who live in his district. Then he lost his reelection bid.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/campaigns/decline-local-journalism-likely-increasing-voter-polarization

Once Bill Clinton allowed corporations to own the news the purveyors of propaganda took hold and now the MSM sets the dialog with the nation….it is not the voter that picks the candidate but rather the MSM chooses who is presented to them as the candidates.

The death of local journalism has signaled the end of any bi-partisanship ever……

In the long run we voters pay the price for the death of local journalism and that price is partisanship and the election of mental midgets that disguise their mental deficiencies with mindless slogans.

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

More Control Over The News

These days we can find “news” almost anywhere across the internet……you can find any interpretation that suits your fancy.

I read something that took me aback. The Pentagon is looking for more control over the news…..you saw that right …the military wants to control you news…..

If there’s a worse idea than the Pentagon becoming Editor-in-Chief of America, I can’t remember it. But we’re getting there:

From Bloomberg over Labor Day weekend:

Fake news and social media posts are such a threat to U.S. security that the Defense Department is launching a project to repel “large-scale, automated disinformation attacks,” as the top Republican in Congress blocks efforts to protect the integrity of elections.

One of the Pentagon’s most secretive agencies, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is developing “custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, video and audio clips.”

Once upon a time, when progressives still reflexively distrusted the military, DARPA was a liberal punchline, known for helping invent the Internet but also for developing lunatic privacy-invading projects like LifeLog, a program to “gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees, or does.”

DARPA now is developing a semantic analysis program called “SemaFor” and an image analysis program called “MediFor,” ostensibly designed to prevent the use of fake images or text. The idea would be to develop these technologies to help private Internet providers sift through content.

The Pentagon Wants More Control Over the News. What Could Go Wrong?

I have written several times about the loss of the Freedom of the Press……..read it for yourself…..https://lobotero.com/2018/08/16/censorship-by-any-other-name/

Since Clinton the Pentagon through the defense lobbyists control the news for the most part…..why? Most outlets are owned by corporations that are heavily invested in the M-IC.

They, the Pentagon, has been controlling the news coming out of our endless and countless wars…..no more unlimited access that they had in Vietnam now they can only report what the Pentagon says they can report. And that is called censorship.

Not to worry….just make shit up and say it enough times and then it becomes believable….that describes the Trump technique to a tee.

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

What Is ‘Disinformation’?

In the era of social media and the claim that it is ‘fake news’ how can we be sure what is true and what is just manure?

Disinformation?

Disinformation is a type of untrue communication that is purposefully spread and represented as truth to elicit some response that serves the perpetrator’s purpose.

Disinformation is sometimes confused with misinformation but the two are distinguished by their intention. The purpose of disinformation is to deceive. Although misinformation is also false, it is presented as truth only because the communicator does not have the facts straight.

The relative anonymity of the Web and the affordability of creating websites have made it easy for people to post disinformation online. Sites developed for the purposes of disinformation typically share several characteristics. For example, such a site usually either has no clearly stated purpose or has little content related to its stated purpose. The majority of content on a disinformation site is usually related to a particular agenda, is likely to be very contentious and may contain blatantly false information that is easily disproved. The most common characteristic of disinformation websites is an absence of contact information or any “About us” page.

Sorry about boring you to slumber….but there is madness to my method…..

The department in the DoD that researches stuff has been given a task to fight ‘disinformation’…..this is almost laughable….

The US military may soon be deciding what is considered fake news on social media. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), an agency of the US Department of Defense, announced the development of a new program to combat “disinformation” on social media.

The Semantic Forensics program will “develop technologies to automatically detect, attribute, and characterize falsified, multi-modal media assets (e.g., text, audio, image, video) to defend against large-scale, automated disinformation attacks.”

DARPA is looking to develop software that can detect fakes amongst 500,000 stories, photos, videos and audio clips. The plan is to undergo four years of trials until the software is ready, so the program will not be used in the run-up to the 2020 election.

Only time will tell how accepting social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will be of the DoD determining what is considered fake news.

The program is likely a reaction to the claim by Robert Mueller that the Russian company, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), led a social media campaign with the aim of “sowing discord” to help President Trump get elected. Although Mueller claimed the IRA was taking orders from the Kremlin, he provided no real evidence to link the IRA to the Russian government.

The actual influence of the IRA is much smaller than what Mueller alludes to in his 2018 indictment of the company. According to a Senate commissioned report by the firm New Knowledge, just “11 percent” of the IRA’s total content was election related. The IRA’s posts were “minimally about the candidates” with “roughly 6% of tweets, 18% of Instagram posts, and 7% of Facebook posts” having “mentioned Trump or Clinton by name.”

(antiwar.com)

I am all for the fight against ‘disinformation’….but I ask if the agency that puts out more such propaganda is the agency to fight it…..has anyone thought about who helped spread the Iraqi WMDs?

Answer that question then ask if they are the ones to fight it. Or why not get the PsyOps people to develop this fight after all they generate most of the governmental ‘disinformation’.

God I love this stuff!

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Just How Stupid Are They?

Every day it seems that some ignorant mental midget grabs a gun and goes on a rampage…..and the pundits and wonks have the same coverage and conversation on a growing problem…..and the same result of all the debate and analysis….we wait for the next attack so we can have the “talk” all over again.

Basically it is……deaths….talks…..wait….rinse and repeat……

I had my little rant because of something completely different….it is the butt hurt Rep from California Devin Nunes who is suing Twitter for 250 million……

Newsweek reported that an attorney representing Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is arguing that two parody Twitter accounts making fun of the congressman are as dangerous as guns.

The lawsuit alleges that the parody accounts, called “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow,” constitute “an orchestrated defamation campaign of stunning breadth and scope, one that no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life,” and for Twitter to keep them operating is equivalent to negligently giving someone a firearm without determining if they are qualified to use it.

Nunes filed the $250 million defamation suit against these two Twitter accounts, as well as Twitter itself and Never Trump GOP strategist Liz Mair, earlier this year. He has also alleged that Twitter was secretly “shadow banning” his account by preventing people from finding him in search results, which Twitter says never happened, and which doesn’t present any clear legal injury even if it was true.

(Raw Story)

If you are against gun laws then I suggest you read that again. (Pause here for the slower readers)

Maybe someone should tell the idiot Nunes that he is doing some damage just because he got butt hurt over criticism.

This lawsuit could have wide ranging consequences…..I am not a lawyer but even I can see the chances here….maybe the NRA should hold a consultation with Nunes and suggest that he drop the lawsuit to avoid any long term damage he could possibly do.

“An action has an equal but opposition reaction”

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

An Unpleasant Surprise

AS Memorial Day approached the US Army thought it would try something new….it ran a survey that asked veterans on Twitter a simple question…..the answers were not what the Army was hoping to get…..

……..the US Army asked veterans on twitter a simple question, “How has serving impacted you?” As Memorial Day approaches, whoever is in charge of the Army’s social media was probably hoping for some nice responses about all the benefits they think come with serving, college education, the bonds formed with fellow soldiers or the invaluable life experience. But the sad reality that our nations veterans and their families face showed itself in the thousands of heart-breaking replies to the question.

Michael J Neel replied, “26 brothers dead. Only 8 in theater. Psyche ward myself after 3 attempts. Everything we accomplished in Mosul was wasted. Every life we gave was spat on. That’s how serving impacted me.” Veteran Drew Turner said, “Let’s see. Lost the functional use of a hand, developed a rare movement disorder and cancer both likely from burn pit exposure, enjoy sleeping 3 to 4 hours most nights due to nightmares and during the day random anxiety attacks all due to PTSD, 7 herniated discs, arthritis…”

https://news.antiwar.com/2019/05/26/us-army-unpleasantly-surprised-after-asking-veterans-about-impact-of-serving/

These veterans are begging for help….IS ANYONE LISTENING?

AS I wrote…not exactly what the Army intended……these are the stories the media needs to report and stop cheer leading for war and aggression and adventurism.

And then forgotten heroes that are with us and we choose to look away…..

Every Memorial Day, we remember the great heroes who perished, from Gettysburg to Normandy to the streets of Basra. Our country was founded, defended and defined on the backs of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our nation and our freedoms.

We think today of the lives that were cut short. Of the men and women in their twenties who never made it home. The children they never had, or the birthdays and graduations they never saw. We must pause to reflect on those lives that were shortened in the name of letting the rest of us live on. We remember their sacrifice on the battlefields in defense of our nation, as we rightfully should.

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-the-casualties-of-war-we-often-forget-20190527-nht36h46kvcjnej3lasew5bstu-story.html

Once again these are the stories that should make the news nightly…instead of what a royal baby is named or what shoes some model wore in Cannes.

None of that is life changing or will make a difference in society….so why bother?

A closing thought is mine and mine alone……

Be a hero and resist the warmongers among us.

Closing Thought–21May19

By now we all have heard that Russia diddled around in our elections and have also done the same for other “Western” countries……and they have been condemned by most people that know of their interference.

Of course they are not the only one that has attempted to diddle….some say China, North Korea, even Iran possibly…..this is reported by our dynamite media…they want us and the world to know of these attempts…..

But there is one that is not getting any attention and as usual the MSM is protecting one country from criticism…….

Facebook said Thursday it banned an Israeli company that ran an influence campaign aimed at disrupting elections in various countries and has canceled dozens of accounts engaged in spreading disinformation.

Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, told reporters that the tech giant had purged 65 Israeli accounts, 161 pages, dozens of groups and four Instagram accounts.

Although Facebook said the individuals behind the network attempted to conceal their identities, it discovered that many were linked to the Archimedes Group, a Tel Aviv-based political consulting and lobbying firm that publicly boasts of its social media skills and ability to “change reality.”

“It’s a real communications firm making money through the dissemination of fake news,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a think tank collaborating with Facebook to expose and explain disinformation campaigns.

https://www.apnews.com/7d334cb8793f49889be1bbf89f47ae5c

The MSM made sure to report on the Eurovision piece of crap but have not thought it was important enough to report on their meddling……so damn typical!

At least Facebook has stepped up….but I think it is more because of the bad press they have gotten recently more than any serious concern……