The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[Ghoulish Delight]

The first clue you've made a stupid decision - you can't be honest with your child as to why you made him "[cry] for about 10 minutes."

Good riddance

[alphabassettgrrl]

While I applaud the forming of an alternative, religious group, I think they're making too much of it. Somewhere I saw a comment that the Boy Scouts will still go camping, learn to make fire, and all that, because they're boy scouts, not a sex club.

[innerSpaceman]

Ah, but summer camp is where I circle-jerked with all my supposedly straight camp-mates - because, well, for horny boys (i.e., practically all young teen boys), camping is to them what prison or the navy is to grown men. It brings out the gay in all - and all it takes is one. (But believe me, as the gay boy at camp - I was NOT the one to even suggest, much less instigate, us all pulling out our dicks and jerking off together in a big circle).

So (continue to) have fun at camp, ye Boy Scouts!

[Ghoulish Delight]

Anatomy of misinformation

A story has been going around about a recently released document through Freedom of Information. It's generally headlined something like, "List of words that will get you on a government watchlist if you tweet them: Includes 'pork', 'emergency', and 'snow'" [or some other combination of individually innocuous words]

I read the report.


1) The thrust of the document is guidelines for monitoring ALL media outlets for information that will help Homeland Security get a picture of a breaking news story (fire, weather event, terrorism, etc.). It's not at all about any sort of long term tracking, it's about getting information about now.

2) While it does talk a lot about monitoring social media, it's explicit in saying that the interest in social media is for a) stories tweeted by major media outlets or b) tweets from any source that then get picked up and distributed by major media outlets. The document does not concern itself with isolated individual tweets. They are looking for NEWS

3) Social media is not enough of a source on its own to raise interest. Only when there's corroboration through other more credible sources.

4) There's a whole section about NOT including "Personally Identifiable Information" in the reports. Hard to build a watch list without personally identifiable information.

Nice job internet, way to uncover NOTHING

[Ghoulish Delight]

Well now.

Got a call, purportedly from my bank, about an automatic bill payment (HOA dues). No detail on the call. I logged into my account online and saw a message on the payment saying the payee was being investigated by the "Risk" department.

I called my bank (at their main number, not the number given on the phone message), and they confirmed that the call was legitimate.

It seems they were concerned about a word that was in the memo of the payment.

A couple interesting facts about that word.

1) It's been there since I started that recurring payment 2 years ago.

2) It's the name of our street and is also on the check as the street address of the account.

I pointed this out and asked why it was suddenly a problem. Apparently a new security policy.

After the call I googled the word.

Interesting fact #3 - it's the name of an ancient city in Syria.

[Snowflake]

Facepalm, GD. Wow!

[Strangler Lewis]

You learn something new every day.

[alphabassettgrrl]

Guess at least you know they're watching! Not in a helpful way, but y'know.

[Kevy Baby]

You live on Mosopotamia Blvd.?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Quick tip, Mr. President. When declining to get on board with a boycott, try not to say, "No one is more offended than me." Because clearly, people are more offended than you.