I get a lot of spam. Everybody does, I guess. On my Gmail account, which is rapidly becoming the one I use most, it’s generally sales pitches and the like, which at least fall into convenient folders. One or two clicks, and it all goes away. My Mac Mail account, the one associated with this site, is more of a pain. But sometimes, it’s fun to look deeper.

Most of it is pitches from crap outfits pointing out that something on this blog from, say, 2006 has a dead link, and would I like a replacement? They have a suggestion! (No.) I ignore these, of course. They generally come in threes — first pitch, second pitch (Hi, Nancy, just checking to see if you had any response to my offer last week…), third pitch (I know you’re busy, but I thought I’d circle back and…). Then they go away. Usually.

I also get an occasional threat from someone who claims to have hacked my entire computer and recorded me “wanking to YouPorn.” If I don’t pay up in a specific amount of Bitcoin, it will be sent to everyone on my contacts list. I keep thinking I should respond by asking to see some frame grabs from these recordings, just to be sure it’s me.

Then there are the poorly spelled and punctuated warnings from various entities offering me a $20 credit at CVS if I just click the big button. One had a return address that was something like kiVHeish@yahoo, etc. As the kids say: Seems legit.

Bottom line: 90 percent of my inbox is garbage. It strikes me that sooner or later, American capitalism + freedom ruins everything. When was the last time you answered an unknown number on your cell phone and the person on the other end was someone you actually wanted to talk to? We have this wonderful technology that allows us to make phone calls from a slender rectangle we carry in our pockets, but it’s mostly useless for communicating with anyone other than people we already know. All because we wouldn’t regulate.

I don’t have a transition from spam to turkey, but I guess I don’t need one. Thanks for the birthday greetings. The actual day is on Thanksgiving this year, so I’ll be observing my birthday by making a big meal with two desserts – pumpkin pie and birthday cake. I’ll be 64, which moves me into the Medicare Penumbra, during which your phone rings with odd numbers every day and the spam — oy, the spam. (I know this because for some reason Alan’s name was associated with my number, and I’ve spent the last year declining his calls.) Got my first call just the other day. It’s gonna be so much fun. Only 365 more days of this.

Happy birthday to me, happy Thanksgiving to all of us and happy weekend, likewise. Random France photo of the day, an unusual civic sculpture outside Nice city hall. Nice thumb, I guess:

I decided to try something new for me — learning from past mistakes, in this case — and do my Thanksgiving shopping early. I swam Friday morning, came home, dried my hair, tanked up on coffee and hit Kroger at about 9:30 a.m.

What a fabulous idea. The store was fairly quiet, but fully stocked on everything I needed, and while there were only two checkout lanes open, I was in and out in 40 minutes. The turkey I bought at Eastern Market the previous day. Such a strange feeling, knocking that out ahead of time; it seems the madhouse crowds the weekend before any big holiday always comes as a fresh surprise. But when I did my usual Saturday shopping last weekend, and the rush had already begun — bloated endcaps on every aisle, mid-aisle stacks of flour and sugar and canned pumpkin — I knew I had to have a plan.

My shopping experience would be improved immensely if my fellow grocery-getters would do two things: 1) Be aware of the space they’re occupying, which is my way of saying that if you want to have a long reading experience with peanut-butter labels, park your cart to one side of the aisle and don’t leave it sitting in the middle where no one can get around; and 2) I can’t remember the second thing, because the first thing is so much more important.

And if you’re still reading, be advised that groceries are very important at this time of year, and yes, that’s why I felt like bragging a little.

Unfortunately, Michigan is now number one in the country in per-capita Covid cases. With a bullet! Or maybe just a hissing ventilator, whatever. The caseload is exploding, and with the holidays bearing down. However, I read some interesting things over the weekend, which explained that vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans are birds of a feather. Which is to say that if you’re vaxed, chances are you hang with others who are, too, and probably have more protection than the unvaxed, who have similar patterns in their associations. That said, Kate’s second band, GiGi, has a Thanksgiving-eve show and I will probably go, but wear a mask the whole damn time.

How was the weekend? I made a fancy dinner Friday and ordered a pizza Saturday, but most of all, I cleaned for the coming holiday. We also watched “King Richard,” the movie about Venus and Serena Williams’ dad, and it was a bit overlong, but not terrible at all. By the end, I wanted to slug King Richard, but he had the courage of his convictions — you gotta give him that.

In other words, a pretty bleh weekend, but a holiday awaits. So there’s that.

Random France photo today is from Pere Lachaise cemetery, where you think everyone there died in the 19th century, but it turns out not: This young woman perished in the 2015 terror attack in Paris.

And…I am back. The Stones were great. I put off updating here until the column I wrote about it was published, as it is pretty much all I have to say about it, except for maybe this:

Leaving a football stadium with 30,000 other people the same week that Michigan led the nation in new Covid cases did not feel good. I had a mask on, but my friend kept muttering “CovidflumeCovidflumeCovidflume” behind me, and I fear he was right. I guess now we test the power of the ol’ booster.

I’ve never been to a Lions game. I was in Ford Field once before, to do an interview with someone who had an office there. Modern stadiums — stadia? — are marvels, especially if you’ve ever watched a Green Bay Packers game, or remember that Bengals-Chargers (? I think it was them) Freezer Bowl at Riverfront Stadium in 1980-whenever. Climate control is a miracle. I hope all those high ceilings kept the air moving, because: See previous paragraph.

Tuesday I and the Birthday Twins went to dinner at a local tapas bar, and Kate updated us on the exciting life of a rock musician/sound engineer. At the Seattle show, which was a festival scattered around multiple small clubs over three days, she walked into the green room and saw Michael Imperioli sitting there. Seems Christufuh has a band. They did not speak. Then they flew home on Delta instead of Spirit — “They give you a free cookie!” — and in another couple of days she’ll be freezing her ass off, doing live sound for the holiday tree lighting downtown. Living the dream.

It’s been a week. Next week will be bigger.

In the meantime, as we wait to watch the jury acquit Kyle Rittenhouse, let’s be grateful that as fucked-up as this country is at the moment, we can still despise Paul Gosar as one.

Good weekend, all. I’m off to pick out my turkey.

Random France photo: Used camera shop.

You may not see much of me midweek, for lo, I am going to the Rolling Stones concert Monday night here in Detroit.

Don’t ask me why. I don’t know why. No, I do: A friend asked if I’d like to go, and I said sure, why not. At the time, we thought we were buying tickets for a summer 2020 show, and I liked the symmetry: 25 years after the first (and only) time I’d seen the Stones. Five years after Kate’s first (and only) time seeing the Stones, both of us in the days after our respective high-school graduations. I figured it would be the last time (maybe the last time, I don’t know), but why not? Have the Rolling Stones ever disappointed us? Who cares if everyone is old? Isn’t that a triumph in and of itself? Isn’t that worth an evening of my life?

So I’m going to see the Stones with two friends. Kate, flying in from a weekend gig in Seattle, might be there with another friend — depends on whether everything is on time. Our seats won’t be close, but we’ll be under the same roof, and that’s symmetry enough.

But I’ll probably be very tired on Tuesday, fading into Wednesday. You never know.

On to more depressing topics: There’s a missing man in East Lansing, a 19-year-old who disappeared the weekend of the MSU-UM game two weeks ago. Last seen leaving a dorm. He wasn’t a student there, but at another school, in Grand Rapids. Since the last anyone saw or heard from him, his phone hasn’t been used, ditto his credit cards. As you can imagine, his family and friends are devastated, and there are prayer vigils, searches and fundraising for rewards and such. You can’t give up, they say, and I absolutely agree. It’s the not knowing that’s the worst, they say, and I agree with that, too. But I have a feeling I know where he is, and it’s not good. You tell me what your conclusion would be, factoring in that the football game is always a blowout party weekend, that the red dot is the dorm he left to walk back to his car and his phone last pinged on Beal Street:

I think he’s in the river. It’s terrible.

I can’t go further than speculation, because I don’t know the depth of the river there, and how hard it is to get to from the roadbed. But it puts me in mind of the deaths at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse some years back:

Between 1997 and 2006, La Crosse experienced tragedy after tragedy as 8 separate college students were found to have drowned in the Mississippi River. The deaths, contrary to some “serial killer” theories put forth, were determined to be the results of excessive drinking combined with a close physical proximity to Riverside Park, bordering the Mississippi River.

You don’t say. The 2006 victim had a blood-alcohol level of .32. I was thinking of these deaths when I worked on the college-drinking project for Bridge some years back. That year, there had already been three in Michigan – a Chinese freshman, a girl, who died of alcohol poisoning before classes even started (BAC >.40); a kid who thought it would be fun to cross the glass roof on Nickels Arcade in Ann Arbor (.20), and fell through; and a weekend visitor to Central Michigan who got lost walking late at night and stumbled into a pond in a garden and drowned (can’t recall his BAC, but he was drunk).

One might think, “But why would he go down to the river? That makes no sense.” But drunks often do things that make no sense. That’s one of the side effects, you drinkers might remember from the last time you were overserved. As I recall from our reporting, the single most dangerous time for college-drinking misadventures is the first semester of freshman year. All of this lines up with the missing 19-year-old here.

Rivers flow, and bodies flow with them. Cold water holds them down for a while, but eventually they get caught on something, stop their downstream progress and, in time, reach the surface. I expect his parents will get him home, soon enough. You always hope for a miracle and who knows, maybe he’s in Florida, having slipped the bonds of civilization’s expectations and lighting out for the territories. But I doubt it.

When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

On a cheerier note, random French picture, this one sunset at Arles after a long, dreary storm:

I’ll say hi to Mick and Keef for y’all. Back whenever.

One of the pleasant side effects of travel is a continued interest in the places you’ve visited. I’m not going ape over French politics, but I started following an English-language website called the Reykjavik Grapevine after our trip there and will check in from time to time. This week’s top story: Tragedy at Reynisfjara.

No, I don’t know how to pronounce it. But we went there. It’s a magnificent place. Here’s 19-year-old Kate, looking like just another crag among many:

The crags are part of the attraction there, and the caves, but mostly it’s the beach, which is comprised of millions of the smoothest black pebbles you ever saw:

This is the southern tip of Iceland, and the sea is ferocious and unpredictable there. There are signs — so many signs — in multiple languages — so many languages — warning of “sneaker” waves, which live up to their name, and can sweep those who come too close off their feet and, quickly, out to sea.

And yet, YouTube is full of videos of tourists walking right up to the edge of the foam, ha ha, then getting hit by a sneaker wave and, within seconds, in dire peril. Someone usually is able to get them out. This week, it didn’t work. Someone died.

The Reykjavik Grapevine interviewed a tourist guide who often takes groups there:

“Once people are off the bus, as a guide, I always go down there,” David told the Grapevine. “I’m there the whole time. I go down ahead. My standard thing is I tell them how dangerous it is, and I tell people that where the waves are finishing on the beach, you give it at least 10 metres. You don’t go any closer and you always, always keep an eye on the ocean. I tell them that I will be there, and I don’t expect them to go any further than I say. I’ll tell them that they will see people doing really crazy stuff; playing chicken with the ocean, thinking it’s fun. You are not sheep. Use your brain, use your instinct, and listen to my words. To this day, I’ve had a few people get wet feet and that’s it, and I’ve been taking people there for over 15 years.”

While he says that this is common practice for experienced guides, there are limitations to just how much power they have over their groups.

“The problem with being a guide is, I have no authority,” he said. “After the last big incident, we’d be down there, screaming at people to get away from the ocean. Some people listen to us, but then there’s some people who will confront us and say ‘What are you, police?’ They’ll be swearing at us, telling us to f*ck off and all this.”

Who among us hasn’t done something stupid? But I look at this and think: Man, swept out to sea in the far north Atlantic while on vacation is a pretty stupid — but undeniably dramatic! — way to go.

Speaking of decidedly less dramatic passings, I’m remiss in not mentioning the loss of Ann Hilton Fisher’s mother, Miriam. Ann comments here, but not often, and is far more active on social media, particularly Facebook. Over the years, I’ve been charmed by her stories about Miriam, who is — was — something of a love dervish, serving her community (Marquette, Mich.), her church (First Presbyterian) and her friends and family. She was a firecracker to the end of her life; one of my favorite pictures is of her and Ann swimming in Lake Superior not many years ago, as the last of the winter’s ice bobs around them. She was one of those women who took in boarders at her house, students at Northern Michigan University, and some of their stories about her abundant kindness will move you to tears. Anyway, Miriam finally went to her (surely abundant) reward at 96 while we were in France, and her memorial was this week. There’s a site called Padlet that compiles all the ephemera of these events, and Miriam’s is worth poking around in. I wish it allowed hyperlinking to individual bits of it, but you can’t have everything. If you control-F to “Carrier,” you’ll find one of her boarder’s testimonies, which I think gives you a sense of what Miriam was all about. I also loved her story called “The Gift of Water,” about her life as the child of a missionary working in Iran.

OK, then. We’re enjoying a warm day that will end in rain, and then Indian summer will be over for good, they promise us. Had to happen eventually. Good weekend, all.

People tell me I need to be empathetic, to meet people where they are, to not give up hope for our divided country. Then I read something like this, a comment Dexter left in the last thread:

When a farmer at his roadside vegetable stand began chatting small talk to me last August, he began loudly with all Trump supporters’ talk. “We all know Trump is our President”, and every other point, to the point, even, that the Covid19 is a hoax. I paid him for my goods and just wanted away from this maniac. I told him calmly of Carla Lee’s death from Covid19. “You mean she had the FLU!!!” he blurted out.

I found another place to buy my sweet corn. The gall that bastard showed, just after telling me he was a lay preacher in several little churches there.

And then I think: Nah, fuck these turd-juggling idiots.

I just read this in the NYT, which I am confident that farmer does not read. This is David Leonhardt writing here:

(The Covid vaccines) proved so powerful, and the partisan attitudes toward them so different, that a gap in Covid’s death toll quickly emerged. I have covered that gap in two newsletters — one this summer, one last month — and today’s newsletter offers an update.

The brief version: The gap in Covid’s death toll between red and blue America has grown faster over the past month than at any previous point.

In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened.

And I am thinking very cruel thoughts right now, which I am not proud of, but honestly, what else can you do with people like this? A guy I know has a number of doctor friends who serve rural areas in Michigan’s Thumb, and hears this stuff all the time. “I’m sorry, but your father has Covid and we’re putting him on a ventilator.” “Daddy has the FLU, there ain’t no COVID!” You can lead a horse to water, etc.

How was everybody’s weekend? Mine was fine. Watched two movies — “Pig” and “The Green Knight,” as different as can be, but both worth watch, although I don’t recommend the second after a full meal and a couple glasses of wine. It’s…strange and contemplative. But beautiful. And “Pig” is similarly unexpected in almost every way. Good to see Alex Wolff, half of the Naked Brothers Band, which Kate used to watch on Nickelodeon. We also went out to a Detroit News farewell for one of Alan’s old colleagues, and that was nice. I also re-upped staples at Costco. Good to know we’re entering winter with all the laundry detergent we’ll ever need.

And it’s a beautiful day. What more can you ask of a Monday?

Another random France picture, below, of a volume of foot-fetish photography we spotted at a flea market, along with my own foot, which would not pass muster with Elmer Batters because I stop using nail polish after Labor Day. But it was published by Taschen, known for their outre subject matter and superior photo reproduction. The price started at 10 Euro, and immediately dropped to five. Reader, we bought it, shlepped it home and now it sits on our coffee table. It’s porny in places, but honestly, almost all the attention really is paid to feet. Foreward by Dian Hanson, described by her ex-boyfriend Robert Crumb as “sort of an Albert Schweitzer of filthy perverts.”

Oh, yesterday’s election was dreamy. Like one of those dreams where you keep telling yourself wake-up-wake-up-it’s-just-a-dream but it keeps going on and on and on. Which is to say: Abysmal turnout, yet again. Thirty-eight voters all day. When that happens, you find yourself staring at the animation on the voter-assist terminal screen. It recycles every three seconds. There are 3,600 seconds in an hour, so it played 1,200 times in 60 minutes. Times…13 hours of voting. It played at least 15,600 times.

I think I watched 12,000 of them. It was in my eyeline.

This is my last year in this precinct, I think. Next year I want a new assignment. Absentee vote-counting, maybe. The same insanely long shift in a mask – because we will be wearing masks forever and ever, that’s clear to me now, get used to the smell of Purell – but constant work, no idleness.

Every so often we’d remark on the lack of voters. I’d say, “Mayor’s race a foregone conclusion. City council the only real races. Low-income precinct. It’s just not an exciting election.” And one of my fellow poll workers would say, every time, “With legalization of psychedelics on the ballot? How can you SAY that?” And I’d laugh, and watch the animation 500 more times, and two hours later, we’d have the same exchange.

It wasn’t a good day for Democrats. I’m not an optimist. I think, in three more years, we’ll have a Trump-Biden rematch (because Biden won’t yield, because…I don’t know why). Trump will win, and American democracy as we’ve known it all our lives will be effectively over. Is that too strong? Maybe so, but you know what the Michigan Secretary of State did this week? Announced that starting soon, non-binary residents can choose X on their drivers’ licenses, instead of M or F. What a victory. What timing. She ran on reducing the wait in license branches to 30 minutes or less. Then the pandemic hit, and they went to an appointment system, which she announced would now be permanent. However, appointments are impossible to get unless you know how to game the system (basically, go on the site at 10 seconds past 8 a.m. or whenever the system goes live and try to snag one of the same-day appointments). So now, instead of waiting in line for an hour to renew your driver’s license (which can now have an X on it!!!!), you can have the experience of sitting in your own home, renewing your driver’s license the way you used to buy U2 tickets.

But in all of this, it’s key to remember that the other thing the secretary of state does? Run elections.

Just once, I want Democrats to behave as though they understand what the stakes are, and stop behaving as though saying “pregnant people” is some sort of landmark in civil rights. And stop handing their opponents the clubs to beat them with.

To be smarter, in other words.

It’s time for me to counter the degradation of all that sitting and snack-nibbling with a workout. Discuss.

At Eastern Market Saturday, I saw a familiar face – a downtown homeless guy, temporarily relocated to a higher foot-traffic area.

If I recall correctly, he’s an addict, and he looked even worse than the last time I saw him, pre-pandemic. He’s also fairly young and pretty smart. Once he asked for money from my editor as we walked back from lunch, and my editor, the softest touch in the world, stopped to peel off a couple of bucks for him. He rarely just forks over the cash, however, and as a true journalist, likes to engage in some small talk at the same time. Soon he was offering to help the guy get a state ID so he could apply for jobs, and I ducked into a coffee spot for an espresso while they hashed it out. When I came out, the homeless kid was saying, “…but there’s an opportunity cost for me in that situation, too,” and all I could think was: Kids, don’t do hard drugs.

Tuesday is election day, and I’m working again. Same precinct. This will be my fourth one there, and I think I’m going to ask for a transfer to the absentee counting boards for 2022, where there will at least be constant work, rather than the long stretches of ass-numbing crickets in our sleepy little precinct. The area we serve is pretty poor, hit hard by depopulation, and turnout is generally abysmal, even by Detroit standards. I think we had 35 voters, total, in August.

But I’m doing my part. I got my Covid test, copied my CDC vax card, printed out my assignment, and will be there at 5:45 a.m. ready for 14 hours in a mask. It’s important.

I know the crowd here skews older, but I have to ask: Do any of you watch comic-book movies? I made it through “Black Widow” on the flight home a couple weeks ago, and at the end had the same reaction I have to all the previous ones I’ve tried: Well, that was a movie. They’re so, what’s the word? Boring. The hero’s journey, spiced with several action sequences, ending with the sequel setup. Plus, if you haven’t followed the Marvel franchise through however many films they’ve squeezed out of it, you get the sense you’re missing in-jokes and backstory the producers simply assume you are familiar with. It’s like millions and millions are spent on people who go to various Comic Cons around the country and stand in line for four hours to listen to colloquia on Spider-Man.

Honestly the most interesting part of “Black Widow” was examining Florence Pugh’s remarkable heart-shaped face. Talk about a movie-star mug. Now to see if she can continue to deliver performances.

If I seem a little aimless today, it’s because I just finished a long story and feel like I’m finally caught up with everything I missed during my time away. And I had too much to drink last night – didn’t rip the knob off, just poured two cocktails into an empty stomach – and feel like my best strategy for today is a bike ride and a nap and maybe some TV. So here’s my new favorite picture: Kate and the band at their show Friday night (which we missed). They were Josie and the Pussycats! I love it. See you later this week.

I hate to say this, but we’re in for some very very bad elections in the future, thanks to you-know-who. This week, the Michigan secretary of state suspended a township clerk from running the election next week. Why? Because she’s all-in on the Big Lie, or is at least Big Lie-curious enough that she wouldn’t participate in routine equipment checks, required by law before the polls open:

(The suspended clerk) said she is worried about the security of the tabulators — including in relation to their performance in the November 2020 presidential election — and believes they were connected to or had the ability to be connected to the internet in past elections.

This is a Big Lie cornerstone, especially in Michigan, where one of the local grifters calls himself a “cybersecurity expert” and has been running around the state saying he could tell the tabulators were connected to the internet because he saw some cable, or something.

I ran the tabulator the last couple of elections. If you’ve ever taken a test where you filled in bubbles on an answer sheet, you know how it works: It’s set up to read certain patterns and assign votes accordingly. In Antrim County, where the infamous OMG-how-is-Biden-winning-in-this-red-county screwup happened last year, it was an inputting error, quickly corrected; essentially, someone told the machine the wrong pattern to read.

You open the polls by plugging it in, starting it up and printing an initial tape (called the zero tape). When the polls close, there’s a shutdown procedure, the totals tapes are printed, and then and only then do you take a small cellular modem out of its cubbyhole on the machine, plug it in and transmit the returns via cell signal back to the Board of Elections. Then you shut it down, follow all the closing procedures, etc., and push it back against the wall, to be picked up by the Board of Elections workers the next day.

This was all explained to the clerk by the state’s elections chief, of course:

Michigan election protocol prohibits connections to the internet, and Hillsdale County has denied any connectivity between the machine and the internet. Brater also notified Scott in an Oct. 15 letter that, while the tabulator has a modem physically attached, “the modem is disabled while polls are open.”

“Tabulator programming does not allow any modem communications to occur while voting is in progress; the secure transmission can occur only after the election is complete and the tabulator tape has been printed,” Brater wrote. “Additionally, data transmission is one-way.”

What’s more, all those paper ballots the tabulator was reading? They’re preserved. In Antrim County, once the tabulating error was corrected, the clerk held a hand recount, and had the correct totals checked and double-checked. All the tabulator is, is a set of eyes.

Doesn’t this sound reasonable? And yet, the Big Lie continues. Now, imagine scores of clerks like this, aided and abetted by the true-believer canvassers who are stepping into vacant slots all over the state. Imagine a future where every election that a Republican doesn’t win, they just say FRAUD and refuse to accept the results.

And we’re supposed to “understand” these people? You maybe see now why I’m a little nervous these days.

The architecture of the present crisis and the ominous waypoints ahead are clear. No matter the outcome of the next Presidential election, the GOP nominee, likely Trump, will refuse to concede a clear defeat. Allegations of fraud will be made without evidence.

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) October 26, 2021

This tweet is the first of a thread that gets worse as it goes on. Read it. Have a nice day!

We discovered a new cocktail in France: the negroni sbagliato. A negroni, as fans of Stanley Tucci know, is very easy to make — equal parts gin, sweet vermouth and Campari, shaken with ice, garnished with an orange slice. Very refreshing. In a negroni sbagliato, you substitute sparkling wine for the gin, which lessens the alcohol content and makes it super-refreshing. (“Sbagliato” means “mistake” in Italian, and the legend goes it was invented when a busy bartender reached for the wrong bottle, but you know about legends.)

Alan bought a bottle of prosecco the other day, but it hasn’t exactly been refreshing-cocktail weather lately. Dreary rain and chill. (Also, you don’t want to open a bottle of sparkling wine if you’re not going to finish it, and so it’s best for when you have friends over.) I made the first soup of the season last night, if you don’t count last week’s chili. Cream of broccoli, because Vegetables. Probably should have served a hot toddy in the cold rain, but we just drank the remainder of the white wine after I added a cup or so to the soup.

And now I think I’m going to take the week off drinking. Got a little too accustomed to the 50cl bottle at lunch, and more at dinner, etc. Of course, in a country where McDonald’s and Haagen-Dazs both have alcoholic choices on the menu, you’re just going with the flow. Back home, you should stop drinking so much, you ol’ sot.

I’ve been reading a fair amount about Facebook lately. I said on my own page that I was ready to pull the plug on that hellsite, that once I stopped working for good and didn’t have to post stories for work, I’d be happy to step back and never post again. Maybe keep the account active for the Marketplace and because some people simply refuse to communicate any way other than via Messenger, but otherwise? Pfft. And I must say, the site is making this easy. My news feed is now disproportionately what’s known as “like farming,” i.e. stupid posts that encourage engagement. “Who remembers when the national anthem was played at the end of the broadcast day,” maybe, or “Come on – who here hasn’t gotten a DUI?” The idea is to get people agitated enough to interact with it, which boosts its position, which boosts the poster’s other material, etc. If this is Facebook, fuck ’em. If I want content like this, I can wander down to a local oil-change place and look at the 25th-generation Xeroxes on the break-room bulletin board.

But I realize I’m in the minority, that the site still has way more active users than detractors, and that it’s continuing on its path to destabilize western democracy, just the same. Social media in general doesn’t appear to be good for anyone, but as a Twitter addict I will say I enjoy the kitty videos, and Cats With Jobs (@CatWorkers) always pleases me. Anyway, back to FB, here’s the NYT today:

Apart from the Like button, Facebook has scrutinized its share button, which lets users instantly spread content posted by other people; its groups feature, which is used to form digital communities; and other tools that define how more than 3.5 billion people behave and interact online. The research, laid out in thousands of pages of internal documents, underlines how the company has repeatedly grappled with what it has created.

What researchers found was often far from positive. Time and again, they determined that people misused key features or that those features amplified toxic content, among other effects. In an August 2019 internal memo, several researchers said it was Facebook’s “core product mechanics” — meaning the basics of how the product functioned — that had let misinformation and hate speech flourish on the site.

“The mechanics of our platform are not neutral,” they concluded.

You don’t say. Elsewhere in the same edition, Ben Smith has a column on Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower. It mentions the platform’s role in fomenting sectarian violence overseas. Getta loada this shit:

Dozens of religious extremists burst into a Pentecostal church outside New Delhi in June, claiming it was built atop a Hindu temple. The group installed a Hindu idol in protest, and a pastor says he was punched in the head by attackers.

Members of a Hindu nationalist organization known as Bajrang Dal claimed responsibility in a video describing the incursion that has been viewed almost 250,000 times on Facebook. The social-media company’s safety team earlier this year concluded that Bajrang Dal supported violence against minorities across India and likely qualified as a “dangerous organization” that should be banned from the platform, according to people familiar with the matter.

Facebook Inc. balked at removing the group following warnings in a report from its security team that cracking down on Bajrang Dal might endanger both the company’s business prospects and its staff in India, the people said. Besides risking infuriating India’s ruling Hindu nationalist politicians, banning Bajrang Dal might precipitate physical attacks against Facebook personnel or facilities, the report warned.

Look on your works, Mark Zuckerberg, and despair. Have I mentioned how very very tired I am of “move fast and break things.” It’s given us piles of shit-tastic technology, and an overwhelming culture of shrugging and back-to-the-ol’-drawing-board and hey-don’t-blame-us-we’re-just-a-platform. It’s maddening.

Anyway. That’s Monday morning. How’s yours?

Finally, I think I’m going to drop some random France pictures in here until I – or you guys – get tired of it. Less-traveled Metro station, here. Love that tile: