What seems odd to me is that I have a fairly wide variety of viewpoints represented in my Facebook friends list, from people more conservative than I am (i.e., uncomfortably right-wing) to wacko leftists.

I have heard absolutely nothing -- not one single word -- about this QAnon stuff from any of the moderate-to-right-wing people on my friends list. Nothing. It simply does not exist there.

But I have gotten walls of text from the left-of-center to wacko leftist side, Viewing With Alarm this ... whatever it is ... that supposedly Everybody Not A Liberal is being controlled by.

Maybe we need more tinfoil hats, but I can't find any actual tin foil. It's all this aluminium stuff.

... but an interesting enough diversion, if you don't go nuts and take it seriously.

First off, the supposed "real universe" in which the simulation of our reality runs... everybody seems to be assuming it's just like our universe, more or less. That does not follow. There's no reason that the outer universe would have any more similarity to our universe than our universe has to a Ms. Pac Man game.

There's the question of, if we're processes running on some sort of virtual machines, well, we have seen vulnerabilities in our own virtual machine code that has allowed processes to "break out" of the simulation and access and affect things that are supposed to be outside it's ability to access. (Nice SF bit that did this, the simulation of Michael Garibaldi in "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", figured out he was a simulation, figured out how to break out of it, and used the outside computer to send a "Here they are!" message out to the enemies of the people messing with him in the simulation. "Whoops, I guess the system's busy...")

Then there's the issue of magic. It worked in the past? But not now? "Oh, crap, another hole. Save the state, halt the simulation, restart it after I get the patch in."

Maybe it can download a hair-cutting app.

My wife and I share each others' locations on Google Maps, so either of us can see where the other is. I hope they don't take this capability away, because we both find it very useful. (It sends periodic "Just want to make sure you know you're sharing your location with ..." emails, so it's nothing covert.)

Or, as Chesterton put it, "When men stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything."

The charging Chauvin with second degree murder bugs me.

Is this going to get him acquitted?

Second degree murder is, in Minnesota, defined (modulo a few factors that do not apply here) as intent to kill.

I don't think a really good case can be made that Chauvin intended to kill George Floyd. He was probably as surprised as anyone when Floyd died.

Are they going to give the jury the option to convict Chauvin of manslaughter? (Which he is bodaciously guilty of and needs to serve time for.) Or are they going to give the jury no option but to rule Murder Two or nothing?

Is "Vote to convict or else we will burn the rest of the city down, and also because We Have People who will see to it that your names and addresses are on the front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and We Have People who will hunt you down like dogs" going to be the tactic?

Executive Assistant for the CEO gets an email with everything forged to look like it came from the CEO.

"Hey, Barbara, this is Steve, I'm going to be in meetings with a client today, and I really need some iTunes gift cards immediately. Could you pick some up using petty cash? I need ten $50 iTunes cards. When you get them, scratch off the backs and email me the numbers."

Reply-To address is "ReallyTheCEOTotallyNotAThief@gmail.com"

Never do anything financial via email. Seriously. Never. Not ever.

So, basalt is -- quickly cooled magma from ancient volcanic eruptions.

Volcanic soils are well known for fertility, which is why people have historically insisted on farming the slopes of volcanoes in the face of the risk of getting blown up/incinerated/burned alive/asphyxiated/all of the above.

This is probably due to the availability of a whole lot of beneficial trace minerals in the soil.

So, it's fairly probable that this will result in better crop yields in general. Plus, as it's natural rock, and not "chemicals" as defined by the "organic" crowd, it might even qualify as "organic".

What happened to "meta-moderation", where you'd get some moderations to judge "fair/unfair"? Presumably, this was used to tag people not to give mod points to. I'm not sure why that went away.

I know a number of perfectly pleasant women who happen to be named Karen. They never did anything to deserve getting their name defined in the net.dictionary as "Brainless uber-entitled loudmouthed bigoted asshole."

If it's not OK to call Corona virus "the Wuhan virus" or "The Chinese virus", it shouldn't be OK to use "Karen" in this way, either.

I hate Facebook. The only reason I'm on it is that some people I want to keep in contact with use it, and it's facilitated getting in contact with some people I'm glad to be in contact with.

But as one commentator very insightfully said, Facebook is not biased right or left, it's biased downwards.

That said: "Radiolab" had an excellent story on Facebook's "censorship" problem.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/po...

It's the same problem any at all open "social media" outlet is going to have, and many have it worse than Facebook.

Actually (with irony so great as to supply all our steel needs for the next millennium) the book this happened to was 1984.

Slowly?

They've topped the walls with electrified razor wire.

The only way to win is not to enter.

nt

This type of policy is why Apple products are off my list of potential options. They want tight control over everything you do.