Friday, September 6, 2019
Chiara Ferragni
See Hollywood Reporter, "Documentary Charting the Rise of Instagram Star Chiara Ferragni Debuts in Venice."
And at Drunken Stepfather, "CHIARA FERRAGNI NIP SLIP OF THE DAY."
Megan Parry's Friday Forecast
Here's the hot Ms. Megan, at ABC 10 News San Diego:
Democrats Go Off the Rails
In any case, at Legal Insurrection, "CNN’s 7-Hour ‘Climate Change’ Town Hall was a man-made disaster for Democrat presidential candidates."
Ok, so NO nuclear, NO coal & NO oil & gas. Electric’s ok, but all power plants that run on coal or natural gas (most of them) will be shut down too. Planes, I guess, will run on Pixie dust & you’ll put a windmill on the hood of your car. This is not serious; it’s empty politics. https://t.co/xaQiiD2QE6— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 6, 2019
Front Row Joes
It's a life-blood thing, and it's amazing.
At WSJ:
One 64-year-old retiree who has attended more than 50 Trump rallies says she keeps going because she trusts only the president to deliver her the news. “How else would I know what’s going on?” Great @MichaelCBender read on the Trump rally diehards: https://t.co/6K83rqm2iU
— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) September 6, 2019
Thursday, September 5, 2019
Joe Biden's Eye Fills With Blood (VIDEO)
This man's got major health problems, dang!
At the Other McCain, "Joe Biden’s Slow-Motion Implosion."
Uh, hey guys. Joe Biden’s eye filled with blood while onstage at the CNN town hall.
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) September 5, 2019
This is not a photoshop: pic.twitter.com/kJRHxMP8wc
'Jumper'
Third Eye Blind.
Pretty Woman
Van Halen
8:43am
Don't You Want Me
Human League
8:39am
Starlight
Muse
8:34am
Life In The Fast Lane
Eagles
8:22am
Vacation
The Go-Gos
8:19am
In Bloom
Nirvana
8:15am
Just Like Heaven
Cure
8:11am
Paradise City
Guns N Roses
8:05am
PARADISE CITY
GUNS N ROSES
8:04am
Jumper
Third Eye Blind
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Chaos Excitement
From Thomas Edsall, at NYT, "The Trump Voters Whose ‘Need for Chaos’ Obliterates Everything Else":
Opinion | The Trump Voters Whose ‘Need for Chaos’ Obliterates Everything Else - The New York Times @Edsall with an insightful & frightening column that should inspire all of us to reform our politics to foster true democracy https://t.co/ffGOiH9S3D— Sal Albanese (@SalAlbaneseNYC) September 4, 2019
Over the four years during which he has dominated American political life, nearly three of them as president, Donald Trump has set a match again and again to chaos-inducing issues like racial hostility, authoritarianism and white identity politics.More.
Last week, at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, the winner of the best paper award in the Political Psychology division was “A ‘Need for Chaos’ and the Sharing of Hostile Political Rumors in Advanced Democracies.”
The paper, which the award panel commended for its “ambitious scope, rigor, and creativity,” is the work of Michael Bang Petersen and Mathias Osmundsen, both political scientists at Aarhus University in Denmark, and Kevin Arceneaux, a political scientist at Temple.
It argues that a segment of the American electorate that was once peripheral is drawn to “chaos incitement” and that this segment has gained decisive influence through the rise of social media.
“The rise of social media provides the public with unprecedented power to craft and share new information with each other,” they write. In the political arena, this technological transformation allows the transmission of a type of information that portrays “political candidates or groups negatively” and has “a low evidential basis.” The “new information” transmitted on social media includes “conspiracy theories, fake news, discussions of political scandals and negative campaigns.”
The circulation of this type of information (which the authors label “hostile political rumors”) has been “linked to large-scale political outcomes within recent years such as the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
On a less cataclysmic level, the authors’ analysis helps explain the intensity of anti-establishment voting that drove Trump’s successful takeover of the Republican Party in the 2016 primaries.
The authors describe “chaos incitement” as a “strategy of last resort by marginalized status-seekers,” willing to adopt disruptive tactics. Trump, in turn, has consistently sought to strengthen the perception that America is in chaos, a perception that has enhanced his support while seeming to reinforce his claim that his predecessors, especially President Barack Obama, were failures.
Petersen, Osmundsen and Arceneaux find that those who meet their definition of having a “need for chaos” express that need by willingly spreading disinformation. Their goal is not to advance their own ideology but to undermine political elites, left and right, and to “mobilize others against politicians in general.” These disrupters do not “share rumors because they believe them to be true. For the core group, hostile political rumors are simply a tool to create havoc.”
And the abstract from the research paper:
The circulation of hostile political rumors (including but not limited to false news and conspiracy theories) has gained prominencein public debates across advanced democracies. Here, we provide the first comprehensive assessment of the psychological syndrome that elicits motivations to share hostile political rumors among citizens of democratic societies. Against the notion that sharing occurs to help one mainstream political actor in the increasingly polarized electoral competition against other mainstream actors, we demonstrate that sharing motivations are associated with ‘chaotic’ motivations to “burn down” the entire established democratic ‘cosmos’. We show that this extreme discontent is associated with motivations to share hostile political rumors, not because such rumors are viewed to be true but because they are believedto mobilize the audience against disliked elites. We introduce an individual difference measure, the “Need for Chaos”, to measure these motivations and illuminate their social causes, linked to frustrated status-seeking. Finally, we show that chaotic motivations are surprisingly widespread withinadvanced democracies, having some hold inup to 40 percent of the American national population.
Kirsten Dunst is Killing It!
At Drunken Stepfather, "KIRSTEN DUNST IS STILL INCREDIBLE OF THE DAY":
KIRSTEN DUNST is killing it on her new show, and not because she’s a 40 year old mom, with a mom body and a set of mom tits, but because she’s actually fucking good. It’s nice to see some of the “OLD GUARD” come back into the mix and have their breakout, or comeback performance that they will either be remembered by, or reminded of….
She is pretty much the last generation of talent that had to break through on an industry level...
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Whoopi Goldberg Goes Off on Debra Messing (VIDEO)
At the Daily Beast, via Memeorandum, "Whoopi Goldberg Goes Off on Debra Messing: ‘You Don’t Have the Right!’."
Monday, September 2, 2019
Lia Marie Johnson
At Celeb Jihad, "LIA MARIE JOHNSON MAKES HER DEBUT."
May 18th🥂 pic.twitter.com/ygBWZDLKQ8
— Lia Marie Johnson (@LiaMarieJohnson) May 8, 2018
Billie Eilish Erupts at Nylon Germany
Billie Eilish calls out 'Nylon Germany' over weird CGI cover https://t.co/bIrrBf2HDk pic.twitter.com/1K5tq675si— SPIN (@SPIN) August 31, 2019
"what the fuck is this shit" https://t.co/Umi8LMivvM— Exclaim! (@exclaimdotca) August 30, 2019
Nylon America is a different company than Nylon Germany and we strongly disagree with their decision to appropriate Billie Eilish's image without her consent. Nylon America is very sorry to Billie and her fans.
— NYLON (@NylonMag) August 30, 2019
My oldest son loves her, of course.
Here's a review from July, at LAT, "Billie Eilish, music’s biggest anti-pop star, returns home a hero."
Jennifer Delacruz's Holiday Forecast
And here's the hot Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Pete Buttigieg Was Rising. Then Came South Bend's Policing Crisis
At McClatchy, via Memeorandum, "plans to beef up campaign staff."
And NYT:
Pete Buttigieg Was Rising. Then Came South Bend’s Policing Crisis. https://t.co/cpVPX0dUCR— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) August 31, 2019
Beto F%!#*ing O'Rourke!
Sad.
Yeah, he f%!#*ing did, alright? 🤷♂️🙄 #Beto https://t.co/aatPmTMN2p
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) September 2, 2019
Beto O’Rourke is having a moment (again.) It stems from tragedy — the horrific mass shooting in his hometown of El Paso — but there it is. A rare and sorely needed chance for a do-over of sorts. https://t.co/aoNlWfbWz9
— Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) August 29, 2019
Sunday, September 1, 2019
Fresno's Racist Past
At LAT:
“The white girl whose behavior is at the heart of Fresno’s current racial debate remains on the cheer squad. The black girl who blew the whistle has been pulled out of school by her fearful mother” Blackface video raises ghosts of racist past https://t.co/QK0xlkKTix @marialaganga
— Hailey Branson-Potts (@haileybranson) September 1, 2019
Zoë Quinn Drives Game Maker Alec Holowka to Death
Death by ‘Social Justice’: Zoe Quinn Drives Game Maker #AlecHolowka to Suicide: https://t.co/QkihqzZLd2: Via @PatriarchTree
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) September 1, 2019
#SJWs #RadicalLeft 🤨 pic.twitter.com/cJq2piZ2Vc
This is what Mr. Holowka had to say about Zoe a few years ago. Too bad no one stood up for him when it counted.
— Ethan Ralph (@TheRalphRetort) September 1, 2019
Now he's dead and that crowd is back to blaming everyone but themselves. (h/t @GamesNosh) #ZoeBodyCount pic.twitter.com/HYZFSvI1rv