Nichification Proceeds Apace

I recently joined, and then left, a Facebook group touting the Scholastic books I used to read and enjoy and occasionally buy in elementary school.

Those of the Gen X vintage likely remember this -- getting a book pamphlet; some called it a catalog but that's a bit grandiose -- and trying mightily to convince your parents to part with a few bucks to buy some books. I recall buying a few. I still have at least this one:

Seeing some of the covers of books I read as a kid, remembering I have some of them on my shelf, and seeing a few I remembered passing over time and again was fun.

But the group was, well, a bit anal.

If someone posted a vintage book but it wasn't of a specific Scholastic era, the posts were removed. Someone made a post about Newberry Award winning books, and it was taken down as it was only distantly-related to the specific Scholastic books the page was dedicated to.

There were some fun discussions. A lot of potential to discuss books we enjoyed. But it all came with a rind of prissiness.

I guess I can see the reasoning -- open up too much discussion, not limited to these specific Scholastic books, and you'd lose the flavor of that specific niche. Maybe you'd have a fun page that a lot more people would like to visit and share and enjoy, but the message would be muddled, and in this day and age we can't have that, apparently.

So I left them to their niche. I can babble about books on my own. But it's a shame to see that political balkanization get into books, no matter the reason.

Once Again, Don't Feed the Trolls

So sit a minute and watch this video.

The message, of course, is transparent. But just in case it needs to be spelled out: Don't feed the troll.

If someone's trolling online, don't react. Don't try to debate, because they're not there for debate. They're there to be right.

I forget that sometimes. But it's important to remember.

Even if they're lying or spreading propaganda. Ignore them. The more interaction they get, the more they grow.

I'm mentioning this because I posted a link to this video on a public post that was asking people to chill. But apparently the use of the concept of "troll" offended the original poster, so I was asked to take it down.

Not wanting additional drama in my life, I took it down. But I came here to post it, because the message is strong.

Don't feed the trolls.

Even if they're well-intentioned.

Ah, Internet Drama

I generally try to avoid drama, Internet or otherwise.

But given what the Internet has become these days, drama can be hard to avoid.

Example: I recently joined a Facebook group that looks at animation. It's a wide-ranging group that looks at the craptacular 1970s offerings of Hanna-Barbera to the oddities of animation from behind the Iron Curtain.

A fellow posted an image of an animation cel he'd found and was interested to know if anyone else recognized it. I could see it was clearly Hanna-Barbera, but I wasn't certain I'd seen it before. I did a Google Lens search and it came up as a cel from a show called "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids," which looked like a Scooby-doo ripoff. I'd never heard of the show.

I wasn't certain if the other guy had done such a search, but figured it was worth a shot. Worst they could do was say they'd already done such a search, and move on.

So I posted a response.

I was immediately told that my response was wrong by another postedr, and that the evidence I offered was incorrect.

Not having a dog in the fight, I replied "My bad," and went on.

But the original poster looked at what I offered and agreed with me that it was indeed where the cel came from. And he went on to chastize the other guy for being rude. I didn't think he'd been rude at all. There was a little back and forth, and it appears it's still going on a bit.

I found the episode in question, and it certainly does provide home to the characters in the cell. But man, talk about terrible Hanna-Barbera cartooning.

I mean it's not the rank snobbery I encountered on the 2001: A Space Odyssey Facebook group, but it was starting to feel like it.

"That's Crazy Talk"

Lately, this is all I see on social media:

And it doesn't matter where. Or who's posting. It's everywhere, and practically everyone. Even, sometimes, me.

What was the trigger, or at least what got me thinking about this tonight?

I saw a post about the closure of an asbestos clinic in Libby, Montana.

I didn't really know why the clinic had closed. And, clearly, not many of the posters on the thread knew either. Many assumed it was Trump/DOGE cuts. And, initially, that's what I thought.

Then a poster got on and in a rather unhinged fashion pointed out the clinic had closed because it lost a court case in which it was accused of approving benefits for people who weren't sick -- clearly committing fraud.

The poster who brought this up was unhinged in her response, and equally unhinged as she responded to a fellow who challenged her response. I don't know if he knew the reason for the closure, but it didn't appear to be.

Both of them went on to shout past each other, not acknolwedging the truths being spoken by the other -- industry had certainly hurt this town and those who were sick because of it deserved compensation; but it appeared at least $3 million of that compensation was awarded fraudulently.

Neither one seemed willing to see the others' point.

I was going to jump in, but decided to check facts first. And yes, the court case is true. But neither the person who brought it up or the person who was questioning the closure could see the facts and come to any kind of agreement. That the poster who brought the court case up was shouting conservative dogwhistles all the while didn't help her case, and it appeared those commenting couldn't see past the dogwhistles long enough to consider the truth.

It all makes me want to engage less on social media. Or at least make sure I know what the hell I'm talking about before I post a single word.

More often than not, what Marge says to Kent Brockman on Smartline is pretty apt:

Map of DOOM

The Irish Sun newspaper -- and you have to love anything associated with The Sun because they always bring sensationally fun times -- provided readers/viewers with a map of the parts of the Earth where the Russian Kosmos 482 spacecraft, originally destined for Venus, has a chance to crash.

The map:

I mean, it is accurate. The map does show the surface of the Earth over which the ailing piece of space junk does orbit. So they're not wrong. The lack of precision, of course, is the fun part.

Other sites have a bit more accuracy going for them, such as this one.

They offer some interesting suggested paths; with the third one (bottom) passing pretty much over my city on the 12th, if that's the day it comes down. (Other lines are, top, May 10; middle, May 11). The predicted day is the 10th.

This one, curiously, suggests the probe's parachutes may have deployed in space. Neat.

We're Screwed, Part Infinite

I'm reading "A.I. Superpowers China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order," by Kai-Fu Lee, and I can't decide if the following is a complete self-own or an omen that we are indeed doomed as a species:

From Page 15 of the book:

China's successful Internet entrepreneurs have risen to where they are by conquering the most cutthroat competitive environment on the planet. They live in a world where speed is essential, copying is an accepted practice, and competitors will stop at nothing to win a new market. Every day spent in China's startup scene is a trial by fire, like a day spent as a gladiator in the Coliseum. The battles are life or death, and your opponents have no scruples.

The only way to survive this battle is to constantly improve one's product but also to innovate on your business model and build a "moat" around your company. If one's only edge is a single novel idea, that idea will invariably be copied, your key employees will be poached, and you'll be driven out of business by VC-subsidized competitors. This rough-and-tumble environment makes a strong contrast to Silicon Valley, where copying is stigmatized and many companies are allowed to coast on the basis of one original idea or lucky break. . . The messy markets and dirty tricks of China's "copycat" era produced some questionable companies, but they also incubated a generation of the world's most nimble, savvy, and nose-to-the-grindstone entrepreneurs.

Emphasis in bold is mine.

First off, I don't think there's stigma in Silicon Valley against copying. Everything I've seen in the AI universe is built on shoving copyrighted material into the maws of the large language whatsises.

And you know when this competition ramps up, Silicon Valley will continue that race to the bottom, with scruples being the first thing dumped, if they have any at all anymore.

So if I'm a little less than enthusiastic about how much AI research is being applied, you'll have to forgive me and my scruples. I guess they're getting in the way, but I'm not giving them up for anything.

Do we want thought leaders who have no scruples or ethics? I don't. But I didn't want a president without scruples either, but the masses have brought us that.

Lee clearly regards at worst the lack of scruples as a strength, at best as an advantage to be exploited. If that's what China wants, then I guess China is ethically bankrupt. And the United States isn't all that far behind.

I Am *NOT* Selling Any Cars, I Promise

April 23, an item:

Twice today a very excited yet hard to understand woman from Pennsylvania has called to inquire about the PT Cruiser I have for sale.

I don't have one to sell or give away.

I don't know what's worse: Knowing she's dialed the wrong number twice, knowing she'll probably call again, or that she's looking to buy a PT Cruiser.

Whow knows what's going on? I chalked it up to a misdial, or at least a phone number written down incorrectly.

Then yesterday/today:

I got another call yesterday - this time from Oregon - from another difficult-to-understand woman confused why I denied all knowledge of the car I have for sale.

Whether or not she, too, was in search of a PT Cruiser is unknown.

Someone else from Oregon just called. I had Google screen the call.

And called again. I talked with her a bit this time. She told me "Red Line Auto Sales" on Highway 99 gave her my number.

There is such a business, in Vancouver, Washington . . .

Once, I could chalk it up as a fluke and/or mistake. But with this many calls, I have to wonder: Why are they getting my phone number?

A commonality: Those who have called have thick what I'd call Asian accents, and all are women. I think someone is jerking their chain in possibly a racist manner. Or not. Who knows?

But maybe *this* is why they want PT Cruisers, or at least why the first lady wanted one.

Excited Much?

I have seen a grand total of two of his posts. I shared one of them. Man, are they excited about that.

Reading: Nathaniel Popper's "The Trolls of Wall Street"

"The Trolls of Wall Street" is less interesting for its exploration of the WallStreetBets phenomenon but far more interesting for the glimpses it gives of people living their entire social lives online and being much more interested in chasing money and "disruption" than they are in actually improving upon the entities they regard as corrupt and in need of disruption.

Distrust of mainstream media -- well earned, given mainstream media screw-ups, agenda-pushing and the like -- led to increased trust in social media, which Popper points out is even more ripe for screw-ups and agenda-pushing than the mainstream could ever hope or fear to be.

Distrust of the big Wall Street firms, also well earned, led to increased trust in the likes of Robinhood, which, per Popper, so poorly understood the industry it was disrupting they were confused as to what laws they'd broken when they were fined by government regulators.

And these little zealots have now been unleashed on government, God help us all. Too busy distrusting and "disrupting" that they're not pausing for a nanosecond to learn exactly what it is they're doing and what their activity will lead to.

Tears and revolution, most likely.

So read this book and weep for the species at large.

I wrote about the book here and here as well. Highly recommended reading (the book, not necessarily my posts).

Roots of Modern Trolling

 

I'm just over 60 pages into Nathan Popper's "The Trolls of Wall Street," and so far I'm most struck by Popper's description of one of the founders of Reddit's Wall Street Bets subreddit, a central focus of the book, and associated other unerdlinings of the Internet that have led to some not-so-nice places.

I don't know how old the guy is, but I suspect post-Millennial. From the book:

There had always been something of a split between the different sides of Jaime's personality: the class clown and the theater nerd, the party guy and the intellectual, the wonk who liked the options matrix and the trader who enjoyed big risks. He had learned to reconcile the conflicts - or at least repress the more boisterous side. He knew the rowdy young man in him wasn't so welcome in the polite society of the modern world . . .

. . .The conversation in the chat room made it clear that this little community was providing something of a similar release for many of the other regulars. They would jokingly recount the police conversations they had all day as they kpet it together at work. Jamie and outsquare and several others generally put some limits on the freewheeling spirit. They did not fully give in to the worst impulses of he locker room and often made fun of the homophobia and misogyny that still permeated so many traditionally male environments. INdeed, part of the reason the chat room was so attractive was that it gave them a new kin of masculinity that didn't just focus on macho bravado. . .

Boys being boys, you might say.

But a bit later:

But WallStreetBets also played directly into a rising current of defiant young men who had been energized by the political currents roiling the American scene in 2015. During the final years of the Obama presidency as progressive movements like Black Lives Matter gained steam, 4chan gave voice to a growing group of angry young men who were unhappy about their own diminished place in the world and angry that Obama seemed to be elevating the political priorities of women and various underrepresented minority groups. This swirl of anger and activity led to a new universe of online communities taht catered to the young men who did not see their interests represented anywhere else.

We'd do well to remember life and politics and economy are not zero-sum games; gains for one don't have to come at the expense of another. But we seem prone in politics and nature to continue to fall for this fallacy. Giving in to baser influences or feelings doesn't elevate -- well, it might temporarily, but rarely for long and never for good. So maybe I worry less about the time I spend on Facebook exchanging MASH and Simpsons quotes with my friends, as long as I'm getting other stuff done in the real world and not betting butthurt that my need aren't the center of everyone's lives.

The "Official" Stupid -- It Burns

The official stupid coming from the Department of Energy is so toxic it burns. 

Folks, Dictionaries Exist and Highways Sometimes Change Direction, but Not Orientation

I really try to drive home to my students that if they don't recognize a word, or know the meaning of it, or are seeing a word used in a context they're not familiar with it, the first thing they should do is look the word up in a dictionary.

I do this all the time, and I learn a lot. Some words I think I know the meaning of I see in a different context that makes me question my thinking. So I look the word up and see that it is indeed being used in the correct context and that my understanding of the word was only partially correct. Thus armed with better information, the next time I see that word I recognize it's being used correctly. Or not, depending on how it's being used.

Local folks could do well to remember this essential life skill, viz:

In this case -- two cases, actually; one discussing a fiery pileup in a freeway tunnel in Wyoming, and this one discussing a plane crash in Canada, East Idaho News (and the Associated Press) were using casualty correctly: Anyone hurt or killed in an accident. A fatality, of course, means those killed.

But people have been really spun up in thinking they know the ONLY way the word casualty is used is to mean a person who was killed. And no amount of correcting, from EIN nor from their viewers who know the full meaning of the word, corrected the individuals who insisted it was being used incorrectly. A few of them, when shown the dictionary definition, doubled down on their thinking rather than admitting they were learning something new.

A fair number of commenters found this response to be condescending which, of course, it is not. I love the guy who jumped into the comments and defined condescending "for the folks at home." Now, that was condescending. And hilarious.

I was kind of sad to see EIN give up on this. They should keep using the word and encourage their viewers to open a dictionary now and again. But clearly they decided this wasn't a hill they want to die on.

I'm waiting to see if they remain committed to the true concept that US Highway 20 -- which stretches from Boston to Seaside, Oregon, in an east-west directon -- is indeed an east-west highway, despite the fact that in our neck of the woods it is oriented in a north-south direction, much to the consernation of local folks who can't fathom that a tiny little jog in an east-west highway doesn't mean it should be talked about as a north-south highway. Highway 20 below passing through Idaho in clearly an east-west orientation, with the north-south jog that *really* confuses local folks to the point they're convinced it's incorrect when the news refers to an accident occurring in the "eastbound" or "westbound" lanes.

I'm certain it's only a matter of time before EIN gives up on this hill too, rather than have to listen to the whiners on social media.

Outrage Machine -- A Review

I remember reading Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody" when the Internet was a relatively new thing, and enjoying the optimism. Since then, as I've watched the general decline of social media, I've often wondered how he'd update that book. Maybe he would have come up with "Outrage Machine." Maybe not. But I think a follow-up needs to be made that's better than this one.

Tobias Rose-Stockwell does an admirable job explaining to the layman what's occurred with social media to lead to the mess we've seen today. His solutions, however, are pedestrian and a bit disappointing if you ask me. On an individual basis, if applied, they could work fine. On a collective basis, it just leaves the public square even more open to the shouters, liars, and droolers. I'm all for individual action, but I think we're to that point that some kind of collective action is needed to claw the public space back from the crazies and the profiteers.

Absent in this book is any discussion with the social media titans about what they could do to help fix the problem. He appears to say the genie is out of the bottle and shrugs his shoulders at those in power doing anything to fix things. That's a serious flaw that permeates the book. What he suggests social media users do is fine -- although his solutions also have their flaws -- but dumping it all in the lap of social media users seems cowardly.

Fortunately, I have other guidelines I'm putting in place to help fix my social media interactions. This book is a small part of it, yes, but it's not much more than general advice without a call to action on the part of social media companies. Industrial polluters get CERCLA and RCRA, while social media polluters apparently get a "Get out of Jail Free" card from this author at least.

I tried summing up his solutions here, and I've added a few comments of my own:

Rose-Stockwell writes: "There are a handful of things we can do as humans to detoxify our relationship with online outrage, and our interactions with it online. Each of these are specific solutions that can help us reclaim portions of emotional agency that we have lost in recent years. Remember that this isn’t just for us: by reducing our participation in the broken system of outrage profiteering and manipulation, we are actually helping reduce the overall levels of toxicity that exist in the world today – the stuff that our friends, family, and neighbors all feel."

His solutions, summed up:

1. Limit your time on social media.

A. Delete apps

B. Aggressively unfollow and block specific accounts that share the kind of content that make you regret time spent on social media. (This one assumes that the social media companies comply with your requests. I have my doubts they’re doing that anymore. It’s like playing whack-a-mole. Get rid of one and two more pop up in its place. I have to hunt to find stuff from my friends in my feed anymore; what’s there is clutter in the form of ads, sponsored posts, stuff I have to aggressively block, and more ads.)

a. I’m going to throw in a condition: unfollow and block groups first, people you know only in online spaces second, and people you know online and in meat space dead last, if at all. Severing a relationship with a group won’t affect the group at all. Severing a relationship with an online-only acquaintance likely won’t amount to much ire, if they notice at all. Blocking people you know in meat space affects meat space, and that’s bad news in my book.

C. This is one I’m adding on my own as is something I’ve noticed in real life. Consider which device you use gives you the best social media experience, and use that device as your exclusive social media access point. I have three devices I use to regularly access social media: A desktop computer, a Kindle Fire, and a smartphone (if the brand makes a difference, it’s a Samsung). The Kindle Fire offers me, for some reason, the worst social media experience, burying my friends’ content and offering up a lot of fluff that I either scroll by or aggressively delete. The desktop computer is better than the Kindle, but by far I have a more positive experience on my smartphone. I don’t know what the difference is, as I don’t have setting set any different device to device.

2. Go on a news diet

A. Recognize we have an “optimal dosage” for news that should not be exceeded.

B. Rely more on straight news from straight news sources, rather than opinion pieces. (I’ll add: Ensure those news sources are in the business of producing straight news, rather than relying on meme sites, random folks on social media passing on “news” or pretending to be news outlets themselves.)

3. Disagree better, not less.

A. Take disagreements into offline conversations.

B. Don’t insult beliefs.

C. Don’t assume other peoples’ motives.

D. Get curious about their beliefs. Find out if they’re operating from care, fairness, loyalty, sanctity, authority, or liberty.

E. Find common values and compare apples to apples. If, for example, they’re operating from a point of view of care, demonstrate how you also are operating from that same point of view.

4. Lead with love.

5. Recognize you’re running your own algorithm in your head, and it may be as flawed as the ones being run on social media.

The thing I appreicate the most about this is that, if followed, these principles can at least slow down our automatic responses on social media and maybe convince our brains to either be more thoughtful in our comments or not comment at all.

But the flaws remain in that the crazies and the loud shouters will still be able to dominate social media unless the social media companies are required to claw back some of the civic real estate that's been ceded. I don't see that happening in a million years.

Anyone interested in reading a much better take on solutions, go here.

My Perfect Sunk Cost Fallacy

For reasons, I found myself in need of a current resume earlier this week.

As many would, I first searched the Indiana Jonesesque pile of paper and electronic files I have amassed to see if I could find a past resume I could start with, but I came up with nothing.

So as many would afterward, I turned to the Internet to find a resume template.

My internet search led me to myperfectresume.com. I looked that site over, and a few others, before I went back to them to build a resume.

They make the job pretty easy, providing templates and even offering artificial intelligence services to write for me (hard pass on that, thankyouverymuch).

I spent probably an hour on the resume. Then I tried to download it.

Should have seen this coming: They wanted me to sign up for a subscription service in order to do so. Hard pass.

Sure, it wasn't all that much money. And I had spent that hour on their website making the resume. The good ol' Sunken Cost Fallacy popped up hard.

So I took screenshots and redid the resume in Microsoft Word and it didn't cost me a penny.

But myperfectresume.com has my email address. So this kind of thing is ongoing:

(Sorry for the blurriness. I wanted to capture their email in one image, so it's been blown up a bit here. Maybe it'll look better when it's published.)

Clearly, putting the hand out is something I should have expected from them. And putting it at the end of the process certainly brings in the sunk cost concept -- I've already invested time in building a resume, and I can see it there it's all done and pretty and I really want to be done with this, so give in and give them money is the end result. Except I didn't.

Unsubscribing now, of course.

And even in the unsubscribing the sunk cost arises: They warn me potential employers won't be able to contact me through their service. As if employers are trolling through myperfectresume.com for potential hires.

Silence is What?

After I watched "Room Service," the last of the Marx Brothers movies I bought over the weekend, I decided to watch one of the shorts included on the DVD, a Daffy Duck cartoon titled "The Daffy Doc."

It's from Daffy's manic period, with lots of woo-hooing going on throughout. In addition to including some Carl Stalling music I recognized from one of my CDs but had never heard in context with a cartoon, it also included Daffy holding up the following sign, after the surgeon he was assisting asked for quiet in the operating theater:

I have no idea what "foo" means, and after some internet searches, I'm pretty sure no one really grasps the concept.

I did find this blog post from a fellow curiosity-seeker.

It seems to be a pretty comprehensive exploration of the foo phenomenon, though he conflates foo with "foobar," which is actually FUBAR in the context used on the post, but that's excuseable if you've never seen FUBAR in print. FUBAR is mentioned in the dubious "entymology of foo" document linked in the post, as is FOOBAR. Still, I think there's a mixup. Some of what's discussed in the post is due to an author working to capture a dialect in print, so it may not necessarily have any relationship to the word in Daffy's sign.

This dictionary entry adds a bit to the definition, bringing in Australian slang (they wrote "Foo was Here," rather than "Kilroy was Here."

This artificial intelligence roundup (a good use of AI, I think) of definitions is also helpful:

Just some weird little bit of late '30s slang that had a moment in the sun, then disappeared, I suppose.

Why Am I Doing This?

When I started this blogging year, I made it a goal to hit an average of 20 posts a month.

There's one month left in 2024, and I have thusfar made that average with a little bit of a cushion:

December brings a few expected posts, including a recap of the books I've read for the year, and a few other things that repeat year to year, so I'm fairly confident I'll meet my goal.

Why bother blogging? Partly, my blog is a journal where I record things that happen to me and my family. Partly because I've been doing it since 2008 and feel like keeping it going, even if I never hear from anyone about it. I guess I'm doing what I can to fight the dead internet theory. Also, I haven't had a year with more than 200 posts since 2012, and that feels like a lifetime ago.

Floating around in the ethers somewhere is another blog I started earlier, but lost track of somewhere along the line. And if the Wayback Machine ever gets back up and operational, there's some stuff there from me from the mid-1990s. (Looks like it *is* operational; I had heard they'd suffered some kind of massive cyberattack and were offline.) I'm an internet fossil. The stuff I did at the University of Idaho was just me dabbling with HTML. They gave us a limited amount of storage space for stuff, and I do recall getting an email from them saying I'd hit my limit, but they decided to give me more space. Not that I was producing magnificent stuff, but I did have a fair bit put up there.

That's a Little Embarrassing, Aithor.

Making it look easy by having a blown up image of an Aithor ad on his screen. While eating doughnuts and rocking out to music over his headphones.

This guy is SOOOOOO COOOOOOOOL.

And yeah, I know it's for an ad, and given the product, we're not exactly looking for quality here. But it's fittingly embarrassing for the product, so I like it.

HIDE ALL COMMENTS

Note 1: There are 261 comments on this post.

Note 2: I have requested that Facebook display all comments.

Note 3: Sudowrite is so embarrassed by what people are saying about their artificial intelligence novel writing service that they're suppressing every single comment on their post.

I don't know if Note 3 expresses the truth, but that's certainly what it feels like.

Again, there are no shortcuts or quick fixes.

The Tells of AI Writing

Universities are working at the speed of, uh, universities, to help teachers counter students submitting work completed by artificial intelligence.

Students, of course -- at least those looking for shortcuts -- are on AI's bleeding edge, using all sorts of AI tricks to make their "work" easier.

But here's the thing: Detecting artificial intelligence writing is pretty easy, even without AI detectors.

I'm not going to reveal my secrets here. First because there are likely developers on the bleeding edge of AI who are already aware of AI's weaknesses, but also because in case they're not, I don't want to aid and abet. But AI writing is obvious on its face, and is mediocre writing at best.

Part of me wants to continue calling out students who use artificial intelligence to write their essays.

A growing part of me, however, is leaning toward just grading the AI writing and giving students the grades they've earned with their "writing."

Not necessarily Fs, of course, because AI isn't that bad. But it's not churning out A level work. Or even B level work. And in many cases, barely C level work. So use AI in my classes, and you're going to get the grade you deserve, whether I "detect" your use of artificial intelligence or not.

Agreed, that's not what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to fail those students, report them to the university and all. But I'm not sure that works to deter the behavior, even if they get expelled from the university. But getting mediocre grades for AI writing -- and consistently mediocre grades, time after time -- might make them think about how good AI is.

And maybe I'm fooling myself. Could be. But it's more entertaining that way.

Nogoodniks

When I opened Facebook Monday Morning, first thing I was was an anti-Kamala Harris screed posted on the official Pickles comic Facebook page.

Unlike the commenters on the post - aghast the comic's author would inject politics onto a page usually reserved for gentle comedy - I knew the page had been compromised and taken over by a political propagandist.

Brian Crane, former owner of the compromised Facebook page, apologized to his readers and expressed frustration that it appears he won't be able to regain control of an online community built over years. He uses the phrase "nogoodniks," which brings to mind Russian propagandists, but who knows what's going on.

If this is the kind of thing you have to stoop to to get your message out, your message, to me, is worthless. This propagandist found a way to take over a Facebook page with a big reach. The people doing this obviously have an agenda, and it's not one that favors good faith political discourse, but is propaganda pure and simple. They're bad actors, whether you agree with the "message" or not.

If you condone this type of action to spread a message you agree with, you are part of the problem. We should not nod in unison with a message we agree with when the message is put out on social media in a deceitful manner.

Which, of course, makes Facebook part of the problem. They may not condone it, but appear either powerless to stop it or, as I suspect, no longer have humans at the tiller.

I engage very little with the political end of social media, particularly with that posted by people or organizations I don't know, because my cynical nature leads me to believe the vast majority of political content on social media is propaganda put out by bad actors.

Then crap like this shows up: People trying to profit off of his creative work.