Quoted in Guardian on Twitter Spam

.

I got a passing quote and link in this Guardian technology article: “Why are there no spam or trolls on Twitter?” by Kate Bevan, jumping off from Russell Beattie’s musings on the topic. I would dispute the titles of both articles; there absolutely are spammers (and trolls) on Twitter. The articles do append their praise of the Twitter community with the qualification that spamming and trolling can and do happen on Twitter, but the offenders are less able to impinge upon your attention because of follower-based grouping and customizable and notification settings. Now, I keep email notifications of new followers on, and the results speak for themselves:

Inbox full of Twitter spam

Those are multiple follow notifications from several Twitter accounts registered by toy store affiliates attempting to boost page rank through bogus links across various social networks and content hosts. This was months ago, and till now many of those spam accounts are still up.

In Twitter’s defense, they’re fairly responsive to complaints about spammers on their support forum. In addition, rel="nofollow" is added to all links in the Twitter stream, ReCaptcha is now used in the signup form, and an internal filtering process watches members’ following and blocking activity for indicative patterns. These measures are major improvements from the last time I complained, and they do much to disincentivize link spammers, though I wouldn’t mind a more direct flag-and-report mechanism such as that used by Blogger.

(I’ve talked a lot about Twitter spam, but not about Twitter trolls. That’s because the term in its original internet discussion sense — referring to mischievous users who post inflammatory content with the intent of provocation — is highly subjective and has been diluted over years of online argument to refer to pretty much anyone who expresses disagreement with community groupthink. But I’m sure there’s someone out there on Twitter who’s posting snippets of mean-spirited unpleasantness designed to sow chaos. But, as mentioned, Twitter makes it quite easy to ignore and block those types.)

Ron Paul

.

Well, it didn’t take long for someone to bring up Ron Paul in my post on being liberal. In all candour and with no offense intended to my readers who support him, let me put this as gently as I am able: screw Ron Paul.

He led on his support base of conspiracy-obsessed crypto-racist neoconfederate libertarians with a massive, almost cultlike psuedo-Republican campaign which, to all appearances served mainly to boost “money bomb” income and book sales on a half-baked compilation of old essays, while providing little to no guidance at all to their frothy, wild-eyed PR brainstorming. (Blimps in winter, anyone? NASCAR? The date of the march?)

Ron Paul voted against net neutrality, civil rights, and DC voting rights, stands against the 14th and 16th Amendments, and opposes government regulations concerning food production, telecom standards, environmental conservation, and other forms of protection for consumers and environment. His stand on the war arises mainly from his thinly-disguised paranoia concerning “New World Order” conspiracy theories, so while he occasionally happens to mouth something sounding like common sense on issues of civil liberties, Ron Paul is otherwise well-deserving of the many crazies who have flocked to his banner.

This is all without even mentioning the infamous racist survivalism newsletter that he ran for decades, earning him significant income. He tried to dodge the accusation by saying he rarely wrote or even read his own publication, blaming a ghost-writing staffer whom he would not identify, even though the newsletter extensively referred to him with first person accounts and experiences. So he was either a bumbling,incompetent newsletter publisher who couldn’t even handle his own lying writers — or he was a semi-Nazi racist who really did write denunciations of civil rights, Martin Luther King, Jews, and Abraham Lincoln to appeal to his political fanbase. Either way, not fit to be president, or even to be a congressman.

But still, in the end, despite his archaic economic liberalism, shamelessly corporatist anarcho-capitalism, un-nuanced selective constitutional literalism, and unapologetic conspiracy-driven paranoia, I fully support Ron Paul in his run for the Republican candidacy, and I encourage him to keep the “Ron Paul Revolution” going, right up to November. I’m sure Senators Obama and Clinton feel the same way. Go Ron!

Further reading:

OverRon

Ron Paul Tumblelog

Ron Paul is Your New Bicycle

Ron Paul Survival Report

On the Issues

Oh, all occurrences of the words “Ron Paul” or related terms will be “optimized” in comments for best results. Freedom of expression FTW.

ISS Construction Continues

.

There’s been a flurry of ISS activity in recent weeks, though it has been a while since STS-120, which featured the delivery of Harmony to the ISS and an astronaut’s daring trip to repair a solar panel. The next mission, STS-122, was repeatedly delayed past its scheduled December launch date due to nagging engine cutoff sensor failures, but finally got off the ground in February to deliver ESA’s Columbus lab module.

Last week we saw the launch of ESA’s Jules Verne ATV, an unmanned, automated cargo vehicle designed to ferry fresh supplies to the ISS, then haul off space station junk to a fiery reentry and disintegration. The Jules Verne will spend the next few weeks undergoing various on-orbit tests before docking with the ISS on April 3rd.

Screenshot of NASA TV showing Endeavour docking with ISS Today, the Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-123) docked with the ISS, following a spectacular night launch on Monday. Endeavour brings with it JAXA’s “Kibo” module and CSA’s new advanced robot arm attachment “Dextre.” NASA has heavily promoted the “international” nature of this mission, highlighting participation from US, Canadian, Japanese, European, and Russian astronauts, with people from these countries’ respective space agencies working closely together in space and on the ground. The SSPTS upgrade will also allow the shuttle to stay docked to the ISS for longer periods of time, possibly extending mission duration to a new record.

Following STS-123, only nine shuttle flights will be left in the manifest, one of which will be a Hubble repair mission.

SpaceflightNow’s STS-123 status page is pretty diligent about providing mission updates, and I continue to collect STS-123 videos on SpaceGet. Of course NASA TV is always on; I keep it open all day, so the chatter between the astronauts and mission control makes me feel all space-y.

DC Made Me Liberal?

.

McCain Van Reading up on media feedback to the current crop of US presidentiables, I note that the outraged response to McCain’s primary frontrunner status from the Coulter/Malkin/Limbaugh/O’Reilly set isn’t a reflection of McCain’s relative liberalness so much as it is a sign of the increasing marginalization of that particular brand of fiery right-wing, pro-war, anti-immigration, security-radical politics. McCain’s rise among Republican voters seems to reflect a shift back to something resembling moderate conservatism — and the fact that someone as right-wing as McCain represents “moderate” to conservatives is evidence of just how far towards the fringe the Republican mainstream has shifted through the course of the Bush administration.

MLK Day 2003 But my saying this also signifies to me my own personal political shift. In 2002 I would have described myself as a socially conservative, fence-sitting moderate. Five years of being surrounded by a disenfranchised urban population which went 90% for John Kerry in 2004 and has never voted Republican, and working with smokefree nonprofits actively opposed by free market think tanks in DC — combined with reading Breathed and Tomorrow and Trudeau while watching Iraq and the economy go the way they have — have had an effect. More and more over the last few years I find myself swinging left on issues like war, health care, environment, taxation, welfare, net neutrality, civil unions, and other political wedge issues.

Devil Bush Guy Brandishing his Pitchfork But have I swung left, really? Or was I already a liberal convincing myself I was still moderate? That I once favorably linked this Lileks entry on Michael Moore and President Bush back in 2004 says that my sympathies were friendlier to Bush, while my thoughts on “my antiwar environment,” in retrospect, held conceptions of “liberal” which were more in line with the caricaturish sloganeering of a much-farther-left. The conservative “higher-ground” principles which I appealed to for defense have since shown themselves to be not quite as high-minded as I had thought, especially in light of such issues as faulty intelligence, torture, wiretapping and telecom immunity, the massive slave-built fire-hazard embassy-city, unscrupulous defense contractors, and the price of oil.

IMG_6887.JPG War issues aside, I’ve decided that being liberal is consistent with my values as a Christian and a Baptist: peacemaking, compassion to the poor and oppressed, sharing for the common good, liberty of conscience in the Lord, defense of human freedoms and rights, and a loving testimony of Christ’s love to the world. I find that in this day I am far more equipped spiritually to uphold these values by more fully committing myself to a liberal position, especially when I contrast my perception of the USA as one raised overseas to that of one living and working among the people of DC.

IMG_6411.JPG “What about abortion,” comes the angered cry. Well, I didn’t say I agreed with the Democrats on everything. (That’s one reason I’ve kept my Facebook “political views” set to “moderate” for as long as I have.) And yet, I think a woman should be able to choose and talk to a doctor about it when life and health are at stake, or in the case of a rape pregnancy — and I can hope and pray that such situations never happen where a woman has to make that choice. I think that by standing for a peaceful and just society we can help to eliminate some of the social and economic pressures which can drive women to want to terminate unborn children.

(Oh, and I am also in some disagreement with certain Democrats on the topic of video games.)

Further reading/viewing:

Clouds, Anonymous, Nader

.

Back in my old apartment I would often leave my webcam on the window ledge, pointed up at the sky to record passing clouds as timelapse sequences, the best of which I compiled into a single video:

I uploaded the video to Google, left it open to saving and embedding for anyone who might want the clouds for something, and pretty much forgot about it, neglecting to even post it to my videolog. More than a year later, reading about Project Chanology, (though I’m not much of a suppressive myself beyond the occasional link and snarky comment) I found a video by Anonymous* which, I’m flattered to say, used my cloud time lapses as a dark, sinister backdrop:

The icing on the cake is that Andy Cobbon (of Democrats For Romney fame) combined Chanology parody with biting political commentary to produce this just-as-sinister message to Ralph Nader (caveat: some adult language):

It would appear that the clouds over my apartment have catalyzed a new class of online video meme: the sinister computer-voiced message to [INSERT CULTIC ENTITY OR POLITICAL NUISANCE HERE]. You’re welcome, internet. I’m glad to be of service.

* Contrary to the breathless panic of clueless sensationalists, Anonymous is not a hacker group but rather is everyone. You, me, him, her, we are all Anonymous. That is why we are legion.

USA 193 Intercept

.

Popular in the sensational space news spotlight last week was the Navy’s shootdown of satellite USA 193, internally known as NROL-21, an experimental reconnaissance satellite which suffered post-launch computer failure so it was trapped in a rapidly decaying low earth orbit, and could have crashed with many large parts intact. Carrying a full tank of highly toxic hydrazine, USA 193 may have posed the greatest reentry threat since Skylab and Cosmos 954 — not to mention the [officially denied] possibility of classified reconaissance hardware surviving reentry and falling into the wrong hands. Without a working guidance system on the satellite, DoD decided to disrupt it with a missile, fragmenting it into smaller pieces which would burn up in the atmosphere, and hopefully rupture the fuel tank to disperse the hydrazine before reaching the ground.

DoD announced the mission on February 14th, and launched an SM-3 missile with a non-explosive kinetic warhead on February 21st from the USS Lake Erie in the Pacific — during the lunar eclipse, interestingly enough. The missile hit the satellite, and an explosion was recorded, with several small fragments reentering the atmosphere shortly after, and a small number of other pieces in orbit being tracked. It was a surprisingly efficient one-shot operation: going from notification of the threat to announcement of the mission in less than a month, and from there to a successful strike on an orbital target in just a week. That’s impressive turnaround time for a process of transforming a catastrophic billion-dollar satellite failure into a public relations semi-triumph of James-Bondian technological scope.

More info on the USA 193 operation:

Bye, Jay

.

I just learned that Jay Tan, an old friend from college who’s been having kidney trouble and got a transplant just two months ago, passed away yesterday. He was 32. Jay was in my carpool and we had a close set of mutual friends, but I’ve only seen him once or twice since college, and I didn’t know that he was in broadcasting. It’s a sharp loss of a jovial man with whom we had some good times back in the 90s.

At the same time, another old friend — of mine and Jay’s — from college, Ganns, lost his half-brother in a disturbing murder in Cebu. This is especially hard for Ganns, who suffers these losses right around his birthday. I’ll let him say the rest.

More memories of Jay from Vic, Charo and Gen. We’ll miss you, man.

Your New Bicycle

.

Thanks to Mat Honan for starting it all, but I say that’s it for that. Any new ones will signify a jumping of the shark. So it ends here. Thus saith I. Brownpau has spoken.

More on sites like this one from Kottke and Wikipedia. (Oh by the way, one of the above “bicycle” sites was made by me, and I threw it together in like twenty minutes, but I’m not telling which one it is.)

Travel Roundup, Dec 2007 to Jan 2008

.

Thank you all for putting up with my much-procrastinated-on, retroactively dated, self indulgent travel logging. Here is a quick roundup of everything from the trip before I go back to the regular grind:

Travel Log Entries

Photos

Video

Assorted “in-transit” video clips from my phone and camera, including a trip down EDSA, the Airport Express and Star Ferry in Hong Kong, and takeoffs and landings aboard various 747-400s:


Assorted Travel Clips: Manila, HKG, LAX (Jan 2008) from brownpau on Vimeo.