In a fiery speech given in Arizona tonight, Trump reiterated his stance on immigration, which includes a wall that Mexico will pay for. More than that, Trump laid into the infirmed democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, saying we’re going to enforce the laws of illegal immigrants who’ve evaded justice, just like Hillary Clinton has evaded justice.’
Pardon the fucking graphics on this video, for it was being recorded by an infantile mental asylum patient.
Comments »
I must admit that I was surprised to learn that 90% of the people in the trending news department were liberally biased. That’s almost cult-like numbers. Having never used Facebook for news or given a shit about what the Zuckerberg network had to say about the world, I can comfortably say that I would not miss this product if it were phased out.
From every article I’ve read about the news algos and curation, it’s 100% shit.
This former ‘curator’ confirms my suspicions.
Source: Digiday
Were trending topics “biased?”
I wouldn’t say that it was a systemic problem with biases per se, but there were things in that Gizmodo article that were accurate. Ninety percent of the team identified as liberal, including the copy editors, who essentially had the final approval on topics. If a source came up that may have been less credible to a liberal reviewer — like Breitbart or another publication like that — it would require more extensive secondary sourcing. However, if there was an article that came from a more liberal-slanted publication, it was essentially given less critique and was a more viable topic from the get-go.
Did anything change once the article came out?
Facebook actually put more checks in place to make sure that that wouldn’t happen. And it did kind of stop. They balanced it out in that those liberal publications came under more scrutiny. If there was a topic that could potentially be biased, they would require more eyeballs on it. They made changes to the algorithm itself, so less credible topics wouldn’t pop up into the feed. People paid a lot more attention. The writing style also got drier. Any headline with loaded adjectives, like ‘Hillary Clinton attacked for emails’ or something like that, they were more focused on changing the verbiage.
Was anything exaggerated?
There were things that were bullshit, like how they said we weren’t treated like other Facebook employees. That’s not true, we were treated like anybody else. We could go to the happy hours, participate in the events, people talked with us in the office. We weren’t tucked away in some corner. We got three free meals. But my biggest problem was that while all these perks were great, they pampered us into complacency.
What do you mean?
Most newsrooms have discussions about what’s going on. You don’t just sit on your computer and write with your headphones on all day. When we were on these topics, and I had a question or wanted to get an editor’s opinion, I always felt like I was bothering them. The push toward quotas and producing content didn’t allow for that. You never felt like you were able to voice any considerations. Like, for instance, there were problems with the tool’s tagging feature. There were pre-set keywords, but they were sometimes inaccurate and wrong, and there was nowhere for us to voice that these topics were insufficient.
Was this symptomatic of a bigger issue of communication problems between the trending team and Facebook’s broader culture?
It never seemed like anyone in the company ever actually understood what we did or understand how the topics were curated. There were times when another team was working with a client and they happened to be trending, and they would ask if we could add a video or something because the client expected that. They didn’t get that it would mean breaking that wall between editorial and business. We would sometimes end up acquiescing to their requests and adding that video, and I just felt like that broke journalism ethics.
Wait, sales could influence trending topics?
No. Sometimes we’d get a request saying, “Hey, our client did this and it isn’t trending, can we make it trend?” And the answer for that would be, no, because that’s not how the algorithm worked. You couldn’t just inject a topic after the Gizmodo article came out. In the past, we had the ability to inject news topics, but I didn’t see it happen with any sales requests. The requests we got from them were more like if a topic was already trending, and there was related media or articles, they would request that we add that. But I still felt like that was a break of journalism ethics.
Can an editorial function live within Facebook?
You would essentially have to have them be a completely independent team, where they had full control over the editorial process and didn’t have to answer to anybody at Facebook. It would have to function like a newsroom. Had that gap existed between editorial and the rest of the company, it would have been a more legitimate product. We never felt the support of Facebook behind the product. It was just a little tab, you couldn’t go anywhere, like facebook.com/trending, where you could read all these topics in a feed.
Did that make you feel disposable?
Yes, I expected that we were going to get laid off and had already started applying elsewhere about a month and a half ago. You know how it looks like now? With just a simplified topic and the number of people talking about it? We saw that before anybody else did, and a few of us put two and two together and figured that it was probably how it was going to look like; otherwise, they wouldn’t be testing it on Facebook employees.
So the purpose of the trending team was just to teach the algorithm how to eventually filter the news itself?
I would like to believe that, because that would mean that we actually served a purpose and did something good. But if you’ve used the tool in the last few days, you’d realize that the algorithm didn’t learn shit. The topics are just wrong — they have bad articles and insufficient sources. I think they are just going to get rid of the product altogether, because there is going to be backlash when people who do use the tool realize that the quality has gone down — unless there are severe algorithmic changes that improve the quality of the topics.
These politicians don’t give a shit about the BLM movement, only as far as it will provide them with enough divisive campaigning to win elections. This is a memo from DCCC staffer Troy Perry, who has since resigned from his fucktarded role there in order to help get Hillary Clinton elected.
There are certain ways to talk to a BLM person, none of which should ever mention ‘black on black crime.’ That shit is atomic level hot sauce with no chaser and is sure to get a nice lad or lass from the Democratic party into a world of media hurt.
Oh, and never say ‘all lives matter.’ That’ll really piss them the fuck off and cause them to descend upon you in a savage manner.
source: Guccifer
Comments »
I am going to challenge Cramer’s thesis here, featured in the video below, that the market is insane for following oil lower and that a drop in oil isn’t truly a harbinger of poor economic output anymore because, well umm, technical innovation is causing people to use less crude. My core concern for a sharply lower stock market was never predicated around a pure economic downturn, but a bursting of a gigantic, cataclysmic, trillion dollar energy bubble that was built on the backs of much higher oil prices. I don’t give a shit if companies, like Cramer suggested, have found ways to drill oil cheaply, when the issue here is tied to debt loads and sovereign government that cannot survive or refinance their debt at $40 crude.
If we were to take Cramer’s pollyanna view of energy seriously and suggest that technological innovation is truly advancing at a pace that will decoupled economic output from crude consumption numbers, then our friends in the middle east and the wide swath of energy companies with gigantic debt loads out there are far more doomed than even I previously expected.
They will drill as much and as fast as possible, selling at any price, knowing that prices are heading lower–due to a sweeping drop in demand. It will be like one gigantic margin call where Quatar, Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia and American oil conglomerates all throw oil at the markets at once, in order to unload inventory.
Prices will crash. Banks will get severely ruined. Markets will drop. Economic activity will grind to a halt. The end.
Comments »
I’ve seen this company do this for the past decade and always come out ahead, at the end of the proverbial day. Alongside TEAM, CRM is the best publicly traded software company on the market. But tonight’s earnings were a little soft, in terms of guidance, so investors are bailing on the stock–sending it lower by 8%.
If I’m a long term investor of CRM, there’s no way I am selling on this tepid guide down in guidance. Year to date, the stock is flat for the year, but higher by 17% over the past 6 months.
Comments »
Why would China sit back and watch Europe, Japan and the U.S. enjoy all of the fun, without partaking in some hijinx themselves?
Jefferies is out with a report that says recent actions by the PBOC to expand lending facilities to state owned banks is QE, in a backdoor, secretive fashion.
Essentially, China is increasing the amount of money they’re lending to state owned banks, who in turn take the money to buy Chinese gov’t bonds. China takes the money, says ‘thank you very much’, and then spends it on making fucking islands in the middle of the China Sea.
The analysts say the PBOC has increased lending to state-owned banks, with the latter subsequently snapping up Chinese government bonds aided, in part, by the central bank’s liquidity infusions.
In order to offset the contraction of the PBOC’s balance sheet due to capital outflows and dollar repayments, the central bank engaged in a form of ‘backdoor QE’ in our view. Alongside the introduction of short-term monetary instruments such as Medium-term Lending Facility (MLF) and Standing Lending Facility (SLF), the PBOC has moved away from using conventional interest rate and RRR cuts.
Wei Yao, China economist at Societe Generale SA, adds: “You might not want to call this QE as it’s not a textbook definition, especially since reliance on these new and short-dated instruments, relative to the average-weighted maturity of Chinese government bonds, would expose banks to duration mis-matches.” But she adds that the introduction of new lending instruments should be seen in a bigger context: “The PBOC is transforming its balance sheet to that of a Western central bank by increasing the weight allocated to domestic assets.”
How wonderful.
QE for life. Get in the matrix.
Central banks will continue to conduct QE operations, indefinitely, because they’ve proven to keep yields low, markets high, and the people docile.
Comments »
My favorite part of today’s commentary was when the Prince of the Marinated Iced Cube said Saudi Arabia needed to pull oil out of the ground and sell it at whatever price, because in 10-20 years it might not have much value at all.
Comments »
The catamites in Italy are taking bold steps to fight terrorist threats in the country, foisted upon them by unchecked migration of people from war stricken areas in the middled east.
Starting mid-September, over 500,000 18 year olds in Italy (EU citizens only, thanks) will be eligible to receive vouchers of $500, redeemable at museums, concerts, and cinema.
The fuckery is strong in Italy.
“It sends a clear message — a welcome for those who reach the age of 18 and a reminder of how crucial culture is, both for personal enrichment and for strengthening the social fabric of the country,” Tommaso Nannicini, the official in charge of the program, was quoted as saying last week.
According to the Italian government, the program is also intended to send a message to militant groups. When the scheme was announced last year, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi implied that extremists should be countered not only militarily, but also ideologically. The announcement came days after militant attacks in Paris killed at least 130 people. “They imagine terror, we answer with culture. They destroy statues, we love art. They destroy books, we are the country of libraries,” Renzi reportedly said, referring to a “cultural battle.”
But Italy’s approach is viewed as unprecedented: The government expects to spend about $300 million on the program, depending on how many eligible recipients claim the money. Theoretically, all 18-year-old European Union citizens living in Italy are allowed to apply. The program runs out at the end of next year.
Opposition parties have criticized the scheme as populist, but counterterrorism experts and international observers say it could be more effective than some other past efforts to counter youth radicalization.
Although the program was launched with the declared intent to counter radicalization efforts, the government has since been careful to label it a “culture bonus.”
“It is hard to say what is the best approach. But what we can say is what is the wrong one: a spying system that stigmatizes and excludes people,” Maina Kiai, the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, said in a recent interview that focused on counter-radicalization schemes in Europe.
So, in summary, instead of spying on citizens of Europe, trying to find criminal elements in the country who are intent on blowing up people in cafes, they’re going to hug them, toss flowers at their AK-47s, and send them to the movies–gratis. I am certain that this ‘culture bonus’ is a secret way of tossing money out of helicopters, without actually saying they’re doing it. This is a trial run for a much larger programme.
Comments »
Before you start celebrating the end of the bull market, just know that the government has one more trick up its sleeve: FRIDAY’S JOBS REPORT.
Please recall that it was the May jobs report that got the Fed off the hook of hiking rates. After that report, markets ripped higher on the prospect of a very easy and accommodative policy. Ever since the economy has been showing signs of strength, the fucking assholes who control this market like muppets have been keeping stocks in a very tight range, as if to say ‘go ahead, fuck with me.’
It’s worth noting that the Fed has never hiked rates without the market already pricing it in. It’s not a conspiracy theory to say the Fed is entirely beholden to equity markets and has no power to control policy, without first gaining permission from the stock Gods.
Right now, the market is pricing in a 35% chance of a September hike. El Erian thinks that number is more like 60% and says it will spike to 80%, if in fact the Friday’s jobs report comes in strong.
In short, let’s all pray, in unison, that jobs were lost in the month of August, and that men and women were tossed out onto the scorching hot concrete by employers and told to ‘fuck off’, as their jobs were shipped off to Mexico to lower wage workers. If our prayers are answered, retroactively (extra EU), we will all enjoy splendour and hedonistic ascension in the stocked market.
Comments »
Cramer paints the EU has a low sort of unsophisticated rubes, desperate and craven from cash. David Faber brings up the U.S. Treasury interfering with the proposed PFE-AGN deal and posits the question if the EU was getting revenge on America for that display for retroactive fuckery.
Comments »
