Treatise on Trump

Coming up to a year of enduring the tangerine tyrant aka Orange Blotus, I think it’s time I write about him (also as this blog is meant to have some political stuff in it). Though, I’m not sure what I can say that hasn’t been said already.

In brief, he’s an ultra narcissistic, racist, childish, dimwitted demagogue, snake oil salesman.

I always had a sinking suspicion that he’d win the election. Michael Moore wrote a very good piece outlining five reasons why Trump would win. Trump undermined democracy prior to the election, saying that the election was rigged, and he was right. It was rigged to let him win. The abomination of the electoral college trumped the popular vote. How would supporters of Trump feel, if it went the other way? Hillary was unfortunately a weak candidate, the ongoing email scandal didn’t help, calling potential voters deplorables didn’t either. A major factor was turnout. Bernie Sanders fanatics voted in an absolute fashion. If it’s not Bernie we won’t vote for them. Bernie or Bust. Well, look what you’ve done now. You’ve got someone who’s a million times worse than Hillary would have ever been. I’ve seen figures that it came down to 70,000 votes in three or four states and it would have gone the other way.

Character

Trump lies. A reductive argument would be so does every other politician. But do they lie to the extent and as often that Trump does? Probably not. And it’s obvious when he’s lying. Whether he’s lying about the size of his penis   inauguration crowd or knowing that Flynn lied to the FBI, berating a war widow, whenever he opens his mouth he’ll spit out lies.  How can you take anything he says at face value? He lies even on the most pettiest things, it’s ridiculous. He has accused several people and organisations of spreading fake news, except himself. How ironic.

People often paint Trump as not only a business genius, but an outright one. They say he’s playing “four dimensional chess” – i.e. complicated mind games with the media. Well, I put it to you, he’s doing no such thing and this simulacrum is because the media doesn’t know how to react, to his utter stupidity and barrages of daily denigration. “Trump must have done this for a reason!” They think, trying to keep sane and a shred of dignity. Being belittled by a genius doing it for a higher purpose, is more bearable than having it done by a stupid buffoon. Trump has incriminated/compromised himself multiple times and then lied to get out of it. Stop believing a serial liar. He’s making it up as he goes a long. Take a look at this American embassy moving to Jerusalem debacle. Trump believed he was merely fulfilling his campaign promise to be pro-Israel. He did not understand the ramifications and potential war that he has unleashed. Now Washington is trying desperately to reduce the fallout and wondering why Mahmoud Abbas won’t meet Mike Pence. Improvising worked well for him during the campaign, but it’s not working as well during his presidency.

It is wrong to say that Trump inherited most of his money.  His current self worth, is roughly ~$4bn but he inherited only $200m (that’s according to Marco Rubio, the true figure is not known. Trump says it was a $1m loan others say at least $40m), so he should be commended right? Wrong. Trump would have been richer if he invested in index funds. He has done worse than the stock market, which tends to raise in value over time. He has done worse than other billionaires from the same era. Take a look at Bill Gate’s returns. How did Trump make his fortune? By squeezing his suppliers, underpaying his workers and being a deadbeat. So much so, that the American banks wouldn’t lend to him and he had to go to Europe. Does this sound like the business acumen of a shrewd businessman? No. It’s the behaviour of a loan shark or gangster.
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Podcasts

I consider myself a encapsulated digital audio radio show prelistening podcast connoisseur; I estimate I’ve listened to over one thousand hours worth. It’s an estimate because AntennaPod likes to crash often and lose statistics. The 1st time is crashed, it didn’t have the stats feature. The second time I was at ~500 hours. Now in ~3 months, I’m at 361.3 hours. You may find this quite astonishing but I don’t spend much time doing nothing but listening podcasts, i.e. I’m doing something else most of the time. Whether it’s driving, shaving, cooking, being bored at work, running or using it as a bedtime story there’s a podcast for every situation. Hell I like podcasts so much, I upgraded the car radio so I could listen to them during driving.

I was quite late to the game. As you well know, I wasn’t too keen on smartphones which is probably the best way to listen to them apart from mp3 players with wifi of course. So initially, I tried listening to BrainStuff (which are typically 5 minutes) and then having to close a bunch of browser tabs when they were done. It wasn’t very practical. I also used to download them and put them manually onto my Zen Micro ®, which I remember being a real pain as I couldn’t tell which files needed to be transferred and which had been already. Using Sync would have helped here.
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The problem with the news

The news has many problems, I’ll discuss some of them here.

My biggest gripe is that the news must have balance even when the facts are unequivocal. For example, if climate change is being discused, they’ll get some crackpot who doesn’t “believe” in it to debate some poor scientist. The masses of course without a critical thought in their heads, will assume that the science is not settled and continue believing falsehood. Another example, why do religious groups comment on scientific matters like stem cell research? Why should we give a shit about what some invisible sky magician is purported to have said thousanmds of years ago? Why should we live by the ethics of a thousand or so years ago, today? The beauty of science is that it’s constantly evolving and bettering itself. Religion just assumes it’s right and inserts its fingers in its ears pretending it can’t hear the contrary. This is a double-edged sword however, we don’t want a situation like in America where the broadcast media is biased as is Faux Fox News. The present stance is fine, but where the facts are clear, only have the correct side should speak about it.

Often the BBC will transcribe radio shows as news stories, e.g. From our own correspondent. These often have a very long preamble and the headline only fleetingly refers to the substance of the article. In these cases, I don’t bother reading the article at all or skim it. Often I will not bother reading the end of articles because of the right of reply. The BBC has a habit of putting this at the bottom which is quite good, because it’s easier not to read it. One example is, there’ll be a story about the Tories not adequatley funding the health service. However, the right of reply is a carefully funded PR statement saying words to the effect of “The NHS has never before received this amount of money. The government is committed to ensuring world class care is provided to patients”. Unfortunately, in this time of information warfare, you’d be forgiven for believing the government. Nominally the NHS may be receiving more funding but increasing the budget by for arguments sake 0.1 % amounts to a real terms cut. Couple this with when it has in the past, received budget increases of 5% it is a cut. Imagine if the Nazi’s had PR, I can see the statement now:

The chancellor Herr Hitler utterly refutes allegations of genocide. Herr Hitler is committed to the security of the German people by providing employment, hygiene and the best possible care for the indigenous people of Germany. He is working hard to shape the future of Europe, for a better more equal society.

It is unfortunate that, the newspapers are owned by right wing facist bastards. Rupert Murdoch supposedly only cares about selling newspapers, right wing slants seem to sell so that’s what he gives the public. Paul Dacre on the other hand is a sanctimonius, cantankerous cunt. The cunt of cunts, if you will. He genuininely believes the bile he prints daily, spreading and profiting from fear and hatred. It’s good that print media is in its death throes, however the Daily Heil has amassed the largest newspaper website in the world, by printing so called yellow diarrhea “news”. It’s bad enough, that such newspapers exist but why do television news channels insist on featuring them in their programs? By definition newspapers are yesterday’s news. Broadcast media can surely find their own sources and report on them if they’re newsworthy.

Some sites like The Daily Beast, have an infinite scroll feature where as you finish one story, they’ll put another one up behind it. It is highly effective and keeps you reading. I just want to read the story I opened. Sites are becoming more sensationalized. It’s hardly surprisng, with the amount of competition out there. But even the BBC is doing click bait headlines now.

There is a campaign group called “Stop funding hate”, which encourages proprieters to stop advertising with The Daily Heil and to choke them of advertising revenue. Whilst an admirable aim, it sets a dangerous president as Ian Hislop notes. What’s to stop others from doing the same to left wing newspapers? Advertisers shouldn’t have the power to decide what gets printed. While you’re at it, go for the jugular and just convince people to not buy the paper in the first palce.

Custom term YouTube RSS feed trick

This post will show you how to subscribe to Youtube (YT) channels without having a YT account. You will also be able to subscribe only to videos that match a keyword. For example, say you like “AVGN” videos but don’t care too much for the rest of the stuff on Cinemassacre.

You’ll need an account at IFTTT (If this then that).

Background: YT/Google in their infinite wisdom, decided in 2014 to shut down their RSS feeds. Who needs functionality right? Instead, each channel is its own RSS feed but it isn’t valid.

Step 1 – Get the URL for the channel you want to subscribe to

For cinemassacre aka JamesNintendoNerd this would be https://www.youtube.com/user/JamesNintendoNerd

Step 2 – Get RSS feed URL

We need to make this into a valid feed URL. So head over to a feed validator, in this example we’ll use W3 Schools. So put the URL through the validator and it’ll say the feed isn’t valid, but it’ll spit out an xml URL (an actual RSS feed). Save this for later. In our example, it is https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC0M0rxSz3IF0CsSour1iWmw

The XML feed URL
The XML feed URL

 

Another method is to place the external channel ID at the end of this URL:  http://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=REPLACE_WITH_CHANNEL_ID

Step 3 – Create applet on IFTTT

The UI for this site is not user friendly.

  • Click on ‘My Applets’ then ‘New applet’.
  • Next, click on the blue “+this”.
  • Select RSS feed
  • If you merely want a notification for each new upload regardless
    of video content, select “New Feed Item”.
  • If you want to match a keyword, select “New feed item matches
  • Put in the feed URL from the validator, optional insert keyword.
  • Create Trigger.
  • Now click on the blue “+that”
  • You can choose anything you want for this option. It’s your preference how you want to be notified. We’ll choose email.
  • Select “Send me an Email”.
  • Optional “Complete action fields”. Don’t mess with it too much or it won’t work, the standard boiler plate is often sufficient.
  • Create action.
  • Finish.

Step 4 – Revel in mastery
Congratulations. You are now an RSS expert.