Quarantine Projects

  

- Figure out how you are going to spend your stimulus money

- Do a gigantic complicated jigsaw puzzle (like Terry and Barbara)

- Re-read and bowdlerize your teenage diary/journal

- Use some creative accounting on your 2019 taxes

- Dig up and prepare your summer garden

- Sort through and clean out your socks’ drawer

- Keep close tabs on all the virus statistics

- Make a birdhouse or two

- Sharpen your kitchen knives

  - Do Zoom calls with your old classmates

- Roll up all those mayonnaise jar coins

- Write the great American novel

- Binge-watch all the old English sailing war-ship movies

- Read and even compliment the Fletcher’s Castoria blog

Mini Mike Offer

Seeing as how the Bloomberg campaign is now throwing money around, I have a proposal for them — for a million dollar donation to the Potts Family Foundation, I will refrain from publishing any more Bloomberg hit pieces on this blog. And, furthermore, for an equivalent amount in Bitcoin paid directly to me, I will herein offer six puff pieces between now and November.

So, dear reader, you can track my financial fortunes by what you soon read here about Mini Mike.

Fractured Definition

Control — one who lives under a bridge and always leaves negative comments on your blog

Line of Sight

"Does it matter losing your sight? Think of all the wonderful work done for the blind." -- Siegfried Sassoon

Your blogger has a confession to make -- I am losing my sight. I have macular degeneration and my vision is getting progressively worse. This probable genetic condition involves scarring of the macula, the center portion of the retina, which causes portions of what one sees to either  disappear or be distorted. Thus I must write these blogs on an IPad from which I can blow up this text to a readable size. Apparently there is no current cure for this malady and one can hopefully only slow its progress by taking certain vitamins. I have no idea how long I have ... nor do the doctors ... until I need to buy a white cane. So, if I suddenly stop producing this bloggish nonsense, you should surmise that this vision flaw has finally overwhelmed me.

Then I think that there might be a number of readers who say it serves me right for supporting The Donald ...

Strange!

Hits on Fletcher's Castoria Blog

Sometime around Thanksgiving last year the user hits on this blog suddenly jumped from about 110  per day to about 350 hits per day ... roughly tripling. The source of this dramatic jump was at first Russia, but it quickly shifted back to the United States. And the pattern of these hits is quite regular ... syncopated if you will ... and is continuing ... see the above chart of hits on this blog during the last day. Strange!

I have been scratching my head about this sudden and regular change in referencing rates to this blog and can only conclude one thing -- that a bot, or some automated software agent, is regularly generating 35 or so references to this site roughly every three hours night and day, every day. The next question is why?

My guess is that this bot is generating regular hits to this blog ... and probable attempted  click-throughs on contained ads --- which is also strange since, as you may have noticed, there are no revenue-generating ads on this blog ... which means that I could be grabbing some nice pocket change by doing so. (I consciously opt not to.)  And why might this bot be doing this? To me, I can only conclude that this is an attempt to inflate the appearance of click-throughs to either the placers of these (non-existent) ads ... or their surrogates. I do know that there have been suggestions that there are shenanigans in this possible phony ad revenue generating process on the Internet ... see: Bloomberg Article.

Are search sites or social media sites fudging things to inflate their ad revenue numbers from unsuspecting advertises? I suspect that, at some point soon, we will learn some disturbing revelations.

Are we in another Internet bubble?

Afterthoughts: You would think the designers of this assumed bot wouldd randomize the intervals and the number of hits generated? Or do they assume we are all tech illiterate? And will they stop referencing this blog site when the figure out that there are no ads here?

Methbot

Back in early July, I noticed an unusual number of hits to this blog coming out of the small island of Mauritius ... then later in the month this activity shifted to Russia. At the time I attributed this surge to political intelligence gathering by the Ruskies ... see: From Russia with Love. Next my Verizon e-mail account was tagged for issuing spam ... all very suspicious! In a few weeks this spurt of Russian activity disappeared and I assumed I had been tasted by the bear and spit out.

Not so fast oh naive one ... for the Russian surge has returned in the last few weeks and today I think I found out why. It seems that there is a grifting group in Russia (and Mauritius too?) that are using a robotic Internet agent called "Methbot" that runs around the Internet referencing sites to artificially run up advertising revenue for some mysterious third party ... see: Fortune Magazine Story. I'm not sure that this is the bot jazzing up the impressions on this site but I am reasonably sure it is a bot because of the syncopation and magnitude of the references. And I also am seeing more originating in the United States of late. And all this for this blog that does't carry ads!!

The site of this blog is run by Google (in a rather haphazard and unprofessional manner). I would like to believe that the software and network talent at Google would be able to thwart such scammers. But maybe the technical talent there does not match their reputations or compensation? Or maybe all this phony bot ad revenue also benefits Google too? (We're talking about as much as two billion dollars of fake annual ad revenue from this one bot.) Just maybe the disincentive just isn't there ...

And just maybe Methbot was used to throw the presidential election? (Tongue in cheek.)

Stranger Than Fiction

A number of years ago there was an appealing television program titled "Third Rock from the Sun" starring John Lithgow. It's premise was that three aliens had landed on Earth and were reconnoitering it for future takeover. Their naïveté in dealing with many of our customs and mores offered ample opportunity to vamp and mock our culture.

Now a friend of mine has also offered up this kind of social commentary in a blog titled, Stranger on Your Planet. He, being a bit of a curmudgeon, also can create interesting scenarios under which he can castigate his neighboring planet-mates. I recommend that you take a look ... you will be entertained.

I have also placed a link to his site in my "Links" list to the left of my blog text. Enjoy!

Comments

Pretty much one of the few people who comments on this blog is a wag who goes by the handle, DEN. And although this Fletcher's Castoria blog averages over one hundred hits a day, this same fellow claims that this large readership coupled with the dearth of comments is only because of all the labels I attach to each entry. This in turn causes random searchers around the world to find their way here.  (Possibly so ... but I  do see definite geographic patterns in my audience.)

However, I have another theory ... spawned from my oversize ego ... and that is my writings often cross the boundary of what many readers want to admit are their own private views (some may even admire Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin) ... yet are currently socially unacceptable in polite company. Ergo, my audience finds vicarious escape in reading those opinions which they would rather not admit to publicly ... and thus are loath to comment on.

Then again, I could be wrong.

(Notice that DEN seldom writes a comment that agrees with my expressed sentiment.)

Feel free to support or disagree with my loopy ideas with your comments ... and prove DEN wrong.

Pulling No Punches

On the anniversary of 9/11 and in the midst of battling some unspecified health problems, W. Lewis Amselem, the writer of the Diplomad 2.0 blog and long-time career U.S. diplomat, has let go with both barrels in his latest post. Apparently President Obama’s equivocating about the true nature of ISIS/ISIL and President George W. Bush’s statement that Islam is a “religion of peace” has caused this clear-eyed writer to pick up his poison pen to state unequivocally that our centuries-long battle is with Islam … not radical Islam or Jihadis … but with Islam itself. He says: 

The war with Islam did not begin September 11, 2001. It began some 1400 years ago and continues. That September 11 was just a reminder that we live in a world of Islamic war..

If you are of a mind to confront this type of unvarnished reality, I suggest that you read his post here: Year Thirteen in a 1400-Year War, the other posts referenced therein, and the attached comments. I know we “heathens” all like to shrink from the realization that there might be legions of people who, to various degrees, might like to kill us (or to join with them). The Diplomad, even in his infirmity, does not … he here is pulling no punches. 

No Ads

Kind readers, you may have noticed that this blog has no advertising. This is on purpose. Early on (in 2006) I did allow Google to insert its hucksterisms into this blog, but then it started offering only public service ads … and then nothing. I think this was because I must have clicked on my own blog’s ad (horrors!) and some geek at Google thought I was trying to hype my own advertising income. I wasn’t and, as it turns out, I have never received one penny of pelf from the Blogspot people.

Later on, after this blog’s readership increased ten-fold and then one hundred-fold, the Blogspot-ers had a change of heart and offered incentives for me to return to Mad-Men land. I thought it over and decided, “No thanks. Why should I clutter up my feeble attempts to shed a little light on world matters with ads for hemorrhoid creams or mortgage refinancings?" So you now read these posts free of any commercialism and it shall remain so for as long as I can type this tripe.

And thank you for your readership.

Milestone

I have been writing this blog for about seven years and, two days ago, marked its 100,000 views. I realize that some blogs get 100,000 views in a much shorter time period, but nevertheless, kind readers, I am thrilled that you have endorsed my silliness to even this extent. Thank you!

Ulcers

I think it was David Sarnoff (among many) who once said, “I don’t get ulcers.  I give them.”  Even though ulcers are now recognized as being most often caused by a bacteria (see: WebMD) and are usually curable, it appears that many in our society are still exhibiting severe dyspepsia ... see: Americans Snapping.  Apart from listing most of the symptoms, manifestations, and palliatives for our society’s current stress levels, this posting offers an interesting insight: 

Make no mistake: This sort of stress on Americans is not only intentional on the part of Team Obama – it is strategic. Remember, these people are revolutionaries (that is, engaged in “bringing about a major or fundamental change,” …) and utterly committed to replacing one societal structure – America’s constitutional, limited-government, free-enterprise system – with another – a socialist, wealth-redistributionist system run by an all-powerful government. 

I myself have sometimes had this very thought when I realize what appears to be our current administration’s irrational and/or extra-Constitutional actions (giving ulcers).  I hope I need not list them here, but take a few moments to reflect on what has recently caused you to stop and scratch your cranium or churn your stomach.  Or try reading The Drudge Report for a few weeks and see if you can’t construct your own extensive list.  Unless you agree with the direction Obama is taking this country, you probably might also need some psychiatric drugs or “medical” marijuana. (Is this why such new state laws are often succeeding at the polls?)

What else might one do?  Rather than buying Maalox or vodka by the barrel-full, you could try my solution and start political ranting on your own Internet blog … it does help.