Tag: Meta

Why I Get No Ad Revenue

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Because they keep serving up ads like this:

Seriously Google™ Adsense™?

You looked at my blog, and you saw my regular use of the term, “Ammosexual,” to describe gun fondlers, and you thought that my reader(s) would be a good place for a f%$#ing ad from the f%$#ing US Concealed Carry Association?

What the f%$# were you thinking?

My standard disclaimer on any post about the aforementioned service applies:

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

Once Again, I Disavow an Ad on My Site

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So, I just saw a advertisement from Ashley Madison, the site for people who want to cheat on her spouses.

I’ve posted the image, but not the link, because:

The ads on my blog are selected by Google with no input on my part.

Ashley Madison not a business I would recommend to my reader(s) .

It could be worse, and it has been, as was the case in 2008, when I was regularly getting John McCain’s “Death Star” banner ads every time I mocked him.

My standard disclaimer regarding advertisements on my site applies:

As always, note that this post should in no way be construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

*Note that this is different from mutually agreed open relationships.

No Blogging Tonight

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Between my cold in generally running around, I was so out of it today but I left the restaurant where I had lunch without paying my tab.
I realized this when I left work and looked at my take out. ( Pancakes, I had breakfast for lunch.)
So, I went back to the restaurants, paid my tab, and tipped generously.
In any case, I have concluded that I cannot maintain my usual levels of coherence.  (That sentence positively buggers the mind, doesn’t it?)
So, I am taking a not particularly well deserves evening off.

Posted via mobile

A Correction

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Today I opened up my email, and I had a demand letter from GIP Development SARL, a firm that IP licensing and regulation management.

I will not be reposting this email, as it was listed as confidential, but they had a complaint about a post of mine regarding vulture funds targeting Argentine bonds.

I made an error, and have corrected my post.

In researching the vulture funds, I conflated two different, but similarly named financial firms that turned up in my google search.

Dr. Dirk Markus has no connection to Aurelius Capital Management LP, the vulture fund in question. 

He is  the CEO of Aurelius Equity Opportunities, which is a completely unrelated financial firm, and is not involved with the attempted looting of Argentina in any way.

My apologies for calling for his arrest and extradition to Buenos Aires.

As an aside, this is the first time that I have gotten anything this close to a cease and desist letter from a lawyer, and on some deep and perverse level it makes me feel important.

Gawd, I am so unbelievably lame.

I am a Complete Whore, So Where is My Money

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It appears that it is a not uncommon practice for brands to buy coverage on blogs.

Despite my solicitations for such filthy capitalist lucre on the front page of my blog, (right hand column toward the bottom) I have not received any offers:

Please, send me free stuff, and I will consider doing a review.

I am a complete whore, so assume that any review is the result of free stuff, and/or under the table payments.

I will do my level best to reveal such conflicts when I remember to.

I am feeling very neglected right now.

PLONK!!!!!!!!!!*

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The day before the California primary, Rachael Maddow, and the rest of the NBC news org, breathlessly and gleefully announcing that they had surveyed the “Super Delegates”, and declared that Hillary Clinton had won the nomination.

I have not watched Maddow since, I saw that it was a descent into hackdom. (though I have referenced online video clips)

Her later non-reveal Trump tax return reveal, parodied by Stephen Colbert, confirmed my opinion.

Well, I just dropped Talking Points Memo from my blogroll, because its founder and editor-in-chief Josh Marshall, just confirmed his descent into hackdom with a truly laughable OP/ED condemning Donna Brazile’s Politico article revealing of the Clinton Campaign’s takeover of the DNC more than a year before the convention.

In order to do this, he had to ignore contemporaneous reports of some of the issues raised in the essay, including reports from Talking Points Memo at the time, as well as insisting that the DNC is moving left while TPM is reporting a purge of progressive members.

There are a number of news orgs whose OP/ED pages contradict what their news section reports, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are legion for this, but they have a wall between opinion and reporting, and Talking Points Memo does not.

Notwithstanding the work done by TPM employees, and the fact that Josh Marshall has assembled a top flight team, this site is, and will probably will always be, Josh Marshall at its core.

He’s jumped the shark, so:  Plonk!!!

*This is a term from the very early (Usenet) days of the internet. the term PLONK is a statement that you have added a user to your killfile, meaning that you will not see their posts.

Headline of the Day

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Oh Chris Cillizza, You F%$#ING Sh%$heel

—Evan Hurst at Wonkette

Over at everyone’s source of snark, Mr. Hurst did two things:

  1. Called out Chris Cilizza for being a completely worthless prat. (Easy)
  2. Changed my mind.  (Not so easy)

Specifically, he was, with an assist from John Cole, talking about Cillizza’s demand that Hillary Clinton issue a statement about the revelations about Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment sexual assault over the past few decades.

I was actually considering doing the same thing, but then I read this:

Make no mistake, this is no “analysis” as he has it labeled. And the thing you need to realize is Cillizza KNOWS that Clinton doesn’t support rape and sexual assault, he just wants make her respond. It’s him using his forum to make her jump- he might as well be saying “Dance, mad bitch, dance,” because we all know that if she does respond, Cillizza’s next piece will be “what took her so long” and “was she sincere” and so on. 

They are right, and so I put the kibosh on writing a similar article to Cillizza’s.

I’m now actually feeling a bit ashamed that I was considering doing something like this.

As an aside, Hillary Clinton did condemn Weinstein today, as did the Obamas, but that really none of my f%$#ing business.

Keeping a score card on this sh%$ is lame.

This is Kind of Tempting

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The websites of US telly giant CBS’s Showtime contained JavaScript that secretly commandeered viewers’ web browsers over the weekend to mine cryptocurrency.

The flagship Showtime.com and its instant-access ShowtimeAnytime.com sibling silently pulled in code that caused browsers to blow spare processor time calculating new Monero coins – a privacy-focused alternative to the ever-popular Bitcoin. The hidden software typically consumed as much as 60 per cent of CPU capacity on computers visiting the sites.

The scripts were written by Code [Coin] Hive, a legit outfit that provides JavaScript to website owners: webmasters add the code to their pages so that they can earn slivers of cash from each visitor as an alternative to serving adverts to generate revenue. Over time, money mined by the Code-Hive-hosted scripts adds up and is transferred from Coin Hive to the site’s administrators. One Monero coin, 1 XMR, is worth about $92 right now.

Let me start by saying that I won’t be putting code like this on my site.

I am considering placing an additional button on my tip jar (aka Matthew’s Saroff’s Beer Fund), but it would take the form of another donation button, since the revenue from Google™ Adsense™ is so pathetic.

If I do this, it will be voluntary, another button to click on the page, and I might occasionally nag my reader(s) to click the button.

As always, note that this post should in no way be construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

I Need to Make My Web Site Tougher More Confusing and More Complex

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A study has been made about so-called “Flat” user interfaces, and it turns out that they are 22% slower for users to navigate a site.

You are no doubt aware of it the trend. It’s the latest user interface fashion, favored by Apple and Google, among others.

It does boggle the mind that an interface created by Microsoft for its Zune® music player has taken user interface design by storm.

First, even by the standards of Microsoft, the Zune® was a miserable failure, and second, who in their right mind would steal user interface ideas from Microsoft?

The only explanation I have for this is a conspiracy theory:  I know from my Google™ analytics account that the amount of time the average user spends on the site is closely tracked. (They call it “Engagement”.)

This means that for advertising supported media, a second wasted is a second monetized.

I’m not actually going to make my site less intuitive, I rely on my ordinary thought processses to confuse my reader(s). It’s a matter of pride.

Neither would I suggest that you leave a tab open to my site in the background, as my making sush a suggestion would be a violation of the terms of service of Google™ Adsense™.

Why I Quote Rather Extensively

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The Million Dollar Web Page Then


And now

Because I am aware of link rot, where much of the information on the information in the internet is peripatetic, notwithstanding the meme that the Internet is forever:

In 2005, one of the most intriguing advertising stunts of the internet age was hatched.

Alex Tew launched the The Million Dollar Homepage, where anyone could “own a piece of internet history” by purchasing pixels-plots (minimum of 10×10) on a massive digital canvas. At the price of just one dollar per pixel, everyone from individual internet users to well-known companies like Yahoo! raced to claim a space on the giant digital canvas.

Today, The Million Dollar Homepage lives on as a perfect record of that wacky time in internet history – or so it seems. However, the reality is that many of the hyperlinks on the canvas are now redirects that send incoming users to other sites, while over 20% of them are simply dead.

I feel that I need to quote extensively enough that the basic context is clear without clicking through.

I learned this lesson when the New York Times took over full management of the International Herald Tribune, and broke all the exiting links to the archives. (Also, Yahoo’s shutdown of Geocities, but Geocities really did suck.)

You may be able to find the page with a search, but link will never work.

That’s why I quote rather extensively.

Why Do I Even Bother?

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Yesterday, I wrote a lengthy post explaining the profoundly dysfunctional Presidential campaign in France.

Today, I came across John Oliver’s summary of the campaign on his show, and I am feeling profoundly inadequate.

It covers the issue and entertains at the same time, though I think that there could be a little less focus on the laughs and more on the humor.

The only thing that I object to is his characterization of Le Pen’s position on the wearing of religious regalia in public.

It’s not outrageous by the standards of France:  French republics have been thoroughly and militantly secular since Charles de Gaulle was a teen,* to the degree that religious wedding ceremonies are not recognized by the state, and couples have to be married in a civil ceremony to have their union recognized.

The policy is called Laïcité, and while Le Pen’s absolutism regarding this policy is a minority position, it is well within the bounds of what is considered mainstream French political thought.

Still, I feel really inadequate right now.

*Specifically, since the passage of the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, though secularism was a significant portion of French political discourse since at least the French revolution.