“The 4d’s”

The Washington Post reports on Naomi Seibt, a conservative think tank’s answer to Greta Thunberg. The article quotes Graham Brookie of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, dedicating to exposing disinformation:

While the campaign “is not outright disinformation,” Brookie said in an email, it “does bear resemblance to a model we use called the 4d’s — dismiss the message, distort the facts, distract the audience, and express dismay at the whole thing.”

Brookie added: “The tactic is intended to create an equivalency in spokespeople and message. In this case, it is a false equivalency between a message based in climate science that went viral organically and a message based in climate skepticism trying to catch up using paid promotion.”

The 4d’s could be considered a playbook for the sitting president. But Donald Trump* has other tricks. Among them, the 4p’s: purges, pardons, the persecution of refugees, and the prosecution of political enemies.

“Visible branch establishments”

Dunstan (formerly Dunstable) Ramsay recalls the gravel pit in the village of Deptford:


Robertson Davies, Fifth Business (1970).

Also from this novel
“Fellows of the first importance”

Eyeshine

[Mark Trail, February 23, 2020.]

Last week I went out after dark to toss coffee grounds and vegetable peelings into the compost bin at the edge of our backyard. It’s a long walk. I stopped in my tracks when my flashlight showed me the yellow-green glow of five or six pairs of deer eyes.

Now I understand what I was seeing. Today’s Mark Trail gives a good explanation of eyeshine. Thanks, Mark.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

Back to the USSR canard

Hearing the assertion that Bernie and Jane Sanders honeymooned in the Soviet Union, I thought, What? And then I remembered writing a post about that canard in 2016. With links to a post by Daughter Number Three and to the best-documented account of the Sanderses’ Soviet trip I could find.

This 2020 post is meant to address the canard, not to imply that I’ve cast my vote. I’ve been leaning toward Warren, but the dismay among MSNBC talking heads over what’s happening in Nevada makes me think I might want to vote for Sanders. James Carville went so far as to suggest that MSNBC has a responsibility to “appraise” [sic ] viewers of why it’s a mistake to vote for Sanders. You’ve got some nerve, mister.

*

February 24: I still loathe James Carville, but the enthusiasm for Sanders that I voiced in the previous paragraph has waned.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

I had considerable difficulty getting started with today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper — a word here, a word there. But Matthew Sewell wasn’t crewell after all. The pieces of this puzzle ended up falling into place fairly easily, even with a clue I still don’t understand: 18-A, three letters, “#2s.”

Lots of long, lively answers in today’s puzzle. For instance:

1-A, ten letters, “Little Havana dance style.” Partly a giveaway.

17-A, eleven letters, “Turn biomass to fuel, e.g.” Huh?

31-D, nine letters, “Uneasy feeling.” I like the colloquiality of the answer. Yes, colloquiality is a word, and not at all colloquial.

32-D, nine letters, “Certain sausage purveyor.” I had never heard of the answer.

33-A, eleven letters, “Wicca category.” I can’t imagine that the answer has a long crossword history.

39-A, eleven letters, “Corkscrew-shaped Aquarius formation.” See 17-A. (I.e., Huh?)

56-A, eleven letters, “Parting phrase.” I thought of my sardine spammer.

My favorite clue in today’s puzzle: 25-D, six letters, “Boast after a casting session.” A neat bit of misdirection.

No spoilers: I direct you to the comments for the answers.

Hat and gloves

It is cold or colder these days. Having just come in from a walk, I want to express my gratitude to my hat and gloves.

My Carhartt Acrylic Watch Hat is the warmest such hat I have worn. Dark Brown/Sandstone for me.

My Caiman 2395 Heatrac gloves are the warmest gloves I have worn. I bought them for $15 in what might be described as an Amish version of Wal-Mart (groceries and everything else). I figured that the Amish must know what’s good for working outdoors in the cold. These gloves look and feel like everyday work gloves, lightweight, not massive on the hands. But they’re very warm. Indeed, they’re warmer than another pair of gloves I have that cost three times as much and make my hands look like monster-robot hands.

Caiman’s 2395 model has been superseded by 2396, with “touch-screen capability.” I take my gloves off anyway to use the phone — better aim.

[I know the “watch cap” as a “ski cap,” or, from childhood, an “Eski cap.” Was “Eski” (as in “Eskimo,” someone living in a cold climate) a kids’ misunderstanding of “ski”? I might have to try to figure it out.]

Go phish

Yesterday morning (local time), over the span of an hour, an anonymous commenter on a distant shore left this comment on ten different sardine-centric OCA posts:

I have always fancied taking sardines, bread and a bottle of milk for breakfast every morning. I guess anyone would say i am addicted to sardines. Reading this article, i had a new perspective. Thanks, Amigo!

I am moved, deeply, to know that a fellow sardinista would take the time to say thanks, again and again and again. I’m sure my commenter won’t mind my posting this comment here, where it will receive the attention it so richly deserves. And I’m sure my commenter will thank me for omitting the sketchy credit-card-application URL that somehow found its way into the comment, again and again and again.

Thanks, Amigo!

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

[Someone took the time to create a Blogger account and deal with reCAPTCHA in order to leave these comments. What was that person thinking? “I’m being paid.”]

Trump* in Colorado

If you can stand it, Aaron Rupar has short clips from Donald Trump*’s rally last night in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The president is not well. And unlike everyone else’s crazy old relative, he’s the president. And he’s not well. And unlike everyone else’s crazy old relative — well, I could go on.

“The truth still matters”

United States District Judge Amy Bergman Jackson, sentencing Roger Stone today: “The truth still exists. The truth still matters.”

And she called Stone’s insistence that truth doesn’t matter “a threat to our most fundamental institutions, to the very foundation of our democracy.”

Cf. Adam Schiff: “If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.”

A related post
Truth, “theory,” and Donald Trump*

[Source for Jackson’s words here.]

Make it new

In the “news”:

Shortly after the Democratic Presidential debate on Wednesday night, aides to Michael Bloomberg announced that he would spend ten billion dollars to buy an entirely new personality.

Acknowledging that some attributes of the former New York mayor’s new personality have yet to be ironed out, campaign advisers indicated that the eleven-figure outlay would be used to purchase warmth, empathy, and humanity.