SeniorJunior

I've Been Telling You and Telling You... Russia, Iran, China, North Korea and a bunch of others are all over the Net They are in your Twitter feed, your Facebook pages, your Instagrams and favorite sub-Reddits. They write many of the comments in the "Comments" sections of your favorite news and opinion sites. they sell you things on Amazon and the auction sites. They traffic in your financial data stolen from Equifax.   You know all that, of course.  Here's a fine piece of journalism from a credible source about the strange variation on the cyber wars as practiced by North Korea. Even their highest class hackers are the slaves of the regime. NONE of us has Kim Jong-un's haircut! There are no strong borders in the cybersphere. Mostly no borders at all. Darn Fern'ers are swarming around us like mosquitoes at Texas summer sundown. The more we educate ourselves about this, the more we can watch our (and each other's) back. MY PASSION, AS PE...

This is an Experiment (But what isn't?) Ok, it failed.   That's science for you.

China Passes U.S. in Laser Power.   China Passing U.S. and Europe in Giant Accelerators Thank Heavens we've got Elon Musk. ...'Cause the Trump Administration is shooting us in our science foot "The most powerful pulses of light the world has ever seen" (Science Magazine) Shanghai 5.3 million billion watts 5.3 PETAWATTS, up and running. And they are building a 100 PETAWATT model.  These super powerful, super short pulse lasers are opening vast new areas of research, and the U.S.A. is not leading the pack. Even Romania and the Czech Republic will soon zoom around us. Russia, of course is planning the Czar Bomba of lasers, a 180 PETAWATT monster.  " Largely missing from the fray are U.S. scientists, who have fallen behind in the race to high powers." sayeth the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. And... DONALD TRUMP WANTS A BIG PA RA DE Big, sophisticated accelerators are coming on line in China China...

Not Russian, Floridian! A source of millions of bots... If you haven't read this amazing investigative report , please look at it. LLLllliiiiiikkkkkkeeee MMmmmeeee !!!! I admit, I'm preoccupied with bots and trolls... the roaring background noise of social media and "Comments" sections.  This amazing NYTimes investigative report uncovers whole new dimensions of the bot-ocracy. Not getting enough "likes" on your brilliant Twitter account? Just buy 10,000 more for a pittance! And who's to say the Russians aren't getting some of their ubiquitous bots from this American scam machine? Oh, it's a winding trail we travel. Olde Scooter's Botmania Symptoms If They Can Do This to Twitter The Russians Really Like My Blog 50,000 Twitter Bots and Counting The Russians are (still) here! The Russians are (still) here! Rebuttal (to some rudenecks) Cluster Trolls Obsession Cured (not!) Obsessed? Who Me? Classic NASTYBOT Examples...

50,000 Russian Bots ....Think What They Can Do to "Comments!" There has been a lot of attention to all the bots on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc. My fixation has been on "Comments" bots/trolls. It all started with the bots on Breitbart for me. That's where I coined " NASTYBOT, " ( More examples ) Go ahead. Pet me.  ...those gross insults that were amping up the snarling, the American-on-American hatred. Somehow Breitbart was the perfect platform for these Russian cyber-clusterbombs. Actual nasty humans jumped right in and became "NASTYBODS," ever eager to follow the worst bully on the schoolyard. Gradually, the word is penetrating the semi-attentive among us to understand how many millions of bots are polluting the social media environment. It took a long time. HOW LONG ? The Really Big Story (of course) came in the New York Times . And this army of bots doesn't even count the Russian ones!! The OTHER...

What's Really Going On While We All Watch the Clown Show (Nunes memo, et al) We are all prisoners of REGULATORY CAPTURE * Yassah, Master Oligarch, just call if you need anything else! It's called "Regulatory Capture," and the Trump Administration foxes are capturing the heck out of some very important hen houses. Republicans have advanced towards their key objective of “regulatory capture”. Regulatory capture is defined by George Stigler, a Nobel laureate economist, as “a form of government failure which occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.” Now, because of direct action by Donald Trump, with a nod from the Republican Congress, virtually all Departments and agencies in our Federal government is headed by someone from the industry or who has advocated for the industry that ...

Finally! Commercial Development of Unmanned, Solar-Powered Flying Wing ... with a little $help from our friends. Remember - fifteen years ago! - When you first saw this beast?      Now this amazing feat of aeronautical engineering is going to be developed further and become a spot so high in the sky you'll hardly ever see it. It can be a "flying cell tower" to bring telecom to emergency zones (It would have been a life saver over Puerto Rico). TV can be transmitted from it. Photo surveys over vast areas can be done. It can fly for weeks... maybe more! And it's now 95% owned by a huge Japanese  telecom company,   SoftBank Corp.      The American entrepreneurs (Monrovia, CA) who developed these flying wonders for NASA couldn't find an American partner, so the biggest (by far) Japanese telecom company is starting a dual venture with American company Aerovironment to utilize these mostly solar (some hybrid with fuel cell) platforms...

Was there  Beef? ... Money, from Russia to the NRA? Another (potentially) YUGE story , and we are all waiting for the other shoe to drop! >>>>>>>>>>>                                                  All used to boost the Trump campaign and to demonize Hillary Clinton _________________________________________________________________________________ McClatchy, one of my journalism heroes, broke a big story on Jan18th, a head-snapper. Their investigative unit is very, very good, and McClatchyDC.com is staying on the story, now with such as Esquire, Rolling Stone, The Observer, Yahoo News... a big list of news organizations... are on the story.  Check out all the coverage here . The allegation that Russia funneled money into the NRA – to directly support Trump's presidential bid – is staggering. Until now, w...

Romania? Blogging is a strange experience. Here I am, an old (81) guy in the mountains of New Mexico, blasting out the occasional commentary on whatever makes me the craziest - or the happiest. Folks from a wide variety of countries check it out. It's humbling and confusing.  But THANKS for giving it a look. I understand the Russians and the Chinese dropping in - I write a lot about them. But I have to admit, I've never written anything about Romania. I might, someday. Pageviews by Countries (blogger data for the last few days) Entry Pageviews United States 367 South Korea 17 Romania 4 France 3 Portugal 3 Russia 3 Ukraine 3 Brazil 2 Japan 2 Canada 1

China is America's Great Competitor... ... In manufacturing, renewable energy and now SCIENCE ALTOGETHER. Not all that "sci-fi."  See below      As you dedicated Sr.Jr. blog readers surely know by now, I am very worried about America's world leadership slipping away from us and into the hands of the autocratic, communist superstate, China.      I have worried aloud about their spectacular progress in important areas while the U.S. sits on its thumb. Military , computers (especially quantum computing), A.I. and robotics, aeronautics, etc., etc. are fields we just can't cede.    Now I see worrying indications that whole swaths of scientific fields are under serious challenge by our Chinese brothers and sisters while our President is slashing scientific budgets all over, and worse, DENIGRATING SCIENCE ITSELF!  Even the MSM is getting worried. Check this in the NYTimes : The Chinese have been taking multi-page ...

Look Back Six Months ... Things were Slightly Less Crazy THIS IS NOT A GOOD TREND. 17 Posts in 30 days, OK for and olde dude. I'd say they are all fairly pertinent even here in the Slightly More Crazy Zone. "Breaking News" they ain't, and we are addicted to "this just in." A bit of look-back is good for the perspective (and the soul). Just click on a title to see the post. SINGLE PAYER! SINGLE PAYER! 6/29/17 DOOMSAYER!! bully ,  endemic lying ,  fake news ,  illiteracy ,  taunting tweets 6/24/17 My Peers 6/23/17 Hate Mongrel hate speech , howler monkey , pamela geller 6/23/17 "We Could Shoot Them Down" hypersonic , hypersonic intercept , hypersonic missiles , raytheon 6/21/17 Just kidding Rick and Morty cells , millennial , rick and morty , social cells ...