Monthly Archives: December 2017

“Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.”

The New York Times: Inside Trump’s Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation. “With Twitter as his Excalibur, the president takes on his doubters, powered by long spells of cable news and a dozen Diet Cokes. But if Mr. Trump has yet to bend the presidency to his will, he is at least wrestling it to a draw.” By Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush and Peter Baker. Published December 9, 2017.

“As he ends his first year in office, Mr. Trump is redefining what it means to be president. He sees the highest office in the land much as he did the night of his stunning victory over Hillary Clinton — as a prize he must fight to protect every waking moment, and Twitter is his Excalibur. Despite all his bluster, he views himself less as a titan dominating the world stage than a maligned outsider engaged in a struggle to be taken seriously, according to interviews with 60 advisers, associates, friends and members of Congress.

For other presidents, every day is a test of how to lead a country, not just a faction, balancing competing interests. For Mr. Trump, every day is an hour-by-hour battle for self-preservation. He still relitigates last year’s election, convinced that the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, into Russia’s interference is a plot to delegitimize him.”

“Do I know you? Facebook seems to think so.”

Gizmodo: How Facebook Figures Out Everyone You’ve Ever Met. “Behind the Facebook profile you’ve built for yourself is another one, a shadow profile, built from the inboxes and smartphones of other Facebook users.”

“Shadow contact information has been a known feature of Facebook for a few years now. But most users remain unaware of its reach and power. Because shadow-profile connections happen inside Facebook’s algorithmic black box, people can’t see how deep the data-mining of their lives truly is, until an uncanny recommendation pops up.”

Quartz: Google collects Android users’ locations even when location services are disabled.

“Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card?

Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they’re connected to the internet, a Quartz investigation has revealed.”

Links via MetaFilter.

“There were hundreds of letters, stretching over four years of war and beyond.”

The Washington Post: Brothers in arms. “Four siblings wrote hundreds of letters to each other during World War II. The story they tell of service, sacrifice and trauma was hidden away in an abandoned storage unit — until now.”

“We have been called out on air raid alarms the last few days, but you know as much about what was happening as I do, the radio is the only dope we get as well as you about them Japs and nasty Germans. Bastards are what they are, raiding without warnings, sneaking up at night and such wrong methods of a clean fight.”

There’s also a related podcast called Letters From War:

“Bringing the letters to life are modern U.S. military veterans. At key moments in the story, we’ll talk to them about how these letters compare to their own experiences — what’s universal about war and what’s changed. How they felt reading the words of these men who fought some 70 years ago. And why everyone who picks up these letters feels like the Eyde brothers become a part of their family.”

So far, a short introduction and the first episode have been published.

See also MetaFilter: Letters From WWII found in a storage locker.

“President Trump on Monday drastically scaled back two national monuments established in Utah by his Democratic predecessors”

The Washington Post: Trump shrinks two huge national monuments in Utah, drawing praise and protests.

“Trump’s move to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by more than 1.1 million acres and more than 800,000 acres, respectively, immediately sparked an outpouring of praise from conservative lawmakers as well as activists’ protests outside the White House and in Utah. It also plunges the Trump administration into uncharted legal territory since no president has sought to modify monuments established under the 1906 Antiquities Act in more than half a century.

His decision removes about 85 percent of the designation of Bears Ears and nearly 46 percent of that for Grand Staircase-Escalante, land that potentially could now be leased for energy exploration or opened for specific activities such as motorized vehicle use.

Trump told a rally in Salt Lake City that he came to “reverse federal overreach“ and took dramatic action “because some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. And guess what? They’re wrong.“

“They don’t know your land, and truly, they don’t care for your land like you do,“ he added. “But from now on, that won’t matter.“ “

Read Garret’s opinion on the matter over at dangerousmeta: Ignore the Administration. Ignore the media.