John Oliver on the menace of Facebook

I have posted before about how Facebook has dominated access to the internet is countries like Myanmar and Sri Lanka and this has led to the rapid spread of wild and false rumors that have been exploited by Buddhist extremists in those two countries to launch attacks on their Muslim minorities.

In last Sunday’s segment, John Oliver discusses in detail, using Myanmar as an example, how bad Facebook is and how they let things get way out of hand before they started doing anything. He ends the segment with a far more accurate ad for what Facebook really represents.

The mystery of the purloined letters

One of the strange stories to come out of the new Bob Woodward book about the Donald Trump administration is the story of how advisors to Trump would swipe documents from his desk that they thought he should not see or sign. A specific case that was cited was former economic advisor Gary Cohn seeing a letter on Trump’s desk that was awaiting his signature calling for an end to a long standing trade agreement with South Korea. Cohn took the letter away and apparently that was the end of the story. Cohn apparently did something similar with a letter about NAFTA.
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Fun and games at Trump rallies

It is clear that there are only two things that Trump likes to do: send out Twitter messages and speak at rallies in front of his adoring fans. I thought that after awhile, people would get tired of him saying the same things over and over again at his rallies and stop coming but they seem to be still turning out. I put it down to the rabid enthusiasm of his die-hard supporters but the tweet below suggests that at least some in the audience may be people who are getting paid to attend the rallies and show enthusiasm.
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Scallop wars and French taunts

One of the many contentious issues that will have to be dealt with as part of Brexit negotiations is over shellfishing. Now a row has broken out between French and British fishing boat crews over the rights to scallop fishing.

French fishermen have been accused of throwing insults, stones and smoke bombs at their British rivals in the English Channel in a vicious scrap over scallops.

The clash happened around 12 nautical miles (22km) off the Normandy coast, near the Bay of Seine.

British boats are legally entitled to fish in the scallop-rich area.

But their presence has infuriated the French, who accuse the British of shamelessly depleting shellfish stocks.

The report did not specify the insults the French used but we know from history that they have a formidable arsenal of taunts that the British are no match for. What kind of comeback can you make when someone tells you that your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries?