The things you find on Reddit. Today's topic: Incels.

Here is the post.

Gee, no wonder these guys have a problem with women.

I first heard this term "Incel" when somebody used it to label me.

I quite literally had no idea what they were talking about, but I looked it up:

Incel: aka "involuntarily celibate", a person (usually male) who has a horrible personality and treats women like sexual objects and thinks his lack of a sex life comes from being "ugly" when its really just his blatant sexism and terrible attitude. incels have little to no self awareness; even when they see other "ugly" men with girlfriends, they consider these men to be tricksters who have somehow beat the system and can get women despite being cursed with unattractiveness (in other words, theyre respectful to women and women are attracted to their personalities, but incels cant comprehend such a phenomenon). they believe that women owe them sex, and many of the more extreme incels like to spend time in incel communities on the internet coming up with ways to make women have sex with them (often involving genocide of people of color, genocide of "Chads" (men who have sex), taking rights away from women, raping them, having sex with women's dead bodies, and other horrid, disgusting things. they cant understand that that is PRECISELY why women want nothing to do with them).

Okay, well there are plenty of derogatory things I could be called, that might actually reflect my character in some way, but this ain't it. 

Apparently that recent attack in Canada is being blamed on one of these losers.

Men hating on women is certainly nothing new, and this does nothing more than put a new label on an age old problem.

For the record nobody owes anybody sex, or even affection.

Those are things you earn.

And relationships, no matter how awesome they may begin, often end with hurt feelings and even outright anger.

I have certainly been there myself. 

But to hate on an entire gender just because you are unlucky at love, is certainly never going to convince that gender that you are worthy of their time or affection.

You have to try to be a better you, before you can expect others to be a better them.

This should help to keep things straight.

A little simplistic, but accurate overall.

The Russians also infiltrated Reddit, one of the most popular websites on the internet.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Reddit admitted it has “found and removed a few hundred accounts” associated with Russian propaganda, one week after The Daily Beast confirmed the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency, or Troll Farm, used the platform during the 2016 presidential campaign. Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman, writing under the username Spez, outlined both direct propaganda, such as troll accounts using the platform, and indirect propaganda, like subreddits such as r/The_Donald repeatedly linking to Russian Twitter troll account @TEN_GOP. “Given the recent news, we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned,” he wrote. 

If you are a frequent visitor to Reddit this is not really news, since this was being called out during the election, but nothing was ever really done about it.

Like Facebook the moderators of Reddit seemed to ignore the problem altogether.

And that has really pissed off a number of Reddit users: 

Reddit users rebelled en masse against the site’s CEO for concealing Russian troll activity the site now admits it knew about, and for not working fast enough to ban dangerous and extremist communities. 

Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman admitted the site has been targeted by at least “a few hundred” troll accounts in an announcement to Reddit users on Monday, four days after a Daily Beast investigation confirmed for the first time that Russia’s troll farm used the platform. 

Reddit has not responded to repeated requests by The Daily Beast for comment about The Daily Beast’s investigation, which showed Russia’s Internet Research Agency used American proxies to access the site. 

Based on that reporting, Senate investigators are looking into opening up probes on the troll farm’s use of Reddit and Tumblr, according to The Washington Post.

I only visited that r/The Donald subreddit a few times, but the stuff that was posted on there was outrageous, misleading, and consistently pro-Donald Trump.

Many of the talking points that you may have seen defending Trump during the election, or minimizing news stories about him, originated on these subreddits and then spread far and wide on Facebook, Twitter, and various other social media outlets.

By the way as of this post r/The Donald is still up and has over half a million subscribers.

So did the Russian hackers get hacked? Maybe.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

The Kremlin-backed troll farm at the center of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election has quietly suffered a catastrophic security breach, The Daily Beast has confirmed, in a leak that spilled new details of its operations onto obscure corners of the internet. 

The Russian “information exchange” Joker.Buzz, which auctions off often stolen or confidential information, advertised a leak for a large cache of the Internet Research Agency’s (IRA) internal documents. It includes names of Americans, activists in particular, whom the organization specifically targeted; American-based proxies used to access Reddit and the viral meme site 9Gag; and login information for troll farm accounts. 

Even the advertisement for the document dump provides a trove of previously unknown information about the breadth of Russia’s disinformation effort in the United States, including rallies pushed by IRA social media accounts that turned violent.

What the Daily Beast was able to confirm:  

While the date of the auction could not be independently confirmed, the authenticity of the leak can. The leaked documents list screen names connected to a number of American citizens who were used as unwitting proxies by the Russians. The Daily Beast was able to track down four of those citizens, whose names have not been previously revealed. The leak contains precise dates in 2016 in which the IRA-created account Blacktivist reached out to those U.S. citizens, plus a short description of the conversations. The Daily Beast spoke to those citizens, and confirmed they interacted with the Blacktivist account in the ways described by the IRA in the document. In one case, the American even provided screenshots of his interactions with the Russian troll trying to dupe him. 

In short, the leaked document contains details of the Russian disinformation campaign that have not been previously made public—details which The Daily Beast was able to confirm. 

The leak shows that even as the Russian trolls were able to influence and manipulate American political discourse online, they were less equipped to keep their own secrets. While The Daily Beast does not possess anything close to a comprehensive trove of the IRA’s internal operations, it is now likely that substantial amounts of the troll farm’s files are waiting to be discovered online.

This data treasure trove also reveals how the troll farm utilized social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, and even Tumblr to spread their divisive propaganda and promote the Donald Trump campaign. 

It is also more proof that the investigations in Russian interference is not a "witch hunt" but rather a very important, and necessary step in protecting ourselves from future manipulation and interference.

When you're trying to troll America but you forget to turn off your location indicator.

I heard that this account was taken down after this was posted on Reddit.

Like I said before, it is up to us to critically analyze the "news" that arrives on our Twitter or Facebook feeds.

Yes, I do.

Best President of my lifetime.

Folks are now sending checks to lawmakers with no dollar amount filled in, but only the words "Thoughts and Prayers."

Sent to Michigan GOP Rep. Jack Bergman pic.twitter.com/FKFGyDPlrA

— Josh Mankiewicz (@JoshMankiewicz) February 17, 2018

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

Amid endless calls for “thoughts and prayers” instead of legislative action in response to mass shootings, a woman in Michigan decided to take matters into her own hands. 

After Wednesday's mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, Fern Malila mailed a letter and a check in the amount of "thoughts and prayers" to Representative Jack Bergman, a Michigan Republican 

“Dear Rep. Bergman,” she wrote, “since you and your colleagues in Congress seem to feel that this is the solution to mass murder, please accept this contribution.”

"I did it because I'm hearing the same arguments after each and every time this happens," Malila explained to Newsweek on Friday. "Each and every news media person says contact your congressman, and Congress doesn't do anything."

A post about this went viral on Reddit, receiving over 300 comments, and it looks as if it has started a mini movement:

"My check is going in the mail today to Senator Marco Rubio — another NRA puppet!" one Florida resident wrote. "Thanks for the inspiration!"

I think it's a great idea.

And a way of demonstrating the hypocrisy shown by these lawmakers. 

If they received a deluge of mail containing checks that simply said "Thoughts and Prayers" I think at the very least it would get their attention.

Just a reminder that this information exists.

Isn't it just like kids to screw up your best laid plans?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

When I think of all the faux scandals that the Right Wing drummed up to go after Obama and his administration, and compare that to the very real scandals that seem to pop up almost every day with this new guy, I am almost left speechless.

If President Obama had one, even ONE, of the scandals orbiting around Trump they would have literally locked him up and thrown away the key.

Let's make this the final word for the day.

Courtesy of CBS News: 

A Senate attempt to move forward with a short-term spending bill vote failed Friday night, sending the government into a shutdown on the one-year anniversary of President Trump's inauguration.

Tomorrow's Trump tweets should be epic. 

Here is today's test of your gag reflex.

Stormy Daniels revealed Trump called her every ~10 days after their first encounter. "We had really good banter," she said. "He told me once that I was someone to be reckoned with, beautiful, smart, just like his daughter" https://t.co/jWEDRH1EBR

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) January 17, 2018

This is so disturbing on so many levels.

I'm going to need this mug.

Okay has anybody else increased their caffeine intake since Trump was elected, or is that just me?

I had weened myself down to about two cups a day, and now I am back up to four, sometimes five.

So hard to type when the words on the page are doing jumping jacks.

I bet his lawyers will be arguing against it.

"Come on, you've read his tweets, do you really think my client is a fully functioning adult?"

Fox News

Fox News almost destroyed journalism in this country.

But journalists fought back.

If it continues it may yet destroy our democracy.

Will we have the courage to fight back?

Well what do you know, Donald Trump is finally right about something.

Trump supporters will continue to say that Trump is not who Mueller, and his team of FBI agents, are ultimately targeting, but at this point you would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to realize that he is absolutely the target.

Okay I might even buy an issue with this cover.

I have not bought a Time Magazine in many, many years.

But if they had the guts to publish this one I would not only buy it but frame it, and hang it where everybody could see it in my house.

Just another day in Trump's America.

Making America Great Again.

Right?

Could work.

Yeah, you know this is coming.

Everything that goes wrong in Trump's world is somehow, someway Obama's fault.

So if this Mueller investigation ends his presidency he will obviously blame our last real president.

That's cool with me by the way.

I am good with giving Barack Obama credit for taking down his toxic presidency.

Trump supporter and online troll kills father for calling him a Nazi.

Lane Davis

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Lane had spent that Friday morning as he did most mornings, on the internet. This day, like the others, Lane read and retweeted posts celebrating the Second Amendment, bemoaning diversity, and spreading conspiracy theories that alleged Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta was involved in a child sex ring and DNC staffer Seth Rich had been murdered. It was the end of a busy week during which he contributed to the Donald Trump subreddit, and over on The Ralph Retort, a fringe blog where he worked as a political editor, (unpaid, according to the site’s owner), he had celebrated the idea of a Kid Rock Senate run, claimed America was under threat of Sharia law, and wondered whether CNN was “literally ISIS.”

Lane’s parents, Catherine and Charles Davis—Charles was known as Chuck to his friends—were used to their 33-year-old son’s outbursts. They had become so frequent that Charles had started recording the tirades on his phone. But that afternoon, they were tired of Lane’s screaming, wanted him to leave, and told him as much. Instead, Lane chased his parents around their home, spitting in his father’s face while screaming that he wasn’t threatening to kill them, but “pedophiles who were taking over the country.”

The Daily Beast has a copy of the 911 call and on it Lane Davis can be heard becoming increasingly upset that his mother called the police, calling them Leftists and pedophiles, and then he makes this chilling remark: 

“OK well, so here’s the deal. If I am going to go to prison for threatening to kill somebody, I mean...” 

“Leave the knife alone,” Charles says while his mother tries to reassure him: No one wants to send him to prison, they just want some help. 

Lane doesn’t seem to hear or believe his mother. “So, you are going to send me to prison?” he asks. “My life is over.”

Minutes later the mother can be heard shouting "He stabbed him," and "He's dead, he's dead, he's dead."

For his part Lane Davis just stood outside with his hands in the air and waited for the police to arrive, while his 73 year old father was lying dead on the back deck.

You know we often talk about how Donald Trump empowers the racists in this country.

But there are other folks who feel that he gives them a voice as well.

The mentally ill for instance.

You see the problem with having somebody who clearly suffers from a mental illness in the White House is that it empowers and excites other mentally ill people into thinking that their time has finally come, and that there cannot be anything wrong with them since someone with similarly erratic and anti-social behaviors as their own is now sitting in the most powerful position in the country.

This is not just finding a like minded group on the internet who support the idea of going off of your psychotropic medications, or think that homicidal or suicidal thoughts are perfectly normal.

No this is much, much bigger.

Clearly this kid was sick, and he desperately needed a mental health evaluation.

But with his current mindset how could he ever accept that there was anything wrong with the way he thinks?

How do you convince an individual with serious mental health problems to seek help, when they see Donald Trump on TV every day walking around freely while seemingly well adjusted people run around doing damage control for him and working to keep him in power?