Get ready. A sustained disinformation attack on the top democrat presidential candidates is already in progress. That’s the new story line. These days you can’t be sure. We’ll talk about it in Russia Targets American Politics Again?-Bob Davis Podcast 809.
According to Politico Weaponized Propaganda picks at the most sensitive issues in our public discourse. Furthermore that propaganda is being pushed across a variety of platforms. It’s happening again.
Sources For Politico Article Include Democrat Operatives
Finally sources for this story include Brett Horvath who has worked for the Mayor of Seattle as well as other operatives who have worked for democrats including Hillary Clinton. Or companies like Storyful who spy on reporters.
No Conclusive Evidence
Even more Korecki writes researchers and others cannot conclusively point to actors behind “the coordinated activity”.
We’re All Trolls Now
Maybe I’m churlish but it seems to me the writer, sources and Politico itself are getting a lot of mileage out of this. The principles in the story are sharing the story on their own feeds. Just slightly Troll Like, don’t you think? Maybe the Russians have switched sides this time!
In Why Burning Man Still Sucks 2017-Podcast 616. March 29th, 2017. Noon Pacific Time. Burning Man 2017 tickets on sale. Already did my ‘burner’ profile. 2 weeks ago waited on line to register for the ticket sale. Third year in a row. All out for tickets to the biggest party in the universe. Out in the Nevada desert. August 27th to September 4th.
Gonna Get My Burning Man Tickets!
Tick tock. One minute to 12 Pacific. Count it down. Here we go. This won’t take long. I won’t have to cancel the big client meeting at three in the central time zone. I’ll get on. Get my tickets. Smooth as silk. A friction free transaction. Forty-Five minutes later I’d canceled the meeting. Oops, tickets sold out. In Why Burning Man Still Sucks 2017-Podcast 616.
Scalpers
Quick Internet search. Stub Hub has tickets at double the price. Frustrated. Angry. Must have done something wrong. Maybe I should register for the STEP program like last year. Yeah. Or maybe call some ‘burners’ in Chicago. If you ingratiate yourself with the ‘burner’ community you might be able to score some tickets from someone who isn’t going to use theirs.
Jeff Bezos Party of 20? Come right in
Remember. Tickets to burning man in the general sale are 400 plus dollars and nearly 100 dollar for a vehicle pass. There’s a final sale coming up. Those tickets are 1200 dollars. What’s under my skin is the way Burning Man is sold. Over Sold and Under Delivered. Clearly there’s a lot of people who want to go and can’t get tickets. Fix it. Find out about my experience trying to buy tickets in Why Burning Man Still Sucks 2017-Podcast 616
We’re Hippies. Really rich hippies
This year Burning Man will gross 43 million dollars from ticket sales alone. They say It’s something you need to experience. A city in the desert. A culture of possibility. A network of dreamers and doers. Oh wait that’s the commercial. Reality is you’ve been waiting for 30 minutes for the kid with dreadlocks who can’t remember whether you ordered a strawberry smoothie or an emerald peanut butter…for the third time.
Not Radically Inclusive
Why Burning Man Still Sucks 2017-Podcast 616. Burning Man still sucks because if you’re wealthy enough to buy a thousand dollar ticket from some ticket reseller, which I am told Burning Man ‘doesn’t endorse’, you’re a ‘burner’. Part of a ‘radically inclusive experience’. Yeah. No. “A citizen of the worldview that is Burning Man. May it be encountered everywhere”. It won’t.
Drive a Maybach Motor Home? Coming out from Santa Rosa for the week to do some acid? Like the old days before, you know, all the corporate stuff. You’re in! Welcome Burners. And all your cash. A unique and distinctive culture awaits people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, but not us working stiffs.
Welcome To The French Revolution
Ten principles for Burning Man: Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification (which basically means no sponsors), Radical Self Reliance, Radical Self Expression (although any and all media ‘projects’ have to be pre approved), and on and on. It reads like the French Revolution’s ‘Rights of Man’ Declaration. You know the one where the peasants are crushed and everyone ends up living through Thermidor II.
Stupid Rules At The Radical Burning Man Festival
And the rules. Don’t run that noisy generator at night. If your truck is old bring plywood to catch the oil dripping from that nasty crankcase. Watch out for the undercover cops checking up to see that you’re not trafficking. Be careful of your carbon footprint. Oh by the way, Burning Man has a bigger carbon footprint on average than the dirtiest of the dirty polluters. Don’t worry about that though. Nothing to see here folks. Move along.
Burning Man is a symbol of the possibilities of Silicon Valley. That’s why I wanted to go. A temporary society built on the ‘No Rules’ Punk and Anarchist pathos. Sadly the Burning Man approach to customers is basically ‘so long suckas’. So yes. Sadly, Burning Man is in fact a symbol of the possibilities of Silicon Valley.
Podcast 561-Pacific Coast Highway. People have been asking for some ‘travel log’ podcasts from the Great Northwest Road Trip 2016 series, so in Podcast 561-Pacific Coast Highway, some travel log audio from Oregon’s coast during a storm, again the angry surf along the Pacific Coast Highway in California north of San Francisco. Most travel sites write about the Pacific Coast Highway south of San Francisco. On this trip I have driven Route 1, all the way from just south of Seattle, through San Francisco to Los Angeles right along the coast. What a long strange trip it’s been. Winding roads, crazy storms, spell binding coastal maritime towns and villages and breathtaking vistas coming down out of mountains. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the experience of twisting and turning two lane roads in 16 year old Mobile Podcast Command laboring up and down, sometimes in brilliant sun and sometimes in the midst of fog, or heavy wind and rain, all under a full moon during these few days in the middle of October 2016. The biggest challenge has been getting out from under a series of storms that have pounded the west coast, from Seattle to San Francisco. In podcast 561 you’ll hear the wind and rain in Oregon, the surf in Northern California, and a little surprise at the end of the podcast for you midwesterners. I have often said long trips take on a personality of their own and you end up having to just go with the flow. Travelers who try to stick to a schedule, try to see too many things or get frustrated with the ‘trip’ are not good travelers. After thousands of miles through the mountains, plains and coastlines of the United States, I’ve learned to settle in for these long trips and just enjoy whatever goes down. This trip, the heavy rain and fog has been following me all down the coast, which has made it even more of an adventure. From pulling into state parks and RV-Parks in the middle of the night and hooking up to electric, to driving 8 to 15 hours at a time on the PCH, it’s been really fun and educational. If you’re looking for those romantic seaside towns tucked away along rocky coastlines, this is the place. There’s the reason they say ‘The West Is The Best’. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance.
