Liars!

Several of the names on the "never trust again" list are associated with polling.

Maybe "polling" is the wrong term. What they have actually been doing is fabricating data that they claimed came from polling and then spreading it:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-company-says-its-polls-were-fake-heres-what-happened 

I mean, I assume that's why they are called "an alleged national pollster" in the title; just saying "crooks" or "fraudsters" wouldn't be specific enough.

It's not like many people (including myself) did not already have doubts about the polls.

Still, with the story out in the open, there are several things that make me angrier. Please allow me to vent:

Laziness: One of the things I hate about polls anyway is how easy it is to skew the data. Whom you contact, what technology you use, and how you phrase the questions can all affect the results. 

Apparently skewing still wasn't good enough; not if you want to back up a claim that four different staffers have leaked that a campaign has no path to victory anyway.

That leads to...

Pathological dishonesty: Yes, the poll information was dishonest, but they continued lying after that. 

I keep seeing blatantly false complaints about how Democrats are trying to make Abdul El-Sayed lose. This is despite the support of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris -- really the big guns on the Democrat side -- and the infusion of disproportionate amounts of cash. The cash is needed because the outsized support during the primary faded away when it was time to fight a Republican and El-Sayed is not as popular as you would want. 

That leads to...

Results: In an election where resources should be focused on vulnerable seats in areas that have been traditionally conservative, they are being funneled into protecting what should have been an easy seat. 

The funds available are not limitless. The time and energy it takes to support a candidate is not limitless.

You know what could have been a good seat to flip, not necessarily easy but with enough vulnerability that a strong candidate would have a chance? Maine. You know what we got? Nazi tatoo-having, sexual-assualting, became-a-mercenary-because-he-was-looking-forward-to-killing-people Platner. 

He finally had to drop out but he should never have been in serious contention.

Leftists do more to hold up Trump than some Republicans, but then it is all Democrats' fault. 

Leftists are now claiming that Democrats are doing damage by looking into the fraudulent polls. 

That is quite frustrating, but there is one more thing I am more aware of now. 

Flagrant disregard for ethics: This goes back to my extra school reading.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/09/overachiever-18-books-for-school.html 

Yes, there was required reading on ethics, but I did extra because it was interesting and also because it was important.

In fact, this complaint goes back to dishonesty, because I don't believe for one minute that it was a "social experiment." They were manipulating elections on purpose.

However, if you were really going to conduct such an experiment, there are standards to research using human subjects. 

You have to consider the potential harm and weigh it against the potential benefits. 

You have to submit it to a review board. That is because even if you sincerely believe the perceived benefit is worth the risk of harm, you might not be objective about it. (And I do not believe in any sincerity.)

Also, submitting it for review means that there is a record of it. That means if you confess right when someone catches on, they don't have to take your word for your pure motives. 

Liars.  

I don't have a clever title. For all that can be understood about their motives and the effects and questioned about whether they really believe they can do any good but are too sheltered to understand how badly they are getting it wrong or any of that, ultimately it still comes back to the lies.  

Feeling some kind of way

While the phrase "silent majority" was used before Nixon (even as far back as Coolidge), that is probably the best-known use and it was used in a specific way.

What was known of public opinion indicated that most people were against the war in Vietnam, but Nixon invoked an image of a country where most people (the good people) were not so loud. They were the moral nad patriotic people.

That meant you could always look down on protesters, who were just being loud troublemakers. 

I don't know if he really believed that was the majority view, but I am not sure if he would have cared; truth was kind of a tricky area for him. 

With the bot farms and trolling and all, it affects different people differently.

There are some people who are going to feel encouraged; I was right all along. 

That encouragement is probably going to take place along racist and sexist, ignorant and hateful lines, but that's how it goes.

Linehan probably enjoys getting the bot likes, even if that is encouraging him to act like absolute garbage.

People who love that are not super-likely to be reading my blog, though. I am more concerned about the other side.

All the hate being spewed can make you feel like you are surrounded by horrible people. 

Remember that a lot of it is manufactured and fake.

It can make you feel less like speaking out, because even the most reasonable thing you say will draw abuse.

I still post my regular posts, but I do engage less with stupid comments. Often it's not a real person there. 

That is more of a factor with Twitter; when people on Facebook are saying stupid stuff, I know them and have some idea whether it's worth trying.

I do see a lot of people engaging with logic even when it might be a bot. While they do not have an effect on the posters, there may be people watching who do pay attention to the logic. That's why I do still engage sometimes, but it's not an easy call.

If you are feeling like you can't say what you want, it may make sense to block or find another outlet. 

I definitely see people becoming cynical. There is such a thing as a healthy amount of skepticism, but not believing anything -- including any possibility of good -- is also destructive.

While still not being able to say there are easy answers, there are things we can do.

Connect to facts.

How do you find facts? Maybe start with where you are. 

There should be some things that you know through experience and study. Build upon that. Sometimes the thing that gets people out of conspiracy theories is that there was something that they confidently knew that let them know that that the theory was false. With one person, it was that he worked in radio and knew about transmitting signals, and one of the theories was blatantly wrong. That brought the other information from that source into question.

Connect to people.

Don't stay scrolling and passively accepting the flow of information the algorithm gives you. Talk to people. Hear their voices. 

Maybe hug them.

Things don't have to be this way. It is a matter of choice.

It may not be conscious choice, but that can be changed.

By design

Writing about books I read because of school, I strongly recommended The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams (not that one):

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/09/overachiever-18-books-for-school.html 

I wrote...

it is an important reminder that we don't notice everything. We are surrounded by design -- some great, some not so much -- and we can notice it by just thinking a little about it. If you need to design a poster or choose advertising options for your business or understand the impact that what seems like background noise can have on you, it's worth reading.

Why am I quoting myself? Huge ego, perhaps?

I am hoping that re-reading that will help today's topic have more impact.

The design in that book was pretty visual in nature: shapes, colors, fonts... that is not the only kind of design.

From the headlines... 

Russian bot activity plunged 84% after Ukraine hit Yandex data centers, but the bots were back at full strength within two days

https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/russian-bot-activity-plunged-84-182000881.html 

How did a plunge in Russian bot activity affect us here in the United States?

You may have seen headlines that either Trump or Republicans in general accused Ukraine of election interference with the bombings.

That appears to have been satire from an Australian paper: 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-trump-did-not-233717615.html 

Of course, the problem with satire nowadays is that the reality is so warped all the satire sounds plausible. 

Regardless, while there do not appear to have actually been any overt accusations, there does seem to have been some interference. It looks like the bombings caused one election gambit to fail.

There are signs that Republicans, including Trump, are concerned about maintaining control of Congress in this election. Ironically, domestic data centers are one issue damaging them.

Regardless, you can see a lot of attacks and attempts to dig up fodder for attacks. 

I would say that has been most noticeable in the case of Mary Peltola, running for Senate from Alaska, except for something that happened and just had great timing.

There have also been attacks on James Talarico, also a Senate candidate, but this time from Texas. Previous attacks focused on his masculinity, but there was an attempt to start a rumor about him seeking mental health treatment that fizzled:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/news/right-winger-behind-talarico-mental-health-hoax-fears-legal-fallout/ar-AA2eadoZ?  

There were logical problems with the story, but it has often been the case that once people get an idea in their head, it doesn't come out easily. If enough people had been sharing the story, it almost certainly would have left an impression, except, would it really be "people" sharing the story?  

If you have a lot of bots sharing the story, then it starts trending, causing more people to view it. The algorithm pushes it. 

Corrections to lies don't get the same traction for some reason.

There had been one other thing I had been thinking about from it.

It was not just that you were seeing fewer false and racist posts from accounts you had never followed. 

Someone had mentioned how you could really see the lack of engagement on some accounts now that the bots were silenced. I can't find that post now, and the only name I recognized from it was Graham Linehan, so I went to check that out.

I do remember the sample post showed something like six likes on one tweet. Before October 15th, it was common for him to have likes in the thousands. They are starting to go back up, though not yet fully restored. 

The reason I recognized that name is that he frequently comes up in discussions of transphobia. Checking his feed for likes, it doesn't look like he posts anything other than anti-trans material. He is worse than J.K.Rowling, and that's saying something. 

I am sure those likes affect the algorithm and trending, too, but they could also give the impression that his hate is more popular than it is.

Visual design affects what is processed by the eyes, but sometimes we talk about other perceptions as what we "see" and then becomes part of how you believe the world to be. That affects what you think and what you feel.

Please pay attention to that effect on you. 

That includes knowing that it isn't always genuine. There is design. 

Slava Ukraini! 

Intersecting months

I sort of did not read Being Heumann for Disability Pride Month, but I sort of did.

Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann (2020)

Technically I did not have a reading list specifically for Disability Pride Month; she was on a different reading list that I have labeled trauma, but it's more complicated than that.

However, as I was working on my capstone I spent a fair amount of time on disability. Also, "Author/Main Character with a disability" was on the Powell's Summer Reading Challenge. It just made sense to move Being Heumann up.

I will probably reference her book again after other books, but the way things worked out I read her book just after Stitching a Revolution: The Making of an Activist by Cleve Jones (2000, with Jeff Dawson), and then there has been some movie watching. It brought some themes together.

Heumann and Jones were both doing their work in the San Francisco area around the same time. In fact, a sit-in they were doing was assisted by Mayor George Moscone about six months before he was murdered, along with Harvey Milk, by Dan White.

The first theme that has really emerged -- which relates to other content as well -- is that the young folks today really don't know how good they have it. They do not know what struggles people have had to go through to get where we are.

Maybe they are less concerned about losing ground because they take this progress -- which is insufficient -- for granted.

The other thing, though, is the building of broad coalitions and the work that goes into that.

When you are reading Jones, you learn about Milk too, who was a mentor to him. 

Some of this may also have been helped by the era. 

One thing that helped with the election of Milk and others to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was a change in the rules where election was by neighborhood. That allowed for greater diversity. That meant a gay man and a Black woman and a single mother who had been a Freedom Rider.

In fact, watching the Civil Rights actions that were televised and publicized not too long ago probably did help,

Regardless, one thing you see with Milk, Jones, and Heumann is working to bring more people in.

There were different challenges. For disability rights, people tended to think of their specific disability. In Heumann's case, she had polio when she was 14 months old and limited mobility because of that. A lot of people had disabilities because of polio back then, but not enough to get the changes they needed on their own. They needed the hearing impaired and the injured and those with congenital disabilities... everyone.

You do still hear about racism at events for gay men, and I was surprised to read about the solidarity with lesbians from back then. I had gotten the impression that it was not the norm, at least in the 80s and 90s. Well, maybe it wasn't the norm in the 70s either, but it was something that Milk and Jones did. 

There were people who tried, and they were people who did good things.

There are lessons for us if we will take them. 

Why would you?

Every now and then I will remember something that an acquaintance said that just bugged me, perhaps irrationally.

I am pretty great at bargain shopping. I have a good memory for what standard prices are, I stock up on perishables when the prices are good, and I know what things can be used together so looking at an ad gives me meal ideas where I can take advantage of the sales. 

Naturally, part of that is coupons. I don't use them on a reality show level (I know someone who has, and it wouldn't fit our needs), but they are an important part of getting the best deals.

The annoying thing was this person casually saying how she's never used coupons.

Well good for you! I mean, having been coddled by your family growing up, then marrying a class above and getting spoiled by them too, and with your tendency to give up on things when they get too onerous, why would you bother with coupons?

I suppose that sends a little resentful (it might be), but the issue at the time was the complete lack of connection to how it might be important or meaningful in any way. I think she is spoiled, but not because of what she has had as much as her not showing any understanding of or interest in what other people deal with or even acknowledgment of her own privilege. It is possible to gain understanding of other experiences with some effort, but there are no signs of that effort. I have a really hard time respecting that. If nothing else, I think it limits her capacity for gratitude for what she has.

Now, for another story that may seem unrelated!

Among the people who were calling for Biden's resignation, but only so they could get their candidate of choice, was actor George Clooney. A big part of his motivation seems to have been something that he took as a snub, though that sounds like it was blown out of proportion. Those Hollywood egos, right? Regardless, after sabotaging the incumbent and the new candidate against an absolute monster, what did Clooney do after the monster won? He moved to France!

This is simply not an option for most people.

I would like to take this time to remind those concerned about Palestinian lives that Palestinian people were begging us not to elect Trump. This did not move American leftists to get behind Biden or Harris, swearing that there was no difference between the parties. 

There is a lot that is wrong with that, including stunning hypocrisy, but there will probably be a different post for that. 

I think the better point to make right now is that when we say "listen to Black women" a big part of that is that with misogynoir, Black women are subject to racism, anti-Blackness, and misogyny. They don't have a lot of defenses against the most horrible influences in our world. By necessity they have to be aware of them. That increased understanding gives them insight that is important for people with more defenses too.

It doesn't mean that some don't have more money and more connections or that you can't find any Black women encouraging people to vote against their own interests, but in general, they have more skin in the game than the millionaire actor so they are more aware of potential consequences on everyone.

As I work on my list of people to never trust again, it is notable how many of them were born into money. 

No, they have never had to clip coupons. Yes, they could indeed move to France if they felt that was best.

It doesn't automatically make them unaware, but it certainly gives them the option.

There is a certain shielding from consequences that goes beyond leaving them uninformed, but sadly seems to invest them with a sense of superiority. They are sure they know better, despite knowing much less.

So when they are pushing certain candidates and ideologies it gives them the freedom to be monumentally wrong with amazing confidence and scorn, where they will just be stunned at what a bad person you are for not acknowledging their rightness and voting as they are telling you to. You must listen to them!

But why would you? 

Incrementalism

Yes, I am thinking about politics here, but the example I am giving is not really political.

Having completed school now, while my main priority needs to be job hunting, there is also a lot of catching up to do on other things. 

Finishing up the last of school required time spent on details where I just had to put some things off. They were also important, but needed time I could not give them.

One of those was an issue with my mother's care costs. I had mentioned it earlier, but there was something that I thought I could help, if I could only get the right answer.

I got bounced around a lot on the phones trying to get that right answer. I decided the only remedy was to go down to the office, but I could not commit to that until yesterday.

There was not someone there at that time who could talk to me. They suggested I might have better luck on the phones, but I assured them that was not the case. We arranged for someone to call me later that day.

Now, part of someone being available at that time was a matter of expertise; this is someone who can give you the right answer. In fact, the person who called me was knowledgeable on the topic and I got the information that I needed.

I also learned that a lot of the information I had gotten previously was wrong. This whole part of the equation had been unnecessary, except that the actual process that I was supposed to have done back then was ridiculous. Maybe the reason so few people understand it is that they are trying to impose logic on a process where it can only fail. I've had that problem myself.

I was able to get it confirmed that the way things are set up now should not impose problems further down the road, but there are some other things that I need to look into where the correct source has not been helpful in the past.

This is still progress. I am ahead of where I was.

That's how it is for a lot of these things. This time you wait on hold. That time you leave a message. This time you do get a call back but the next time you don't and you have to start over.

I didn't go until Tuesday because I was trying to resolve three other things Monday. One was resolved and one is supposed to get me a callback, though two days later I am not optimistic about that one.

For the third I was locked out of a web site. Even though the person I was talking to told me I was not locked out, she eventually did agree that I was and got me in. However, it did not resolve one specific area of the system, and I needed to call on that today. 

That one, at least, is completely resolved now (and would not have been an issue if I had not had to change my phone number in the first place, but these things happen).

Yes, bureaucracy is a problem here, but it is a part of life that there are things that you can't get all done at once.

It requires patience and persistence -- sometimes more than the people who need it have -- but you just have to keep going, being glad for the progress that there is and keeping sight of the progress that is still needed.    

I will also acknowledge that part of this is due to my economic class (which may make it more political). 

People with more money never have to deal with a lot of this. There are some things about that which end up being pretty important. 

Animal rescue infighting

Update for the week: I did complete my Master's degree and my mother is still alive, though there are signs that our time is winding down.

Among the things I have done to try and prepare for that was drafting an obituary.

I last mentioned that in January, I think. It's been a long haul. 

Part of that is second-guessing yourself. The part that has given me the most trouble has been the "in lieu of flowers" part. 

I don't even know if anyone would want to send anything, but if they did, I currently have Felines First and the Aloha Community Library Association: 

https://www.facebook.com/FelinesFirst

https://www.wccls.org/using-library/member-libraries/aloha-community-library

They were part of making some of her time with dementia better, though there have been many different phases. 

I did think about charities specific to dementia, but I couldn't decide which one and these are both small groups that don't get a lot of attention.

What might seem like a glaring omission to some is the lack of any greyhound groups. Those dogs were an important part of her life, as were the people that she volunteered with and dog sat for. 

What I have in the obituary is that the organization that she worked with disbanded, which is true. After greyhound racing ended in Oregon, Oregon Greyhound Association stayed around until every greyhound that either raced in Oregon or was born in Oregon (or both) was placed. 

That telling also leaves out the group before. 

There were many different adoption groups, basically sorted by region. There was another one that she worked in. Most of our dogs were adopted through them, and most of the volunteering and most of the friends happened through them. 

A new couple came in to that group from out of state. They had done a lot of rescue work so they came in with people kind of impressed, though I can't help but feel like their money was a factor. 

I am not naming the organization or people here, but I promise you that there are people around who would know what and whom immediately.

The new couple started taking over, alienating a lot of people we liked.

Some left and never came back. Some got away from greyhounds, but that's why Mom went to OGA. Our last dog came through them, but the numbers were going down already. They served their purpose. 

The other group still exists and I have feelings about them. 

I don't think they intended to wreak the devastation they did. Maybe there were certain people that they would have wanted gone, but I think in general they just wanted to do things their way and felt justified in doing so; they were so obviously superior.

Having known many people who work with animal rescue and adoption, none of them are ever surprised by this story. That problem is in no way exclusive to greyhounds.

To be fair, there were issues before. I knew people who had been in the group but left previously due to disagreements, again, where everyone on either side felt right.

There were disagreements about whether to be against racing or for it. If you were for it you could still disagree on whether that was because racing wasn't really that bad and look at what loving dogs it makes or because it was evil but you can't alienate the people doing it if you want to have access to the dogs so you have to put up with it.

There were passionate disagreements about proper care and feeding of dogs. I knew some people angry because their dogs were called fat and others pushed out after being called abusive because their dogs were so thin, but also sometimes those dogs had health issues where it was not whether or not they were getting enough food. 

I don't think there was ever anyone who didn't love the dogs; how can you not love them? But there were sure people who didn't love each other. Some could be petty or pushy or resentful, but they could be kind, too.

We saw it all, sometimes in the same people.

This problem is in no way exclusive to animal rescue.