Stormbringer's Thunder

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen In the thrilling days of internet yesteryear, people were using emoticons to express reactions with face-like symbols. This platform automatically turns the text version into a picture so I am unable to make one of the old styles, but you know: Those things with a combination of a colon, dash, right parenthesis to make a smiley face. They evolved into graphic emojis, and people do not need to turn their heads to see them. Credit: Unsplash / Lidya Nada Now the things are ubiquitous on social media, and even show up in more serious online posts and articles. (In my opinion, they should be avoided or at least used sparingly, depending on the article, subject matter, and so on.) Smartphones make them exceptionally easy to use. Text messages are an entirely different animal, so it's obviously up to the individual in that regard. Using desktop browsers, I have an option insert them 😸 as well as other special characters. Also, this dreadful Blogger platform has a s...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen It seems a mite ironic that I began using this platform back in 2007 so I could have my say on various topic, and today I am complaining that various social media outlets are becoming more and more opposed to free speech — at least, among Christians and Conservatives. Made at Atom Smasher Facebook is frequently in the news by alternative media for discrimination and censorship. Hate speech against Jews, Christians, and Conservatives is just fine, but the sidewinders in charge will shut down Pages and accounts by people who are not atheists, anti-creationists, terrorists, socialists, and the like. Reporting those for clear violations of Fazebook's alleged Terms of Service are usually worthless. Two standards, no waiting. Used under Fair Use provisions for educational purposes (click for larger) Aside from their lackadaisical approach and blatant hypocrisy on their ToS, Fazebook removes Christians, Conservatives, and supporters of Israel (I h...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Most of us know that employers in The Big Company monitor someone's social media activities. As is often the case, when someone expresses a personal view that is not politically correct, they can be screened out and barred from employment, and people have even lost their jobs for expressing themselves on social media . I disremember when I read this, but someone said that it was good and right for The Big Company to monitor someone's activities. Really? We may cry "censorship" or "freedom of speech", but those do not apply so much here. That is, try to fight it in court on "free speech" grounds, and you'll probably lose. Your speech is regulated while on the company clock, vocal or written, and what you write can be monitored even though it's on your own time, on your own media accounts. There are companies that don't really care what the typical employee does in his or her spare time  as long as they ...

This made my day! I gave a flirt on Twitter to Ann Coulter, thinking (a) there's no way she'll see it, and (b) probably an imposter anyway. Well, from the way people are treating that Twitter account, it may very well be her.  Anyway, you have to acquire the "eye" for it, so I'll give you the background. Someone said something, I added on with, "@Ann Coulter is my One True Love. Ask her about me and she'll say, 'WHO???'  She gave me a reply, a "retweet": That's her sense of humor, that's for certain! Nice thing to do for me, huh? Addendum: This was sent to me later: " Excellent! Yup that's really her, I've been following her for a while now. Very nice! I'd be on Cloud Nine if somebody like her ever noticed me. And I'd get that framed."

Buon giorno. Been getting myself in trouble with the crew. Grousing to Lela, Hal the Hacker, Tommy the Knocker, Billy the Baptist, Rowdy Ralph, Tommy the Knocker, Nicky and the others... they told me to put it into writing so they don't have to hear me. I'm in the mood for a little grumbling, making the sound of a distant thunder. Most are small. Sure, I have plenty of things that I can rant about, such as people who use bad reasoning but cannot see it, double standards of the Hollyweird leftists (sure, complain about Bush at every turn, not a peep about B. Hussein Obama's failings in dealing with the BP situation), the way PayPal is letting finances for terrorist lovers go through but shuts down their account with Atlas Shrugs and other anti-jihad sites — but I want to let other people handle those so I can go after must less important things. Except one brief comment of something bigger. Can the criticism of Elton John for playing at the Limbaugh wedding, willya? Peopl...

Buon giorno. Last time, I discussed why I will not follow some people on Twitter. This time, it's slightly different: Unfollowing. (No, it's not a real word outside of social networking, but it's still useful.) I am not one of those people that needs to have loads of followers to validate my existence; in fact, I trim off the followers. OK, so I've been Twittering, Tweeting, Retweeting (gosh, those terms make me feel so manly...ha!) for a while. Then I see that I'm getting bothered by some of the material that appears before of my eyes. Here are some of the reasons that I may drop my following: Although I knew what I was getting into, someone sends links almost exclusively . Sure, I want news. But not quite that much! It would help if the person had personality instead of acting like some kind of posting bot. They ignore my links . As almost a sub-point to the above, I post some links myself. When I have a new Weblog posting, I'll share the link. When people a...

Buon giorno. I have to get some thoughts out regarding Twitter, and I will have a few installments. The next one will probably be about "unfollowing". If you don't use Twitter, I hope you will read these anyway, because I believe they have some deeper meanings for our communications habits in general. The "rules" or procedures for social networking are different in many ways from "real life", but there are also some things in common. One rule is that the rules are constantly changing. Wow, lookie here! Someone decided to "follow" me on Twitter. Naturally, I click on their profile to see what they say about themselves, what they have "tweeted", who else they follow, how many followers they have and so on. And when they decided to follow me, there is an expectation that I will feel obligated to follow them back. Not this little gray duck. By the way, in the real world, we don't "follow" people that we just met unless we...