Facebook and the Trump Campaign

I recently wrote a blog about leaving Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but after reading a CNN article titled, Here's how to delete Facebook (It won't help), I have a couple of comments to share about why I disagree with this article.

SOME HISTORY

Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm owned by: Alexander Nix (CEO), Robert Mercer,  Rebekah Mercer, AND Steve Bannon,  used data mining techniques in an effort to meddle with the 2016 electoral process. PLEASE NOTE THAT STEVE BANNON IS A KEY PLAYER HERE.

Bannon was Trump's Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President.

Cambridge Analytica started in 2013 as an offshoot of the SCL Group, partly owned by Alexander Nix. Directly from the SCL website:

"SCL Group provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations worldwide. For over 25 years, we have conducted behavioral change programs in over 60 countries & have been formally recognized for our work in defense & social change."

From Wikipedia: Laurence Levy, a lawyer with the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, advises Rebekah Mercer, Steve Bannon, and Alexander Nix on the legality of their company.

Giuliani was Trump's supporter while he was campaigning and he is currently the president's advisor and lawyer.

What a web! Steve Bannon was part owner of Cambridge Analytica and Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, was aware of the inner workings of the SCL Group.

Buckwheat Bread Recipe - A Gordian Knot!

The Gordian Knot is a Greek legend associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor for an impossible problem that is solved easily by finding a loophole or thinking creatively hense "cutting the Gordian knot".

I have been looking left and right for a 100% buckwheat bread recipe. There are plenty of recipes out there, BUT the taste is questionable and they combine all purpose flour and/or off-the-shelf yeast. I think that you will need to make your own buckwheat starter yeast for this to work.

I will go shopping early tomorrow morning to buy buckwheat flour for this experiment of mine. As soon as I have any results, I will post them here.

Shiver me timbers! I'm nervous but excited.

Merry 2018 Christmas You Filthy Animal and Happy Chicken Stock Making

I got up at 6:00 am today, December 25th 2018, to call my Greek relatives, and by the time I finished making all of the calls, I couldn't go back to bed. So, if you asking "What is Evan cooking now?",  it is chicken stock. I created a similar post five years ago and that was very successful.

Shiver me timbers! Here is my very first youtube video.

I had purchased four chicken backs from Adams Fairacre Farms in Newburgh, NY, and a variety of vegetables.

Observational Comedy - Gallons to Liters Conversion

Observational comedy is a form of humor where the storyteller turns aspects of everyday life into comedy. Normally, the joke starts with "have you ever noticed" or "did you ever wonder why" and this is the premise of this post.

Please note that I don't have an agenda, other than a comedic one,  and I can't help it when I need to write about some sort of everyday mundane aspect of my life. Also, this post appears to deal with males and for this reason I will satisfy only about 50% of the population. Keep reading.

Writing this post is difficult because of the subject matter. I edited this post several times and I hope it doesn't turn you off while reading it, not to mention the difficulty I had taking the two pictures being used in this post, man it was very tricky. I waited several minutes before taking the pictures to make sure I was alone and it felt very strange, actually it felt like stealing. It would be terrible if someone saw me using my cellphone and taking these pictures. Oh my! Keep reading.

So, here are the two infamous pictures that I took. Yes, here they are, two pictures of a urinal from a public bathroom.

What made me look at this, I still don't know. But as I was standing there using this fixture, I could not help myself as my eyes were drawn to the upper left corner of the fixture. First is the name of the manufacturer, American Standard and that's fine and dandy. Under the company name, it states "3.8 Lpf / 1.0 gpf".

Lpf stands for "Liters per flush" and "gpf" stands for gallons per flush.

Trump's New Wall Design

WHAT'S WRONG WITH TRUMP!

Take a close look at this screenshot of his "new" favorite wall design.

What is very interesting is that this is a new design and not anything like the proposed ones. Keep reading.

We can use the car shown in the front of the wall and comparatively surmise that the wall is about 30 feet tall.

The United States of America is a country of immigrants. At the base of the Statue of Liberty it states, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free". Now we build steel slats with pointy ends to kill those who try to seek refuge in the United States of America. The slats with the pointy tops have nothing to do with what the Statue of Liberty states.

Trump claims that this new wall is "beautiful" and "totally effective". How did he determine that the wall is totally effective? I am using the vehicle in front of the wall to determine that the space between the slats is wide enough for a skinny person or a child to get through. Here we go. It took me two minutes to find a way to get through the $5 Billion wall design! In terms of effectiveness, is he referring to the pointy tops of the slats? Which company created this new design? Was it designed by an engineering company or by a staff member of his? Knowing Trump anything is possible.

My Potato Tower Project

During the summer of 2018, I made an attempt to grow potatoes in 5 Gallon buckets. I had recently decided to garden seriously and after a little research, (the word "little" is a keyword here), I gathered some information about growing potatoes, bought a few buckets, haphazardly bought a few potatoes from a local garden center and I thought I was in great shape. Oops!

Online Resources

I found a GREAT resource on youtube that you should familiarize yourself with. If I made a post or video copying their information, it would be a waste of time and effort. Their videos, Hollis & Nancy's Homestead, are complete and VERY informative chock full of relevant information free of fluff. Specifically, Hollis created three videos that every wannabe potato grower should watch, HD How To Grow Potatoes In Containers (Part 1, 2, 3). I think the third video is the best one because it describes what I am trying to do. Kudos to Hollis and Nancy for taking time to create such complete, wonderful resources.

Well, when I bought my potatoes for the 5 Gallon buckets I thought that potatoes are just potatoes. You buy seed potatoes, bury them in the ground, water them, and then pick them. WRONG! You should watch Holli's videos to learn about potatoes.

Civil Rights Movement and Any Progress That Has Been Made

I was born and raised in Greece and came to the US the day before the Thanksgiving holiday in 1977. I was completely uneducated and uninformed in any civil rights matters. In Greece my education was consumed by learning ancient Greek, Latin, mathematics, science and Greek politics. Regarding any other matters, well, I was clueless. In Greece, young people between the ages of 17 and 24 can be categorized as: professional students, drunks, gamblers, ignorant, or rabid communists. I can safely say that was more ignorant than drunk.

Music has always been a big part of my life. I can only say that I love music of all types. Friends and relatives are stunned with my knowledge of hip hop/rap music and hip hop/rap artists. If you haven't heard songs by N.W.A. (Straight outta Compton, Express Yourself), well, you are are not doing yourself any favors. By the way, here is a message to the relative who stole my Snoop Dogg CD titled Doggystyle: RETURN IT!!! Another artist that I admire and respect is Nina Simone. There are several songs that she wrote and I like, but, her song Mississippi Goddam tops all of them.

Mississippi Goddamn was released in 1963 and was written in response to the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, which killed four black children. Then Alabama's Governor George Wallace was a segregationist and during his 1963 inaugural address he had pledged "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever". Oy!

Recent political events have stirred up such terrible feelings that forced me to write this post.

In Mississippi, since on November 6, 2018, senate candidates failed to capture a majority of the vote and they went to a November 27th runoff. Hyde-Smith ran against Mike Espy, a former Mississippi congressman and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in Clinton's administration and she won. So far so good, because in every race always someone wins, but there is more to this story. Keep reading.