Disqus - Latest Comments for drron

Re: YouTube Music Playing the Same Artist Makes Everyone Miss Google Play Music

drron — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 07:11:38 -0000

I am a quadriplegic and I use voice commands to request music and radio. It used to be easy to simply tell my google smart speaker: "Play Michigan Radio" and then I would hear my local NPR station. But now it ends up playing YouTube videos that have nothing to do with my request!

Re: Arlington, VA: Free Caller ID for 7033107303

drron — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 16:38:35 -0000

The voice message claims to be FBI and mentions tax and IRS problems

Re: Is That Phone Call Really from Google?

drron — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 13:34:25 -0000

I get an average of four or five calls a week regarding Google business listings. For each call, I block the sending number, then I get the same message from a new number! It is relentlessly unending.

Re: The University of Michigan’s Plan to Increase Diversity

drron — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 08:10:31 -0000

After Trump was elected President, perhaps nothing should shock me, but I am stunned by the number of openly racist people who read The Atlantic. It's ok racist white people, don't think about the fact that you're being screwed by Petroleum Plutocrats, who are not Climate Change Deniers, they are Climate Change Liars, who are going to suck every last dollar they can out of fossil fuels, while destroying the planet for our grandchildren. Don't think about how much white working people have been screwed by the 1%, because just think about how much better you are than those black and brown people. And, by the way, as a University of Michigan Ph.D. (1981) I can tell you the reason Michigan has a lot of Asian students is because the Chinese government pays 100% of costs for students to study in Ann Arbor. That's around $50 thousand a year just for tuition alone in the engineering graduate school, where whites are in the clear minority.

Re: The University of Michigan’s Plan to Increase Diversity

drron — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 07:51:55 -0000

"American colleges are educating more international students than ever before, according to a new report, “Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange,” released by the Institute of of International Education. The widely anticipated report finds that nearly 1 million international students—many of them from countries such as China, India, Kuwait—were educated in the United States in the 2014-15 school year, up 10 percent from the previous year. These students typically arrive with the means to pay the full price tag for college."
https://www.theatlantic.com...

Re: The University of Michigan’s Plan to Increase Diversity

drron — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 07:44:12 -0000

I completed a Ph.D. at The University of Michigan in 1981. One thing I noticed over the years was that over 50% of the engineering graduate students are from other countries where their governments are funding 100% of their attendance. A very large number come from mainland China. I bought a house near campus in 1988. The value of that house has increased 640%, which is great for me, but not so great for low income students trying to live in Ann Arbor, which has changed from a counter cultural center in the 1960's to a place with expensive restaurants and bars for the wealthy students who comprise the overwhelming majority of the student body. Every time I return to check on my house, which I rent for a good price (my major income at age 66) I see more wealth and more poverty as the inequality we have witnessed across America gets amplified in this college town. FWIW, having an income from that house enables me to do a lot of pro bono web development for progressive causes.

Re: Here’s What Philly Cops Thought of the DNC Protests

drron — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 17:44:09 -0000

The DNC security who body slammed my 74 yr old female co-delegate need to take some lessons from the Philly police. Two Philly police officers came to our aide when I and another Bernie Delegate were separated from our spouses. On my way to ‪#‎DNC‬ I promised family I'd try to talk to Hillary Delegates. Out of first 10 tries 4 did not know what TPP is and 6 just refused to talk, so I don't know if they were embarrassed to not know what it is or just didn't want to talk to me. But 2 Black Philly police officers who helped us get an 80 year old through lines blocked by Secret Service to our car were both Bernie supporters, knew about TPP and opposed it. Let's do more outreach to local police. By gaining #Unity with local police we'll have the power to fight the billionaires.

Re: Code Corps | Build a better future.

drron — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 17:36:07 -0000

I am most interested in looking back at this past year of volunteering for Bernie Sanders and figuring out how the tools we build and integrate address problems that we each may have encountered. Please add comments with your perspective. After a year of being part of many Slack teams used by Bernie Sanders supporters, I wonder what other people's concerns may have been about process, and what solutions you might recommend. I lost many hours every day trying to find the "needle in the haystack" of noise generated in so many Slack teams. Which existing Slack plugins or integrations would people recommend to have better document and project management? Or, what new things should people try to write? For project management with my clients I have used Basecamp since 2006. For a while before the Sanders campaign, I was happy using Slack with teams of five or six people, but felt like I was about to lose my mind after being a member of over a dozen Slack teams (some with over 100 members), where knowing what was going on required way too much time. It seems that some top level one page table of contents and an integrated calendar with some information about milestones or roadmap details would have been extremely helpful. Instead, to be a member of the "clique" that was running the Slack team required many hours of constant interaction, or it was very difficult to know what was going on.

Re: Senate Democrats Considering Replacing DNC Chair - NationofChange | Progressive Change Through Positive Action

drron — Wed, 25 May 2016 13:54:24 -0000

Now the Democratic Party just has to find a nominee that would unite the party. Otherwise, DWS is simply being asked to fall on her sword in return for some other future payback.

Re: Bernie Sanders Responds to Nevada Convention Debacle - NationofChange | Progressive Change Through Positive Action

drron — Thu, 19 May 2016 12:54:17 -0000

Have you seen reports from across the country of people who had been registered Democrats for years discovering that someone had changed their registration without their knowledge or permission? See this from Arizona: "Ed Higgins, another voter who had his registration changed to Independent, testified that the signature pasted onto the unauthorized registration was the exact duplicate of the one on his drivers license. His testimony suggests that whomever accessed his registration to render him ineligible to vote was also somehow able to access his driver license to obtain an image of his signature." here: http://electionnightmares.c... and watch countless actual videos from the convention floor here: http://www.berniesandersvid...

Re: The Alaska Democratic Convention Just Rejected Superdelegates - NationofChange | Progressive Change Through Positive Action

drron — Wed, 18 May 2016 21:27:39 -0000

mimi, have you seen any of the video showing what really happened? Googling produces articles that talk of violence from Bernie supporters, but I have yet to see any evidence of violence (shouting is the worst I have seen). Watch this video from the floor of the Nevada convention: https://youtu.be/mVTZdYs130o

Re: FREE ONLINE PROGRESSIVE CANDIDATE SUMMIT

drron — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 21:03:22 -0000

Should we be trying to comment here or in YouTube?

Re: Free Online Progressive Candidate Summit | Part 1

drron — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:55:45 -0000

Will we be interacting online during the presentation?

Re: Bernie Sanders's Problem With Democrats

drron — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 17:15:43 -0000

The problem is that the Democratic Party leadership has moved away from their traditional constituency of working and middle class citizens to representing the interests of big banks, insurance companies and free trade policies that have moved wealth out of the middle class into the hands of the 1%. We now have two types of Democrats: (1) Progressive Democrats and (2) Wall Street Democrats. Progressive Democrats would like to se a return to the values of FDR, while Wall Street Democrats, though "Progressive" on certain social issues, like gay marriage, are more likely to be free market neoliberals. The Wall Street Democrats have a lot of power and money, but there is a tidal wave of grassroots activism among Progressive Democrats, who seek to give more working class and middle class people a reason to vote. The USA has one of the very worst voter turnouts in the world because most people do not believe their lives will be any different because of who gets elected. The outcome of the coming Presidential election is going to be determined by just how much Progressive Democrats can do to convince more people to vote.

The title "Bernie Sanders' Problem With Democrats" should be re-written as "Democrats Problem With Their Traditional Constituency."

Re: Sanders Campaign Sues the DNC for Blocking Voter Data Access, Court Documents Say

drron — Sat, 19 Dec 2015 01:11:25 -0000

There is a larger issue here about how a Grassroots Political Revolution should maintain its own copy of data we collect. If you are going door to door, doing the work to collect voter data, then you should be able to save your own data. We need to build Open Source tools that enable the person, who did the work of collecting the data, to control who has access. I first encountered this issue when my house was the Ann Arbor headquarters for the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. First we went door to door for Dean collecting voter data. Then when Kerry got the nomination and Dean supporters offered to help Kerry, we had to go back to the same doors again, because we did not have access to the data we had collected. I was already talking with people about building our own mobile apps for data collection. With these recent revelations about the DNC and VAN, I am even more convinced that whatever we do or don’t do using VAN, we need to protect access to the data we collect.

Re: I’m a young, black female, and I may not vote in this presidential election

drron — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 09:03:48 -0000

Arielle, you say: "Another stumbling block are his supporters, who are embedded in a white savior ethos that discounts black thought leadership as unintelligent and unworthy." Please do not lump me together into to this stereotype you seem to have of Progressives. As Bernie himself says, this is not about him, it is about progressives coming together to make institutional changes that we need for racial equality, income equality, educational equality, healthcare equality, etc. to have a chance.

We need more people to vote, not less, if we are to address the institutional problems that enable racism to continue and grow. And, I would never assume that voting by itself will bring about a lot of change. Voting by itself is not sufficient. We need to be organized and work together to produce real, lasting change. I understand that your priorities may be very justifiably different than mine. But, why would it be a priority to attack progressives? Isn't that a waste of your energy? My grandmother's brother fought with the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War against Franco. People on the left shot at each other. And Franco was then able to rule his fascist government for decades. I can appreciate that Angela Davis is someone you admire. I am old enough to have demonstrated outside of the Panther 21 trial in NYC. If you don't want to participate in this presidential election, I respect your decision, that you may have higher priorities. But, is spending time shooting at me and other progressives a good use of your time?

Re: An Open Letter to Bernie Sanders Supporters

drron — Sun, 16 Aug 2015 12:47:58 -0000

Some background details: http://reverbpress.com/poli...

Re: An Open Letter to Bernie Sanders Supporters

drron — Sat, 15 Aug 2015 15:42:05 -0000

I hope I am not making a mistake attempting a discussion here, when maybe I should just not react to this and move on, the way one has to do with a family member, whom you love, but with whom it is futile to attempt to engage in meaningful discussion.

"Shut up" is simply not a good way to start a conversation about change. Despite that, I did read your entire post. I am very concerned when anybody tries to silence someone else. The history of social change movements is filled with internal fights and purges. I can't speak for every Sanders supporter, but I know that I, a Sanders supporter, was already listening to important messages from Black Lives Matter, before the upsetting events in Seattle. And I was not upset because Sanders did not get to speak about Social Security. I was upset, because I thought it was a really bad tactic, by two women who, right or wrong, gave me the visceral feeling of the high school bully who beats people up in the bathroom. AFAIK, Black Lives Matter may come across differently in different cities, because the people are different. BLM people in Boston, seemed to be content to sit in a secondary room, when Hillary was speaking. Thus, BLM, is a brand and a brand's value is affected by people's perceptions. My perception of Boston was confusion about why they were being so nice to Hillary.

At the same time, while I was upset by the Seattle "performance," I do understand that children, who are abused, often grow up to become abusers themselves. While, I have no sympathy for any child abuser, I would try to get more help for an abused person, who has grown up to become an abuser. And that is part of why this whole incident was upsetting to me. As a Latino, I've had my own experiences with the prejudice of white liberals. But, I don't lump them together into one group and try to make them all my enemy. As a "senior citizen" I am also concerned about agism from young people, who make assumptions about the positions of older people, who may have been in the streets getting gassed by the police before that young person was even born. So, the scene of these young women in Seattle seemed a little more complicated to me than just black versus white. It also reminded me of teenage Maoists during the cultural revolution in China and how they were portrayed in this film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... All doctors have been sent to do hard labor for being over educated, and the students are left as the only ones in charge and this results in deaths at the hands of incompetent student "doctors."

Re: The 2016 Presidential Race: A Conversation With Democratic Candidate And Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders - The Diane Rehm Show

drron — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 20:20:01 -0000

"Redistribute" does sound Soviet to many and I think that is why so many Republicans use the word.

Instead of using the word redistribution, how about "investing" in infrastructure like good jobs to fix collapsing bridges or laying fiberoptic cable to make Broadband Internet more accessible? Since originally being #1 in Broadband access, the US has dropped below about 30 other countries.

Apple has not created many jobs for Americans and Apple files patents offshore to avoid paying taxes.

Re: The 2016 Presidential Race: A Conversation With Democratic Candidate And Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders - The Diane Rehm Show

drron — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 16:07:48 -0000

It's time for taking back the money that the 0.01% have taken from the middle class since the early 1980's. "We used to make sh!t in this country" now the wealthy use finance to redistribute wealth upward. http://bit.ly/1JKSwbl

Re: The 2016 Presidential Race: A Conversation With Democratic Candidate And Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders - The Diane Rehm Show

drron — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 14:24:40 -0000

In the 1960's when I was in high school the NYC subway cost $0.15, a slice of pizza cost $0.15 and minimum wage was 10X that - $1.50/hour. Now the subway costs $2.75. So, think about what minimum wage should be.

Re: The 2016 Presidential Race: A Conversation With Democratic Candidate And Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders - The Diane Rehm Show

drron — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 11:02:35 -0000

It is time to stop thinking about who can win under the current conditions of low voter turnout and the corruption of money in politics. Start thinking about what issues really matter to the people who have not registered or voted and how to get them to turn out. Turkey just had an 85% turnout in their elections. How will we present issues? My small part will be playing videos on the flatscreen TVs in my local laundromat. Think about what you can do to claim a Media Commons space and offer an alternative to TV time purchased by the corruption of money in politics.

Re: The 2016 Presidential Race: A Conversation With Democratic Candidate And Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders - The Diane Rehm Show

drron — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 09:06:20 -0000

My local laundromat in Brooklyn has agreed to let me hook up Google Chromecast to play videos on their flatscreen TVs. With a cheap "travel wifi" hotspot you can play locally stored video without Internet, as an alternative to fake judge TV shows in laundromats. We should make Bernie's YouTube videos available for people to play from their phone, tablet or computer with Chromecast, so an Internet connection would not be necessary. This is about people taking back the media. Isn't the corruption of money in politics mostly about buying TV time? Let's make shared space like laundromats the new Commons for media and attempt to address issues hyperlocal to a neighborhood, that would make people more interested in voting.

Re: Migrating Your WordPress Database: WP Migrate DB – Development to Production

drron — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 11:16:03 -0000

You should also mention what to do with the plugins and themes that, like the media in the uploads folder, do not get migrated with the database export/ import.

Re: White Is the New White

drron — Sun, 18 Aug 2013 20:41:23 -0000

I'd like to add a little interesting data about story telling and persuasion that has been learned by people who do fund raising using tools like Kickstarter to crowdfund projects. If your project, e.g. is to help people who need clean water wells in some third world country, you don't have the third world person be the center of the video. For the center of your video you pick someone who is like the viewer that you want to make a contribution to your campaign. You of course include the third world people in the video. If the goal of your messaging is to reach the third world people to get them to think or do something, then you should make a third world person the center of the video.

If you agree that more white people need to learn about the realities of the US prison system and that African Americans already need less education about those realities, then it is much more effective to have the lead character be a blond white girl.