My WordPress Blog Hit Stats are Sucking this November. I Blame Google’s Update.
I’ve been blogging less these days; I admit it. The winter lazies have taken hold and they don’t want to let go. But I haven’t been blogging 2/3 less, and yet my page views have taken that massive drop in just a month.
I blame Google’s new algorithm tweaks, which rolled out in November and affects about 35% of searches. Like their previous update “Panda,” the tweaks aim to target “freshness” and “relevancy.” These changes do not favor the average blogger that wants to compete with already well-established sites.
I don’t want to assess the decisions of the wise programming team at Google (whom I imagine work on a cloud forming magical products out hopes, dreams, and digital unicorns) as fair or unfair. I just have to play the game for relevancy in the blogosphere as we all claw desperately for validation with lowercases and capitals.
Some bloggers will claim that they don’t care about being read or not read, and that they write for the sheer internal joy of writing. But denying the basic human psycho-social need to be validated by peers by claiming that you only need yourself can be easily identified as a “defense mechanism.” If they were only writing for themselves, they would stick to a diary or series of unknown word documents, and not a public blog.
For me, I take each algorithm hit as a sign that maybe it’s time I start making up titles that more accurately meet the demand of the increasingly short-attention spanned, critical thinking-averse American population:
Kim Kardashian, Pregnant with Justin Beiber’s Baby, Engaged to Penn State Child Molestor. Herman Cain Best Man.
I hear there are naked pics of the wedding on TMZ. Now there’s a title that everyone would click on if Facebook’s WaPo reader app told you your friends were reading it..
I also missed talking about the CBS debate, because I working all weekend. Now it’s awkward to talk about because so much other stuff happened in the last 4 days. It’s like when you remember someone’s birthday 4 days too late, it’s just easier to rationalize that you’ll remember to acknowledge it next year. Let me just just say that listening to them talk about foreign policy was like having my frontal cortex be waterboarded as US-led NATO forces stormed my medulla oblongata.
You may have noticed that since my Panda post, I’ve been adding pictures to almost all of my posts. Pictures generally help your blog in Search Engine Optimization. Todays posts’s demotivational poster isn’t very relevant to anything I wrote, and you’ve probably seen it already on Reddit, but I still think it’s funny.
What Mayor Bloomberg Said About the Zuccotti Park Eviction
Tweet Sent Out By Mayor Bloomberg's Office at 1:19 AM as Police Handed out Fliers in the Park
The eviction process started almost immediately after the fliers were handed out, according to a timeline provided OccupyWallStreet.org. Those that refused to leave by 3AM proceeded to be arrested one by one from their human barricade.
The press was banned, with even CBS helicopters asked to leave the airspace. MotherJones reporter, Josh Harkinson, who slipped into the Park before being physically removed by an officer, reports widespread police use of pepper spray and zip ties. Upon their return after the cleaning, the City says that protestors will not be allowed to erect tents or have encampment structures of any kind.
Due to the lack of notice and quick eviction and arrests of those refusing to leave, many personal and public belongings, [edit: blogs are correcting themselves that the Library has NOT been destroyed], have been thrown into dumpsters by the NYPD during the forced cleaning.
This morning, 200 supporters of the protesters attempted to come onto the scene. They were prevented from getting within a block of the park by a police barricade.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who scheduled a news conference for Tuesday morning, had issued a statement explaining the reasoning behind the sweep. “The law that created Zuccotti Park required that it be open for the public to enjoy for passive recreation 24 hours a day,” the mayor said in the statement. “Every since the occupation began, that law has not been complied with” because the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”
“I have become increasingly concerned – as had the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties – that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protestors and to the surrounding community,” Mr. Bloomberg said. He added that on Monday, Brookfield asked the city to assist in enforcing “the no sleeping and camping rules.”
“But make no mistake,” the mayor said, “the final decision to act was mine and mine alone.”
Watch Bloomberg’s Full Statement video at the Washington Post.
This morning the National Lawyers Guild obtained a temporary restraining order from the court, allowing protestors to return with tents to the park. Reports are coming in that hearing will be held with the state Supreme Court later today on whether or not the temporary restraining order is maintained.
Read the press statement from the NLG and a copy of the “Order to Show Cause and Temporary Restraining Order” at The Gothamist.
I will update later today as this pans out.
Update:
Judge Rules Against Occupy Wall Street Encampment
Well, shit.
CNBC Debate Review: I’m Exhausted of Listening to this Shit
I tried to continue my Annotated Transcript series. But, honestly I’m burned out, and this debate was dryer than Michelle Bachmann’s vagina. If only Mitt Romney would awkwardly touch an inflammed Rick Perry. It would have almost made those 90 or so minutes of my life worth it.
Full video here: http://www.2012presidentialelectionnews.com/2011/11/video-watch-the-full-cnbc-republican-debate-from-michigan/
The one part that made my blood boil Ron Paul was towards the end when they asked Ron Paul about wildly inflated education costs and he somehow ended his statement by suggesting to audit the Fed.
Inflation has risen 250% since 1978. Tuition costs have risen over 900%. We already have private colleges; where’s your free market now? According to Ron Paul’s answer, somehow subsidized loans are the cause.
I’ve had a superficial bet for sexual favors going since early last year that Mitt Romney was going to win out over Perry. It’s looking like I’m getting some. By the time I made this bet, I had already won my bet that Mike Huckabee wouldn’t run, but hindsight 20/20, Mike Huckabee must be crying himself to sleep every night for not running.
The Winner of the Debate:
Jim Cramer – for braving national TV without the context of funny sound effects.
Weird News Wednesday: Deer in Taco Store and Beyonce’s Baby Gift
This is a Deer in a Taco Store.
There’s a chain of taco restaurants in Georgia called Taco Mac. In Atlanta, a deer smashed through the glass window of one of these fine establishments, lost an antler, ran around panicked for a about a minute, and then ran out the back door that an employee opened for it.
Complete story at HuffPo.
I have no sympathy for this deer’s lost antler. Deer are assholes; they’re just “rats with hooves.” Except they’re 200 pounds and will kill you if they ram into the driver side door of your sedan. Which they do, because they have no concept of man-made objects that move. And apparently, no concept of glass, either.
If you missed the deer attacking the guy on a bike viral video from last month, here’s irrefutable proof that deer are assholes.
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Since I always need to hate on two things in WNW, the second thing I would like to hate this evening is rich people. Because they bathe their babies in $5,200 pink, Swarvoski crystal-encrusted bathtubs. 44,928 crystals that were laid by hand. (Though I guess if any celebrity baby is going to be blinging, it might as well be Beyonce and Jay-Z’s.)
If you ever want to make yourself suck by looking at opulent manifestations of capitalism, go to the product’s site and look at the thumbnails under the main picture. In addition to bathing babies, other suggestions for use of the 5 Grand “Diamond Bathtub” (misleading name since it’s crystal, not diamond) include storing puppies and serving alcohol.
Apparently, “a percentage of the proceeds” will be donated to The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer foundation, but they don’t say what percent. Whatever it is, the benefit to puppies in need of a crystal bathtub beds will certainly mitigate the guilt of spending a potential $5,200 direct contribution to charity on a baby that isn’t capable of forming memories yet.
We Had a Fed Audit? 16 Trillion in Secret Loans?
(^It’s over an hour and a half long. I can’t admit to watching the entire thing. The hearing was in October. The audit report was released in July.)
I’m copying this post verbatim from Facebook, because I hate not updating but I’m having writers block. The context of this post is that I have a Ron Paul supporter friend who told me we did a Fed Audit and loaned out 16 Trillion to foreign banks:
Our conversation of Ron Paul’s Fed Audit was bothering me. Mostly because I wasn’t aware there was a Fed Audit. The reason I hadn’t had heard about it, is because the Fed Audit that Ron Paul proposed hasn’t happened. Paul’s bill for a Fed Audit, HR 1207, was shot down by Congress in 2009.
What I think you were talking about was a July 2011 Government Accountability Office report, which was a far less comprehensive audit, specifically on Federal Reserve System approved emergency funding over a three year period. That audit was allowed due to parts of the Dodd-Frank bill, which, because of broader reasons, Ron Paul voted against.
News media reports, that, “The U.S. Federal Reserve gave out $16.1 trillion in emergency loans to U.S. and foreign financial institutions.”
News Article with the Audit report here: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed-gave-16-trillion-in-emergency-loans/
But this number is bullshit.
The number $16.1 trillion appears only once in the report, on a chart on page 131. This figure is actually irrelevant, because it’s not “term adjusted” and aggregate borrowing math tends to double count a lot of the same money. A term-adjusted chart a couple pages later brings it down to $1.1 trillion, and more accurately reflects “real risk.”
This is turning into something really long and technical, and I don’t really want to talk more about Federal Reserve Credit, so I’ll just end with the note that the important thing to take away is that these loans are highly regulated and backed by collateral, different from the some of the previous bailouts. The Fed has said it had “no credit losses” on any of the emergency programs, and collected $13 billion in interest.
This conclude this episode of “scandalousmuffin reads tedious economic shit so you don’t have to.”
Results of November 5 Bank Transfer Day
According to a survey by the Credit Union National Association (CUNA):
- At least 650,000 consumers across the nation have joined credit unions in the past four weeks.
- Estimates are that $4.5 Billion have been transferred to new savings accounts.
- Aearches for credit unions continue to show surges on the website aSmarterChoice.org, with more than 56,000 visitors in October.
South Park Sucks for Seven Consecutive Episodes
It also blows in 'Broadway Bro Down'
*This review has spoilers*
I was going to give Matt Stone and Trey Parker a pass for the shit-fest (literally and figuratively) that was the mid-season finale, ‘You’re Getting Old.’ It’s no surprise that the creativity flow will ebb at some points throughout 14 years, 15 seasons, and 216 episodes. It’s also understandable that, at the time, the duo was busy winning a number of Tony Awards with a combined metal value to surpass the net worth of a third world country.
‘You’re Getting Old’ was, in my opinion, the least funny episode of South Park ever. It was forced with awkward out-of-character plot movers. (Why exactly was Kyle so eager to eat Cartman’s burger to begin with?) It was so unfunny that critics everywhere suggested that the crappiness was the point, a self-aware marker of the show’s decline. But on June 15, a week after the mid-season finale aired, the guys gave an interview on The Daily Show where they were seemingly oblivious to their show’s slip into suckitude.
“Ass Burgers” brought in the second half of the season with a Matrix parody that about 12 years too late. The brunt of satire in this episode was the autism-vaccine debate, but again, they were about a year late.
The next episode Ryan McGhee of The A.V. Club graded a B+, stating, “‘The Last of the Meheecans’ isn’t really about immigration reform so much as its about the narcissistic viewpoint that America must be, as a point of irrefutable fact, the best place in the world to live.” Ok, that’s great except that it’s stating the obvious. Which is not what good satire should be doing.
‘Bass To Mouth’s’ only memorable joke was presented in the title. When laxatives are being hidden in food as a plot device, you know your writers need help. If you’ve seen Catatafish’s monolgue, you’ve seen everything worth seeing about this episode, which tackled the dual subjects of Wikileaks and student suicide, the latter of which is harder to make a good joke out of than a school bus fire.
With all the filler, like the random kid who for some reason now owns Lemmiwinks, the throwback to a classic episode ended up as tepid as the 200th episode throwback to everything. I did, however, enjoy the parody of the Goblin song from the 1977 Hobbit animated movie, if anyone else was nerdy enough to catch that reference.
The sixth episode, ‘Broadway Bro Down’ made me think this season was just a blow-job with teeth that never ended. There was an opportunity to insert some self-deprecating humor if Stan had crashed, let’s say The Book of Mormon. Parker and Stone didn’t take the obvious shot at themselves.
And finally, ‘1%.’ I’ve been waiting a couple months for them to tackle OWS, and… meh. Occupied bathroom puns is all you have?
When supervising producer of the show, Frank Agnone, was asked for the recent October 9, 2011 documentary about South Park, “Do you have concerns about their creative energy?” he stared at the sky for a second contemplatively. “Well…” and then he laughed.
It’s not that they’ve angered my liberal sensibilities. If you’ve read my blog, you’ll know I love angering politically correct sensibilities as much as I love throwing hippie babies into the sky so they can touch their dreams. It’s that South Park simply hasn’t been very funny lately.
I’m not exactly sure what the show needs to revive itself. (Unfortunately, pot-smoking koala has already been taken by another show.) But they need to not reference to things that happened a year ago that no one cares about anymore. I’m looking at you, broken musical Spiderman.
I’m sure someone—the same type of person who has the amusement baseline of a 12-year-old—is going to be boring enough to comment, “It’s a condition called being cynical asshole.” Yes, I have a condition. I think the only treatment for it is fresh writers.
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