Notices by Michael Martinez :verified: (michael_martinez@c.im)

Finally found a new #cdrama I can watch all the way through (all the episodes are available).

#legendofshenli is a funny, different kind of #wuxia with an engaging pair of leads.

The story is both serious and funny.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has published a report explaining how Republican election deniers can be challenged if they attempt to refuse to certify results in federal elections.

#uspolitics #election2024 #voteblue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01_HKARXWOM

Russia may now be pulling front line troops from the Donbas and Ukrainian forces are following them - reversing some advances that Russia made in the south.

Treat this as unconfirmed rumors for now. But so far this guy has been pretty reliable.

It also looks like the Ukrainian advance into Kursk is taking a southward bend but they're still expanding in several directions.

#ukraine #ukrainewar #ukrainerussiawar #russia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZhnfA4fIdE

Rick Wilson of The Lincoln Project reads the riot act to the New York Times and other news organizations for conducting a massive disinformation campaign against President #joebiden over the past few weeks.

They've literally ignored or downplayed all the dangerous things #DonaldTrump has been saying and doing - and all the obvious signs of his mental decline - to pretend that President Biden is unfit for office and should not be running for re-election.

Biden has given numerous speeches and interviews and run a major NATO conference as effectively and efficiently as anyone half his age (and people much younger than him experience memory mishaps when under immense pressure).

The shameful way the U.S. major news media have abandoned any pretense of maintaining professional journalistic standards makes it clear and obvious they can't be trusted to reliably and credibly report on basic facts that conflict with their own editors' or publishers' personal egos and agendas.

No decent, self-respecting, professional journalist should have anything to do with this misinformation campaign. They already know that millions of Americans are too easily persuaded by lies and bullshit. They're supposed to be the Fourth Estate, standing up for accountability and transparency. Instead they've let us down in the worst way possible, introducing yet another vector of corruption into the American political environment.

#uspolitics #election2024 #ridingwithbiden #news #newsmedia #journalists #journalism #democracy #saveamerica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqNd3d8C46I

@pfefferle And YOU have a point.

I'll keep thinking about how to handle my needs.

Thanks again.

@pfefferle But you're missing MY point.

I want to avoid using the tags "tolkien" and "mdidleearth" if I can - because they're redundant on that Website.

It's like me tagging every fediverse comment with #michaelmartinez - there's no benefit to it.

The blog's name is not a tag. And repeating the name as tags doesn't serve any useful purpose for blog visitors. It would just be a trick to get the fediverse to see that the blog is associated with those queries.

I can redirect the tag archives to the main archive, sure, but I might one day want to use those tags to collect articles specifically about [J.R.R.] Tolkien (or anyone in the Tolkien family) and the concept of Middle-earth.

If I do as you suggest, I'll have to create distinct tags (like tolkien1 or tolkienfamily or something).

@pfefferle I don't mind seeing the tags at the end of the post (the current theme on the site is embedding the standard tags there).

I just don't want to have to embed the hastags at the top of the post because that makes all the excerpts look very similar.

I can redirect any individual tag archive to another destination - so if I MUST create a set of #tolkien and #middleearth tags I can live with that. But the plugin limits what I can embed in the excerpt (I'm guessing because that's what the theme decided was useful for excerpt length).

I'm just hoping to expand the fediverse visibility without having to find another theme.

I use Classic Themes - hate Gutenberg. And that blog is so old (has so much content) that switching themes creates issues because of the Featured Images. It's a very complicated situation.

But I manage or help manage over 100 sites. We could federate them all if the plugin were just a little more flexible. As it is, we're stuck because it's too limiting.

@pfefferle See my other reply for details and an example.

I can get around this by reposting the URL from this account (not associated with the blog) and adding the hashtags in my content. But that's tedious.

Or I can wait for the long-promised #quotetoot feature (or whatever it will be called) to be added to Mastodon's core code, but even then I would still have to reshare everything and manually add the hashtags.

@pfefferle But they don't appear in the fediverse. So the posts cannot be found in searches for those hashtags.

If you search for #tolkien or #middleearth none of my recent content shows up but the posts are live.

Here's an example: This post is tagged "magic" and "the numenoreans" (or "numenoreans") in usual WordPress style. But if you search those hashtags on the fediverse, you won't find that article.

Even if I go back and edit the post and add hashtags to the top of the page, they won't appear in fediverse searches.

In order to be fully federated, I must embed the hashtags at the top of my content (because I publish excerpts) AND I must allow the plugin to convert them to standard blog hashtags. So if I want to announce to people there's a new "tolkien" "middle-earth" blog post, I have to create and add to those WordPress tags even though I don't use them on my [Tolkien and Middle-earth] blog. It's completely redundant.

https://middle-earth.xenite.org/did-the-numenoreans-possess-magic-other-men-could-not-wield/

Much as I like the concept behind the #ActivityPub plugin for #WordPress, it's not doing a good job.

And it comes down to tagging.

In order to federate your tags you either need to include them high up in the content (for excerpts) or you need to federate the entire post.

Whole-post federation consumes other people's resources and I've seen some pushback against that. So I opted for the excerpts.

But with the excerpts I'm limited to how many characters are federated. Injecting tags into the top portion of the posts requires characters. And there are other problems, because the kinds of tags people use on the fediverse aren't necessarily the kinds of tags one uses on a blog.

I'd like to see the plugin enhanced so that it can allow the user/author to add "fediverse tags" that are appended to the end of either the whole post or excerpt, but which do not create new tag archives on the blog itself.

@pfefferle would that be possible?

I watched a #cdrama movie set in the #Novoland fictional universe, "Novoland: Trace of the Dragon". Here is my review. Short version: watch it only if you absolutely need to see every Novoland adaptation.

#fantasy #movies #cdramas

https://forums.sf-fandom.com/thread-37280.html

I've posted my review of "In Blossom" at the SF-Fandom forums. Overall I liked the show.

#cdrama #cdramas #fantasy #jujingyi #liuxueyi

https://forums.sf-fandom.com/thread-37282.html

@liztai For me it comes down to whatever I have in my hand and if I can mix the rice with something else. It's also a way of slowing down how much rice I eat, since I love a good rice-based meal.

This is too rich not to share.

"U.S. Congresswoman Suspected of Having 'Russian Handlers' After Transcarpathia Amendment"

FROM THE ARTICLE: "Political pundit ‘Jay in Kyiv’ responded: 'The amendment that Marjorie Taylor Greene just proposed to sabotage the Ukraine bill is something that is such a nuanced Russian disinfo narrative that it could have only come directly from her Russian handlers.'

'The notion that Hungarians are being persecuted in Ukraine is insane BUT it’s being pushed by both Orban (who was promised a piece of Ukraine by Putin) and Russian disinfo machine. For an American to suggest this really confirms she is being handled.'"

#uspolitics #ukraine #russia

https://2paragraphs.com/2024/04/u-s-congresswoman-suspected-of-having-russian-handlers-after-transcarpathia-amendment/

@liztai There are those of us in the USA who feel what Tucker Carlson does is anything but journalism.

We need to promote healthy forests and jungles. Planting trees to fight climate change is a controversial practice but science shows that if we're going to plant things, we should think in terms of rebuilding ecosystems and not simply "planting trees".

https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(23)00223-9

Journalist (now academic) Ilene Prusher explains in an op-ed how she and other members of the media were deceived by #Hamas over the decades.

"Opinion: I reported on Hamas in Gaza for over a decade. Here are the questions I’m asking myself now"

One important paragraph that is relevant to current casualty claims by Hamas: "Hamas also played fast and loose with facts they gave us reporters. During the first major Israel-Hamas war in 2008 to 2009, known as Operation Cast Lead, Hamas said that fewer than 50 of the 1,400 dead in Gaza had been combatants. But more than a year later, Hamas’ interior minister acknowledged in an interview with the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper that between 600 and 700 of its militants were killed in that war. In that and in almost every war since, Hamas or other militant groups in Gaza launched rockets that fell unintentionally on their own citizens, but rarely if ever, owned up to the error, instead blaming Israel for the deaths."

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/07/opinions/israel-hamas-gaza-media-press-prusher/index.html

@pfefferle

This is a recent post and the screen capture below is what I see. I don't use a Mastodon client. I only access it from the C.im Website, if that matters.

I also don't use the Gutenberg editor in WordPress. I use the Classic Editor (in case that matters).

And this post was published on a multisite network (using subdomains).

The "Not Available" is where the Featured Image should be.

https://c.im/@michael@middle-earth.xenite.org/111063510798864523

@73ms @feditips @pfefferle There are ways to promote Mastodon/fediverse accounts on any WordPress blog (even free WordPress.Com accounts) via widgets in sidebars and footers.

I'm experimenting with ActivityPub + Friends plugins on several blogs but because the Featured Images don't display properly for me when I view them from this account, I'm not sure I want to promote those blogs directly.

I'm still manually sharing content when it's published to ensure I can see my Featured Images. But I'm probably just being prissy at this point.

The Friends plugin is still a little iffy but it's recently been enhanced and I need to scale up my experimentation to learn more about what to expect.