Briathrail // Albert 2MNG

This was imported from my old Tumblr blog posts.

Well, looks like there’s some time after a work meeting for blogging.

• ClintonKaine.com Pays Off For Domain Squatter (NPR)
  
  As I’ve referenced earlier, some dude with too much time on his hands has bought ClintonKaine.com way back in 2011. And I hoped that Hillary buys it before Donald Trump takes out his hamster-sized hands to sign a check for it. So NPR (c/o David Greene) conducted an interview with that dude, Jeremy Peter Green (no relation, as David opined in the article).
  
  It was an interesting read, as Jeremy was willing to divulge so many details of himself – he’s a lawyer, apparently, and he’s using the aforementioned domain to showcase his skills as a crappy JK Rowling-esque author of political fan fiction… oh, and he’s broke and living in a basement. Well, this is NPR, not exactly the same level as Howard Stern or a popular podcast. Turns out he’s with Her.
  
  GREENE: So do you support Hillary Clinton? GREEN: Yes, I do. – NPR
  
  Makes it easy, right? Hillary supporter who needs cash badly, and it’s the right domain for Hillary and Her Partner Who Plays Harmonica. Then David got to the meat of the interview – the “coveted” domain name that Jeremy held on for 5 years.
  
  GREEN: … So I decided to reach out to the campaign first to see if the Clinton campaign wanted to buy it before I started talking to other buyers. GREENE: And what was your offering price? GREEN: I was willing to go as low as 10,000 if they had even tried to bargain with me. GREENE: You were willing to go 10. GREEN: For Clinton, yes. – NPR
  
  For the record, he planned to sell the domain for 90K. And he was also willing to give Hillary the big supporter discount, so this should be in Hillary’s swag bag already, right? Next to the hot sauce. And this is America, and everybody loves a big discount (or else there’s no such thing as a Black Friday). Good news, it’s sold. Bad news, Hillary totally low-balled the destitute dude, so he ended up making other plans.
  
  GREENE: And, well, did the campaign get back to you? GREEN: I had a three-minute phone conversation with someone pretty high up in the Clinton campaign. And she offered me $2,000. GREENE: Two-thousand dollars. GREEN: Yeah, it was so sort of shockingly low, I didn’t even really know how to react. – NPR
  
  OK, I know that a domain costs about $10-15 a year, depending on registrar and TLD. And the domain would be only used for a year, so this is pretty cheap to begin with. But this is special. There’s a reason Mike Bloomberg gorged himself on .nyc domain names, because he don’t want online trending shit to happen with mikebloomberg[insert shit here].nyc domains. This is a national election, and domains that basically says everything about your campaign is a needed one. Even if it’s 10K, it will pay off if you can prevent a few online shitstorms coming your way. ClintonKaine says everything, unless Hillary want a threesome, in which case ClintonKaineWarren is still an option. So, Jeremy is broke and needs to sell off a valuable domain. David, continue.
  
  GREENE: So now you said that you were pretty broke until recently. You’ve now sold the domain. GREEN: That’s right. GREENE: For how much? GREEN: For 15,000. GREENE: And who was the buyer? GREEN: All I had was an email address. And they turned out to be the web marketing company that the Trump campaign uses. – NPR
  
  OH COME ON! The Trump campaign now has a valuable tool (unless Trump wants the same treatment he did for Jeb’s website) they can use for whatever f*ck-up they want for Hillary’s online presence. You know, like launch a legit-looking website for Clinton where she quotes passages from Mein Kampf. Or scare old white folks with the domain containing handfuls of Breitbart articles about how Hillary and Obama will send them to fictional death chambers. Hypotheticals, but possible given how Trump tweets stupid shit like how Chipotle sells burritos. And for that extra kick, Trump’s people padded Jeremy’s 10K with an additional 5K, because, just you know, they can afford it. They can gloat Hillary lowballs supporters with below-the-belt offers for squatted websites.
  
  GREENE: … In our own research, we found that clintonkaine.com now belongs to a Brad Parscale, who works as Donald Trump’s digital director. – NPR  
  
  One, I’m pretty sure Jeremy won’t be flying into any of Clinton’s events any time soon. Second, Trump has a new toy to play with. Although, for our consolation, it’s a small toy that can fit in Trump’s tiny, tiny hands.
  
  
• Egypt state TV orders female hosts to lose weight (BBC)
  
  Now we go to another place that’s not as hot as the US is right now, Egypt. Apparently, Egypt’s state-owned media outfit has a similar (if not the same) level of beauty standards as Sepp Blatter and decided to suspend eight of its female TV presenters and told them to go on a diet. Yeah, as if telling people to take a temporary hike because their audience supposedly cares more about pleasing body figures than the daily watered-down versions of stories about their President el-Sisi f*cking their country will go down easily.
  
  The Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) has given the women one month to slim down before they can appear on air again with an “appropriate appearance”, the Al-Yawm al-Sabi website reports. The ERTU has a female director, Safaa Hegazy, a former state TV anchor herself. – BBC
  
  Definitely sexist, but you know what stings more, there’s a female in the ERTU directors but they just went through it like a hot knife through butter. Maybe the ERTU got on Google and saw TV Guide’s list of sexy weather women and got insanely jealous. The news agencies should be more concerned about the news content rather than the physical appearance of its news presenters. People ain’t concerned about how much makeup the news man has, they watch because they are more interested in what’s coming out of their mouths rather than the mousse on their hair. It’s called a news show for a reason.
  
  If ERTU wants women with pleasing figure-eight waistlines reporting their President el-Sisi’s fictional achievements, they should call their broadcast the “Egyptian Nightly Sexy Show* (* May contain a few news articles)”, otherwise they should reinstate the eight women and let them present the news.
  
  
• #PokémonGoHome: Spoof posters appear in London in campaign to safeguard EU nationals post-Brexit (London Evening Standard)
  
  One should visit the news website because it is f*cking amazing to see a cleverly sarcastic way to use pop culture to advance a national concern. Apparently, a lot of EU-related concerns are some of the fallouts after the Nigel-and-Boris Deepthroating Racism Show (popularly abbreviated as Brexit), and a person named David Felton wanted to make some Brits understand the concerns more, so why not repackage it as something else?
  
  Posters calling for the deportation of Pokémon characters have appeared around London in an eye-catching campaign to highlight the uncertainty facing EU nationals in Britain. Referencing the immensely popular Pokémon Go app, they state that “by 2019 your Pokémon may lose their right to live in the UK” and “just because your #Pokémon is here, doesn’t mean it will stay”. The #PokemonGoHome campaign directs people to a website and petition, which demands EU citizens be allowed to stay in the UK with the same rights following Brexit. It has currently been signed by just less than 4,500 people. David Felton, the creative copywriter behind the campaign, told the Standard: “Following Britain’s decision to leave the EU, more than half a million people won’t meet the residency requirements needed to stay if Article 50 is triggered next year. They are in a very difficult and worrying situation, but not many people are actually talking about it. I thought that by almost ‘brandjacking’ the Pokémon craze we could raise awareness of this issue.” – London Evening Standard
  
  Well done, David. Very nice use of Pokemon Go. But maybe you can go one step further and have them printed on some shirts. Posters might do the trick, but to raise 100K signatures you need more eyeballs to your campaign. Shirts can.