In a rally address that veered off frequently from prepared remarks, Donald Trump suggested Friday that if Hillary Clinton were to shoot somebody “right smack in the middle of the heart,” the former secretary of state would not face charges.
On the subject of totalitarian impulses in today’s US, I am moved by the whole Gabby Douglas kerfuffle. As a mid-50s guy who would simply die if I contemplated gymnastics …
Whenever I encounter someone saying that Texas should secede, I counter that the US should give Texas back to Mexico.
Saying something nasty and following it with “I’m just joking” is a form of verbal abuse that’s passive-aggressive. I.e: it’s semi-concealed aggression, intended to give the target pause as to whether or not they can successfully counter-attack.
Is this the right room for an argument?
It’s a technique that can be employed in a strategy of verbal abuse but succeeds if it’s fairly consistent, and only then against unsophisticated targets.
Richard Feynman famously said that marketing was an inherently immoral job, because it consisted of selling something as being better than the marketer knows it to be. I tried that argument on our VP of Marketing, back in the day, and she said that “MarCom” – Marketing Communications – was OK. Well, that still leaves the rest of marketing on the hook.
As we discussed in my piece on butter packaging, marketing claims often do amount to lies – excuse me – “deliberate excursions from the truth.”
I’m just not sure whose culture…
At MISTI in 2013 I was on the closing panel with Alex Hutton (at the time CSO of Zions Bank) and Chris Nickerson (a “red teamer”) – the topic was the distressing state of internet security. Hint: it’s distressing. Somewhere in the course of the panel I decided to do a “show of hands poll” and asked everyone in the room:
How many of you use the google 2 factor authentication on your gmail account?
“We should outlaw teleprompters … for anybody running for president” – Donald Trump
“LOL Whut?” – Demosthenes [Read more…]