This guy was elected three times and doesn’t know that you aren’t required to swear on a Bible when taking your oath of office?
Wow.
The only thing that would make this clip better is if Tapper said “Because he says he’s Christian” when the Moore spokesperson tries to pivot away from his slack-jawed, empty-eyed response by saying “Well, Donald Trump swore on a Bible!”
It’s wild that it was even this close (49.7% to 48.6% as I type this with write-in ballots accounting for *double* the vote differential!) but the people of at least one deeply conservative American state has soundly rejected Donald Trump and his brand of “anything goes” politics.
We covered as much as we could in an hour using three focus areas as jumping off points – the history of fake news, the impact of social media, and finishing up with some ideas on how to spot fake news – but the reality is that we could’ve easily spent a day looking at all the different aspects of the topic.
We touched on most of these in passing but it would’ve been useful to get into greater detail about the political impact of fake news, the role of fake accounts and bots, the psychology of why people are susceptible to fake news (and which people are most susceptible), the role and limits of skepticism, the possibility that the library, in its goal to not make judgements about people’s information needs might be complicit in spreading fake news.
Shea and I were both off Friday and with Pace in school, we did one of our annual traditions, putting Sasha in daycare and spending the day doing Christmas shopping, having lunch out together at a nice restaurant, and running a few other errands (eg. passing a bunch of Sasha’s clothes that she’s outgrown to a family friend who have a younger girl.)
We got home mid-afternoon and started wrapping presents but it was getting close to Pace’s home time so I went out to intercept him and then him and I walked over to pick up Sasha at her daycare centre which is a few blocks from our house while Shea finished wrapping a few final things.
After we picked up Sasha, as we sometimes do since the strip mall near our house has a convenience store, the three of us stopped in for treats.
There are a few choices out there but this trailer makes me think “The Public” might be the best library-themed movie ever, in part because it appears to address so many of the issues we deal with in the library every day – homelessness, community engagement and creating a welcoming space, the library’s relationship to other agencies and the government, and big picture questions about what is the library’s role as a public space and how libraries can be seen as the embodiment of democracy in society.
Shea made us a very tasty Christmas-themed drink this past weekend featuring peppermint vodka, toffee cream liqueur and chocolate-flavoured whiskey along with a rimmer of melted After 8 peppermint chocolates and crushed candy cane.
We didn’t name the drink but I’m going to suggest “Christmas Star” since it certainly was a star of our weekend. 😉
I thought I’d do it again this year and have lots of ideas for this year’s series from a MetaFilter thread looking at the Wham song “Last Christmas” as well as various other songs (“Little Drummer Boy“, “Wonderful Christmastime“) that people are using as a fun personal challenge to see if they can make it through December without hearing their chosen song.
Personally, there isn’t too much Christmas music I don’t like and so I’m likely to fail any challenges I take on as I’ll listen to Christmas music, good or bad, non-stop all month.
Last night, I literally had a playlist that streamed “Last Christmas” *followed by* “Wonderful Christmastime”. Then, after that, I purposely looked up “Little Drummer Boy” by Ringo Starr because Ringo! 🙂
Anyhow, in the spirit of that challenge, here’s my first December “Music Monday” song…
