#facebook newsfeed

[sillimancer]

man facebook is just an awful dogshit website now isn't it

[rosicheeks]

🤦🏽‍♀️

[bills-bible-basics]

News Feed or Junk Feed It may surprise some of you to know that when I am on my iMac, I very rarely ever go to my Facebook news feed. Whenever I open Facebook in Firefox, I always go directly to my timeline instead, which I have bookmarked. It seems that with the Facebook app on my iPhone, I don't have this option. Upon launching it, the app takes me directly to my news feed whether I like it or not. So why do I choose to go to my timeline instead of to my news feed? Basically, because more often than not, the news feed is full of all kinds of junk in which I am not the least bit interested. The very worst has to be all of the political garbage. Even some of my Christian friends do it. People — including some Christians — take sides, and then they do everything they can to support the politicians who they like, and to blast and condemn the politicians who they don’t like. I mean, the political gossip, rumors and accusations is as thick as stew. It is unending. I am sorry folks, but I really don’t need that in my news feed. I get enough of that kind of nonsense in the daily news bundles which are downloaded to my email client. Then there are those people who spend a lot of their time attacking or defending certain popular preachers in the news feed. Personally, while I do expose the errors of a few popular preachers in some of my older articles, for the most part, I strive to stay out of those kinds of discussions, particularly when they are occurring online. As I explain in the following KJV Bible verse list, I believe that we should each abide in our own calling, and leave the ministries of others to be sorted out by the Lord. If they are in error, or false prophets, God will expose them at length: "Abide in Your Calling" KJV Bible Verse List: https://www.billkochman.com/VerseLists/verse243.html So as I said, I am sorry, but I am not interested in reading that kind of stuff in my news feed. Then, of course, there are all of the conspiracy theorists with their often off-the-wall ideas, rumors and links to questionable websites, many of which contain bogus info and fake news. I have spoken about this before, and have even made some graphics concerning this topic. So again, no thanks, but I’ll pass on this kind of stuff in my news feed. I just don't need it. As if all of the above is not enough to turn me off to the Facebook news feed, then there are all of the posts regarding the latest styles in clothing, ads for make-up, the latest celeb gossip, the coolest apps, etc. Again, I am sorry, but I am not the least bit interested in those kinds of things. Now, I know a lot of you enjoy posting images of your beloved pets. Believe me; I understand that. I am an animal and nature lover too. I have had pets of one sort or another since I was a young boy. Occasionally, I will share photos or short videos of my two cats, Polo and Eljio. But for the most part, while your cute pet images and videos are often very adorable, nevertheless, I can do without being overwhelmed by dozens of them in my news feed as well. Sorry. I realize that what each person puts on their timeline is a very personal decision. Your timeline is yours to do with as you please, and that is indeed your right, regardless of what anyone else thinks or says. If you want to fill it up with pics and videos of your family and relatives, or with any of the other things which I previously mentioned, that is your choice. However, at the same time, please understand that, personally, the bottom line for me is this: I primarily joined Facebook so that I can use it as an outlet to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s it. In fact, that is why I purchased my very first computer so many years ago. I look at my computer, and social networks, as tools to share the Good News of Salvation and other related topics. Now, considering that most, if not all, of my FB friends are Christians, I would assume that they are also interested in sharing the Gospel with other people on Facebook as well.

Sadly, I must confess that I am both amazed and disappointed by the amount of worthless junk in my news feed; much of which is generated by my Christian friends. Yes, there is some Christian content by a small number of my friends. However, having to wade through all of the crap in order to find the good content is just not worth my time. So, as a result, I will mainly stick to just posting on my timeline, and I will stay away from my news feed as much as possible. Look at it this way. At least when you visit my timeline, you will know exactly what you will find there: Plenty of God's Word. And it won’t include any of the aforementioned worthless junk. I post some humorous stuff now and then, and as I said, sometimes cat photos, but for the most part, you will find good Christian content which will feed, inspire and motivate you. I hope that I am a blessing to you. https://www.billkochman.com/Blog/index.php/news-feed-or-junk-feed/?feed_id=74347&_unique_id=65095a09b22d6&News%20Feed%20or%20Junk%20Feed

[mariacallous]

A lawsuit filed Wednesday against Meta argues that US law requires the company to let people use unofficial add-ons to gain more control over their social feeds.

It’s the latest in a series of disputes in which the company has tussled with researchers and developers over tools that give users extra privacy options or that collect research data. It could clear the way for researchers to release add-ons that aid research into how the algorithms on social platforms affect their users, and it could give people more control over the algorithms that shape their lives.

The suit was filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of researcher Ethan Zuckerman, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst. It attempts to take a federal law that has generally shielded social networks and use it as a tool forcing transparency.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is best known for allowing social media companies to evade legal liability for content on their platforms. Zuckerman’s suit argues that one of its subsections gives users the right to control how they access the internet, and the tools they use to do so.

“Section 230 (c) (2) (b) is quite explicit about libraries, parents, and others having the ability to control obscene or other unwanted content on the internet,” says Zuckerman. “I actually think that anticipates having control over a social network like Facebook, having this ability to sort of say, ‘We want to be able to opt out of the algorithm.’”

Zuckerman’s suit is aimed at preventing Facebook from blocking a new browser extension for Facebook that he is working on called Unfollow Everything 2.0. It would allow users to easily “unfollow” friends, groups, and pages on the service, meaning that updates from them no longer appear in the user’s newsfeed.

Zuckerman says that this would provide users the power to tune or effectively disable Facebook’s engagement-driven feed. Users can technically do this without the tool, but only by unfollowing each friend, group, and page individually.

There’s good reason to think Meta might make changes to Facebook to block Zuckerman’s tool after it is released. He says he won’t launch it without a ruling on his suit. In 2020, the company argued that the browser Friendly, which had let users search and reorder their Facebook news feeds as well as block ads and trackers, violated its terms of service and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In 2021, Meta permanently banned Louis Barclay, a British developer who had created a tool called Unfollow Everything, which Zuckerman’s add-on is named after.

“I still remember the feeling of unfollowing everything for the first time. It was near-miraculous. I had lost nothing, since I could still see my favorite friends and groups by going to them directly,” Barclay wrote for Slate at the time. “But I had gained a staggering amount of control. I was no longer tempted to scroll down an infinite feed of content. The time I spent on Facebook decreased dramatically.”

The same year, Meta kicked off from its platform some New York University researchers who had created a tool that monitored the political ads people saw on Facebook. Zuckerman is adding a feature to Unfollow Everything 2.0 that allows people to donate data from their use of the tool to his research project. He hopes to use the data to investigate whether users of his add-on who cleanse their feeds end up, like Barclay, using Facebook less.

Sophia Cope, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, says that the core parts of Section 230 related to platforms’ liability for content posted by users have been clarified through potentially thousands of cases. But few have specifically dealt with the part of the law Zuckerman’s suit seeks to leverage.

“There isn’t that much case law on that section of the law, so it will be interesting to see how a judge breaks it down,” says Cope. Zuckerman is a member of the EFF’s board of advisers.

John Morris, a principal at the Internet Society, a nonprofit that promotes open development of the internet, says that, to his knowledge, Zuckerman’s strategy “hasn’t been used before, in terms of using Section 230 to grant affirmative rights to users,” noting that a judge would likely take that claim seriously.

Meta has previously suggested that allowing add-ons that modify how people use its services raises security and privacy concerns. But Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, says that Zuckerman’s tool may be able to fairly push back on such an accusation.“The main problem with tools that give users more control over content moderation on existing platforms often has to do with privacy,” she says. “But if all this does is unfollow specified accounts, I would not expect that problem to arise here."

Even if a tool like Unfollow Everything 2.0 didn’t compromise users’ privacy, Meta might still be able to argue that it violates the company’s terms of service, as it did in Barclay’s case.

“Given Meta’s history, I could see why he would want a preemptive judgment,” says Cope. “He’d be immunized against any civil claim brought against him by Meta.”

And though Zuckerman says he would not be surprised if it takes years for his case to wind its way through the courts, he believes it’s important. “This feels like a particularly compelling case to do at a moment where people are really concerned about the power of algorithms,” he says.

[vyorei]

I found a post about Palestine and olive trees about a week ago, this reminded me of it so I'm gonna post the text below.

This was posted on Facebook by Dima Seelawi on the 29th of October 2018, it just happened to find its way to my newsfeed:

"When I was young, I never really understood my parents insistence to only use olive oil imported from Palestine. It took a long time and a great distance in a process that was neither cheap nor convenient. The oil came in old beat-up containers that did not look appealing to me at all. In my head, if they wanted to support distant family back home, they could just send them money and save us and them a big hassle. We could just use the nice looking olive oil containers from the nearby store. Yet, this was never an option in our household. The only olive oil we used at home was from Palestine.

As I grew up and started a student part-time job, I worked with olive oil a little. I knew all about olive oil imported from Spain, Italy, and other countries. I knew which ones were better and more expensive. I also learned to tell, based on the pungent taste, which ones were extra virgin. I was tempted to use my employee discount to bring home one of the fancy bottles and use at our kitchen. I could not get myself to do it, and I did not exactly know why. I felt like it would be disrespectful to my parents even if it didn’t make sense to me. It did not feel right. It was not an option.

After living in Palestine for a year during the olive picking season, something changed. The olive picking season in Palestine is holy.

Palestinians relate to the weather based on how it would benefit or harm the olives. There is well-known unspoken rule about treating olive trees with respect. There is a day off from work just to pick olives. On public transportation, it is not unusual to hear someone on the phone telling their friend to stop by for their share of this year’s olive oil stored in what used to be a Coca-Cola or a liquor bottle. A driver will stop in the middle of the way to give his brother- in- law a jar of olives that are so close to one another that they start to crush showing their insides.

In Nablus, the owner of the Nabulsi soap factory takes pride in how picky he is about getting his olive oil. He insists on filling a cup to let me smell how authentic it is and smirks as he sees my diasporic facial expressions transform in appreciation of its strong smell running through all of my brain cells.

I started noticing how olive oil is an essential part of so many dishes. “Palestinians drink more olive oil than water” I would jokingly say and they would laugh in agreement. Olive oil is truly an everyday ritual.

They fantasize about its color when it’s fresh and remind me that it starts to change as it reacts with oxygen over time. They dip their bread into olive oil, just like that and without any additions, and enjoy it more than the sweetest of all foods. I can guarantee that every lunch invitation (عزومة) I received during the olive-picking season was a chance for my hosts to share their olive oil using Msakhan (a traditional Palestinian dish).

I now have a deeper understanding of the psychology behind the burning of olive trees by Israeli settlers and why farmers moan at the scene as if they lost a loved one.

Wherever you are, if it’s accessible to you, make sure your olive oil is Palestinian. Your ancestors would want that."

And this picture was attached:

Link to the article in the header image:

[thefirelookout]

Dead silence

This post is an attempt to share or let out some of my complex feelings about the situation in Bangladesh.

We went to our city's protest yesterday. It was a silent, peaceful protest. The Bangladeshi student community here in Kingston stood in a human chain with placards. "Save Bangladesh student", yes grammatically wrong, yes, it assumes that young revolutionaries need saving, so on and so forth. The protest started and ended quietly. My non-Bangladeshi friends were a bit confused, since they're used to chanty protests for Palestine, or union picket lines with cars passing by, honking in support. There was more noise even for the Iranian protests, Zan Zendegi Azadi. The silence of a graveyard in this one, though.

Who cares about little old Bangladesh? I sometimes wonder. We're not in the eye of the middle eastern storm like Syria, Lebanon or Palestine are. We're not strategically important, we don't even have many natural resources like Sudan or Congo do. The Prime Minister visited China recently to ask for an aid or a loan, and came back pretty much empty handed. China isn't very interested in us. India has gotten what it needed to get, and can milk more out of us, but they can do the same with Nepal or Bhutan too. We're never in the headlines, the US or the West in general isn't interested in us at all. And Pakistan denies that the 1971 genocide ever happened.

Which is why, the world isn't missing our voices due to the internet blackout.

The voices were all over my Facebook newsfeed. Aunties and apus on Facebook live selling sarees, jewelry, crafts, elderly boomers sharing gardening tips, quick fixes or herbal remedies that they swear by, people sharing posts about cricket or which cricketer's wife wore what, food bloggers calling every possible dish juicy (be it a burger or the meat in biriyani), celebrity drama, political drama to the extent of what was allowed back home. That sort of thing.

Now, again, there's the silence of a graveyard over here. And I feel like screaming till I snap my vocal cords. Can you all please come back? Please? The silence is unbearable! Please! I won't judge you if you sell your wares! Please! I won't judge if you think turmeric water can act as a miracle detox! Please, please I won't say a word if your post about your stupid cricket match! Just something, please say something! I haven't seen a single one of you online. Please don't die, please stay safe. When the internet comes back, please, post about your vacations and your pets. Not the dead, please, don't post about the bodies. I can take a bit of silence but not more bodies please!

Speaking of bodies. There was an armoured vehicle, painted navy blue in the colours of the police (fuck them). And there was a body on top of it. Dead, obviously, very dead, because it flopped down with the slightest nudge, and was left on the streets. Before that happened, the vehicle drove about as if parading its spoils of war, with the body on top. Sending a message. This will happen to you if you raise your voice.

That image has been haunting me for two nights now. So yeah, I'm not man enough to get some incisive political analysis out. I have no either or predictions for what happens if the regime falls or doesn't fall. My body feels numb, I've been binge eating because I still have food in the house and I won't be gunned down if I go out to get groceries now. My non-Bangladeshi friends, bless their first world hearts, have never had to live under fascism. Bless their hearts, have never had to stifle their voices to the extent that we've had to. Bless their beautiful hearts, could hardly pronounce Bangladesh. But they still showed up to that docile little protest because they care about my spouse and I. I can't even begin to thank them.

My insides are tearing up. I'm sitting with a poker face typing all this word vomit, but my insides are nothing but a scream. No clever realpolitik comes out of a heart that's screaming, because our mouths are sewn shut.

[odinsblog]

I was stunned to find the number of people in the tech industry who are all-in on the theory of scientific racism and eugenics. They've been out about that for years, though.

There's a sort of complex where this was the birth of, whether you want to call it the intellectual dark web, I think that was the moment there. They've sort of been radicalized gradually, as happens with these things, where they started with, like, Slate Star Codex was a really big key central point for them to gather and sort of say, well, we have to interrogate and question a lot of these (egalitarian) assumptions. They were very actively courted by the neo-reactionary movement.

So you have things like Peter Teal holding dinner parties with the founders of the movement, and sort of people who have explicitly endorsed slavery, explicitly endorsed disenfranchising women, and people of any non-male gender from being able to vote.

And I always resent it because I sound like a crazy person by just merely accurately describing what they have publicly said. I sound like a conspiracy theorist who's pinning up red strings on a cork board by literally being like, “This is a thing they said out loud, in public, multiple times.” And people are like, “There's no way.” And I'm like, I don't know what to tell you, but it's all out there. We have receipts for ten years.

They are way out there, and they have an explicit agenda of normalizing, really radical, really hateful agendas.

And for me, it's like, it's just a very simple thing.

It's like I have to care about my kid’s safety. I have to care about my friend's safety, I have to care about, you know, basic moral values that we used to agree on.

And that's the other thing too, is because I knew these people 10 and 20 years ago. Like the first blog that Marc Andreessen ever had, I set up. It was on a platform I helped build. So I know that there was a point in which, at least from the public visible face, this was once a reasonable person. And for them to embrace the sheer intellectual dishonesty, along with the hatred… the fact that they're just like, they don't care that they're lying because it's an effective tool to get what they want.

That stuff is… I don't know.

It really soured me on the traditional tech industry.

This is what their tech is for. The things they fund are meant to carry out their agenda.

Let me give you a clear example: To the people who believe in this extremist racist ideology, Elon Musk being willing to lose tens of billions of dollars in value of his own money, presumably, in Twitter, turning into “X,” is a principled person who puts his values ahead of the dollar. He is so committed to advancing this reactionary movement that he's willing to forego tens of billions of dollars of personal wealth in order to advance it.

And what rational people see as the destruction of Twitter is rather, the destruction of the ability for anybody to ever again make a Black Lives Matter hashtag, or to make a Me Too hashtag. And that is because he's not a dumb person. Like the thing that a lot of progressives and reasonable people want to just say, well, he's racist and evil, so he must be dumb.

He's not a dumb person.

Peter Thiel's not a dumb person.

So if we assume they're smart people who understand how systems work and have virtually unlimited resources, then why would they choose to do this?

Well, there must be a reason.

And there is a reason.

It's just one we don't like to confront.

Even more insidious is the fact that these tech moguls own huge companies with enormous influence, and wielding that kind of power over their employees creates a herd mentality within their workforces.

So if, for example, Facebook's board includes both Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen. They don't have to give somebody an order to say what kind of content they want to promote on the newsfeed, on Facebook.

Everybody who works there knows this is who our bosses are. This is what we got to do, because they're smart. Everybody's smart, everybody's very reasonable.

And so you don't have to imagine, like I said, I don't have to be a conspiracy theorist that's putting up some red strings on a cork board to connect the dots and whatever. You're like, “Oh, I'm a midlevel product manager at a company. I'd like to make a name for myself and make the share price go up. And I know the boss's boss has been on every podcast in the world saying we need to promote more voices that are calling for ethnic cleansing,” okay?

Message received.

That's what a person who has no moral context would do. And there are a cohort of people in the technology industry that have come up entirely consuming media owned and created by these people, because they know the programming site Hacker News, which is owned by a venture capital firm and run by Paul Graham, is one of these guys.

They read blogs written explicitly by these guys. They consume it. They were on clubhouse. They're in a Discord chat with others that are sort of buying the stuff. They have a full wraparound media bubble. If they just read substacks and listen to the blog posts or read the blog posts from these folks, you can have what feels like an entire media diet shaped solely by this dialogue.

And this is why they're trying to own the media outlets and the distribution, like Twitter, alongside owning the platforms. And the fact that they can control more parts of society, right? The leverage of owning the distribution networks, the leverage of owning media outlets, the leverage of owning the platforms is very, very different, because we do have a lot of historical precedent.

If we go back 100 years ago and we say you're reeling from coming out of a pandemic, you are reeling from economic precarity and inequality at unprecedented levels, and you see the rise of, again, a direct parallel, virulent antisemitism. And you have things like the oil barons giving way to the Henry Fords of the world, the labor crackdown of the Pinkertons, Ford's embrace of, you know, to the point where he's pen pals with Hitler, and IBM building the technology.

The first person that ever asked me to do technology work for him was a neighbor of ours, and he had a tattoo on his wrist. And I was a little kid and didn't know what it meant. And I asked him what it was. It was his concentration camp tatoo. And what people don't realize is those are database entries in an IBM database.

And IBM's stance at the time was that they were neutral.

This is what technology does to enable the rise of fascism and victimization around the world. And we have a direct precedent less than 100 years ago, of how these technologies are used.

And I don't say that lightly.

I'm not saying we're there yet, but that is how you get there. And I would be surprised if the pattern doesn't play out in some ways, in terms of if you have tycoons of industry at a moment when the world is reckoning with massive social change, cultural change, along with recovering from things like economic destruction, inequality and pandemics… And you have rising military threats around the world.

That is exactly where we were a century ago.

—ANIL DASH shares his thoughts and experiences on Richard Hanania and rampant neo-fascism in Silicon Valley

[traumasurvivors]

do you steal your posts from other places? I’ve seen that no timeline for healing post on Facebook

I absolutely do not steal my posts. I’ve occasionally posted image quotes from pages I follow, but I always link back to the page.

The post you’re talking about was stolen from me. It got posted on twitter with the wrong credit like 4 years ago and it has spread. A lot. It shows up on my newsfeed on Facebook credited to the wrong person and it’s actually a source of frustration.

The original is here.

I accidentally deleted the original so I made a new one because I’m trying so hard to spread it with the right credit. But even if the original post no longer exists, it still shows the date and my blog name on it.

Also - to anyone that does this… it isn’t cool. It isn’t cool to take posts from tumblr and pass them off as your own on other social media just because it’s “Tumblr”.

I talked a bunch about this under my tag stolen quote. (Not saying you should have known that, but just if you want to see it).

[l3irdl3rain]

I saw an article about you today pop up on my newsfeed on facebook? I wasn't sure if you knew about it! https://pethelpful.com/pet-news/woman-rescuing-terminally-ill-cats

Oh I did not know about that. How very weird! Thank you for sharing with me.

[slow-burn-sally]

A big part of me not hating my body anymore involves me heavily curating my newsfeeds on social media by liking, reblogging and watching posts by fat femmes trying on clothes, modeling fashions and generally being hot. This has been life changing for me. It shows me representations of my gender orientation and body type in positive, fun ways, and replaces the endless thin people cavalcade that would be awesome to look at if we hadn't all been told that we were worthless if we weren't thin.

I do not at all work for Bloomchic, but god damn it, I would. I love their videos so much, because they show fat femmes from a wide range of sizes, body types and looks. There are just fat, average-by-society's-strict-beauty-standards people modeling dresses and sweaters and skirts, and being cute. It's so affirming and lovely.

Clothing hauls are really fun too. Watch fat femmes trying on outfits and talking about it. I find this algorithem thing works better on Facebook than on tumblr, because I'm not a fat activism blog, but I am a fat activist, so you can catch me at my fat/body positive blog @therealieblog for that content.

I strongly recommend liking, reblogging, video watching, fat women and fems looking hot and cute in lots of little outfits. It's just good for the soul. It's really helped me feel so much more comfortable in my own skin.

[borderlinereminders]

I impulsively made a Facebook page for borderlinereminders and an Instagram called borderlinereminders.

(Keep in mind if you “like” or interact with the Facebook page that others on your newsfeed can see that.)

[fapper]

Not this genuinely popping up on my newsfeed on facebook ?

[bills-bible-basics]

News Feed or Junk Feed It may surprise some of you to know that when I am on my iMac, I very rarely ever go to my Facebook news feed. Whenever I open Facebook in Firefox, I always go directly to my timeline instead, which I have bookmarked. It seems that with the Facebook app on my iPhone, I don't have this option. Upon launching it, the app takes me directly to my news feed whether I like it or not. So why do I choose to go to my timeline instead of to my news feed? Basically, because more often than not, the news feed is full of all kinds of junk in which I am not the least bit interested. The very worst has to be all of the political garbage. Even some of my Christian friends do it. People — including some Christians — take sides, and then they do everything they can to support the politicians who they like, and to blast and condemn the politicians who they don’t like. I mean, the political gossip, rumors and accusations is as thick as stew. It is unending. I am sorry folks, but I really don’t need that in my news feed. I get enough of that kind of nonsense in the daily news bundles which are downloaded to my email client. Then there are those people who spend a lot of their time attacking or defending certain popular preachers in the news feed. Personally, while I do expose the errors of a few popular preachers in some of my older articles, for the most part, I strive to stay out of those kinds of discussions, particularly when they are occurring online. As I explain in the following KJV Bible verse list, I believe that we should each abide in our own calling, and leave the ministries of others to be sorted out by the Lord. If they are in error, or false prophets, God will expose them at length: "Abide in Your Calling" KJV Bible Verse List: https://www.billkochman.com/VerseLists/verse243.html So as I said, I am sorry, but I am not interested in reading that kind of stuff in my news feed. Then, of course, there are all of the conspiracy theorists with their often off-the-wall ideas, rumors and links to questionable websites, many of which contain bogus info and fake news. I have spoken about this before, and have even made some graphics concerning this topic. So again, no thanks, but I’ll pass on this kind of stuff in my news feed. I just don't need it. As if all of the above is not enough to turn me off to the Facebook news feed, then there are all of the posts regarding the latest styles in clothing, ads for make-up, the latest celeb gossip, the coolest apps, etc. Again, I am sorry, but I am not the least bit interested in those kinds of things. Now, I know a lot of you enjoy posting images of your beloved pets. Believe me; I understand that. I am an animal and nature lover too. I have had pets of one sort or another since I was a young boy. Occasionally, I will share photos or short videos of my two cats, Polo and Eljio. But for the most part, while your cute pet images and videos are often very adorable, nevertheless, I can do without being overwhelmed by dozens of them in my news feed as well. Sorry. I realize that what each person puts on their timeline is a very personal decision. Your timeline is yours to do with as you please, and that is indeed your right, regardless of what anyone else thinks or says. If you want to fill it up with pics and videos of your family and relatives, or with any of the other things which I previously mentioned, that is your choice. However, at the same time, please understand that, personally, the bottom line for me is this: I primarily joined Facebook so that I can use it as an outlet to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s it. In fact, that is why I purchased my very first computer so many years ago. I look at my computer, and social networks, as tools to share the Good News of Salvation and other related topics. Now, considering that most, if not all, of my FB friends are Christians, I would assume that they are also interested in sharing the Gospel with other people on Facebook as well.

Sadly, I must confess that I am both amazed and disappointed by the amount of worthless junk in my news feed; much of which is generated by my Christian friends. Yes, there is some Christian content by a small number of my friends. However, having to wade through all of the crap in order to find the good content is just not worth my time. So, as a result, I will mainly stick to just posting on my timeline, and I will stay away from my news feed as much as possible. Look at it this way. At least when you visit my timeline, you will know exactly what you will find there: Plenty of God's Word. And it won’t include any of the aforementioned worthless junk. I post some humorous stuff now and then, and as I said, sometimes cat photos, but for the most part, you will find good Christian content which will feed, inspire and motivate you. I hope that I am a blessing to you. https://www.billkochman.com/Blog/index.php/news-feed-or-junk-feed/?feed_id=33035&_unique_id=6406becc87948&News%20Feed%20or%20Junk%20Feed

[liskantope]

Since I'm evidently in the mood for grousing (without providing much argument) about stuff my acquaintances post on social media tonight, also seen on my Facebook newsfeed today was a highly educated, highly intellectual friend of mine suggesting that therapy bills should be a tax write-off. Now I don't particularly mind this view; in fact, I think there are potentially good arguments to be made that health care expenses in general should lower one's taxes, although this does just seem like a superficial variation on making more health benefits more widespread in the first place. But part of her justification is that "we already do it for charity, and what else is therapy but charity for the self?" And that sort of attempted reasoning, combined with flowery words about how "good mental health is how we show up" in our moral duties, makes me feel Somewhat Irritated, more than I know I should be.

[tkwrtnewsfeed]

Newsfeed #137 November 1, 2023 (1 Hísimë)

I know it has been a while, but if you only knew what I have to go through regularly, you would understand why it takes me so long to do anything. I will go into that on another day. It is special because today, the world gets the first look at Book II: The Saga of Thranduil--Extended Version.

If you are a member of the Facebook Group, then you can get it there. If you are not, you will have to go here. It will be available in both places from now until November 7, 2023. It would be appreciated if you would leave a comment on this thread about whether you liked it or not because I sent it out for beta readers for a reason.

I have been in talks with a lot of publishers on demand who want to publish this book. One of them overzealously wanted to turn the book into a Netflix series. (do not ask). I would rather film the story in order, which begins with @tkwrtrilogy3. At over 1200 pages (currently), the entire trilogy is long enough to have a television show (but I would want it to include @oflordsandkingstkwrtbook and @tkwrtsongofsevenrivers). I am aware of that. To be honest, I would like to be the one to write the script as I also know how to do that (from experience). But, because my stepsister (Roseann Grotjan) stuck me into a Britney Spears situation, I do not have access to my money or any way to negotiate the publication of any of my books (and I have several) on my own, so this is going take a while. I have millions of adoring fans willing to scare the BeJesus out of her in order to get their favorite book in print and onscreen.

But. someone leaked to me what a perspective book cover of The Saga of Thranduil would look like. I will post one of the mock-ups because seriously, who is going to notice? It is a mock-up, so it is not a final design. Also, I didn't choose it. It was chosen for me to persuade me to choose this particular company. There are at least seven or eight of these people trying to persuade me to publish this book. One of them has actually read the book, and it made them cry.

They want to sell it in hardcover and paperback. Wouldn't that be nice? My bestie (@fortunatelyclevercandy) wants me to wait. I will not tell you why because I know why, and I'm about to do what she asked me to do. I want literally no FREE PR around it.

Oh, that is a lot I know. But if it were not for my stepsister, the state of Missouri, and the crappy hellhole they put me in the middle of nowhere with shitty internet (on purpose), I would be farther along, and everybody probably would have several copies of this book series by now. The moral of my story is: do not trust your family after your father dies and leaves you some money. They might just get the idea in their head to take it from you to make $20/hour as your guardian by claiming that you're crazy when you just asked them about your own trust fund. But I digress.

Enjoy The Saga of Thranduil--Extended Version. You will be the ones who will decide which version of this story gets published. You will be the ones that will make it possible to see the Elvenking's life story in a book store, online, or even on Netflix.

[lemonade-luvr]

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