WaterGirl

No News is Not Good News, the Lying Bastards

John’s latest missive through the mailing list, after the update today.

I’m officially depressed.  I feel so helpless and there is simply nothing I can do to get the website back.  I just have to sit here and wait and hope they come through.

I am glad that there will be a lawsuit, because that at least will put some pressure on the fuckers.  But it doesn’t help me get the site back.

I feel like someone whose house has burned down with all their shit in it.

I am, however, once the site comes back, get more involved in the day to day operations of things, because i never want to feel this helpless again.

That’s all I have.  Miss you guys.

Georgia Election Thread

I just got out of the zoom and have another meeting, but there’s no action in the back room, so here’s your Georgia election thread!

Good news all around?

Update from Our Site Host

Hey everybody,

In quotes below you will find the latest update from our site hosts.  In case you haven’t been following along, our site hosts are the good guys, and “354” Data Denters are the ones who are stonewalling and withholding information.  Our site hosts pass on what information they have from 354 Data Centers, which is usually meaningless word salad.

As a visual cue, you can pretty much assume that any text that refers to them as 365 Data Centers was written by someone besides me!

I’m sorry my message to you yesterday might have seemed confusing.

The confused mixture of phrases and updates from 365 sounds like word salad to me and has made it difficult for me to communicate clearly and effectively with you. I’ve done my best to accurately relay their communications to you.

I am fighting hard for your business. My primary focus has been to get our backups from 365. My secondary focus has been to create a temporary landing page system for your website so that you could communicate to your customers and audience.

Late last night I received some new information that I did not have before that has caused me to pause and consider taking legal action.

I’ve reached out to and started discussions with a law firm that specializes in corporate liability and class actions and we are in the process of initiating a class-action lawsuit against 365 Data Centers – for everyone’s benefit. Several customers in our blogging community have stepped up to co-lead the class-action lawsuit on your behalf.

I’ve been fighting hard for our clients. This has really gone on way too long and it’s beyond unacceptable. The damage being done to our brands is devastating.

I do expect to have the timeline from 365 this week and I do anticipate that timeline includes 365 Data Centers turning back on the cloud services and releasing our backups – at least that is what their team has repeatedly been telling me.

We do not yet know details of the new information that David found disturbing, but it’s surely nothing that would make us feel better about the situation.  My hope is that we’ll be back up with Balloon Juice within a week or 10 days.

In the meantime, I’m trying to make this site as comfy as possible since our 3-hour tour has turned into a much longer one than that!

Late Night Open Thread

I am on my way to bed and I don’t have anything in particular to get you all started, but I have one idea.

It’s been a few days since the Ukraine update from Adam.  How about if we crowd source information about Ukraine and supply any good Ukraine links that you have?

Or even just talk about what you’ve been thinking and how you feel about what’s happening.

I loved this photo that Subaru Diane sent me.

But if crowd-sourcing Ukraine info doesn’t grab you, that’s okay.

Totally open thread.  Talk about whatever you want.

 

Open Thread & Reminder: Zoom with VAAC on Tuesday at 7:30 ET

I want to invite everyone to what I think will be a really special zoom on Tuesday evening at 7:30.

Come and meet the folks from Voting Access for All Coalition!  You will meet some of the people who founded this organization two years ago, and you get to meet all of the folks who are in the video below.

I know that “zoom” and “fun” don’t always go together, but I can’t help feeling anything but excited and inspired when I talk to the people from VAAC.

Send email to WaterGirl to get the zoom link.

Please join us in the zoom tomorrow!

Totally open thread.

Monday Update from Cole: Piled Higher and Deeper

Piled Higher and Deeper

A long, long time ago, when I was a young man in Basic Training at Disney Barracks in Fort Knox, Ky, a recruit in Bravo Company, 2/13, I had a Drill Sergeant named Shirley Mason. He was a light skinned black man with freckles, reddish hair, and a hairlip, so when he spoke it was with a pronounced lisp. Sometimes it was all we could do to keep from laughing when he yelled at us-

“YOU PRIVATETHHH ITHHH ALL FUCKED UP. YOU ITHH MORE FUCKED UP THAN A THOUP (soup) THANDWICH (sandwich)”

But we didn’t laugh because he was 5’5″ of coiled muscle and anger and we were terrified of him and deified him and loved him all at once.

One day we were in the middle of doing something when it was allowed for us to be talking amongst ourselves while. Unbeknownst to my little crew of four to five guys, Drill Sgt. Mason had been in earshot of us, and had heard us bitching about all the stuff we had to do. It was the usual stuff “I hope we get off early” or “I hope we don’t have to do this” and on and on. Right after I had told Chris Plandell and Brian Carney, two other privates, that I wished we didn’t have to do our weekly fitness test in the morning, Drill Sgt. Mason hollered out in his booming voice:

“Private Cole, I want you to withhhh (wish) in one hand and thhit (shit) in the other and you tell me which one fillth up firthht.”


We received another email update today from David at Bizbudding, which I will share with you in its entirety:

“Hi John

I had a conversation today with two senior members of the 365 team.

They have advised me that there is quicker movement and forward progress and are hopeful to provide us with a timeline for the restoration of your website(s) this week.

Based on 365’s discussions with their cyber forensic partners and their current estimates, they feel this timeline is appropriate to bring the cloud data center back into service.

Again, they confirmed their assessment that customer data is secure and untouched.

365 committed to providing a post-mortem detailed root cause analysis (after all their customers have been restored) that explains the situation and why it is taking so long to restore the environment.

I will share that report with you when I receive it. I will also provide additional updates when received.

-David”


I immediately called him after receiving it, and he and I (and, as I just checked my phone before writing this, Watergirl as well) think it is more boilerplate bullshit and nondisclosure from 365, but it IS the first time since this whole nightmare began that they actually stated that the site will be coming up, even if they did not give us a timeline. Bringing it up “this week” is the first time they have even given us an estimate, however abstract and non concrete it might be.

We know how Drill Sergeant Mason felt about hoping and wishing, and I pretty much feel the same way as a prematurely cranky 50 some year old, but right now hoping and wishing is all we really have. So that is how I am looking at things. All we need is access to our data, and we will be back. I hope it is this week, but who knows. Until then, we just soldier on.

In other news, I have seen no appreciable response to my attempts to shame 365 Data Centers in my twitter campaign against them, although I will note that Stephen Klenert, Senior VP of Customer Solutions who was posting tiktoks of him cleaning his patio has now made his account private, so there is that. The whole twitter campaign probably won’t do anything other than make me feel better, but that’s enough for me to keep going.

Other than that, I got nothing.

Be good to each other.

John

Site Update May 23: Speculation & Update (!)

Must resist the urge to add that image as the banner for our little home away from home.

I saw on John’s twitter feed that the Senior VP of Fucking Customer Solutions at 355 Data Centers made his TikTok private after John posted the TikTok of the guy washing down his driveway this weekend.  So someone from “355” noticed John’s rants, at least.

Apparently at 355, they all have their fingers in their collective ears, chanting “la-la-la I can’t hear you.”

At this point I share Gin & Tonic’s view from Friday.  How does this not become an extinction-level event for “355” Data Centers?

Anyone want to speculate as to the reason for the outage?

Disgruntled employee?
State-sponsored hack?
Random hacker doing it for grins?
Ransomware?
Incompetence?
Greed?
Under-funding of safety measures?

Why is it taking so long to resolve?

Incompetence?
It’s ransomware and they were trying to get the money?
It’s ransomware and they were stalling, hoping to fix it before paying?
All 365 employees are at a 2-week retreat, except for the poor clueless bastard who has to answer the phone?

Why all the secrecy?

Government agencies involved and they required secrecy?
Outage due to some embarrassing reason they are trying to hide?
The people at the top are uncaring dicks?
Lex Luthor is running the company?

What’s your best guess for the date we actually learn anything tangible?

choose your date

What’s your best guess for when Balloon Juice is back up?

choose your date

*****

Add your best guesses in the comments.  Whoever comes closest wins… something?

If you are not in the mood to speculate, you can admire the cat quilt that Quilting Fool is making me!

I have never seen a quilt before it is quilted before!

Columbia Journalism Review Features NYT Pitchbot (DougJ)

DougJ seems to have won the lottery in the talent department!

Fun and interesting blogger.  Great interviewer with a great voice.  (I have been known to nudge DougJ to do regular audio interviews for us on Balloon Juice; hopefully one of these days he’ll have enough time to do it.)  Great twitter game.

As NYT Pitchbot, he seems to have found exactly the right canvas for his genius at mocking the NYT in 280 words or less.

So it’s no surprise that DougJ was recently interviewed by the Columbia Journalism Review as NYT Pitchbot.  I find it amusing that in an article that talks about mockery of NYT headlines… that they chose such a lame title, since NYT Pitchbot isn’t a bot at all!  (Apologies, DougJ, if you liked the headline, or worse, if you chose it!)

The Bot that Saw the Times

Excerpts from the article:

A FEW WEEKS AGO, the person behind the New York Times Pitchbot—not a bot at all, but a Twitter account whose posts satirize New York Times headlines and articles—was at his home, in Rochester, New York, doing laundry with one hand while tapping out, with the other, one of his most frequent refrains on Twitter: “Dems in Disarray.”

Though his subject matter might suggest otherwise, NYT Pitchbot does not work in media or politics. He is a fifty-two-year-old math professor and father of two who describes himself as a “committed Democrat” of the “slightly hardcore left.” He is anonymous on Twitter, and asked to remain so for this story, citing personal and professional concerns. (CJR contacted him via email and spoke with him on the phone, verifying his association with the Twitter account over direct message. He shared his real identity with CJR, which we verified with two other sources.)

NYT Pitchbot began his sideline in online political commentary in the early 2000s, posting anonymous comments on blogs, focusing much of his energy on one called Balloon Juice (i.e., hot air). Under the alias Doug J, he mounted ironic defenses of George W. Bush to “let off some steam” and provoke the blog’s founder, John Cole, a conservative undergoing a liberal transformation.

“Trolling is what you would call it, but it wasn’t malicious,” says Cole. “It was basically pointing out that what I was saying was stupid—taking things to their logical extremes.” Doug J, Cole says, was a “crowd favorite.” So in 2009, Cole asked him to start writing posts for Balloon Juice directly.

Early contributions included criticism of Times columnist Thomas Friedman (“writes entire columns about the wonders of free trade…without citing a single figure”) and earnest admiration for Glenn Greenwald, now NYT Pitchbot’s bête noire. (“What really gets me is this combination of nihilism and stupidity,” says NYT Pitchbot, citing Chris Cillizza as another offender.) Around the same time, Pitchbot says, he was banned from the New York Times’ online comment section, for a disparaging remark submitted on the launch of “The Conversation,” a column-in-dialogues by David Brooks and Gail Collins.

Doug J still occasionally posts on Balloon Juice, where he also raises money for liberal causes and Democratic candidates. (Through the online donation platform ActBlue, he’s brought in more than $2.8 million to date.) He joined Twitter in 2009, taking @dougjballoon as his handle, but didn’t start tweeting regularly until four years ago, when his first child was born. With kids and full-time teaching, it was easier to tweet than blog, he said.

In 2019, @DougJBalloon changed his name on Twitter to New York Times Pitchbot, committing to a new bit. He was encouraged by a conservative journalist friend and inspired by other “pitchbot” accounts, particularly one, now retired, that satirized The Federalist, a conservative online publication. “It’s a tricky thing, because The Federalist is so insane. How do you parody it?” he says. “What I think is more interesting is just how much of that same kind of stupidity is embedded in ostensibly left-center establishment journalism.”

With his account, NYT Pitchbot imagines the Times formula for stories as a kind of wheezing algorithm, a bot churning out contrarian headlines and half-baked hot takes. “I was a lifelong liberal Democrat,” begins one mock pitch for the Times opinion section. “Then reproductive rights activists held a vigil in front of Brett Kavanaugh’s house.” Another: “Ukrainians Have Sunk the Russian Warship Moskva. Here’s why that’s bad news for Joe Biden.” (Like “Dems in Disarray,” “Bad News for Biden” is something of a catchphrase for the account.)

NYT Pitchbot is a lifelong Times reader and a current digital subscriber. “Obviously, I think the New York Times does fantastic journalism,” he says. Still: “I’ve always had a lot of issues with how the media handles national politics. Like, I really thought that what went on around the Iraq War was insane.” He finds the Times’ framing of political coverage grating, and criticizes its opinion section as contrarian, focused on “concern-trolling liberals”—engaging in disingenuous criticism. “There’s this obsession the Times has with attacking other liberals,” he says. Beyond an attempt at balance, “I think part of it is that’s the ecosystem that they live in, and they find the people around them irritating.”

NYT Pitchbot’s first viral tweet came in March 2020, as covid lockdowns began. (“Sources close to Jared and Ivanka said that privately the couple opposes the pandemic.”) The tweet—a dig at the Times reporter Maggie Haberman and her coverage of the couple—gained NYT Pitchbot thousands of followers overnight. To date, the account’s most popular tweet was during the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. (“We wanted to understand what’s happening in Afghanistan. So we talked to three unvaccinated Trump supporters at an Arby’s in Harrisburg.”) But the author’s favorite pitches are more baroque, combining several jokes. (“Times have been tough in this Ohio town ever since the woke mob shut down the old ivermectin factory.”)

The account has made a particular hobby of mocking the Times’ obsession with man-on-the-street style interviews at Rust Belt diners. (“Nearly 90 percent of people admitted to hospitals due to Covid are unvaccinated. But in this Ohio diner, nearly 90 percent of unvaccinated diners don’t believe that matters.”) Those jokes are intended to sting not the interview subjects, but rather the Times reporters who conduct the interviews. These are stories written with a note of condescension that presume a wealthy, urban reader. “They fly in, they look for people to say stupid things, and they leave,” says NYT Pitchbot. “I think it’s kind of dehumanizing.” (By frequently focusing on white people, he adds, these articles reinforce the false idea of an exclusively white working class.) The Pitchbot account currently links to an online shop where supporters can order a T-shirt, mug, or onesie printed with in this ohio diner… So far, two hundred items have been sold…

read the whole thing.

Sunday Update from Cole: Greetings from the Warpath

Quick PSA before we get to the actual update:

Over 700 people have subscribed to the Balloon Juice mailing list, but only about 450 of you have opened the previous messages, so as many as 250 of you are not seeing the messages, most likely because gmail (or other email programs) are moving these to “Promotions” – so you never see the updates in your inbox.

John sent out the update this evening at xx, so if you signed up and you are not seeing that message in your inbox, that is probably the reason.

If you tried looking through your folders via the left pane, found “Promotions” and tried dragging a message to your Inbox, the message *might* be copied to your Inbox/Primary tab, but you won’t get the “Would you like all messages from (username) be sent to your Inbox/Primary tab?”.

But, if you click on Inbox, you should have header tabs across the top. You should see Primary, Social, Promotions and Forums. Click the Promotions tab from there and drag the message from (username) to the Primary tab, and you *should* get the “Would you like all messages from (username) be sent to your Inbox/Primary tab?”

Some of these updates come from me and some come from John, so you may have to do that twice, once for each of us.

Okay, here’s today’s update.

Hello all!

I wish I had something positive or informative to add, but I in fact do not. I will let you know that sometime this afternoon I snapped and reached for the nuclear codes and have been going off on twitter all day. I doubt it will do anything, but I am officially ready to burn 365 Data Centers to the ground.

It starts here.

At any rate, I am now starting to think that this was a ransomware attack and they are in the late stages of negotiation to get the data back. It’s the only thing that makes sense. The only way they could KNOW our data is still safe but still not be able to access it is if someone else hacked in, took control of their controls, and of course the data is safe because if they kill the baby they won’t get paid.

This is just speculation, but that is all I have. Other than that, no updates. I talked to the people at the help center and told them to stop lying to me, and they said they were going to pass this on to management, and I told them to start preparing for class action lawsuits. I also asked if Stephen Klenert is still their VP for customer solutions, and they confirmed that he is, so I told them I was thrilled to view his tiktok of him cleaning his patio yesterday.

I am ready for this place to burn down.

At any rate, I have no answers, am in a shite mood because this is twenty+ years of my life’s work and I have no control over what happens to it, and I can’t even eat my fucking feelings because I have no pasta or ice cream in the house.

Take care

Updated at 8:30 on Monday to add better instructions about “Promotions”.  Thanks JWR.

And this tip from NotMax: As for Gmail, easy peasy (i.e., lazy) way to bypass hunting through individual categories is to click the “All Mail” option in the left-hand pane.

And check your spam folder.