KGB Report

One of the problems associated with being thrown into Facebook jail is ignorance of the alleged offense.

The announcement states that your post has violated Facebook's "Community Standards," a dense, 27-page litany of offenses that will get you kicked off the platform.

I found the section which I believe addresses my post:

"We care deeply about the safety of the people who use our apps. We regularly consult with experts in suicide and self-injury to help inform our policies and enforcement, and work with organizations around the world to provide assistance to people in distress.

"While we do not allow people to intentionally or unintentionally celebrate or promote suicide or self-injury, we do allow people to discuss these topics because we want Facebook to be a space where people can share their experiences, raise awareness about these issues, and seek support from one another."

"We define self-injury as the intentional and direct injuring of the body, including self-mutilation and eating disorders. We remove any content that encourages suicide or self-injury, including fictional content such as memes or illustrations and any self-injury content which is graphic, regardless of context."

Here's the offending cartoon:

I maintain this isn't a cartoon about suicide- it's a cartoon addressing the power of social media to influence otherwise sane people to do insane things. If anything, it's an anti-suicide cartoon.

I've appealed prior suspensions and won, because it was obvious the artificially intelligent bot or stressed human outside contractor didn't grasp the concepts of satire, parody, or irony and made a bad call. Most of the time Facebook admitted it was in error and unhid the post. But I don't think it's going to work in this instance, because self-injury is one of those categories of which Facebook seems to have a zero tolerance policy. There is no way to contact any human at Facebook to offer a defense. And a small potatoes page administrator with a mere 10,134 followers really can't create enough media outrage to get Facebook executives involved.

I suspect Facebook adopted this policy to aggregate a number it can use in its "we're doing our best, but we can't catch everything" defense. They can point to their mountain of context-free suspensions and say, "Look, we suspended n accounts in the last month for violating our policy against self-injury."

Supplementary viewing/reading:

25+ best memes about jumping off a cliff

Little evidence supports the claimed effectiveness of zero-tolerance policies.

"The whole principle is wrong (censorship); it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak."
-Robert A. Heinlein

"The written word will soon disappear and we'll no longer be able to read good prose like we used to could. This prospect does not gentle my thoughts or tranquil me toward the future."
-James Thurber

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"The first way to answer the questions in the song ('Blowin' in the Wind') is by asking them. But lots of people first have to find the wind."
-Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman. He's 80 today.)

Actor Gary Burghoff is 78 today. The video above is the 1984 pilot episode of a M*A*S*H spinoff that wasn't picked up.

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The first text message: On this day in 1844, Samuel Morse sent the message "What hath God wrought" (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from a committee room in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland, to inaugurate a commercial telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington D.C.

On this day in 1940, Igor Sikorsky performed the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.

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NOT REAL NEWS: a look at what didn't happen last week.

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Pentagon's UFO footage- and Obama's curiosity- ratchet up expectations for a big reveal. When Congress passed the $2.3 trillion omnibus appropriations bill in December, it included a requirement that the Pentagon and a number of intelligence agencies prepare a report laying out what they know about UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), which is the new military-speak for UFOs. The report is expected to be delivered as early as June 1, and at least part of it will be made available to the public.

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Good news for a Monday morning: "...greater coffee consumption is associated with a decreased risk of all-cause mortality."

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Liz Cheney's GOP primary challenger admits to impregnating 14-year-old when he was 18. Liz Cheney's GOP primary challenger admits to impregnating 14-year-old when he was 18. The Facebook video he released, called "Senator Bouchard takes on the fake news media," claimed "I was young" and "you've heard those stories before. She was a little younger than me, so it's like the Romeo and Juliet story," he said, neglecting several glaring differences like the Shakespearean characters were fictional and neither was running for Congress in the so-called "family values" party.

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Can the news be fixed? The fix is already in. Oh, you mean like repaired.

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The Great Amazon Purge... "About three weeks ago, several major Amazon brands were suddenly kicked out. Most people were unaware of the names of more than 12 disappearing Chinese companies, such as Mpow and Aukey. However, these two sell a number of electronic devices, such as phone chargers and external batteries for smartphones. If you click "Buy" on Amazon's first phone charger or wireless headphones, it could be from one of the sellers currently suspended."

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Alabama will now allow yoga in its public schools (but students can't say 'namaste'). But on the other hand, Alabama becomes latest state to legalize medical marijuana.

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Life as we know it:

Solar storms are back, threatening life as we know it on Earth.

A massive heat dome is about to make the Southeast sweat. "Temperatures starting on Monday will run between 10-15 degrees above normal, and border on record maximum temperatures, both for daily highs and lows."

Spermageddon: Could men be infertile by 2045? One word: parthenogenesis.

New coronavirus discovered- and dogs are spreading it. It could be the eighth coronavirus known to cause illnesses in humans.

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Categories: Alabama, amazon.com, Anthony Bouchard, Bob Dylan, Coffee, Covert Comic, Dogs, Drugs, Facebook, Fact check, Gary Burghoff, Helicopters, Igor Sikorsky, James Thurber, January 6, Liz Cheney, M*A*S*H, News Media, Republicans, Robert A. Heinlein, Romeo and Juliet, Samuel Morse, Self-injury, Spermageddon, Suicide, Telegraph, The Sun, Weather, William Shakespeare

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James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories, published mainly in The New Yorker magazine then collected in his numerous books. One of the most popular humorists of his time, Thurber celebrated the comic frustrations and eccentricities of ordinary people. (Click for full article.)

A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands.

A little crotch kicking is a good thing, if done in anger. I can't stand guys who are merely piqued by the unforgivable...

A man's bed is his cradle, but a woman's is often her rack.

A pinch of probably is worth a pound of perhaps.

A woman's place is in the wrong.

All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

American college students are like American colleges; each has half-dulled faculties.

But what is all this fear of and opposition to oblivion? What is the matter with the soft darkness, the dreamless sleep?

Childhood used to end with the discovery that there is no Santa Claus. Nowadays, it often ends when the child gets his first adult, the way Hemingway got his first rhino, with the difference that the rhino was charging Hemingway, whereas the adult is usually running away from the child.

Discussion in America means dissent.

Do not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.

Don't get it right, just get it written.

Don't let the chip on your shoulder be your only reason for walking erect.

Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.

He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

I loathe the expression “What makes him tick.” It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.

I spit on the grave of my awful forties.
(on turning 50)

I suppose that even the most pleasurable of imaginable occupations, that of batting baseballs through the windows of the RCA Building, would pall a little as the days ran on.

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.

I wouldn't go down there if they was Fig Newtons down there.

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.

In his grief over the loss of a dog, a little boy stands for the first time on tiptoe, peering into the rueful morrow of manhood. After this most inconsolable of sorrows there is nothing life can do to him that he will not be able somehow to bear.

It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.

It's better to know some of the questions, than all of the answers.

Love is blind, but desire just doesn't give a good goddamn.

Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with Man is Man.

Men are more interesting than women, but women are more fascinating.

Nowadays men live lives of noisy desperation.

One [martini] is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.

Our love never ripened into friendship.

She said he proposed something on their wedding night her own brother wouldn't have suggested.

She who goes unarmed in paradise had better be sure that is where she is.

Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.

So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it.

Sometimes the news from Washington forces me to the conclusion that your mother and your brother Ed are in charge.
(cartoon caption)

The human being says that the beast in him has been aroused, when what he actually means is that the human being in him has been aroused.

The material on me... was so extensive that the writer couldn't find anything he was looking for, and, with data up to his waist, had to guess and make things up.

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

The saddest words of pen or tongue are wisdom's wasted on the young.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

The written word will soon disappear and we'll no longer be able to read good prose like we used to could. This prospect does not gentle my thoughts or tranquil me toward the future.

There are two kinds of light- the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.

There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as twenty years before his birth.

We must all study German. When Fate knocks in German, by God you hear it.

What this country needs is a good detached retinue.
(to his ophthalmologist)

Where did you get those big brown eyes and that tiny mind? (cartoon caption)

Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hell-bent get where they are going.

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

Women deserve to have more than 12 years between the ages of 28 and 40.

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

You can tell where I get my ideas from the things I write, and then you will know as much about it as I do.

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

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Categories: Cartoons, James Thurber, Quotes of the day

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(from ETOnline)

Emmy Award winning actor William Windom passed away at his home in Woodacre, California last Thursday, his wife Patricia confirms. The 88-year-old actor died of congestive heart failure.

In addition to numerous appearances in film and TV, the actor is best known for playing Star Trek's Commodore Matt Decker, Murder She Wrote's Dr. Seth Hazlitt, and multiple memorable roles on the Rod Sterling series, The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery.

(YouTube video: William Windom in "The Doomsday Machine")

Windom won an Emmy in 1970 for best actor in a comedy series for his performance in My World and Welcome to It, based on author James Thurber's essays and cartoons. The actor is survived by his four children and wife of 37 years.

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William Windom's Commodore Decker has been an integral part of KGB Report for more than a decade. If you try to access a non-existent page, you'll see this:

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Categories: James Thurber, Star Trek, Video, William Windom, YouTube

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James Thurber (b. December 8, 1894)

A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands.

A little crotch kicking is a good thing, if done in anger. I can't stand guys who are merely piqued by the unforgivable...

A man's bed is his cradle, but a woman's is often her rack.

A pinch of probably is worth a pound of perhaps.

A woman's place is in the wrong.

All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

American college students are like American colleges; each has half-dulled faculties.

But what is all this fear of and opposition to oblivion? What is the matter with the soft darkness, the dreamless sleep?

Childhood used to end with the discovery that there is no Santa Claus. Nowadays, it often ends when the child gets his first adult, the way Hemingway got his first rhino, with the difference that the rhino was charging Hemingway, whereas the adult is usually running away from the child.

Discussion in America means dissent.

Do not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.

Don't get it right, just get it written.

Don't let the chip on your shoulder be your only reason for walking erect.

Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.

He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

I loathe the expression “What makes him tick.” It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.

I spit on the grave of my awful forties.
(on turning 50)

I suppose that even the most pleasurable of imaginable occupations, that of batting baseballs through the windows of the RCA Building, would pall a little as the days ran on.

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.

I wouldn't go down there if they was Fig Newtons down there.

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.

In his grief over the loss of a dog, a little boy stands for the first time on tiptoe, peering into the rueful morrow of manhood. After this most inconsolable of sorrows there is nothing life can do to him that he will not be able somehow to bear.

It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.

It's better to know some of the questions, than all of the answers.

Love is blind, but desire just doesn't give a good goddamn.

Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with Man is Man.

Men are more interesting than women, but women are more fascinating.

Nowadays men live lives of noisy desperation.

One &lsqbmartini&rsqb is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.

Our love never ripened into friendship.

She said he proposed something on their wedding night her own brother wouldn't have suggested.

She who goes unarmed in paradise had better be sure that is where she is.

Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.

So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it.

Sometimes the news from Washington forces me to the conclusion that your mother and your brother Ed are in charge.
(cartoon caption)

The human being says that the beast in him has been aroused, when what he actually means is that the human being in him has been aroused.

The material on me... was so extensive that the writer couldn't find anything he was looking for, and, with data up to his waist, had to guess and make things up.

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

The saddest words of pen or tongue are wisdom's wasted on the young.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

The written word will soon disappear and we'll no longer be able to read good prose like we used to could. This prospect does not gentle my thoughts or tranquil me toward the future.

There are two kinds of light- the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.

There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as twenty years before his birth.

We must all study German. When Fate knocks in German, by God you hear it.

What this country needs is a good detached retinue.
(to his ophthalmologist)

Where did you get those big brown eyes and that tiny mind? (cartoon caption)

Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hell-bent get where they are going.

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

Women deserve to have more than 12 years between the ages of 28 and 40.

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

You can tell where I get my ideas from the things I write, and then you will know as much about it as I do.

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

---

Categories: James Thurber, Quotes of the day

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