Plato’s Pow Wow

A Musical Shout-out from Plato’s Guns to All My Blogging Pals at FriendFeed!

Sadly, today the social network FriendFeed is closing down.  I would like to send a big heartfelt howdy and thank you to all my pals at Friendfeed for all the banging laughs and banger fights we’ve had there over the years – thoroughly enjoyable!!  Chapeaux to Weareone, Chu, American200, SeanMcbride, MRW, Danaa, annie, and the GFTG posse et all!  Thank you all for your activism and patriotism.  Hope to keep bumping into y’all in the dives and salons of cyberspace!

My Friends Have (Lyrics)

My friends have many features
Many reasons, I can believe them
My friends have many things that
I am needing to keep me singing

Yeah, you’re a friend of mine
You’re a friend of mine
Yeah, you’re a friend of mine
You’re a friend of mine

My friends have many mountains
Many mountains that I can breathe in
My friends have many houses
Many caves that I can choose to live in

Yeah, you’re a friend of mine
I love these friends of mine
You’re a friend for life
I love these friends of mine

My friends have many pathways
Many roads that I can choose to take
My friends have many highways
Where I can find my way back home again

You’re a friend of mine
I love these friends of mine
You’re a friend for life
I love these friends of mine

My friends have always been there
To help me shape my crooked features
My friends have picked me up again
And pushed my enemies out of the picture

Yeah, you’re a friend of mine
You’re a friend of mine
Yeah, you’re a friend of mine
You’re a friend for life

I love these friends of mine
I love these friends of mine
You’re a friend of mine
I love these friends of mine…

Standard

43 comments:

  1. seanmcbride says:

    Taxi,

    Wishing you best of luck with Plato’s Guns — so far your efforts have been impressive and inspirational — keep on being proactive!

  2. Long Live Friend Feed! While it had some setbacks (like paragraphing and bold/italics/underline) it was unequal to any other platform. And recalling data was so easy. Facebook should be the one closing down, not FriendFeed.

    It goes to show you even a sound idea can be bought out by a larger corporate power and shelved in the icy data warehouse. I understand FF wasn’t bringing in revenue, whereas Facebook does, but why not keep it running as part of the FB portfolio of programs? Probably to get you to join Facebook and then you can be data-mined like everyone else.

    Here’s some nostalgia for y’all. One of the first posts on MWFF on JeffBlankfort being banned with 526 comments!
    http://friendfeed.com/mpff/345ccbb1/jeffrey-blankfort-was-banned-i-find-this

    • OMG thank you Chu for linking this incredible discussion! I notice that all my postings there are missing cuz I accidentally deleted that account a few months ago and so everything I ever wrote under that account has gone poof! Still, it’s fantastic to read through it and see so many of MW’s old timers there! Man! Those were some incredible times!

      I remember about 3-4years ago having this very intensive mega epic discussion on MW with Jeff Blankford about Iran – he was concerned that the neocons were going to get their Iran war on and I just didn’t think it would happen – finally, I managed to convince him that all the sabre rattling at the time was going to be inconsequential and no war on Iran over its nuclear program was going to happen… And look where we are now. I can’t tell you how badly I wanna catch Jeffrey and shake him by the shoulders and say: See, I told you so! LOL!

      • In that Blankfort thread he says ‘when I was first notified of the banning by apparently Phil under pressure by his minder, Adam…’.

        And how did Donald get an elevated platform during that dust up?

        btw if you want to save any FF post, right click and select ‘save as a webpage’ I think FF is toast after today.

      • It’s not called mondoadam, and it’s not called mondodonald.
        If it’s the fault of anybody other than Weiss (and it’s not), it would be Michael or Lizzy Ratner, the billionaires who make sure mondoweiss never runs out of money.

        Weiss was the guy who was Richard Witty’s last supporter, after Adam and Annie were more than ready to ban him.

        Weiss is the guy who politely responds to every zio-troll in the comment section, year after year, trying to save their souls.

        Weiss is the guy who published and publically agreed with Donald Johnsonberg’s gatekeeping article where Donald told everybody to tone it down, and to Never suggest that the US might go to war with Israel some day.

        Annie should jump ship, team up with Taxi, and spend more time writing good content.

      • Philip Weiss January 17, 2012, 11:52 am
        Hi Krauss. I’m not with you here. I imagine there may be some quarrel about Donald Johnson’s items, but the atmosphere can be offputting, and it’s a fringe of commentary that causes it, and the outreach issue, to all Americans and others of conscience, is crucial. I think the comment board is one of the great values of this site. It is filled with authoritative voices, informed voices, moral voices. But I think it suffers from some dark sentiments. I know that many comment boards have intemperate voices. And polarization of the issue is of course inevitable, there are two sides here generally speaking. But our side will win with the truth, with facts and logic, and lose by invective.. Phil

      • The people that made mondoweiss a great site were the commenters, the ones who valued truth and justice more than they believe in Jewish moral superiority and “inevitably elite”-ness.

        Weiss’ ego and Jewish collective narcissism couldn’t handle a bunch of gentiles out-smarting him, and being willing to sacrifice Jewish supremacist beliefs for truth and justice.

        Weiss is a hope-peddling gatekeeper, and keeping discussion philo-Semitic and polite are excuses to make sure that his “inevitably elite” (Weiss’ words, to Gilad Atzmon before all things Gilad were censored) tribe never loses it’s death grip on the US.

        Weiss wants to kvetch about the NYT and NPR, but he doesn’t want them to actually be run by the 98% gentile super-majority.

      • Hops should be canned/banned. He’s thoroughly dishonest and downright creepy and everyone calls him on it. It like a guy you invite to your salon/party and he continues to make excuses for apartheid-land while saying ‘you’re the one with the problem’. lol

        Wasn’t ‘American’ the one who started the dust up with Jerry Slater/Donald about Just war?

      • The excuse that discussing 9/11, Atzmon, or Jewish history is a “distraction” is a very lame excuse. The entire comment section is a zio-troll distraction. But I’ve noticed most of the anti-zio Jews are infinitely patient with the trolls, and will never stop trying to save their Jewish souls in the name of prophetic tikun olam or whatever supremacist bs they tell themselves.

      • making certain topics verboten, undermines any cause/ makes a blog seem provincial. I recall on DailyKos that they could even discuss zionism or Israel. That’s kinda odd for a liberal leaning site. I think it’s changed today (how could it not).

      • If you’re in L.A. now you can make a recruiting trip up to San Fran.
        And Danaa will be popping in soon if she hasn’t already. Weareone might be a lady as well.

        I’ll try not to troll up your blog too much, and hope things start rolling in that direction.

      • I’m glad I’m not in LA – that despicable hub of zionists on botox! Man I’ve learned so much stuff about the ME from hanging around the Levant for a coupla years. I think a more seductive recruitment would be to invite annie to come visit me here before September (I’m going back to LA then, sadly).

        And hey, you’re only technically trolling if you repeat the same message over and over and over and over…..

        A buncha your points are valid, pepsi.

      • Thanks Taxi. I agree about L.A.
        When I moved out of NYC I could feel the neurotic Zio spiritual smog dissipating as I drove away.

  3. weareone says:

    Hi Taxi,
    You’ve done a great job! The site is beautiful and elegant and your cartoons (especially of Netanyahu) are priceless. 🙂

    And Chu, I agree–thanks for the Blankfort discussion. It will be fun to look over….526 comments–incredible!

    • Wearone! I’m so excited you’re here! Your presence at my little corner newsstand is much appreciated – I hope you will visit again and endear us with your sound and informative perspective.

    • de nada, wao. that was a polar shift to the comments section back then and FF served as a back channel, props to mcbride (and only 3 years & 2 months ago!)

      • weareone says:

        Dear Taxi,
        Thanks.
        and Chu, yes–definitely props to Sean—-a lot has transpired in those few years…

  4. OT: mmm I gotta fix that thinning commentary colomn – give me a couple of days and I’ll get to it! Tomorrow I’m going museum-hopping in Beirut and it’s a little late for me to get all techy at such a late hour in the Levant.

    • Okay, I have two tech thoughts:
      1) try to find your neighbor with the Arabic book about the Saudi royal family’s crypto roots. Then, scan it. In Beirut if necessary.

      2) If your wordpress control panel gives you the option, you should change the number of “recent articles” in the widget at the bottom of your blog to a number higher than the current Five.
      As traffic and discussion picks up, recent-but-not-recent-enough articles and discussions will get bumped out of view.

      The other option would be to adjust your “recent comments” widget, again at the bottom, to a higher number, so more discussions and comments can be found on your front page.

      • Thanks for the tips Pepsi – will try that out later.

        My front page is set to show 15 articles ( I can raise it up to 100, I think) — is it a different look for you guys? Do you only see 5 articles on the homepage?

        Also, what’s the number of your comments widget set to? mine is set to 5.

      • Okay I need to clarify. Your 15 stories on the front page is fine.
        But scroll to the bottom of your blog, and you have two widgets.
        One is “recent comments”. It looks like yours is set to 7.

        On our “recent comments” widget on the right of the blog, it’s set to show 15 recent comments. A higher number means more discussions are likely to be easy to get to from the front page.
        Because sometimes one discussion will generate 7 or more quick comments, and thus only one discussion is a click away.

        So you just need to find the “widget” section in your control panel thing, and then try to edit the number in the “recent comments” widget.

      • I can easily find my comments widget on my dashboard, no problem – but am I editing the number higher than 7 or lower? And if higher, by how much should I increase – double?

      • I’ll get the Saudi writers name tomorrow for sure – getting a hold of the book and scanning it might take a while though – but it’s on my list of things to do (it’s been on my list for like a year – man I got at least 20 lazy bones in me!).

  5. Pepsi,
    I increased comments widget to 15 – that’s the maximum allowed on my theme.

    And I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of the thinning threaded comments. I don’t understand (due to sleep fuzz in brain) the following box in my ‘discussion’ setting:
    “Break comments into pages with 100 top level comments per page and the last page displayed by default”.

    I can tick or untick the above box and I can also change the ‘100’ number but to what?

    *No rush to reply – am going to be soon.

  6. “What you might consider doing now: make a proactive effort to recruit MW commenters to PG who are interested in discussing topics that have proven too sensitive for MW. This isn’t a competition — people can comment on many platforms depending on the content they wish to address. MW will always be a first-rate discussion space on Mideast politics — arguably the best on the Internet. The beauty of the Internet is that all of these discussion spaces are endlessly reconfigurable with little effort. – Sean McBride @ ff”

    Say, Sean, I intend to spread the word soon as I’ve got a good handle on the dashboard, which I feel I do now and getting faster at it too. But I need some feedback on how visitors are finding the interactive experience and whether there’s something that I can be adding/improving, whatever, etc.

    Is it a ‘smooth’ experience and visually inviting?

    • seanmcbride says:

      Taxi,

      From my angle, PG is now more than presentable and serviceable — but by all means keep tweaking the fine points. You now have established the groundwork here for an easy flow of useful conversation. And for current MW commenters visiting PG, the interface should be a breeze.

      (By the way, notice how easy it is to communicate across platforms — as we are doing now between MPFF and PG.)

  7. Thanks Cloaky! Always great to have your added and keen insights.

    And thanks Sean too for your feedback – and yeah I love communicating in real-time. You just can’t beat that now can you?! Liberation from censor and moderators to boot too wooooohoooooo!!!!!!

    • seanmcbride says:

      Taxi — fast-flowing friction-free conversation is the way to go for Internet discussions, in my opinion. And people should be permitted to engage in discussion with whomever they want and on whatever topics they want in whatever style they want. The Internet provides the tools to do just that if one knows how to exploit them — one can always create new customized discussion spaces to suit any taste.

      Bottom-up multidirectional communications beat top-down unidirectional communications in the pursuit of truth — it’s the democratic vs. the authoritarian model.

  8. Hello Taxi – I’ll be poppin’ in, now that I am done spending time recapturing some of my own old comments on FF and the good discussions I had with people there over the past 3 years (yes, that took a while). I know Sean said to use Notebook, but…..do I ever listen? Too bad I lost all the comments made to you – I expect all manner of amends – you know how it is, what we lose is always the best, or so we convince ourselves. For now, I’ll comment through WordPress – convenient enough, and, just in case, I can back up any comments worth backing up to my own little start-up blog (which for now will just be an archiving mechanism, till I get the hand of what’s what and where and why). Just in case,, you know…

    I love the name of your blog – seems appropriate.

    And Chu, thanks for bringing up that great conversation we had on the occasions of Blankfort’s banning. I saved it for posterity, I hope.

    • Hiya Danaa! So excited you made it here – welcome to my little mideast newsstand! Wot we waiting for? Let’s roll!! Lol!

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