Late-evening Twitter poetry from Tom Brokaw after blurting out his opinions concerning hispanic immigrants' "failure" to "assimilate". There's speculation that he's been hacked – "This cannot be real," writes Soledad O'Brien – but a look at his timeline suggests that Brokaw is just at the perihelion of boomer twitter. The light and heat of social media's burning sun blasts each generation's neurons a different way. Read the rest

They surely got hacked, but some of those guys are on the strong stuff and you just never know what happens when you mix high-proof conservatism with Jesus and give everyone unlimited access to the Twitter account.

Update: The Examiner said their feed was hacked and a tweet was posted that did not come from our staff. Read the rest

To enable "further research of information operations on Twitter", the company today published a dataset of tweets posted by known Russian and Iranian troll farms.

In line with our strong principles of transparency and with the goal of improving understanding of foreign influence and information campaigns, we are releasing the full, comprehensive archives of the Tweets and media that are connected with these two previously disclosed and potentially state-backed operations on our service. We are making this data available with the goal of encouraging open research and investigation of these behaviors from researchers and academics around the world.

These large datasets comprise 3,841 accounts affiliated with the IRA, originating in Russia, and 770 other accounts, potentially originating in Iran. They include more than 10 million Tweets and more than 2 million images, GIFs, videos, and Periscope broadcasts, including the earliest on-Twitter activity from accounts connected with these campaigns, dating back to 2009.

Downloads! The Russian set is 1.24GB of tweets, with nearly 300GB of media. The Iranian one is 168MB, with 65GB of media. Read the rest

As the Cohen and Manafort news blows up, we've got Jackhammer Jill watching the Orange Menace's twitter feed like a hawk. When the blowhard begins to melt down, we'll post tweets and analysis here.

Earlier this afternoon, Michael Cohen, in a courtroom in New York, under oath, declared that President Donald Trump “directed” him to commit a federal crime. Within an hour, Trump's former campaign chair Paul Manafort was found guilty on 8 felony charges.

When Donald Trump landed in West Virginia, he told press as he exited AF1 that he felt sorry for Paul Manafort, and believed the (partly) guilty verdict Manafort received was “sad.”

It's sad things have to “end this way,” said Trump, referring to Manafort's life and career. One imagines Manafort wouldn't appreciate hearing this as much as he'd appreciate a presidential pardon.

Trump waxed on about Manafort:

“He worked for Bob Dole, he worked for many people, it had nothing to do with Russian collusion, they continue the witch hunt.”

He said nothing about Michael Cohen.

But we're pretty sure a storm is a'coming!

Enjoy the rally, Mr. President https://t.co/rfPDi0dJqP

— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) August 21, 2018

Read the rest

In 2015, Alok Menghrajani wrote a simple game, including a floppy disk bootloader to run it, that fit in a tweet. Now that the tweet length is double what it was then, he's made a version that can be burned to CD.

perl -E 'say"A"x46422,"BDRDAwMQFFTCBUT1JJVE8gU1BFQ0lGSUNBVElPTg","A"x54,"Ew","A"x2634,"/0NEMDAxAQ","A"x2721,"BAAAAYQ","A"x30,"SVVVqogAAAAAAAEAF","A"x2676,"LMBaACgB76gfbgTAM0Qv8D4uYAI86qqgcc+AXP45GA8SHIRPFB3DTeYSEhyBSwCa8CwicMB3rSG/sHNFbRFJjAke9rrwQ","A"x2638'|base64 -Dcd.iso

The code is compacted into Base64, but you get the idea: a ludicrously yet ingeniously simplified game wrapped in a perl script that dumps it into an iso file to burn to CD. The game is ~64 bytes long.

See also: the tweet-length demoscene. Read the rest

The Twitter account of upscale retailer Nordstrom confirmed this weekend that it did not "like" a tweet that claimed the "DS" in "Nintendo DS" stood for "dick suck."

Another twitter user had reported that the offensive remark appeared in their feed because Nordstrom liked it, but it appears now that this report was itself mistaken.

"The DS in Nintendo DS stands for Dick Suck," wrote Nick Wiger, a Twitter japester with 32k followers on the popular social network. "The idea was, playing it was as fun as gettin your dick sucked. 3DS, as fun as 3 dick sucks."

"Um, this appeared in my feed because @Nordstrom liked it?," replied Katie Metz of St. Louis, or at least an account using that identity, concluding her tweet with a skeptical frowny face emoji and the hashtags #nordstrom and #fail.

"Sorry for the confusion, Katie," Nordstrom responded three minutes later. "We can confirm we have not liked this tweet."

At press time, Twitter had not yet responded to an inquiry concerning why the site was still free.

Photo: Mike Mozart (CC-BY-3.0) Read the rest

Retweet.RIP is a service by Will Cosgrove that, once given access to your Twitter account, systematically turns off retweets for everyone you follow. You can turn them back on again, too, but let's face it—you probably won't.

If you're a power user who has spent a lot of time fine tuning which accounts you get retweets from and which you don't, this tool is not for you. It will heartlessly ruin all of your hard work. So don't click either button.

Poe's law in action! What could be more white than posting a selection of unopened and unused supermarket condiments as sardonic proof that white people do in fact season food? Read the rest

Shahak Shapira reported hundreds of racist, sexist, abusive or otherwise hateful Tweets.

Twitter didn't delete them, so he sprayed them on the pavement outside the company's offices in Germany.

Update: Shahak Shapira's name was missing the "r". I eget the eo. Read the rest

Sadly, it's already sold out, but Trump tweets toilet paper is perhaps the gift of 2017. While you're waiting for stock to replenish, you can instead wipe your arse on his face. Read the rest

The FAKE NEWS media has never been so wrong. Or so DIIRRRRRRTY! Read the rest

Bernie Sanders presented a large printout of a Trump tweet in the U.S. Senate, to remind that body that Trump is a dangerous moron. Remixes flooded the net, but what if you can't shoop? Bernie.gomix.me is here to save the day! Feed it a tweet ID and it will generate an image of Bernie presenting your tweet in the U.S. Senate. [via Anil Dash] Read the rest

Caity Weaver spotted that Sure Deodorant had inaugurated a poll in which not a single person voted. Read the rest

Politiwoops, already dead in the U.S., now dies in 30 more countries. They rely on Twitter's API, after all, which the company has long made clear is not a public service. The problem: it kills something that keeps politicians honest.

Jules Mattsson:

"It’s a terrible shame that Twitter has made this decision. Politwoops has been an important new tool in political accountability in the UK and abroad. Politicians are all too happy to use social media to campaign, but if we lose the ability for this to be properly preserved, it becomes a one-way tool."

He's been getting it from all sides, lately: months of griping from Gamergaters, reaction to an outspoken tweet slamming the sexism in someone else's movie, and now a feminist backlash against the tone-deaf portrayal of Black Widow in his latest movie. Read the rest

Now that Twitter's finally made old tweets available, you might be inclined to nuke a few. Developer Benjamin Jackson created a tool that makes it seem easy: the Shame Eraser. Read the rest

Supervelma sells lovingly-stitched tweets from the mind of Kanye West at Etsy. Discounts are available for anyone who would like a set of three or more tweets. Read the rest