Linked List: September 6, 2020

Sunday, 6 September 2020

‘A Tough Way to Make a Living’ 

Two weeks ago, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee released Volume 5 of its report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Page 274 describes a night on the town in Las Vegas in 2013:

The dinner that night ultimately included members of the Agalarov family, Trump Organization, Miss Universe Organization, and a number of Emin Agalarov’s friends. Michael Cohen attended with Trump and [Keith] Schiller. During the meal, Goldstone recalled being approached by Schiller, who asked Goldstone if the Agalarov group had plans after the meal. Goldstone recalled telling Schiller that one of Emin Agalarov’s associates, Murtaza Akbar, was an investor in a club called The Act and that the group planned to go. According to Goldstone, Schiller responded by telling Goldstone that “Mr. Trump wants to come.”

Following dinner, the group, which included the Agalarovs, their associates, and the Trump Organization group, went to The Act. Goldstone described The Act as, “a bit Cirque du Soleil and a bit burlesquey thrown into one.” Cohen recalled that the club was “more than a burlesque club” and was a “wild place.”1823

Footnote 1823 contains this testimony from Cohen to the committee, further describing the club:

“It’s a club that puts on shows, and you never really know what the show is going to be. In this specific case they brought out a young man who was in a leotard body suit, who, to me, I would diagnose him as a thalidomide baby. And he was blind as well, but he sang like Pavarotti. And while he was singing — I forget the song, it was like a ‘God Bless America’-type song — there was a woman who was in a thong bikini, who was large, performing sex acts on him while he was singing. Interesting, because I was with Mr. Trump at the time. It was not really a place I expected to be with him at. He looked over to me when he was finished, and I’ll never forget this, he looked me right in the face. He goes, ‘That’s a tough way to make a living.’”

Twitter Stopped Letting New Users Pick Their Usernames During Sign-Up Years Ago 

Darius Kazemi:

There’s a common belief that Twitter accounts with usernames like @jsmith12345678 must be bots, or trolls, or otherwise nefarious actors.

The thing is, since at least as far back as December 2017, the Twitter signup process has not allowed you to choose your own username! It instead gives you a name based on your first and last name, plus eight numbers on the end. You aren’t prompted to pick a more distinctive username after that, and you can change it but you need to figure out how to do it yourself. (The December 2017 date was confirmed to me privately by someone who works at Twitter Design.)

This means that when you see a reply from someone with a username with a bunch of numbers in it, it’s actually pretty likely that the user is simply someone who joined Twitter after December 2017 and either doesn’t care to change their username, or doesn’t know that they can change it, or doesn’t know how to change it. In other words, it’s probably a user who isn’t very technically savvy.

I learned this a few months ago when I created the @ditheringfm Twitter account. You can still pick your own (available) username on Twitter, but you have to change it in your account settings after starting with a dumb-looking handle you never chose.