Website behind widely shared fake election polls run by 21-year-old ~ The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/20/fake-polling-website-median-strategies
"The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”.
“I wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily,” Rahil Prakash told the Guardian on Thursday when reached by phone. “And as it turned out, it could.”
Back in the early 80's my wife was working for a small company here that had snagged some design and purchasing work for some construction projects in Saudi Arabia.
The head of the company was named Ray Gill, and he would visit S.A. a couple of times a year. This was before the wonders of our modern telecomms of course, when timezones were important and phone calls had to be patched through with considerable effort at both ends, and in between.
She had to make a call to Ray Gill one day, and to deal with some guys on that end whose English was spotty.
She was bounced around for several hours as they tried to locate Mr. Ray Gill of Memphis Tennessee, USA.
"Ray Gill. I need to speak to Ray Gill. R-A-Y G-I-L-L. Ray Gill."
'Yes, Ray Gill! We have found him!'
Finally, after wasting most of the afternoon, she was connected.
'Hello,' a man said with a heavy accent, 'this is Rahil.'
Down with Covid again. Nowadays you don’t need to wait 5 days after fever ends to show your mug around town. You just need to wait 24 hrs after fever ends and all symptoms generally improving, being extra cautious around compromised people. Whether you feel up to being out and about is another story.
On X: Mayor Bill Wells of El Cajon @MayorBillWells
"We got word that there were around 50 children in our city who were suspected victims of sex trafficking. We wanted to go get them. That is the whole job. That is why you put on the badge.
Our city attorney stopped us. He told us that under state law, we'd be the ones in violation. Not the traffickers. Us. And it wouldn't be me who paid for it. It would be the officer who actually knocked on that door. He'd be charged. He'd lose his pension. He'd lose his livelihood.
So we did the reasonable thing. We wrote to Sacramento and asked the Attorney General to help us find a way. One question: can we go check on these kids?
The answer came back in writing. No.
I keep that response because people don't believe me when I describe it. They think it's hyperbole, or politics, or some wild-eyed conspiracy theory. It isn't. It's a letter. It's the state of California telling a police department to leave trafficked children where they are.
It happened in my town. I have no reason to believe my town is unique."
Ach tells us this fake poll is the Ds being evil because all Ds are always evil, according to Ach.
IDK. Maybe.
But it seems like there could be as much or more motivation for someone placing big bets on the prediction markets. Maybe not in this particular situation the fake poll was from folks placing bets. But, it does now seem like inventing a fake poll(s) would be a good way make money on the prediction markets.
Anywho, is there any point where Ach will look up and decide that DJT is way more of a fraudster than this person that made the fake poll?
Gusty Winds, that was a great comment. Why are women siding with the murderer who strangled her three children - lining up to watch the trial and offer her support? Tim Pool had an excellent video on that. I can’t find it now, but here is a sample of what’s happening: https://x.com/timrunshismouth/status/2090580130468970540?s=46 I don’t have an answer, but I hope none of these women have children. She has admitted to killing her children. The question at trial is whether she was legally of sound mind at the time. Yet some of these women are looking at her astrological sign and claiming she could not have done what she has already admitted to doing. After killing her children, she jumped from a second-story window and is now paraplegic.
Two Democrats released a simple pledge that stated, “we are capitalists, not socialists. We want safety, not lawlessness. We are proud, not ashamed of America.”
Only 8 of 212 Democrats signed it. Eight. That tells you everything you need to know about where that party is heading.
I asked Grok 'why do I find the stock phrase "I realized" annoying?'
"Overuse, formulaic storytelling, and a sense of performative insight make "I realized" grate for many people. It’s a classic stock phrase that shows up constantly in personal essays, self-help content, podcasts, social-media posts, TED-style talks, and memoirs. Once you start noticing it, the pattern becomes hard to unsee: setup → struggle → “I realized X” → neat moral or transformation. That predictability turns the words into verbal wallpaper. The realization often feels staged rather than earned, as if the writer or speaker is signaling “here comes the profound part” instead of simply conveying what changed."
An Alabama jury on Thursday awarded $9.25 million in damages after finding that The New York Times defamed a college basketball player by incorrectly reporting that he was at the scene of a fatal shooting in Tuscaloosa.
"At some point, empathy crossed a line and ventured into a murder cult.
There are legitimate conversations to have about maternal mental health, the pressures many women face during pregnancy and family life, and the women who have been ignored when they were crying out for help. Fine. Have those debates and convos.
But none of that requires turning Lindsay Clancy into a feminist hero."
Upside down day in New Jersey, when you get arrested for praying for the slaughtered unborn, and protected for attacking ICE. Next thing you know, she will be signing a law that women can kill their three children if they have mental problems. (and blame it on the husband)
Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh 🚨 JUST IN: New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) just signed a bill that will effectively BLOCK people from PRAYING outside abortion centers
Women smile as she takes action to support baby killers 😠
You gotta be freaking kidding me.
Why do Democrats attack Christians so much?
“Peaceful sidewalk counseling, prayer, holding signs, or simply offering help and alternatives outside a facility can easily be labeled “intimidation” by someone who claims to feel threatened, leaving pro-life advocates open to criminal charges that are difficult to disprove and chilling constitutionally protected expression.” — New Jersey Right to Life https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2090545948313469421?s=20
Prayer? At the end of our church service on Sunday our Pastor offered an alter call. A homeless guy in the congregation (we see a lot of those) raced to the alter. Most of our homeless guests hang around in the back, get some coffee and bolt. Hopefully we can steer him towards recovery.
The New York Times reports the mother of a sailor aboard the Lincoln saying of her son and his shipmates "They didn't sign up to be on a ship in the middle of the ocean."
Regarding Natalie Harp, we’ve seen this gambit on the part of the Democrats and their bootlicking lackeys in the newsmedia before. Anyone besides me remember George H. W. Bush and his aide Jennifer Fitzgerald? Wss there ever any evidence for an affair between them? No. But everybody (on the Left) “knew.”
And now it’s Trump and Harp. The original was bad enough. The sequel sucks worse.
Maybe Annapolis can change the lyrics to “Navy Blue and Gold.” Instead of singing about “sailors brave in battle” they can sing “For sailors whining to their moms,”
“ Women smile as she takes action to support baby killers”
There’s a blues song from three or for years ago, I think it was titled Gone Too Long, with lyrics like “ the devil smiled as I laid my head upon his lap to sleep”.
Trump pauses quota tariff on 300,000 tons of beef ahead of midterms ~ Politico
Trump has decided that in order to make ground beef cheaper, he will cut tariffs on ground beef. And I'm wondering if he could generalize from this one product to other products, and perhaps concede that tariffs raise prices on American consumers.
Here's IEE doing his usual knee-jerk everything-Trump-does-is-wrong shtick, and implying that Trump's tariffs are what raised the price of beef. Someone on Twitter alleged the same thing explicitly, and Mostly Peaceful Is In The Eye Of The Media™ on Twitter replied (link):
"This 26.4% tariff went into effect and has been in place since 1995.
"Oppressive regulations by states like California on herd size, grazing lands, runoff and climate policies started the environmentalist's agenda to stop us from eating meat, ultimately to get were we are today."
Is Mostly Peaceful right, and we should blame Clinton and Newsom for high beef prices? I don't know, but strongly suspect he is. Will IEE check on that before repeating his sneer? Very unlikely.
Dr W: I wasn’t implying that these were Trump’s tariffs that he was curtailing. My point was the interesting political and economic implication: the administration is effectively acknowledging that removing an import tariff can lower consumer prices.
IEE: I don't believe you. You could easily have mentioned that these were Clinton tariffs, and should have done so, but didn't. Did you not know until I told you, or know and not care?
Read my words out loud — perhaps that will increase your read comprehension.
My point wasn’t “Trump imposed these tariffs.” It was that his administration is now demonstrating, rather awkwardly, that removing an import tariff can reduce consumer prices. If the history of who first imposed the tariff is the relevant issue, I’m happy to discuss that. But it doesn’t change the economic point.
My reading (not "read") comprehension is working fine, and I still don't believe you. Here's another Tweet about the actual causes of high beef prices, from 'bumbadum' (link):
"Beef prices aren't up becuase of tariffs you moron. They are up because:
"1. 4 meatpackers have consolidated the entire industry and are currently under investigation for price fixing.
"2. Cattle herds are at record lows because of leftist policy for the past 10 years intentionally trying to destroy the meat industry to prevent climate change.
"3. We imported 40 million people in the past 4 years that are all subsudized by the government to buy beef from walmart.
"This is all well known and the American left has been public about this for years. A temporary waver of tariffs on foreign beef to bring prices down during midterm elections is not proof that tariffs are bad or that the current situation is caused by tariffs."
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith. Also: No italics, even briefly. Use asterisks for emphasis. And don't play with the format by changing fonts or using boldface or all caps. Never include more than one extra line break between paragraphs.
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३८ टिप्पण्या:
Another open thread, this one to carry you through the night.
Website behind widely shared fake election polls run by 21-year-old ~ The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/20/fake-polling-website-median-strategies
"The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”.
“I wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily,” Rahil Prakash told the Guardian on Thursday when reached by phone. “And as it turned out, it could.”
AI forgets it already talked about that.
Dreamweaver...
Rahil, is it? (Ra-heel)
Back in the early 80's my wife was working for a small company here that had snagged some design and purchasing work for some construction projects in Saudi Arabia.
The head of the company was named Ray Gill, and he would visit S.A. a couple of times a year. This was before the wonders of our modern telecomms of course, when timezones were important and phone calls had to be patched
through with considerable effort at both ends, and in between.
She had to make a call to Ray Gill one day, and to deal with some guys on that end whose English was spotty.
She was bounced around for several hours as they tried to locate Mr. Ray Gill of Memphis Tennessee, USA.
"Ray Gill. I need to speak to Ray Gill. R-A-Y G-I-L-L. Ray Gill."
'Yes, Ray Gill! We have found him!'
Finally, after wasting most of the afternoon, she was connected.
'Hello,' a man said with a heavy accent, 'this is Rahil.'
I think Ray called from there the next day.
Democrats are now pushing fake poll talking points to hide their obvious election fraud in Wisconsin.
Paper ballots and Voter ID requirements end the democrat party.
Down with Covid again. Nowadays you don’t need to wait 5 days after fever ends to show your mug around town. You just need to wait 24 hrs after fever ends and all symptoms generally improving, being extra cautious around compromised people. Whether you feel up to being out and about is another story.
On X:
Mayor Bill Wells of El Cajon
@MayorBillWells
"We got word that there were around 50 children in our city who were suspected victims of sex trafficking. We wanted to go get them. That is the whole job. That is why you put on the badge.
Our city attorney stopped us. He told us that under state law, we'd be the ones in violation. Not the traffickers. Us. And it wouldn't be me who paid for it. It would be the officer who actually knocked on that door. He'd be charged. He'd lose his pension. He'd lose his livelihood.
So we did the reasonable thing. We wrote to Sacramento and asked the Attorney General to help us find a way. One question: can we go check on these kids?
The answer came back in writing. No.
I keep that response because people don't believe me when I describe it. They think it's hyperbole, or politics, or some wild-eyed conspiracy theory. It isn't. It's a letter. It's the state of California telling a police department to leave trafficked children where they are.
It happened in my town. I have no reason to believe my town is unique."
https://x.com/MayorBillWells/status/2090063307579207787
CA is going the way of South Africa.
Ach tells us this fake poll is the Ds being evil because all Ds are always evil, according to Ach.
IDK. Maybe.
But it seems like there could be as much or more motivation for someone placing big bets on the prediction markets. Maybe not in this particular situation the fake poll was from folks placing bets. But, it does now seem like inventing a fake poll(s) would be a good way make money on the prediction markets.
Anywho, is there any point where Ach will look up and decide that DJT is way more of a fraudster than this person that made the fake poll?
Time will tell.
Gusty Winds, that was a great comment. Why are women siding with the murderer who strangled her three children - lining up to watch the trial and offer her support? Tim Pool had an excellent video on that. I can’t find it now, but here is a sample of what’s happening:
https://x.com/timrunshismouth/status/2090580130468970540?s=46
I don’t have an answer, but I hope none of these women have children.
She has admitted to killing her children. The question at trial is whether she was legally of sound mind at the time. Yet some of these women are looking at her astrological sign and claiming she could not have done what she has already admitted to doing.
After killing her children, she jumped from a second-story window and is now paraplegic.
Two Democrats released a simple pledge that stated, “we are capitalists, not socialists. We want safety, not lawlessness. We are proud, not ashamed of America.”
Only 8 of 212 Democrats signed it. Eight. That tells you everything you need to know about where that party is heading.
The mother dove out that window and landed on her head, Eva Marie.
Yes, she damaged her spinal cord.
I asked Grok 'why do I find the stock phrase "I realized" annoying?'
"Overuse, formulaic storytelling, and a sense of performative insight make "I realized" grate for many people. It’s a classic stock phrase that shows up constantly in personal essays, self-help content, podcasts, social-media posts, TED-style talks, and memoirs. Once you start noticing it, the pattern becomes hard to unsee: setup → struggle → “I realized X” → neat moral or transformation. That predictability turns the words into verbal wallpaper. The realization often feels staged rather than earned, as if the writer or speaker is signaling “here comes the profound part” instead of simply conveying what changed."
Here is Google's answer - Link
Murkowski - Corrupt just like a Democrat
An Alabama jury on Thursday awarded $9.25 million in damages after finding that The New York Times defamed a college basketball player by incorrectly reporting that he was at the scene of a fatal shooting in Tuscaloosa.
@MadTownGuy said....
Once schools start Truancy Office can ?
"At some point, empathy crossed a line and ventured into a murder cult.
There are legitimate conversations to have about maternal mental health, the pressures many women face during pregnancy and family life, and the women who have been ignored when they were crying out for help. Fine. Have those debates and convos.
But none of that requires turning Lindsay Clancy into a feminist hero."
https://revolver.news/2026/08/the-lindsay-clancy-case-is-the-downfall-of-womankind/
Upside down day in New Jersey, when you get arrested for praying for the slaughtered unborn, and protected for attacking ICE.
Next thing you know, she will be signing a law that women can kill their three children if they have mental problems. (and blame it on the husband)
Eric Daugherty
@EricLDaugh
🚨 JUST IN: New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) just signed a bill that will effectively BLOCK people from PRAYING outside abortion centers
Women smile as she takes action to support baby killers 😠
You gotta be freaking kidding me.
Why do Democrats attack Christians so much?
“Peaceful sidewalk counseling, prayer, holding signs, or simply offering help and alternatives outside a facility can easily be labeled “intimidation” by someone who claims to feel threatened, leaving pro-life advocates open to criminal charges that are difficult to disprove and chilling constitutionally protected expression.” — New Jersey Right to Life
https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2090545948313469421?s=20
Prayer? At the end of our church service on Sunday our Pastor offered an alter call. A homeless guy in the congregation (we see a lot of those) raced to the alter. Most of our homeless guests hang around in the back, get some coffee and bolt. Hopefully we can steer him towards recovery.
*altar*
The New York Times reports the mother of a sailor aboard the Lincoln saying of her son and his shipmates "They didn't sign up to be on a ship in the middle of the ocean."
Regarding Natalie Harp, we’ve seen this gambit on the part of the Democrats and their bootlicking lackeys in the newsmedia before. Anyone besides me remember George H. W. Bush and his aide Jennifer Fitzgerald? Wss there ever any evidence for an affair between them? No. But everybody (on the Left) “knew.”
And now it’s Trump and Harp. The original was bad enough. The sequel sucks worse.
Maybe Annapolis can change the lyrics to “Navy Blue and Gold.” Instead of singing about “sailors brave in battle” they can sing “For sailors whining to their moms,”
""They didn't sign up to be on a ship in the middle of the ocean."
I joined up for the water skiing and for the travel, sir
Instapundit picks up on the recent "men in shorts" post (via Daniel Drezner). If this is one of your obsessions, hurry over to Instapundit to comment.
If men shaved their legs, would it be as much of a pressing problem?
Is anybody else having to mow their lawn 2 or more times a week? I don't mind. I like the exercise. Lots of steps.
“ Women smile as she takes action to support baby killers”
There’s a blues song from three or for years ago, I think it was titled Gone Too Long, with lyrics like “ the devil smiled as I laid my head upon his lap to sleep”.
Trump pauses quota tariff on 300,000 tons of beef ahead of midterms ~ Politico
Trump has decided that in order to make ground beef cheaper, he will cut tariffs on ground beef. And I'm wondering if he could generalize from this one product to other products, and perhaps concede that tariffs raise prices on American consumers.
Here's IEE doing his usual knee-jerk everything-Trump-does-is-wrong shtick, and implying that Trump's tariffs are what raised the price of beef. Someone on Twitter alleged the same thing explicitly, and Mostly Peaceful Is In The Eye Of The Media™ on Twitter replied (link):
"This 26.4% tariff went into effect and has been in place since 1995.
"Oppressive regulations by states like California on herd size, grazing lands, runoff and climate policies started the environmentalist's agenda to stop us from eating meat, ultimately to get were we are today."
Is Mostly Peaceful right, and we should blame Clinton and Newsom for high beef prices? I don't know, but strongly suspect he is. Will IEE check on that before repeating his sneer? Very unlikely.
*altar*
*sweet*
Supreme Court rule for Ballroom construction to proceed forthwith. Whiners hardest hit.
Dr W: I wasn’t implying that these were Trump’s tariffs that he was curtailing. My point was the interesting political and economic implication: the administration is effectively acknowledging that removing an import tariff can lower consumer prices.
IEE:
I don't believe you. You could easily have mentioned that these were Clinton tariffs, and should have done so, but didn't. Did you not know until I told you, or know and not care?
Read my words out loud — perhaps that will increase your read comprehension.
My point wasn’t “Trump imposed these tariffs.” It was that his administration is now demonstrating, rather awkwardly, that removing an import tariff can reduce consumer prices. If the history of who first imposed the tariff is the relevant issue, I’m happy to discuss that. But it doesn’t change the economic point.
My reading (not "read") comprehension is working fine, and I still don't believe you. Here's another Tweet about the actual causes of high beef prices, from 'bumbadum' (link):
"Beef prices aren't up becuase of tariffs you moron. They are up because:
"1. 4 meatpackers have consolidated the entire industry and are currently under investigation for price fixing.
"2. Cattle herds are at record lows because of leftist policy for the past 10 years intentionally trying to destroy the meat industry to prevent climate change.
"3. We imported 40 million people in the past 4 years that are all subsudized by the government to buy beef from walmart.
"This is all well known and the American left has been public about this for years. A temporary waver of tariffs on foreign beef to bring prices down during midterm elections is not proof that tariffs are bad or that the current situation is caused by tariffs."
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith. Also: No italics, even briefly. Use asterisks for emphasis. And don't play with the format by changing fonts or using boldface or all caps. Never include more than one extra line break between paragraphs.