Amazon Cracks Down on Snarky Reviews

Before Jennifer Granholm was announced as Secretary of Energy, I was perusing the comments of my now banner post at my big time blog gig over at Climate Scepticism. Ron Clutz made a comment about green energy scams and I replied with a comment abut how our former Michigan governor got scammed into going on stage and awarding a $9 million tax credit to a convicted fraudster named Richard Short. I'd remembered going through her book at the library and not finding anything about it so I wanted to mention it in my comment. I went to Amazon to see if the book had the index in the Look Inside part just to sort of double check. I was surprised to see the kindle version was only $1.99 (still a couple of orders of magnitude more than its worth) so I bought it with thoughts of writing a review. BTW after her new appointment it has gone up to $9.99.

I've Accumulated Two More Prominent Twitter Blocks

I've accumulated a couple more prominent Twitter blocks. The first is Jerry Taylor. He was an environmental skeptic for the Cato Institute, who sort of switched sides after something of a falling out over advice he used (probably from Pat Michaels) in a debate with Joe Romm. He's now the president of a centrist think tank called the Niskanen Center. Here's a couple links to connect Pat Michaels and Joe Romm.

He's not terribly prominent with 9000 followers, but he does get cited a lot. He's not a 100% renewables zealot, but he does buy into a lot of the renewable hype. He's not anti-nuclear, but also not a big proponent. He does think it should play a roll and castigates anti-nukers. His tweets generally don't get a lot of responses, so I've made a lot of (mostly polite) responses to his climate and energy tweets. In his profile, he says he blocks trolls and in my profile, I refer to myself as a "Fact Mongering Nuclear Troll", along with two other pejorative descriptions.

Amazon Ups requirements for Customer Reviews

I just finished Alex Epstein's The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, and I was going to write an Amazon review. When I clicked the "write a review" button, they hit me with a red box that said I didn't meet the minimum eligibility requirements.

My first thoughts on seeing this were that I'd probably made some transgression that they were cracking down on. I spend a lot of time on Amazon reviews, reading, writing and commenting, and I do like to push the limits of what I can do. I clicked to their guidelines page and found that they've added some new requirements:

Twitter Block Update

I've been blocked by a few more people on Twitter. A couple of them appear to have done it preemptively. First, there's Katharine Hayhoe, who is getting something of a reputation as a Twitter blocker. I don't remember ever tweeting to her. And now I've found out that Twitter has a nifty advanced search. It's a little tricky to find. First you search for anything. Then hit the "Search Filters Show" button. Then hit "Advanced Search".  There's all kinds of search options. I found I made no tweets to Katharine Hayhoe, but did make some that mention her account.

The other preemptive block was anti-nuclear zealot Helen Caldicott. I made no tweets to or mentioning her. I tweet quite a bit about nuclear power, so she clearly took preemptive action.

I've got a couple blocks due to my interest in the Penn State Paterno/Sandusky case. PZ Myers blocked me for tweeting to him about it. He still lets me comment on his blog, Pharyngula, on other topics. The other block is a motor mouth named Steve Shives. I have another blog called Canman Canned Facts where I blog about the Penn State scandal. 

I just got blocked by Sarah Myhre for tweeting to her that I thought she was hysterical. I had no intention of being misogynistic, but that is the only word I could think of to describe her. She is hyper-emotional, almost beyond parody. She's apparently blocking quite a few other twitterers. Judith Curry has a new post up with some stunning quotes from Myhre. She's also tweeted about it.

PS:  Here's a link to Twitter's advance search. It even works when you're not logged in, so you can search for tweets from people who've blocked you.


List of Links:

https://twitter.com/KHayhoe

https://twitter.com/DrHCaldicott

https://twitter.com/pzmyers

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/

https://twitter.com/steve_shives

https://canmancannedfacts.blogspot.com/

https://twitter.com/SarahEMyhre

https://judithcurry.com/2018/12/12/cliff-mass-victim-of-academic-political-bullying/

https://twitter.com/curryja/status/1072959865952370692

https://twitter.com/search-advanced

Willard Cuts Me Off at And Then There's Physics

[Update: Willard won't let me link to this post. BUILD A GATE!]
[Update: Just in case it's not clear, my first two comments were not deleted. My other comment would better be described as "snipped" rather than "not posted", so I FIFY.]

Anders's gatekeeper, Willard, has cut off a subtopic that I brought up in a post about consensus. He also says his next post will be on this very topic, which is CAGW. I'm looking forward to it.

This is the comment I posted:

The big, obvious, elephantine, taboo question, whenever someone is talking about “climate” and “consensus”, is:

Is this a consensus about whether AGW is happening (real or whatever) or is this a consensus about whether it is dangerous?

This is a very important distinction, and everything I ever read from konsensus types is always a big load of BS, blather meant to avoid, conflate or confuse this distinction!

Never Mind -- Well Maybe Not Never

In my last post, I wrote about a comment of mine that I thought might have been spoofed. After publishing it, I've had my mind jogged by something that reminded me of a comment that I do remember making. I was commenting on this post at the blog, And Then There's Physics, where I found a comment of mine that contained only a cryptic moderation note in brackets. I could not remember making a comment there and I found seeing my avatar, name and Gravatar link to be disconcerting. I tried to think of any comment I might of made there and came up blank. I even sent a note to WordPress on one of their contact pages.

Well looking through my browsing history, I came upon a link I remembered using in a comment. I now pretty much remember the whole comment and I do think I posted it in this spot. In this comment, I berated alarmists for not debating. I included the YouTube video of Gavin Schmidt running from Roy Spencer on John Stossel's show. I also had a link to a story about the head of Leonardo DeCaprio's foundation backing out of a debate with Alex Epstien. The cryptic moderation note ([Peddling --Willard]) even makes sense. Willard is probably a moderator and is accusing me of peddling something -- links that show debate being suppressed. I will have to say that having this comment cut is worth having a Canned Comments post.

I started a WordPress forum called "Comment Spoofing" and will put a link to this post on it. If I could find the WordPress contact page I used (I can't), I'd retract the claims I made in the message I sent them.

Am I Being Spoofed at ATTP?

Yesterday, I made a couple of comments at the blog, And Then There's Physics on this post. I made two comments very close together and then left to go do something else. When I went to check for responses later, I found this comment in between the ones I had made:

It has my name, avatar and links to my Gravatar profile just like my comments do. It appears to be some kind of moderator message. I only remember making two comments, but I suppose I could have forgotten about one and Willard could be a moderator who deleted it's contents, but I'm pretty sure I only made two comments.

Well, anyway, I went to one of WordPress's contact pages and sent off the following message with "Comment Spoofing" in the "WHAT'S THIS ABOUT?" field:

I found this comment that I did not make:

https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2017/06/09/lukewarmers-resurgent/#comment-97705

It has my name and avatar. It also links to my Gravatar profile just like my comments do.

The comment reads as follows (between the quote marks): "[Peddling. – Willard]"

It appears to show some kind of moderation message from a moderator.

Is this something that it is possible for another commenter to do or has my account been compromised?  Also I believe one of the moderators at this blog (https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/) works for WordPress. She is the proprietor of this blog:

https://rachel.blog/

I'll see what happens.

[Update: I now think I did post a comment that was clipped. See my next post.]