The starlings have definitely got into the loft to nest - their clattering chirping and rustling woke me at 6:30 am and kept me awake for a couple of hours before I got off to sleep to tumble out of bed at 10:30 unrested. The pleasureable side of the day came when I wrote about and promoted the most recent Milton Contact Ltd book 'Alfie Bear goes to work' by self-styled 'Crazy Grandma' Brenda-Gillian in collaboration with her grandson, the eponymous Alfie Bear. Check out my Miltoncontact blog article here: http://www.miltoncontact-blog.com/2017/05/alfie-bear-goes-to-work.html.
Came across an interesting article dealing with both Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump to President, online in yesterday's Guardian. Eye-catchingly titled 'The Great British Brexit Robbery: How our democracy was hijacked' by Carole Cadwalladr, it implicates influential and affluent owners of companies specialising in big data in the deliberate gathering of selective data on potential voters and then targeting them prior to the elections in both the US and the referendum in the UK. This was done with messages and 'news', on the basis that a swing of a mere 1% in favour of their alt-right views could tip the balance in their favour. You can read the article here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy.
A similar message was presented in today's 'Panorama' on BBC1, with Facebook being involved on both sides of the US presidential campaign. Again, it was the use of big data collected from Facebook users that was apparently used to generate targeted campaign messages.
This on the same day that Facebook published their guide to identifying fake news posts. Oh, the irony.
One has to applaud the French government which blocked media from using the leaked and allegedly spiked Macron emails dumped on the web just before the actual vote in the presidential election.
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