This was funnier before it was true.

Depressing on two levels, actually. The near-reality of its topic, and the simulation of the one-sided non-argument argument that typically happens in our national media.

Yay! Works so well, apparently, that I sifted 97 good entries out of about 1400 last night, which the program tells me is good for updates until June 27.

The last bit was whether the automated updating was working, and since this morning has given us Ruth “The Master” Bader-Ginsburg, I suppose so.

All background stuff, but the end target is to make it easier for me to edit entries. I started working on that, and ran into the incorrectly escaped quotes problem which needed some programming, and then noticed the database is clogged with hundreds (maybe thousands) of spam entries which just made me sleepy to think about.

Duplicated database to a temp db for working: check.
Modified database, program, updater to use a more rational schema than the crap I had originally: check.
Fixed the entry form escaping quotes: check.
Cleaned up existing escaped quotes: check (see also: check).
Removed about 1500 spam entries by searching for obvious spamness: check.
Installed anti-spam filter: check, and surprisingly effective already. This is the kind of thing that’s clogging up the database; since last night I’ve gotten these. My code adds “:SPAM:” in the entry so I can see it worked, and if that test goes well, I’ll just have them quietly deleted.
Modified daily updater: check, but haven’t tested it yet.

To do: my admin interface.