Monday, 4/12

 Geez. I hope I'm not being hacked by the Russians!

Over the past week or so I've noticed an uptick in readers of these ramblings. In fact, on a few days last week, I got almost twice as many readers as usual, which was a bit strange, because I wrote about things like hams and the first warm day of the year and seagulls becoming my co-workers, which aren't exactly click bait in the larger world.

Curious, I checked out the statistics portion of the site on which I post these and noticed something strange. Those extra readers from last week, the ones that almost doubled the number of people checking this out?

Almost to a person, they came from Russia.

In fact, one day last week I had more people from Russia check out this blog than from the U.S. and France combined, and those two countries usually make up 99.5% of the readers. I have no idea how (or why) so many hits were from Russia. I have no idea if they were Russian bots or Russian spiders. I have no idea if Vladimir Putin was bored one night. I have no idea if a Russian English-language class picked this blog to read (although if they did it was probably to see how NOT to write).

I just don't know.

Part of me wonders if Russia 's just practicing and refining techniques they might use in an attempt to meddle once again in the 2022 elections. Although, if that were the case, I have no idea what they would gain by reading my insights the Marquette Board of Light & Power lighting up a Christmas tree before tearing down a power plant. Maybe they have some kind of bot that goes through blogs and try to find content that they can leave trolling comments on. But, if THAT were the case, they'd find that with very few exceptions I try to stay away from politics and therefore they'd have very few instances in which they could leave fake comments.

I just don't know.

I will be curious to see if this continues, or if this was a one-shot thing. I'd be curious to know if this was indeed part of ramp-up to try & influence the election, or if was just part of a survey of the internet. And I'd also be curious to see if this WAS a language class learn how not to write, because if that were the case, I can point you to a lot of garbled syntax that lies within these walls.

Trust me on that.

I'll keep you updated as I find out more!

Das vidaniya,

(jim@wmqt.com)