In recent news, Macron has been rather critical of the self-evident ideological bias of Western media and now they are attacking him for it. I simply love how they put "bias" in quotation marks, as if it is such a ridiculous claim that nobody can take it seriously. Except, you know, most people.
And I really like the fact that he said that they were not heirs to the Enlightenment because it is true and important to remember. Enlightenment values are increasingly lost in this age. The naked devotion to one political ideology at all times and at all costs is as antithetical to the supremacy of reason as any religion ever could be. The fact that they and the party at large wants to suppress knowledge and stifle discourse, rather than expand them, is even more telling.
I don't think the argument has anything to do with party political allegiance. France has, since their Revolution, had a more aggressively secular view of society than any other Western country and that means that some actions that seem reasonable to them, do not seem reasonable to foreign commentators. The fact that Macron is facing an electoral challenge by a right-wing party also of course gives him a political incentive to parade his credentials for defending the French way of life - and bashing foreign media is an easy way to get news coverage, particularly given the recent strained relations between France and the US.
Personally, I think religious influence on the state tends to cause more harm than good, so I have a lot of sympathy with the general French attitude. I think it is reasonable for instance that religious symbols are not allowed in schools or to be worn by public servants while doing their jobs. I also think it is reasonable to expect people to show their faces when visiting government offices (rather than wearing a burka for instance). However, even I think the French sometimes go out of their way to cause trouble - for instance with the laws prohibiting any form of Islamic attire on public beaches. While it was certainly reasonable for Macron to re-emphasize the French commitment to secularism, following the beheading of the teacher, I do think that he deliberately framed those remarks in a way that would cause offence to Muslims (for party political purposes) and I don't think it's unreasonable of newspapers to pick him up on that.
It's hard to take Q-anon bashing seriously. This is an online cult of powerless individuals with social media accounts. Because they have a false take on the world everyone wants to condemn them and shut them down. The majority of the public think the highest, most "credible" news organizations in the country have false takes on the world as well. Between the most powerful distributors of information in the land whose narratives are heard by every person and a subculture of the conspiracy internet that nobody but the extremely online or informed knows about, and all ire goes towards the latter. Tiresome and an outright refusal to reckon with the credibility crisis in news media that breeds and ferments conspiracy theories by design.
It's serious because it's so widespread. Misinformation that even a year ago was mainly confined to specialist message boards is now circulating freely on mainstream social media. That makes a difference. Decades of research has shown conclusively that advertising works even on most of those convinced it has no effect on them. I see no reason to think that the same does not hold true for this sort of propaganda. In fact I've heard a couple of investigative programs covering anecdotal evidence like that mentioned by @jjstraka34 showing that it does hold true - and can infect people with a wide range of political views.
Infect is a good word choice. Because I'd add that the same sources of disinformation are spreading lies about the coronavirus as well. And that has a serious toll. And it's a kind of disinformation that does not at all exist within the "mainstream" press that's being demonized.
It's serious because it's so widespread. Misinformation that even a year ago was mainly confined to specialist message boards is now circulating freely on mainstream social media. That makes a difference.
Why does it make a difference? What tangible harm is there in people sharing what they sincerely believe, wrong or not, on social media? Is this tangible harm on a large enough scale to justify not allowing the whole of the population to share what they believe for fear it might be conspiratorial? Highly doubtful. Seems like another reason to engage in politically motivated mass censorship to me.
Democrats should do what I did when their own pet conspiracy was in vogue, call it what it is and explain why it is wrong. This would probably be an easier task if they hadn't shredded the credibility of mainstream media in the first place, because then it could be a bulwark against baseless conspiracy instead of aiding it. Trying to simply shut people up doesn't convince them they are wrong. Quite the opposite. It convinces them they are right.
Decades of research has shown conclusively that advertising works even on most of those convinced it has no effect on them. I see no reason to think that the same does not hold true for this sort of propaganda.
Assuming that this is true, and people are easily susceptible to propaganda, what is your proposal? If people can't be trusted to make their own decisions about political claims because they are too easily fooled, what is the solution? No political discussion outside of "approved" mainstream media discourse? I'm not being facetious, i'm sincerely asking.
This doesn't look like a stable republic to me. It is things like this that make me sincerely believe secession will be on the table sooner or later if people can't come to an understanding.
I don't know what you think is "happening" to Qanon followers that is some sort of great injustice. Is the idea that people who believe in stuff that is more fantastical than your average fantasy novel can't be mocked?? Facebook is most CERTAINLY not doing a damn thing about it whatsoever. The darker places of the web where it filters out from aren't overseen to any extent at all. So I don't really know what kind of "censorship" you're talking about.
As for what tangible harm it is doing, I've already gone over my position on that, but I'll just requote what I've seen many people say in the last year, which is "Facebook and FOX News have done to our parents what our parents thought video games were going to do to us."
You talk about the media as if there isn't an entire apparatus of coordinated right-wing media that is as ingrained as the "mainstream" press you like to rail about. No one gives a shit about the Washington Post and New York Times in rural America, it isn't even on their radar. The "news" is whatever Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity say it is at 11am and 2pm. It's been this way since at least 1992. And we just sit around pretending like the nearly COMPLETE domination of the radio airwaves of the country isn't important or part of "mass media", but newspapers almost no one actually reads are.
And it isn't really even all about them self-selecting their media diet (it becomes that way, but it wasn't in the beginning). If you spend most of the day in a truck or a tractor, you have these options for what you listen to for eight hours:
1.) Classic Rock
2.) Country
3.) Sports Talk
4.) Right-wing talk radio
That's it, unless you want to turn the dial all the way to the left and get NPR on FM 89.6 and see if you can get a signal (which you most likely can't). Most of these people are literally never exposed to anything other than conservative propaganda masquerading as fact-based journalism. By the time they reach a point where they could actually MAKE a choice about what media to consume, their minds have already been completely warped.
I know I've repeated this point over and over again, but I just can't fathom how this doesn't get included as part of the conversation. I KNOW what I'm talking about in this regard because I lived it and watched it for 20 years. Conservative propaganda has a complete, nearly 100% monopoly on one of the four main dispensing outlets of news, which is the radio (the others being TV, newspaper, and the internet). Local news broadcasts nation-wide lean heavily conservative (see Sinclair Broadcasting). The internet is a wash. Cable is a wash at BEST (FOX is still the dominant ratings channel). That leaves.......newspapers. The one place people attempt to do actual fact-base reporting. Only about 20% of the country EVER reads one. So how is the "mainstream media", in any way, actually liberal??
People still believe that the Bush Administration did 9/11 as an inside job, and it's was just as absurd then as it is now (didn't help that Jesse Ventura got on the bandwagon with his TV show). And my position has always been that you don't need a conspiracy to make sense of what can easily be explained by incompetence. Plenty of people saw plenty of warning signs about 9/11 coming that were ignored. There are multiple avenues to go down if you want to criticize W.'s Administration for what happened that are both legitimate and true. But many people decided to go with "they planted explosives for controlled demolitions in multiple locations, created CGI airplanes that apparently everyone could see simultaneously in real-time, and pulled off an operation that would have required THOUSANDS of people to never say a word about it in 20 years".
And a key distinction here is that Democrats never elected a 9/11 Truther to Congress, or gave them any credibility whatsoever. The Republicans have, to this point, already elected two full-blown Qanon believers, and are basically openly embracing the entire thing. If you don't believe me, just listen to the vast majority of Republican lawmakers talking about this election. The mainstream Republican position on mask mandates, social distancing, and the seriousness of the virus is DIRECTLY connected to this movement.
I don't know what you think is "happening" to Qanon followers that is some sort of great injustice.
I didn't say anything is happening at all. I am asking what should happen to them, because it will set a precedent for how we treat unpopular political beliefs down the line. I don't care who or what gets mocked, but I would start to care if we start denying people who believe in what is deemed by higher powers as conspiracy theory the right to speak. I find the anti Q anon memes funny, in fact. The idea that Jeff Sessions was engaging in a secret legal war against the Clintons and the Deep State reads like bad fanfiction and is hilarious. But besides the mere principle of the matter, there are a hundred different ways that standard could be used to suppress legitimate and important facts.
I don't know what you think is "happening" to Qanon followers that is some sort of great injustice.
I didn't say anything is happening at all. I am asking what should happen to them, because it will set a precedent for how we treat unpopular political beliefs down the line. I don't care who or what gets mocked, but I would start to care if we start denying people who believe in what is deemed by higher powers as conspiracy theory the right to speak. I find the anti Q anon memes funny, in fact. The idea that Jeff Sessions was engaging in a secret legal war against the Clintons and the Deep State reads like bad fanfiction and is hilarious. But besides the mere principle of the matter, there are a hundred different ways that standard could be used to suppress legitimate and important facts.
I don't think anything should happen to them either. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have to be addressed or there isn't a reckoning coming in regards to it. In the end, they can vote and exercise their right like every other person (well, like most other people, some are suggesting if you live in a city in a swing state your vote should just be thrown out by default). But that doesn't mean their worldview must be given serious consideration among reasonable people. And it's LONG past the point of "outreach" for many of them. The only thing that would work at this point would be an intervention of the same sort you would give an alcoholic. And you'd meet with the exact same anger and resistance from the target.
I don't know what you think is "happening" to Qanon followers that is some sort of great injustice.
I didn't say anything is happening at all. I am asking what should happen to them, because it will set a precedent for how we treat unpopular political beliefs down the line. I don't care who or what gets mocked, but I would start to care if we start denying people who believe in what is deemed by higher powers as conspiracy theory the right to speak. I find the anti Q anon memes funny, in fact. The idea that Jeff Sessions was engaging in a secret legal war against the Clintons and the Deep State reads like bad fanfiction and is hilarious. But besides the mere principle of the matter, there are a hundred different ways that standard could be used to suppress legitimate and important facts.
I believe the "happening" was quoted because there's like a great awakening/happening or some BS that Q-anoners believe in.
Unpopular political beliefs.. What do you mean unpopular political beliefs, that's not so simple a thing to mention and move on from.
These are lies and propaganda these guys are believing. You and I might laugh off, and rightly so, the idea that Jeff Sessions was engaging in a secret legal war or there's a pedophile pizza ring in a basement of a building without a basement or whatever, but there are many people who see this and believe it and act accordingly.
There are people dying from Covid-19 who, due to their unpopular political beliefs, don't believe it is real. They spend their last minutes dying raging about the virus not being real instead of saying goodbye to their loved ones.
There has to be a line right between political belief and reality. There just has to be.
People get invested in fantasy with highly destructive results for society and the world. When people believe these fantasies they can act out on them violently or to their own self destruction. I'm sure the people that flew the planes into the towers on 9/11 had unpopular political beliefs too you know?
Freeze peach is great and all but what about reality? Beyond even that what about science and things that can be proven?
Free speech and propaganda have overwhelmed people's sense of reality.
It's serious because it's so widespread. Misinformation that even a year ago was mainly confined to specialist message boards is now circulating freely on mainstream social media. That makes a difference.
Why does it make a difference? What tangible harm is there in people sharing what they sincerely believe, wrong or not, on social media? Is this tangible harm on a large enough scale to justify not allowing the whole of the population to share what they believe for fear it might be conspiratorial? Highly doubtful. Seems like another reason to engage in politically motivated mass censorship to me.
Democrats should do what I did when their own pet conspiracy was in vogue, call it what it is and explain why it is wrong. This would probably be an easier task if they hadn't shredded the credibility of mainstream media in the first place, because then it could be a bulwark against baseless conspiracy instead of aiding it. Trying to simply shut people up doesn't convince them they are wrong. Quite the opposite. It convinces them they are right.
It seems a concern now, but I accept it's quite possible (maybe even likely) that's just due to the relative novelty of social media. As people grow more accustomed to that perhaps it will be integrated into activities in a more balanced way (as has happened with TV, video games etc in the past).
Decades of research has shown conclusively that advertising works even on most of those convinced it has no effect on them. I see no reason to think that the same does not hold true for this sort of propaganda.
Assuming that this is true, and people are easily susceptible to propaganda, what is your proposal? If people can't be trusted to make their own decisions about political claims because they are too easily fooled, what is the solution? No political discussion outside of "approved" mainstream media discourse? I'm not being facetious, i'm sincerely asking.
I don't have any solutions. I am concerned though about the extent to which many people are now getting all their news from self-reinforcing sources, which does suggest to me there is a real possibility that more people now end up believing conspiracy theories than in the past, even though people as individuals will be no more susceptible to such claims. A few things that might be tried to reduce the impact of that self-reinforcement could include those below, but I realize they all have significant limitations and drawbacks:
- more use of moderation (though of course "who moderates the moderators").
- more use of warning labels and pointers to alternative viewpoints.
- using algorithms that downgrade sensationalist stories rather than promoting them.
- restrict the ability to monetize conspiracist sites.
I don't know what you think is "happening" to Qanon followers that is some sort of great injustice.
I didn't say anything is happening at all. I am asking what should happen to them, because it will set a precedent for how we treat unpopular political beliefs down the line. I don't care who or what gets mocked, but I would start to care if we start denying people who believe in what is deemed by higher powers as conspiracy theory the right to speak. I find the anti Q anon memes funny, in fact. The idea that Jeff Sessions was engaging in a secret legal war against the Clintons and the Deep State reads like bad fanfiction and is hilarious. But besides the mere principle of the matter, there are a hundred different ways that standard could be used to suppress legitimate and important facts.
Freeze peach is great and all but what about reality?
What is this "Freeze Peach" you're speaking of. Sounds like the code-name of some clandestine anti-Trump operation. I'm going to have to check this out on 8-kun when I get home from work... ?
I don't have any solutions. I am concerned though about the extent to which many people are now getting all their news from self-reinforcing sources, which does suggest to me there is a real possibility that more people now end up believing conspiracy theories than in the past, even though people as individuals will be no more susceptible to such claims.
This is very well said. And again, I think the important thing to note is that it is very distinct from some of the errors people might pick up from the mainstream press. And one doesn't have to have a solution in hand to highlight the extreme and dangerous amount of disinformation pouring out of social media. A problem not merely confined to the US, it's worth saying.
I'd add as a remedy, merely the suggestion that people not get their news mainly from social media. Social media companies do not have a monopoly on news distribution. And my experience is that people who rely on it as a primary means of news consumption are doing themselves a disservice. Moreover, I admit that following the news on social media can be captivating, it's also not making people happier. So it's failing to serve people in multiple ways.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is phoning governors and secretary of state in AZ and Georgia and other states begging them to toss out legal ballots.
The two Republicans on the Wayne County (MI) board of elections are refusing to certify the results of the vote in their county because they don't accept the numbers coming out of "Detroit". This won't matter, because if they don't it will be up to the State board, and they will certify. But when I've said all these years that Republicans don't believe black people should vote, it wasn't hyperbole, and it wasn't assigning malicious motives to them they didn't have. When they say "Detroit" they mean "I don't think we should accept the votes of these black people". It isn't up for debate. And nothing REMOTELY analogous exists on the other side. I'm done arguing about this. The dog whistles are now air raid sirens. They would likely agree to accept 3/5th of the vote from Detroit:
They're telling you loud and clear who they are and that they don't believe in ANY of this (this being the United States and our democratic elections). Believe them.
The fact that the entire party is lining up behind the idea that the results literally shouldn't matter is also shouting it as loudly as possible. I don't know how they could possibly sink any lower at this point. What depths are even left??
The fact that the entire party is lining up behind the idea that the results literally shouldn't matter is also shouting it as loudly as possible. I don't know how they could possibly sink any lower at this point. What depths are even left??
Looking at Michigan, the delay on certifying Detroit's votes seems shameful.
The articles show that the evidence is a discrepancy of 1-4 votes cast in 94 precincts in Wayne county. Just at issue are the votes from the late-counted mail-ins. By my calculations it's a maximum of 372 votes or an average of 234. I might be wrong, but doesn't seem like that's going to turn the tide. And it's fewer discrepancies than their August primaries (363 precincts with discrepancies). And that was certified on time.
If people would like a concrete answer as to WHY African-Americans vote, at a minimum, at an 85% clip for Democrats, this is why. This is so much more fundamental than any economic policy or tax proposal. It's about their right to even participate in the process at all.
In fact, this entire election was about more than that. One party still believes in the will of the people (is there a single Democrat contesting a House or Senate seat ANYWHERE??). The other has utterly abandoned even pretending to do so. They want to throw out the results because this man-child lost. It's the most pathetic display we've seen in American politics since George Wallace tried to stop integration. But then again, they are basically fighting the same battle half a century later.
Imagine what kind of moral weakling you have to be to sell every ounce of your integrity for someone like Donald Trump, who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.
Massive public outcry forced their hand. They had another vote after public comment and certified. But just check out HOW disingenuous their argument was about Detroit:.
I keep a particular eye on the UK and US in relation to coronavirus stats. Up to date they have a pretty similar performance overall, but the UK has been considerably more up and down. The spring outbreak in the UK was much more intense than the US resulting in far higher death tolls, but the lockdown at the end of March had a dramatic effect in bringing that down - right into daily single figures at one point. That meant that the US, which never actually got rid of the first wave, saw deaths per capita gradually catch up with the UK and pull well ahead.
The second wave in the UK could be seen building in the stats for a long time, with exponential rises in cases from the beginning of September. As the base was so low to start with, the government had plenty of time to react and they did introduce a number of initiatives over time, but none of those had the desired impact. Eventually the government was forced into more drastic action with the prospect of the health service being overwhelmed and we're now in another national lockdown as a result - albeit one less strict than in March. The sharp growth in numbers up to the end of October meant that a few days ago per capita deaths in the UK once more overtook the US. This time though it's not going to take months for the US to catch up again and I thought it might be interesting to explain why.
For large numbers of cases there is a close correlation between case numbers and deaths. The exact relationship varies between countries and over time (for instance as a result of better treatments), but the level of correlation is consistently high (at least where there's a decent level of testing - which wasn't the case earlier this year). To illustrate that, here are daily case numbers and deaths in the US - including the 7 day average.
If I had good graphical tools and knowledge I could superimpose those graphs over each other to give a really good illustration of the correlation. Lacking that, here's a rough hack that I think still makes the point of how close the relationship is.
Of course though there's a time-lag between cases and deaths of about 3-4 weeks. The graph showing deaths correlates with cases up to 24th October - when the average for cases was 68k. The average as of yesterday was 160k, so daily deaths should be expected to be more than double the current level in a few weeks time - even if one of Trump's 'miracles' occurred and there were no new cases from now on.
As I've said before there is no good solution to coronavirus. It's certainly possible to argue the case that the US would be worse off overall by attempting to suppress the virus, but (at a national level anyway) there does not seem to be any coherent debate on the merits of particular actions. Among other things, I think that means there is a real possibility that parts of the US will get into the same situation as parts of Italy earlier in the year - when cases overwhelmed the available healthcare provision, making outcomes for both Covid and non-Covid patients much worse.
This was going to be a major problem if we were at 100,000 cases per day. We are now at 160,000 a day. Within a week, you are going to have 2000 dead a day. I don't even know if it maxes out at 2500, because, again the major public health proclamations basically amount of letting bars only be open til 10pm and slightly nudging people to maybe reconsider wearing a mask. There is no second wave in the US. The response has been so bad that the concept of "waves" has been made meaningless. It's just been one long steady death march.
It's fairly clear to me that the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in SD in August is the catalyst for the wildfire-like spread though the rural Midwest. An event which, by it's nature, draws in people to close quarters from out of town to drink in bars, with no masks, in the 10s if not 100s of thousands for an entire weekend. Who then all went home to their various states. 75 days later......here we are:
The UK has a particular interest in taking forward the Green agenda as it is hosting the next COP summit (UN meeting to discuss progress on climate change). Other issues, such as Brexit and Covid-19 have pushed this down the priority list somewhat, but there was a significant announcement yesterday. The BBC have picked up on the acceleration of the move to electric vehicles, but that's only a relatively small part of the proposals - which include use of 'clean' hydrogen (produced using renewable energy), an extension of nuclear with the aim of developing a network of far smaller local plants than the large-scale ones seen hitherto and building on the existing developments in offshore wind to produce enough electricity from this source to power all homes in the UK.
One aspect that I had a particular interest in was the target to install 600,000 heat pumps a year in homes and public buildings by 2028. I've been working on a project for 3 years now to provide heating for a rural village (without access to natural gas) using a mixture of ground and air source heat pumps to feed a heat network. The low density housing means installing the heat network of pipes to carry the heat is much more expensive than putting a network into a new housing development. Thus there needs to be some government funding to make it a commercial proposition. There are various government funding streams currently existing in this area, but none really targeted at our particular situation. We think there should be given that there are around a million homes in the UK in this position and the use of heat networks provides a better value alternative to installing individual air source heat pumps for each house.
We actually had a meeting with the relevant government minister yesterday about how he could tweak funding streams to help our project. That's easily the most advanced of its type in the UK, so cracking on and getting that built would allow it to act as a pathfinder project for the many hundreds of similar villages around the country. The minister was making the right sort of noises and, in the light of the subsequent government announcement, I'm pretty hopeful that we're asking the right questions at the right time .
The evidence just keeps piling up. The Trump campaign is going to ask for a recount of Wisconsin. But not the whole state. Oh no, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to imagine the voters in Oshkosh or Grantsburg committing fraud. They are asking for recounts in ONLY (surprise!!!) Milwaukee and Madison. I don't think people quite appreciate just how nakedly Jim Crow racist this whole thing has gotten. They are one step from asking all black voters to return to the polling place to guess how many jelly beans are in a jar. The Republican Party, by their actions, is basically signaling what they would PREFER in this country is apartheid.
This won't succeed today, but those voter fraud story will be what the GOP will use to rally their base and justify further deviations from democratic norms.
The danger of these stories is quite substantial - if you look at how Democracies the proponents almost always tell a story of the country being betrayed by the other side specifically including the rank-and-file supporters.
This won't succeed today, but those voter fraud story will be what the GOP will use to rally their base and justify further deviations from democratic norms.
The danger of these stories is quite substantial - if you look at how Democracies the proponents almost always tell a story of the country being betrayed by the other side specifically including the rank-and-file supporters.
Yep, it continues to reinforce an idea that's become ubiquitous among US conservatives. Only Republican election victories and only Republican governance is legitimate.
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I don't think the argument has anything to do with party political allegiance. France has, since their Revolution, had a more aggressively secular view of society than any other Western country and that means that some actions that seem reasonable to them, do not seem reasonable to foreign commentators. The fact that Macron is facing an electoral challenge by a right-wing party also of course gives him a political incentive to parade his credentials for defending the French way of life - and bashing foreign media is an easy way to get news coverage, particularly given the recent strained relations between France and the US.
Personally, I think religious influence on the state tends to cause more harm than good, so I have a lot of sympathy with the general French attitude. I think it is reasonable for instance that religious symbols are not allowed in schools or to be worn by public servants while doing their jobs. I also think it is reasonable to expect people to show their faces when visiting government offices (rather than wearing a burka for instance). However, even I think the French sometimes go out of their way to cause trouble - for instance with the laws prohibiting any form of Islamic attire on public beaches. While it was certainly reasonable for Macron to re-emphasize the French commitment to secularism, following the beheading of the teacher, I do think that he deliberately framed those remarks in a way that would cause offence to Muslims (for party political purposes) and I don't think it's unreasonable of newspapers to pick him up on that.
I laughed until I cried when I first saw this clip.
Infect is a good word choice. Because I'd add that the same sources of disinformation are spreading lies about the coronavirus as well. And that has a serious toll. And it's a kind of disinformation that does not at all exist within the "mainstream" press that's being demonized.
Why does it make a difference? What tangible harm is there in people sharing what they sincerely believe, wrong or not, on social media? Is this tangible harm on a large enough scale to justify not allowing the whole of the population to share what they believe for fear it might be conspiratorial? Highly doubtful. Seems like another reason to engage in politically motivated mass censorship to me.
Democrats should do what I did when their own pet conspiracy was in vogue, call it what it is and explain why it is wrong. This would probably be an easier task if they hadn't shredded the credibility of mainstream media in the first place, because then it could be a bulwark against baseless conspiracy instead of aiding it. Trying to simply shut people up doesn't convince them they are wrong. Quite the opposite. It convinces them they are right.
Assuming that this is true, and people are easily susceptible to propaganda, what is your proposal? If people can't be trusted to make their own decisions about political claims because they are too easily fooled, what is the solution? No political discussion outside of "approved" mainstream media discourse? I'm not being facetious, i'm sincerely asking.
As for what tangible harm it is doing, I've already gone over my position on that, but I'll just requote what I've seen many people say in the last year, which is "Facebook and FOX News have done to our parents what our parents thought video games were going to do to us."
You talk about the media as if there isn't an entire apparatus of coordinated right-wing media that is as ingrained as the "mainstream" press you like to rail about. No one gives a shit about the Washington Post and New York Times in rural America, it isn't even on their radar. The "news" is whatever Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity say it is at 11am and 2pm. It's been this way since at least 1992. And we just sit around pretending like the nearly COMPLETE domination of the radio airwaves of the country isn't important or part of "mass media", but newspapers almost no one actually reads are.
And it isn't really even all about them self-selecting their media diet (it becomes that way, but it wasn't in the beginning). If you spend most of the day in a truck or a tractor, you have these options for what you listen to for eight hours:
1.) Classic Rock
2.) Country
3.) Sports Talk
4.) Right-wing talk radio
That's it, unless you want to turn the dial all the way to the left and get NPR on FM 89.6 and see if you can get a signal (which you most likely can't). Most of these people are literally never exposed to anything other than conservative propaganda masquerading as fact-based journalism. By the time they reach a point where they could actually MAKE a choice about what media to consume, their minds have already been completely warped.
I know I've repeated this point over and over again, but I just can't fathom how this doesn't get included as part of the conversation. I KNOW what I'm talking about in this regard because I lived it and watched it for 20 years. Conservative propaganda has a complete, nearly 100% monopoly on one of the four main dispensing outlets of news, which is the radio (the others being TV, newspaper, and the internet). Local news broadcasts nation-wide lean heavily conservative (see Sinclair Broadcasting). The internet is a wash. Cable is a wash at BEST (FOX is still the dominant ratings channel). That leaves.......newspapers. The one place people attempt to do actual fact-base reporting. Only about 20% of the country EVER reads one. So how is the "mainstream media", in any way, actually liberal??
https://www.google.com/amp/s/elemental.medium.com/amp/p/69ca2abd893a
People still believe that the Bush Administration did 9/11 as an inside job, and it's was just as absurd then as it is now (didn't help that Jesse Ventura got on the bandwagon with his TV show). And my position has always been that you don't need a conspiracy to make sense of what can easily be explained by incompetence. Plenty of people saw plenty of warning signs about 9/11 coming that were ignored. There are multiple avenues to go down if you want to criticize W.'s Administration for what happened that are both legitimate and true. But many people decided to go with "they planted explosives for controlled demolitions in multiple locations, created CGI airplanes that apparently everyone could see simultaneously in real-time, and pulled off an operation that would have required THOUSANDS of people to never say a word about it in 20 years".
And a key distinction here is that Democrats never elected a 9/11 Truther to Congress, or gave them any credibility whatsoever. The Republicans have, to this point, already elected two full-blown Qanon believers, and are basically openly embracing the entire thing. If you don't believe me, just listen to the vast majority of Republican lawmakers talking about this election. The mainstream Republican position on mask mandates, social distancing, and the seriousness of the virus is DIRECTLY connected to this movement.
I didn't say anything is happening at all. I am asking what should happen to them, because it will set a precedent for how we treat unpopular political beliefs down the line. I don't care who or what gets mocked, but I would start to care if we start denying people who believe in what is deemed by higher powers as conspiracy theory the right to speak. I find the anti Q anon memes funny, in fact. The idea that Jeff Sessions was engaging in a secret legal war against the Clintons and the Deep State reads like bad fanfiction and is hilarious. But besides the mere principle of the matter, there are a hundred different ways that standard could be used to suppress legitimate and important facts.
I don't think anything should happen to them either. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have to be addressed or there isn't a reckoning coming in regards to it. In the end, they can vote and exercise their right like every other person (well, like most other people, some are suggesting if you live in a city in a swing state your vote should just be thrown out by default). But that doesn't mean their worldview must be given serious consideration among reasonable people. And it's LONG past the point of "outreach" for many of them. The only thing that would work at this point would be an intervention of the same sort you would give an alcoholic. And you'd meet with the exact same anger and resistance from the target.
Even though most conspiracy theories are absurd, some conspiracies did actually happen. For example, the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
I believe the "happening" was quoted because there's like a great awakening/happening or some BS that Q-anoners believe in.
Unpopular political beliefs.. What do you mean unpopular political beliefs, that's not so simple a thing to mention and move on from.
These are lies and propaganda these guys are believing. You and I might laugh off, and rightly so, the idea that Jeff Sessions was engaging in a secret legal war or there's a pedophile pizza ring in a basement of a building without a basement or whatever, but there are many people who see this and believe it and act accordingly.
There are people dying from Covid-19 who, due to their unpopular political beliefs, don't believe it is real. They spend their last minutes dying raging about the virus not being real instead of saying goodbye to their loved ones.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8955047/South-Dakota-nurse-says-COVID-19-patients-insist-virus-isnt-real-theyre-dying-it.html
There has to be a line right between political belief and reality. There just has to be.
People get invested in fantasy with highly destructive results for society and the world. When people believe these fantasies they can act out on them violently or to their own self destruction. I'm sure the people that flew the planes into the towers on 9/11 had unpopular political beliefs too you know?
Freeze peach is great and all but what about reality? Beyond even that what about science and things that can be proven?
Free speech and propaganda have overwhelmed people's sense of reality.
I don't have any solutions. I am concerned though about the extent to which many people are now getting all their news from self-reinforcing sources, which does suggest to me there is a real possibility that more people now end up believing conspiracy theories than in the past, even though people as individuals will be no more susceptible to such claims. A few things that might be tried to reduce the impact of that self-reinforcement could include those below, but I realize they all have significant limitations and drawbacks:
- more use of moderation (though of course "who moderates the moderators").
- more use of warning labels and pointers to alternative viewpoints.
- using algorithms that downgrade sensationalist stories rather than promoting them.
- restrict the ability to monetize conspiracist sites.
What is this "Freeze Peach" you're speaking of. Sounds like the code-name of some clandestine anti-Trump operation. I'm going to have to check this out on 8-kun when I get home from work... ?
Except one is a real threat and one is a made up one on the internet.
I can always tell which way a person leans politically when they address the line above.
This is very well said. And again, I think the important thing to note is that it is very distinct from some of the errors people might pick up from the mainstream press. And one doesn't have to have a solution in hand to highlight the extreme and dangerous amount of disinformation pouring out of social media. A problem not merely confined to the US, it's worth saying.
I'd add as a remedy, merely the suggestion that people not get their news mainly from social media. Social media companies do not have a monopoly on news distribution. And my experience is that people who rely on it as a primary means of news consumption are doing themselves a disservice. Moreover, I admit that following the news on social media can be captivating, it's also not making people happier. So it's failing to serve people in multiple ways.
Can we call it a coup attempt yet?
They're telling you loud and clear who they are and that they don't believe in ANY of this (this being the United States and our democratic elections). Believe them.
The fact that the entire party is lining up behind the idea that the results literally shouldn't matter is also shouting it as loudly as possible. I don't know how they could possibly sink any lower at this point. What depths are even left??
Looking at Michigan, the delay on certifying Detroit's votes seems shameful.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020/11/17/wayne-county-election-certification/6309668002/
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/11/17/wayne-county-canvassers-deadlock-certifying-november-3-election-results/6324274002/
The articles show that the evidence is a discrepancy of 1-4 votes cast in 94 precincts in Wayne county. Just at issue are the votes from the late-counted mail-ins. By my calculations it's a maximum of 372 votes or an average of 234. I might be wrong, but doesn't seem like that's going to turn the tide. And it's fewer discrepancies than their August primaries (363 precincts with discrepancies). And that was certified on time.
In fact, this entire election was about more than that. One party still believes in the will of the people (is there a single Democrat contesting a House or Senate seat ANYWHERE??). The other has utterly abandoned even pretending to do so. They want to throw out the results because this man-child lost. It's the most pathetic display we've seen in American politics since George Wallace tried to stop integration. But then again, they are basically fighting the same battle half a century later.
Imagine what kind of moral weakling you have to be to sell every ounce of your integrity for someone like Donald Trump, who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.
The second wave in the UK could be seen building in the stats for a long time, with exponential rises in cases from the beginning of September. As the base was so low to start with, the government had plenty of time to react and they did introduce a number of initiatives over time, but none of those had the desired impact. Eventually the government was forced into more drastic action with the prospect of the health service being overwhelmed and we're now in another national lockdown as a result - albeit one less strict than in March. The sharp growth in numbers up to the end of October meant that a few days ago per capita deaths in the UK once more overtook the US. This time though it's not going to take months for the US to catch up again and I thought it might be interesting to explain why.
For large numbers of cases there is a close correlation between case numbers and deaths. The exact relationship varies between countries and over time (for instance as a result of better treatments), but the level of correlation is consistently high (at least where there's a decent level of testing - which wasn't the case earlier this year). To illustrate that, here are daily case numbers and deaths in the US - including the 7 day average.
If I had good graphical tools and knowledge I could superimpose those graphs over each other to give a really good illustration of the correlation. Lacking that, here's a rough hack that I think still makes the point of how close the relationship is.
Of course though there's a time-lag between cases and deaths of about 3-4 weeks. The graph showing deaths correlates with cases up to 24th October - when the average for cases was 68k. The average as of yesterday was 160k, so daily deaths should be expected to be more than double the current level in a few weeks time - even if one of Trump's 'miracles' occurred and there were no new cases from now on.
As I've said before there is no good solution to coronavirus. It's certainly possible to argue the case that the US would be worse off overall by attempting to suppress the virus, but (at a national level anyway) there does not seem to be any coherent debate on the merits of particular actions. Among other things, I think that means there is a real possibility that parts of the US will get into the same situation as parts of Italy earlier in the year - when cases overwhelmed the available healthcare provision, making outcomes for both Covid and non-Covid patients much worse.
It's fairly clear to me that the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in SD in August is the catalyst for the wildfire-like spread though the rural Midwest. An event which, by it's nature, draws in people to close quarters from out of town to drink in bars, with no masks, in the 10s if not 100s of thousands for an entire weekend. Who then all went home to their various states. 75 days later......here we are:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/10/17/sturgis-rally-spread/
One aspect that I had a particular interest in was the target to install 600,000 heat pumps a year in homes and public buildings by 2028. I've been working on a project for 3 years now to provide heating for a rural village (without access to natural gas) using a mixture of ground and air source heat pumps to feed a heat network. The low density housing means installing the heat network of pipes to carry the heat is much more expensive than putting a network into a new housing development. Thus there needs to be some government funding to make it a commercial proposition. There are various government funding streams currently existing in this area, but none really targeted at our particular situation. We think there should be given that there are around a million homes in the UK in this position and the use of heat networks provides a better value alternative to installing individual air source heat pumps for each house.
We actually had a meeting with the relevant government minister yesterday about how he could tweak funding streams to help our project. That's easily the most advanced of its type in the UK, so cracking on and getting that built would allow it to act as a pathfinder project for the many hundreds of similar villages around the country. The minister was making the right sort of noises and, in the light of the subsequent government announcement, I'm pretty hopeful that we're asking the right questions at the right time
The danger of these stories is quite substantial - if you look at how Democracies the proponents almost always tell a story of the country being betrayed by the other side specifically including the rank-and-file supporters.
Yep, it continues to reinforce an idea that's become ubiquitous among US conservatives. Only Republican election victories and only Republican governance is legitimate.