Starker on 4/7/2022 at 05:34
Twitter megathread on scientific literacy, critical thinking, memes, cognitive biases, woke brands, polarization, conspiracy theories, and so on:
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https://twitter.com/steak_umm/status/1336348473713680385)
Some of it is pretty basic info, but nevertheless good stuff to remind yourself every now and again.
Starker on 1/8/2022 at 15:41
In other olds, Republicans in the US really want to their veterans to suffer, apparently:
[video=youtube;fmacgVAtxSk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmacgVAtxSk[/video]
[video=youtube;siJwHVsHN7U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siJwHVsHN7U[/video]
Dia on 1/8/2022 at 15:54
I was appalled when that bill was shot down. I did some research and found an article that names the 41 assholes who voted against providing this special healthcare to our veterans. I was surprised that I was not surprised to find that one of those assholes is from my state; Ron Johnson (R-WI), who never even tries to disguise the fact that he's an asshole. Guess who I'll try to vote the hell out of office this year. Johnson and Vos and their cronies have got to go.
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https://www.newsweek.com/41-senate-republicans-voted-against-veterans-health-care-1728613)
Starker on 2/8/2022 at 07:15
If you're interested about topics like the nature of consciousness, Decoding the Gurus just had an episode as part of their "right to reply" policy with one of the gurus they had dissected. First part of the show is more about things they talked about in the original dissection episode, such as consciousness and the purpose of evolution, and the latter part of the show is about Ukraine and geopolitics between US and Russia.
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https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/special-guru-right-to-reply-with-robert-wright)
Decoding the Gurus is a podcast where two liberal centrist scientists discuss various personalities who have guru-like tendencies or characteristics. These are often people like Bret Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Ibram Kendi, Joe Rogan, etc, but also some outright cult leaders. The hosts are an Australian psychologist, Matthew Browne, and and Irish anthropologist, Chris Kavanagh and since neither of them is from the US, they frequently talk about things from the point of view of countries like Australia, Ireland, Japan, etc. It's generally quite good natured and science oriented and a bit tongue-in-cheek, though it frequently delves into controversial topics like religion and politics and cultural issues, due to the nature of the subject.
Cipheron on 16/8/2022 at 07:34
Climate-related, with the UK heatwave really hitting hard, people uncovered this TV host mocking a meteorologist who was trying to get people to take the hot weather seriously:
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/07/21/downplaying-extreme-heat-uk-news-anchor-draws-comparisons-dont-look)
Quote:
An exchange between BBC meteorologist John Hammond and a news broadcaster went viral Wednesday
...
In the July 14 interview on GB News, Hammond spoke with news anchor Bev Turner about the forecasted extreme heat in the U.K. and other parts of Europe, which ended up breaking previous temperature records by huge margins, sparking dozens of fires across London, and killing more than 1,900 people in Spain and Portugal.
Turner immediately pushed Hammond for a sunny weather report, asking, "It's not too hot, is it?"
At the time of the interview Hammond was enjoying mild weather in Buckinghamshire, but emphasized that Britons must prepare for temperatures that could top 104°F (40°C).
Turner's insistence that Hammond be "happy about the weather" seemed ripped from the screenplay of Don't Look Up ...
[...]
Hammond warned that as temperatures reach into the hundreds, the U.K. could see "hundreds, if not thousands, of excess deaths."
"This will be potentially lethal weather for a couple of days," he added. "It will be brief but it will be brutal."
Turner quickly tried to tamp down Hammond's warning, asking if "something's happened to meteorologists to make you all a little fatalistic and harbingers of doom."
"I want us to be happy about the weather... [every time I've turned on, anyone's talking about the weather, they're saying that there's going to be tons of fatalities, but] Haven't we always had hot weather?" she asked, mentioning the summer of 1976 in the U.K., when temperatures reached nearly 90°F for more than two weeks.
Hammond explained that while the 1976 heatwave was an outlier event, the extreme heat seen across Europe in recent days was part of an established pattern in recent years.
This interview was about 3 days before the news hit about the 2000 heath deaths in Spain
Here's the actual video. Her tone makes it even more infuriating
[video=youtube;00uGSlFBVDs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00uGSlFBVDs[/video]
faetal on 16/8/2022 at 23:05
That's GB News, it's basically kids TV for adults (hence the popular nickname Gbeebies, after UK Kids TV program Cbeebies) not to be taken seriously at all.
The viewing figures are very low, as the nation is not (yet) collectively stupid enough to have its Fox News.
Cipheron on 17/8/2022 at 05:42
Quote Posted by faetal
That's GB News, it's basically kids TV for adults (hence the popular nickname Gbeebies, after UK Kids TV program Cbeebies) not to be taken seriously at all.
The viewing figures are very low, as the nation is not (yet) collectively stupid enough to have its Fox News.
Ok got that then.
That sounds similar to Sky News Australia then. EDIT: "The CEO of GB News is Angelos Frangopoulos who formerly ran Sky News Australia."
As I mentioned in the other thread, Sky News Australia is Murdoch-owned and available on his FoxTel pay TV subscription. They only get 50,000 viewers across cable, broadcast and internet. So it's clearly propped up purely by Murdoch Dollars and wishful thinking that Australia needs it's own Fox News. A die-hard 0.2% of Australians tune into Sky News every night for their news.
Compare that to 1.4 million viewers for the most popular nightly news show on normal TV.
EDIT: I read that the main rival to GB News is "TalkTV" (also created by Murdoch) which provided us with this gem:
[video=youtube;6-9-FkwUrRo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-9-FkwUrRo[/video]
Btw "Since [TalkTV] launch ratings have been very low with some shows, especially those broadcast in the evening, recording few viewers, if any."
"if any". i.e. some of their shows literally get zero viewers :D
Cipheron on 18/8/2022 at 02:41
This was a while back, but it's just coming to a head now:
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https://apnews.com/article/crime-trending-news-government-and-politics-6f30f575dc739415af1e5b47b1be50f0)
Quote:
Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions.”
In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Mark Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups. Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of kids would be sent to PA Child Care and its sister facility, Western PA Child Care.
Ciavarella ordered children as young as 8 to detention, many of them first-time offenders deemed delinquent for petty theft, jaywalking, truancy, smoking on school grounds and other minor infractions. The judge often ordered youths he had found delinquent to be immediately shackled, handcuffed and taken away without giving them a chance to put up a defense or even say goodbye to their families.
[...]
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out some 4,000 juvenile convictions involving more than 2,300 kids after the scheme was uncovered.
[...]
“They recounted his harsh and arbitrary nature, his disdain for due process, his extraordinary abruptness, and his cavalier and boorish behavior in the courtroom,” Conner wrote.
[...]
Several of the childhood victims who were part of the lawsuit when it began in 2009 have since died from overdoses or suicide, Conner said.
Cipheron on 19/8/2022 at 15:56
Thanks, I gave that a listen. Had heard of their podcast a few times via QAnonAnonymous, I think they had one of those guys as a guest once or twice.
Current news is that OAN is being kicked off Verizon, now one of the hosts is begging *liberals* to bail them out.
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https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1552092292537880576?s=20&t=Z09MNQXpX1C8MOv3-BiiSg)
For anyone who didn't know, there's a bit of a deep dive, in that the board of AT&T apparently orchestrated the creation of OAN. Keep in mind that AT&T also own CNN and HBO.
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https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-oneamerica-att/)
Quote:
OAN founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives.
“They told us they wanted a conservative network,” Herring said during a 2019 deposition seen by Reuters. “They only had one, which was Fox News, and they had seven others on the other [leftwing] side. When they said that, I jumped to it and built one.”
Since then, AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN's revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant.
What I think's actually happened is that after AT&T was exposed for creating and propping up OAN, they've bailed on the network. Now OAN is spinning that as "dark forces" are coming for OAN so liberals need to band with OAN for survival. *gets popcorn*