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Month: July 2018

Media announces “fact free” reporting initiative

Media announces “fact free” reporting initiative

Tiny couple lives in 8 square foot trailer: The couple, both 30 at the time, decided to trade in their three-bedroom San Francisco home to take up residence in an 8-square-foot TAB Teardrop camper. Source: As millennials embrace RVs, next wave of travel trailers go hip | kgw.com The actual dimensions of the queen size bed inside are 31 square feet. Guess it’s like a Doctor WHO Tardis, bigger on the inside? Newsweek says Virgin Galactic space plane now travels…

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Bad week for Facebook and Twitter

Bad week for Facebook and Twitter

Facebook lost about $113 billion market capitalization this week (per news reports). Twitter share price also fell about -20%. One pundit on Twitter remarked that while government did nothing about Facebook’s privacy scandals, the free market itself just assessed a $100 billion fine on Facebook, of which about $16 billion came out of Mark Zuckerberg’s pocket.

Repeat after me: #Facebook is a global surveillance business

Repeat after me: #Facebook is a global surveillance business

Been saying this for a long: Facebook has long claimed that its mission is to develop social infrastructure and — *gag* — build community. That no longer passes the giggle test. What they really want to do is follow people around the Internet, collect and organize what they learn and sell that information to the highest bidder. Source: Wall Street finally taught Zuckerberg the lesson he deserved Their entire business is to create the world’s best propaganda platform through the…

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Mean world syndrome

Mean world syndrome

At a local comic con, of all places, a cosplayer and recent sociology graduate introduced me to the term “mean world syndrome”. Mean world syndrome is a term coined by George Gerbner to describe a phenomenon whereby violence-related content of mass media makes viewers believe that the world is more dangerous than it actually is. Source: Mean world syndrome – Wikipedia She says sociology, as a field, suffers from mean world syndrome as all they do today is study things…

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Update – “Average renter can’t afford their apartment”

Update – “Average renter can’t afford their apartment”

A few months ago, a news item spread saying that the “average renter” or “minimum wage renter” cannot afford a one bedroom apartment. But that is not what the study actually said. The study picked a price point equal to the 40th percentile of rental unit price distributions. In general, those earning a single minimum wage income are usually not able to afford a one bedroom apartment at the 40th percentile. They can afford lower cost units in the market below…

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