Media, Economy: New grad can’t find work
International student who studied at expensive Stanford, plus a study abroad, to earn a BA and MA in English – is having trouble finding work in the U.S.
Media: Everything is awful, scary, terrifying
How the media shapes your emotions – everything is awful, scary, terrifying, getting worse blah blah blah. This screen snapshot is from Drudge Report taken on July 15, 2025.
Media: “It’s impossible to say” but we will say it anyway
It’s impossible to make this claim, says ABC News, but we will make it anyway…
Media: “Camp Mystic girls had a safe haven by the river for 100 years. Then, the flood came.”
Except the camp has flooded numerous times. Was that really a “safe haven”?
Media: The headline is incorrect
The headline of a news story is a hallucination of an AI news generator – the claim is not true.
Social: Doctor fired after online posts
A surprisingly large number of supposedly smart people post things on social media – and end up being fired.
Parts of this blog were made “private”; about 800 posts remain online
As this blog is not read much, in 2025 I removed about 2,000 posts, leaving about 800.
Update: 1 in 7 Americans do not go to bed hungry every night
Just updated this old post regarding the false claim that 1 in 7 Americans go to bed hungry each night. It’s total fiction.
22 methods of propaganda/persuasion
Great list of specific methods of persuasive arguments or also used in propaganda. You have likely seen many of these methods used to try and persuade you (or others) to adopt someone else’s position.
Begging the Question: “This is not who we are”
Every time these examples occur, after publicly demonstrating precisely who you are, the organization denies this is who they are – this is the “Begging the Question fallacy”: “Following tonight’s men’s basketball game, it was brought to our attention that an unacceptable chant occurred,” Reed-Francois said in a statement. “On behalf of the University of Arizona Athletic Department, we apologize to BYU, their student-athletes, coaches and fans. The chant is not reflective of who we are and should not have…