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Category: Cherry Picking

Journalists and Academics seek special privileges on Facebook

Journalists and Academics seek special privileges on Facebook

Facebook restricts certain conduct on its platform. However, journalists and academics are seeking to  receive special privileges to do things that are prohibited for others. Journalists and academics, for example, would be permitted to set up fake accounts with fake or curated content, for the purpose of studying users. Individuals, however, would be banned from conducting the same research and thus, would be prohibited from verifying or evaluating the work of journalists and academics. Basically, the proposal is to have…

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Part 7: We should all be like Denmark, remember?

Part 7: We should all be like Denmark, remember?

Occupy Democrats is an online, social media-based, for profit publisher of emotion laden political propaganda posters targeting those who view themselves as left wing. In 2016, Occupy Democrats used social media to distribute this propaganda through shares and likes. Every claim on this widely distributed and shared poster is essentially false – or two that are highly misleading at best (see links below for excruciating details.) Note their last item: SHARE if America should follow their lead! Occupy Democrats wants…

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It may be virtue signalling, but at least its not actually true

It may be virtue signalling, but at least its not actually true

This propaganda poster came across my news feed. According to Snopes, He occasionally rides a subway but is more often driving one of his sports cars or classic motorcycles. He generously support several charities; however, his net worth is estimated at $350 million. He lives in a $4 million home (shack, not a mansion, in Hollywood Hills, which is in California, not New York City). Typical of propaganda, this poster extracts “bits” and extrapolates those to make broad or generalized…

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Tesla really did say this in 1926

Tesla really did say this in 1926

This poster came across on Twitter – and surprise – the quote is authentic! Surprisingly (for social media memes!) Tesla really did say this in an interview published in Colliers on January 30th, 1926. This forecast for the future is intriguing and certainly his brilliance comes through. But … the same interview had a number of other predictions – some correct and some not so correct: Tesla invented our modern day alternating current electrical system (versus the competing direct current…

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Climate communications: Polar bears, social media, and how our emotional response may have helped a PR stunt

Climate communications: Polar bears, social media, and how our emotional response may have helped a PR stunt

(This item – featuring a polar bear – emotionally hooked many people – and for some, any discussion is controversial. However, this post is not about polar bears or climate change but about successful propaganda messaging.) Here is the original dying polar bear photo and post from photographer Paul Nicklen. Read carefully. He – and his associate – never say this polar bear is dying due to climate change but he does link climate change to polar bear habitat and…

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And now for the rest of the story …

And now for the rest of the story …

Source: Seattle hits record high for income inequality, now rivals San Francisco The data presented in the article is correct. But it leaves out critical information for understanding what this means overall, or even if it means what it purports to mean. Almost 20 years ago in a graduate economics course we learned that the “static” view of income at an instant in time is not a full picture. Not surprisingly, incomes change over time, often by a lot. Consider…

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Is this one of the nation's worst fire seasons?

Is this one of the nation's worst fire seasons?

It has been a bad fire year but some mainstream reporting is getting ahead of itself and seems more intent on providing a propaganda message. In fact, its the worst fire season since … 2015! Propaganda: Note the reference to “in one of the nation’s worst fire seasons”. And: “worst fire seasons we’ve ever seen”? Some news writers confused record spending with record wildfires. While there is a linkage, it is not an accurate 1:1 correlation nor is the spending…

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We have lost our ability to think?

We have lost our ability to think?

The Seattle Times publishes an opinion column advocating Medicare for All. The column gives quotes of insurance prices with and without Medicare (the author of the column is now on Medicare) and says, see, Medicare costs so much less why can’t we do this for everyone? Incredibly she left out that she has spent her entire working life subsidizing Medicare by paying Medicare payroll taxes.  She fails to recognize the accumulated Medicare fund is subsidizing those lower prices (a fund…

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TV news focuses on political outrage and selling eyeballs to advertisers

TV news focuses on political outrage and selling eyeballs to advertisers

TV audiences can’t get enough news coverage of Donald Trump. Reporting on pretty much anything else is ratings poison. Source: Broadcast News Misses Ratings Bonanza With Too Little Trump – Bloomberg This year I had a chance to travel to several U.S. states. Among all the people I met, politics was avoided. Most seem fed up with politics and the purveyors of politics and definitely fed up with the culture of perpetual outrage. Media targets a narrow demographic of the…

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Eating too much protein will kill you? No, but it grabs the emotions and gets shared on #socialmedia!

Eating too much protein will kill you? No, but it grabs the emotions and gets shared on #socialmedia!

Eating too much protein will kill you? That’s the message left by hundreds of headlines and news stories earlier this week. But the statement was misleading at best and untrue in regards to the individual who died. Yet most stories ran with quotes like this: Meegan Hefford, a mother of two and bodybuilder, died after an overconsumption of protein shakes, supplements and protein-rich foods. Source: Bodybuilder mom dies from too much protein before competition | New York Post or “That…

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