The role of media in establishing public consensus
Link to an essay on the role that “technical authority”, media propaganda, and how “consensus of experts” are used to influence the public and to exert control over us. This essay is an eye opener.
“Deplatforming” Parler
The controversy over hostile social media content advocating violence, hate, and lies on social media – and the deplatforming of individuals and entire services (e.g. Parler).
Was Parler deplatformed for “conservative” ideas or for users advocating violence?
Methods of subtle media propaganda
Every time someone not following the face mask meme contracts Covid-19, the media makes the lack of face masks the story. Yet when a large group of health care workers, with 100% face mask compliance is diagnosed with Covid-19, mention of face masks vanishes. According to the CDC, 90% of those diagnosed with Covid-19 were face mask wearers – suggesting the media’s focus on face masks or lack of one as the cause of contracting Covid-19 is propaganda messaging.
Social media: Claim that car fatalities and injuries went up
Social media post tries to say something about vehicle fatalities going up. Not sure what the author was trying to say but the reality is vehicle fatalities have gone down by a lot, which is good news.
The viral social media propaganda poster that started this web site
Blast from the past: the social media propaganda poster that led to the birth of this blog and web site.
Wild fires: Is everything a single variable problem?
Western state Governors are increasingly blaming climate change for western wild fires, as if the wild fires are a single variable. If only we could control the climate, we would no longer have wild land fires. Realistically, there is no magic control knob on climate that we can control and which will reduce fire danger for decades to come.
There are concrete steps that can be taken immediately to reduce the threats of future wild fires – but politicians would rather blame climate change – which they do not control – because to acknowledge there are factors which they can control is to acknowledge that their leadership has failed.
A common mistake people make is to focus on a single variable in a multiple variable problem. In this case, the focus is on one variable that cannot be controlled in the near term, while ignoring other variables that can be controlled.
Oregon’s 500,000 evacuees was faked by OEM – it is about 40,000
Oregon’s Office of Emergency Management has a reputation for making things up. Yesterday, they claimed that 500,000 or 10% of Oregon’s population had evacuated due to wildfires. This claim received national and international media coverage. The Oregonian noted no where near that many people live in the evacuation zones. This afternoon, they have acknowledged its closer to 40,000, not 500,000. See how Internet memes get generated by fake data from official government sources?
I attended a Covid-19 party and you won’t believe what happened next
Stories about people attending Covid parties and then getting sick are poorly sourced and in general, probably never happened.
“Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental Health”
In the midst of an ineptly managed pandemic and ineptly managed civil unrest and economic fiasco people try to make sense of it by reading everything they can. Scrolling through post and news story after news story is called “doomscrolling” and it destroys your mental health. Sadly, much of the bull shit is not from random social media posts but from actual experts who spew nonsense.
Journalism: USA Today misreports on Oregon, even miscounts the number of Counties
Just about all of the numbers in this USA Today “news report” are wrong, and easily cross checked for the correct numbers. This. Is. Journalism. Where facts are strictly optional.