Media: “to protect from a tsunami… get under a table”?
Oh dear … reporter says in the event of a tsunami, you should get under a table or sturdy piece of furniture. How embarrassing.
How to show you know nothing of history without saying you know nothing of history
Some one posts a TikTok video claiming “Baby boomers” never had to deal with inflation and had it easy finding jobs. She is factually and logically wrong, but the media turns this into a viral story, without noting the Tiktoker was wrong. The TikToker demonstrated she knows nothing of history without saying she knows nothing of history. It’s not a good look!
Follow up: Trevor Jacob and his faked for social media plane crash
Trevor Jacob pretended to have an engine out failure in his light plane, jumping out by parachute as his plane gradually circled to impact into a hillside in a remote area. He then filmed his “harrowing” escape and hike out. He now admits the entire stunt was done for social media views and a promotional fee, and has pled guilty to charges. He may be sentenced to prison.
It’s back: The annual bogus “happiest countries in the world list” 2023!
It’s time again for the annual “World’s Happiest Country” bull shit survey results. Using a survey that doesn’t measure happiness, the survey proclaims – every year – the same Nordic countries as the world’s happiest. That’s because the metrics they use define happiness as living in a Nordic country! But again, don’t measure anyone’s happiness. And every year, the media twits fall for this survey.
The primary purpose of Twitter is to make a fool of oneself :)
The primary purpose of social media is to enable pundits to say things and make utter fools of themselves 🙂
White Anglos culturally appropriate the German language, from Germans
Cambridge University is teaching students a fake form of the German language, that does away with the language’s gender usage. Many languages, German, French, Spanish – and so on – have gendered nouns that require a gender specific definite or indefinite article (and other forms).
Using social media to destroy your career
A medical professional posted on Twitter that she can and will withhold care from patients based on her perception of the patient’s sex, race and political beliefs. By Monday, her hospital bio page displayed “Page not found”. Far too many engage in inappropriate emotional outbursts on social media that have led to severe consequences, including being fired from a job.
Fake news: “COVID-19, shootings: Is mass death now tolerated in America?”
Reporter asserts all Covid deaths in the U.S. were preventable. My pointing out that Covid was not controlled anywhere in the world (having accurate data collection and reporting), and my pointing out that 27 other countries had worse outcomes than the U.S. is “denying that the deaths were preventable”. Therefore, you are cautioned that my inconvenient questions and observations are official disinformation, as determined by the Associated Press. Also, remember Betteridge’s Law – any headline that ends in a question mark means the story is bull shit.
Stanford’s Professor Michael McFaul is a fool [has since apologized and backpedaled on his original comment]
Stanford’s Professor Michael McFaul is a fool. He said on MSNBC that Hitler never targeted ethnic Germans. McFaul is a fool, an idiot, and makes us wonder if his biography is a fraud. He is a professor of International Studies at Stanford, Director of their International Studies Institute, and was a White House policy advisor for five years on Eurasian affairs. He also is why “expert” has become synonymous with idiot.
Climate communications: Time Magazine changes headline three times, uses false headline “How Asthma Inhalers are Choking the Planet”
Time Magazine engaged in deliberate, and false, propaganda messaging to influence readers to take action. After contacting the magazine, they did, at least, revise the headline (for the 3rd time). They began with the accurate headline “How Asthma Inhalers are Contributing to Climate Change” but immediately changed it and promoted this rude and 100% false headline: “How Asthma Inhalers are Choking the Planet”.
First, making crude humor of asthmatics “choking” is not funny and is rude and insensitive. Second, it is physically impossible for inhalers to be “choking the planet”. In homes where someone uses an inhaler, annual inhaler usage produces about 1% of the total CO2-equivalent gases emitted by the home and life activities during the course of a year. If all inhalers were eliminated tomorrow, there would be no measurable impact on weather or climate over the next 100 years. A worst case inhaler, using data cited by Time and BMJ, produces about half the CO2-equivalent GHC as does a person breathing and exhaling CO2. Seriously. Just breathing is a bigger threat than using inhalers.
Time eventually changed the headline to the better, but still misleading “How One Commonly Used Asthma Inhaler is Damaging the Planet”. Their fiction story also referenced the wrong gas used as a propellant, cited an exaggerated greenhouse gas effect multiplier from an environmental activist group rather than the more modest IPCC AR5 science-based estimate, and then omitted many article changes from their Corrections List. The text itself continues to climate shame asthmatics with the false “Choking the Planet” claim.
This is an example of garbage journalism and how not to do do climate communications.