2021-09-25
Worthy
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Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi - by Alex Berenson - Unreported Truths
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Facebook is Other People - by Kevin Munger - Never Met a Science
One of my relatives has never been very tech-savvy or studious; to make things worse, he suffered a serious head injury in bar fight that permanently damaged his cognitive functioning. He’s now in his early 60s. I recently learned that he has never used a computer, but is thinking of learning how. He lacks both the scaffolding of employment and the social resources to learn to use the internet well, and never developed the deceptively specific (invisibly specific, to the educated knowledge working class) skills and intuitions shared by the creators and implied consumers of internet content. If he gets online, he is at serious financial risk; never very financially savvy, he will be defenseless against the legions of outright scammers, identity thieves and ransomware extortionists.
And his presence as a consumer of online news will have negative consequences, both for himself and for the wider information environment. He is an embittered, lonely man, the perfect target for information fraudsters who will claim to explain that the source of his pain is some despised group (immigrants, the deep state). Consuming this information might make him feel better, but it will make him more confident in false beliefs about what members of his various outgroups are actually like. Even worse, it will contribute to the success of the bullshit vendor; directly, through ad revenue, and indirectly, by increasing their view/like/retweet counts and thus their credibility.
Horseshit
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The Pandemic Seems to Have Made Childhood Obesity Worse, but There’s Hope
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Microsoft and an army of tiny telecoms are part of a plan to wire rural America
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People in rural areas get an insane amount of subsidization for infrastructure. And for what reason? Why does their incredibly energy intensive, land intensive lifestyle deserve to get subsidized? This is yet another take that money deserves to get sucked out of cities and pushed to car dependent, unsustainable areas.
Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination
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U.S. schools with mask requirements are seeing fewer outbreaks
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As Florida punishes schools, study finds masks cut school Covid outbreaks 3.5x
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Education secretary backs mandatory school Covid-19 vaccines
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'Vigilante treatments': Anti-vaccine groups push people to leave ICUs
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Improving gender diversity in leadership by ‘opting-out’ of the default
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Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » Was Scientific American Sokal’d?
The essay actually develops a 100% cogent, reasoned argument: namely, that the ideology of the Star Wars films doesn’t easily fit with the new ideology of militant egalitarianism at the expense of all other human values, including irony, humor, joy, and the nurturing of unusual talents. The authors are merely oblivious to the conclusion that most people would draw from their argument: namely, so much the worse for the militant egalitarianism then!
Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship
TechSuck
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Apple Is Working on iPhone Features to Help Detect Depression, Cognitive Decline
- We''l tell you when you're happy, we'll tell you when you're sick, put your faith in us! We don't miss a trick.
We'll tell you when to sleep, where and what to eat, with neural networked data our judgment can't be beat.
It only costs a little, all your friends bought in, you don't want to be the odd one, do you? Clubhouse is The Thing!
We know your body, we know your mind, we hold your worldview safe. Hew only unto Apple lest the unclean seal your fate.
Economicon
Poilitcks
Crime / Police
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An FBI Informant Marched into the Capitol on Jan. 6 Riot
As scores of Proud Boys made their way, chanting and shouting, toward the Capitol on Jan. 6, one member of the far-right group was busy texting a real-time account of the march. The recipient was his F.B.I. handler.
The F.B.I. also had an additional informant with ties to another Proud Boys chapter that took part in the sacking of the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the matter, raising questions about the quality of the bureau’s informants and what sorts of questions they were being asked by their handlers before Jan. 6.