5 ms·

I had a Lyft driver on a business trip in Pennsylvania recently who was a very nice fellow. He was immunocompromised, worried about COVID, and said he hated Tru

I had a Lyft driver on a business trip in Pennsylvania recently who was a very nice fellow. He was immunocompromised, worried about COVID, and said he hated Trump's character. And yet, he said he was voting for Trump. Why? Because Joe Biden was a pedophile whose son f~~ked underage Chinese children and took money from a Ukranian dictator to influence US policy. He saw Biden as more amoral than Trump. I think this is a significant demographic block that's been ignored, because the media class doesn't really meet with people of these sort. He was extremely convinced, and I'm sure he really believed it. He really seemed upset about the moral quandary of voting for Trump vs. voting for a pedophile.

throwawaygh 6y ago
The media class is not ignoring these people. It's getting really rich feeding them this poison. The media class consists of more than just a few large center-left outlets.
- sebmellen 6y ago
  Fair point. I was surprised at my blind spot, which I think I have because my media consumption consists mostly of the centrist media outlets you refer to. I never realized how influential Bitchute QAnon believers are or One America News Network is either (mainly due to social media algorithms running haywire). Tristan Harris of the Social Dilemma made some really great points to this effect on his podcast episode with Joe Rogan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaTKaHKCAFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaTKaHKCAFg.
- easyat 6y ago
  The media is not center left. Neoconservatise(Fox) and neoliberal(CNN/NYT) are different shades of right. We are watching different points of view of right wing politics argue. Wall street vs petrochemical companies vs SV, etc... all jostling for position. And all of these people with quite a bit of overlapping interests but slightly different focus i.e. foreign intervention but should the pentagon focus on M.E. destabilization or for African and S.A. lithium?
  - danaos 6y ago
    This is the first time the NYT are pictured as neoliberal. That, or I've been living under a rock.
    - eutropia 6y ago
      Remember: the thing about neoliberalism is that it ain't new, and it ain't liberal. NYT follows the narrative supportive of the corporate agenda writ large, not because of an active choice about what it does write about, but because of the glaringly newsworthy things it ignores: like ongoing imperialism and terrorism committed by the US all over the world. This is true for most all major news orgs in the US.
    - Glide 6y ago
      You’re not alone. His statements don’t line up with the ruckus after the Tom Cotton op-Ed or Bari Weiss’s departure.
    - easyat 6y ago
      Does supporting far right coups and writing context free puff pieces like this(constantly)[1] after a massive turnout for the very left wing party that the NYT railed against seem center left? Or, their uncritical push for the war in Iraq. Or their complete silence on the United State's role in Yemen etc... They write articles like this weekly, if that is not neoliberal then what is it? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/world/americas/evo-morales-bolivia.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/world/americas/evo-morale...
- bra-ket 6y ago
  Trump has been blatantly slandered by the mainstream media as racist evil orange man, it was 4 years of '1984' style brainwashing by the left. One of the big reasons for voting Trump was standing up against this propaganda machine, lies, censorship and intimidation. 70M people thankfully did just that, which gives hope in the future of this country.
  - Falling3 6y ago
    Please stop repeating the same comment, silently editing it, and deleting it when it's downvoted? You're very clearly not going to get any substantive replies. Biden won because people have legitimate issues with Trump. Deride it as "the propaganda machine" and other nonsense all you like. But this administration has a mind-boggling amount of documented fact-checked lies, clear nepotism, a history of censoring government agencies and intimidating federal employees who disagree, and putting out some of the most absurd propaganda we've seen in this country in modern history. It's astounding that this administration's chief complaints about the other side are always exemplified by the administration themselves. And people mindlessly repeat it without a shred of irony.
    - bra-ket 6y ago
      anything pro-Trump being consistently flagged which is so fitting of your liberal friends. I will repeat my comment as many times as it's flagged.
      - Falling3 6y ago
        > anything pro-Trump being consistently flagged which is so fitting of your liberal friends. That's simply not true. There are pro-Trump comments here that are not being flagged or downvoted into oblivion. But they're the substantive comments that aren't full of baseless claims about Trump being the victim of conspiracies and abuse.
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      I'm really glad I saw that comment, because it's good to know people can look past their bias to see the very terrible thing that happened to our democratic process to give you the outcome you feel is good. We need reconciliation, but it will never happen until we're at least willing to look at the facts objectively and realize we just witnessed a type of coup.
jancsika 6y ago
> Why? Because Joe Biden was a pedophile whose son f~~ked underage Chinese children and took money from a Ukranian dictator to influence US policy. In other words, voting for Trump because "samy is my hero." :) Could there be a class action lawsuit against the various companies whose recommendation engines hijacked people's attention to recommend and reinforce this garbage? Edit: clarification
- d10r 6y ago
  > Could there be a class action lawsuit against the various companies whose recommendation engines hijacked people's attention to recommend and reinforce this garbage? I think this thought is spot on. The usual defense is "but free speech!". Which would boil down to: "such is human nature". But I don't believe that's the problem. The problem may indeed be selection and amplification mechanisms like recommendation engines tuned to divert max. attention to the medium, masterfully exploiting the vulnerabilities of the human psyche as evolution formed it. The rest is collateral damage which nobody seems to feel responsible for. Not a sustainable situation.
  - spirald 6y ago
    A good legal question is whether the selection/rejection of content by an algorithm tuned to provide financial benefit to the platform would be considered "editorial control". If there were a dead simple filter where the user could pick friend groups, tags and sorting criteria to tune their feed this would not be an issue. Reddit, for instance seems relatively simple in that respect- the presentation is a function of the subreddit and the votes. But once the algorithm is driven by sponsorships, monetization opportunities, and opaque surveillance data then the control of the presentation shifts from user to platform. One could argue that this should creates some liability on the part of the platform. If the editor of a publication was monetarily compensated for publishing lucrative slander, in a manner designed to maximize its credibility with certain audiences, and it resulted in harm to people then they arguable could be held responsible. If the editor claimed that an algorithm decided to publish it and the publication developed the algorithm I don't think it would make them less responsible.
- 6y ago
Kye 6y ago
Carl Sagan had a good, relevant story in his "Why we need to understand science": I read it in one of his books, but this is the only good version I can find online. PDF: http://plaza.ufl.edu/trishak/Carl%20Sagan%20-%20Why%20We%20Need%20To%20Understand%20Science.pdf http://plaza.ufl.edu/trishak/Carl%20Sagan%20-%20Why%20We%20N... >> From Parade Magazine, September 10, 1989 – As I got off the plane, he was waiting for me, holding up a sign with my name on it. I was on my way to a conference of scientists and TV broadcasters, and the organizers had kindly sent a driver. >> "Do you mind if I ask you a question?" He said as we waited for my bag. "Isn't it confusing to have the same name as that science guy?" >> It took me a moment to understand. Was he pulling my leg? "I am that science guy," I said. He smiled. "Sorry. That's my problem. I thought it was yours too." He put out his hand. "My name is William F. Buckley." (Well, his name wasn't exactly William F. Buckley, but he did have the name of a contentious TV interviewer, for which he doubtless took a lot of good-natured ribbing.) >> As we settled into the car for the long drive, he told me he was glad I was "that science guy" -- he had so many questions to ask about science. Would I mind? And so we got to talking. But not about science. He wanted to discuss UFOs, "channeling" (a way to hear what's on the minds of dead people -- not much it turns out), crystals, astrology ... He introduced each subject with real enthusiasm, and each time I had to disappoint him: "The evidence is crummy," I kept saying. "There's a much simpler explanation." As we drove on through the rain, I could see him getting glummer. I was attacking not just pseudoscience but also a facet of his inner life. >> And yet there is so much in real science that's equally exciting, more mysterious, a greater intellectual challenge--as well as being a lot closer to the truth. Did he know about the molecular building blocks of life sitting out there in the cold tenuous gas between the stars? Had he heard of the footprints of our ancestors found in 4-mil-lion-year-old volcanic ash? What about the raising of the Himalayas when India went crashing into Asia? Or how viruses subvert cells, or the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence or the ancient civilization of Ebla? Mr. "Buckley" -- well-spoken, intelligent, curious -- had heard virtually nothing of modem science. He wanted to know about science. It's just that all the science got filtered out before it reached him. What the society permitted to trickle through was mainly pretense and confusion. And it had never taught him how to distinguish real science from the cheap imitation.
djsumdog 6y ago
He does touch children very inappropriately. And YouTube actively pushes those videos to the very back of search. They're more difficult to find and they're creepy. They don't prove anything, but they're not good. There is plenty of real hard evidence than Hunter was used to peddle influence and spread corruption, and the media completed censored all of that information, from one of the oldest newspapers in the country: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-solution-to-big-tech-isnt-legislation-its-technology/#censorship https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-solution-to-big-tech-isnt... This should trouble everyone.
- sebmellen 6y ago
  No doubt the whole matter isn't clean. At those upper echelons I think it's very hard to not be corrupt. Joe Biden's touchiness does bother me, as does the Hunter Biden story. But I don't think that's anywhere near what my driver was talking about, and I also don't think Trump is better when it comes to sexually inappropriate behaviour or corruption. My driver also brought up Pizzagate and other such (nearly unequivocally) debunked conspiracy theories, which makes me suspicious of his reasoning capabilities.

throwawaygh 6y ago

The media class is not ignoring these people. It's getting really rich feeding them this poison. The media class consists of more than just a few large center-left outlets.

sebmellen 6y ago
Fair point. I was surprised at my blind spot, which I think I have because my media consumption consists mostly of the centrist media outlets you refer to. I never realized how influential Bitchute QAnon believers are or One America News Network is either (mainly due to social media algorithms running haywire). Tristan Harris of the Social Dilemma made some really great points to this effect on his podcast episode with Joe Rogan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaTKaHKCAFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaTKaHKCAFg.
easyat 6y ago
The media is not center left. Neoconservatise(Fox) and neoliberal(CNN/NYT) are different shades of right. We are watching different points of view of right wing politics argue. Wall street vs petrochemical companies vs SV, etc... all jostling for position. And all of these people with quite a bit of overlapping interests but slightly different focus i.e. foreign intervention but should the pentagon focus on M.E. destabilization or for African and S.A. lithium?
- danaos 6y ago
  This is the first time the NYT are pictured as neoliberal. That, or I've been living under a rock.
  - eutropia 6y ago
    Remember: the thing about neoliberalism is that it ain't new, and it ain't liberal. NYT follows the narrative supportive of the corporate agenda writ large, not because of an active choice about what it does write about, but because of the glaringly newsworthy things it ignores: like ongoing imperialism and terrorism committed by the US all over the world. This is true for most all major news orgs in the US.
  - Glide 6y ago
    You’re not alone. His statements don’t line up with the ruckus after the Tom Cotton op-Ed or Bari Weiss’s departure.
  - easyat 6y ago
    Does supporting far right coups and writing context free puff pieces like this(constantly)[1] after a massive turnout for the very left wing party that the NYT railed against seem center left? Or, their uncritical push for the war in Iraq. Or their complete silence on the United State's role in Yemen etc... They write articles like this weekly, if that is not neoliberal then what is it? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/world/americas/evo-morales-bolivia.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/world/americas/evo-morale...
bra-ket 6y ago
Trump has been blatantly slandered by the mainstream media as racist evil orange man, it was 4 years of '1984' style brainwashing by the left. One of the big reasons for voting Trump was standing up against this propaganda machine, lies, censorship and intimidation. 70M people thankfully did just that, which gives hope in the future of this country.
- Falling3 6y ago
  Please stop repeating the same comment, silently editing it, and deleting it when it's downvoted? You're very clearly not going to get any substantive replies. Biden won because people have legitimate issues with Trump. Deride it as "the propaganda machine" and other nonsense all you like. But this administration has a mind-boggling amount of documented fact-checked lies, clear nepotism, a history of censoring government agencies and intimidating federal employees who disagree, and putting out some of the most absurd propaganda we've seen in this country in modern history. It's astounding that this administration's chief complaints about the other side are always exemplified by the administration themselves. And people mindlessly repeat it without a shred of irony.
  - bra-ket 6y ago
    anything pro-Trump being consistently flagged which is so fitting of your liberal friends. I will repeat my comment as many times as it's flagged.
    - Falling3 6y ago
      > anything pro-Trump being consistently flagged which is so fitting of your liberal friends. That's simply not true. There are pro-Trump comments here that are not being flagged or downvoted into oblivion. But they're the substantive comments that aren't full of baseless claims about Trump being the victim of conspiracies and abuse.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    I'm really glad I saw that comment, because it's good to know people can look past their bias to see the very terrible thing that happened to our democratic process to give you the outcome you feel is good. We need reconciliation, but it will never happen until we're at least willing to look at the facts objectively and realize we just witnessed a type of coup.

jancsika 6y ago

> Why? Because Joe Biden was a pedophile whose son f~~ked underage Chinese children and took money from a Ukranian dictator to influence US policy. In other words, voting for Trump because "samy is my hero." :) Could there be a class action lawsuit against the various companies whose recommendation engines hijacked people's attention to recommend and reinforce this garbage? Edit: clarification

d10r 6y ago
> Could there be a class action lawsuit against the various companies whose recommendation engines hijacked people's attention to recommend and reinforce this garbage? I think this thought is spot on. The usual defense is "but free speech!". Which would boil down to: "such is human nature". But I don't believe that's the problem. The problem may indeed be selection and amplification mechanisms like recommendation engines tuned to divert max. attention to the medium, masterfully exploiting the vulnerabilities of the human psyche as evolution formed it. The rest is collateral damage which nobody seems to feel responsible for. Not a sustainable situation.
- spirald 6y ago
  A good legal question is whether the selection/rejection of content by an algorithm tuned to provide financial benefit to the platform would be considered "editorial control". If there were a dead simple filter where the user could pick friend groups, tags and sorting criteria to tune their feed this would not be an issue. Reddit, for instance seems relatively simple in that respect- the presentation is a function of the subreddit and the votes. But once the algorithm is driven by sponsorships, monetization opportunities, and opaque surveillance data then the control of the presentation shifts from user to platform. One could argue that this should creates some liability on the part of the platform. If the editor of a publication was monetarily compensated for publishing lucrative slander, in a manner designed to maximize its credibility with certain audiences, and it resulted in harm to people then they arguable could be held responsible. If the editor claimed that an algorithm decided to publish it and the publication developed the algorithm I don't think it would make them less responsible.
6y ago

Kye 6y ago

Carl Sagan had a good, relevant story in his "Why we need to understand science": I read it in one of his books, but this is the only good version I can find online. PDF: http://plaza.ufl.edu/trishak/Carl%20Sagan%20-%20Why%20We%20Need%20To%20Understand%20Science.pdf http://plaza.ufl.edu/trishak/Carl%20Sagan%20-%20Why%20We%20N... >> From Parade Magazine, September 10, 1989 – As I got off the plane, he was waiting for me, holding up a sign with my name on it. I was on my way to a conference of scientists and TV broadcasters, and the organizers had kindly sent a driver. >> "Do you mind if I ask you a question?" He said as we waited for my bag. "Isn't it confusing to have the same name as that science guy?" >> It took me a moment to understand. Was he pulling my leg? "I am that science guy," I said. He smiled. "Sorry. That's my problem. I thought it was yours too." He put out his hand. "My name is William F. Buckley." (Well, his name wasn't exactly William F. Buckley, but he did have the name of a contentious TV interviewer, for which he doubtless took a lot of good-natured ribbing.) >> As we settled into the car for the long drive, he told me he was glad I was "that science guy" -- he had so many questions to ask about science. Would I mind? And so we got to talking. But not about science. He wanted to discuss UFOs, "channeling" (a way to hear what's on the minds of dead people -- not much it turns out), crystals, astrology ... He introduced each subject with real enthusiasm, and each time I had to disappoint him: "The evidence is crummy," I kept saying. "There's a much simpler explanation." As we drove on through the rain, I could see him getting glummer. I was attacking not just pseudoscience but also a facet of his inner life. >> And yet there is so much in real science that's equally exciting, more mysterious, a greater intellectual challenge--as well as being a lot closer to the truth. Did he know about the molecular building blocks of life sitting out there in the cold tenuous gas between the stars? Had he heard of the footprints of our ancestors found in 4-mil-lion-year-old volcanic ash? What about the raising of the Himalayas when India went crashing into Asia? Or how viruses subvert cells, or the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence or the ancient civilization of Ebla? Mr. "Buckley" -- well-spoken, intelligent, curious -- had heard virtually nothing of modem science. He wanted to know about science. It's just that all the science got filtered out before it reached him. What the society permitted to trickle through was mainly pretense and confusion. And it had never taught him how to distinguish real science from the cheap imitation.

djsumdog 6y ago

He does touch children very inappropriately. And YouTube actively pushes those videos to the very back of search. They're more difficult to find and they're creepy. They don't prove anything, but they're not good. There is plenty of real hard evidence than Hunter was used to peddle influence and spread corruption, and the media completed censored all of that information, from one of the oldest newspapers in the country: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-solution-to-big-tech-isnt-legislation-its-technology/#censorship https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-solution-to-big-tech-isnt... This should trouble everyone.

sebmellen 6y ago
No doubt the whole matter isn't clean. At those upper echelons I think it's very hard to not be corrupt. Joe Biden's touchiness does bother me, as does the Hunter Biden story. But I don't think that's anywhere near what my driver was talking about, and I also don't think Trump is better when it comes to sexually inappropriate behaviour or corruption. My driver also brought up Pizzagate and other such (nearly unequivocally) debunked conspiracy theories, which makes me suspicious of his reasoning capabilities.