memfree

When we mean the bad ones, it’d be, “My nightmare has come true.”

… seems like every news story evokes that thought these days.

I guess I just can’t hear “literacy gains” as anything but a postivie regardless of source; even (if not especially) if it is an ‘enemy’ population.

I am not confident I or most other Americans can always tell what is misinformation. A recent bout of AI generated ‘Am I the A-hole?’ post on reddit recently got a bunch of people angry (Meta would say, ‘highly engaged’) because enough of them though the stories might be true.

When the Fukishima power plant got hit by a tidal wave, I foolishly believed an ‘expert’ on TV that day who said the plant was designed so that lead shielding hoods would automatically cover the rods in the event of power loss. Well THAT didn’t happen. I no longer remember who the ‘expert’ was, so he could fool me again. Maybe he has.

I, too, know the trend of criminal U.S. administrations to tell the other side to tone it down and just go with the President. The current administration makes me more outraged than post-9/11 when we knew the hijackers were Saudis, we knew bin Laden was around Afghanistan/Pakistan, and we had a team of Nuclear inspectors WITHIN Iraq saying they’d found no evidence of such weapons, yet a few days before their official report was finished, Bush declares war on Iraq? With no exit strategy? When Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?

Rather than suggesting we all calm down, or that true patriots back the President, I’m simply seeing the article’s point in asking people to stop following the top, say, 2% most divisive voices. It is a sad truth that the worst liars will get their followers to disbelieve Dr. Fauci such that he becomes divisive through no fault of his own, but he won’t hit the critical ‘worst’ list because he’s not spouting vitriol of his own.

As far as Bernie goes, there were a good number of Bernie backers at Trump rallies, so I honestly doubt that anyone but moneyed think tanks have much bad to say about him.

I agree that as categories, the are different things, just as ‘tools’ are not the same as ‘weapons’, but ignoring the perncious overlap borders on criminal. If you follow actual news sites and reporters but omit the likes of Musk, you will still see Musk quoted, but it is more likely to be properly discredited where needed. At no point does the article suggest you avoid all partisan content, it simply says the most divisive is likely to hurt us all. You know the platforms profit from engagement, so they’ll promote the worst offenders’ content upward, but we don’t have to take that bait.

The accounts with the MOST divisive political content are unlikely to be your best source of information. You might hate Rachel Maddow or Charlie Kirk, but you’'ll be better off getting news from a generic MSNBC or FOX feed than either personality. Better still, pick BBC, Reuters, and AlJazeera to see a variety of views.

A reverse example of context: Project 2025 never explicitly says anything about IVF, but it repeatedly talks about human life “from conception to natural death”, which would mean IVF would be problematic. If you try quoting just the last sentence in this chunk, ‘day one’ might be interpreted as birth, but in context, ‘day one’ is obviously conception:

From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities. The Secretary must ensure that all HHS programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural death: Abortion and euthanasia are not health care.

P.S. Do we agree that Bernie Sanders is NOT divisive? That the majority of actual people agree with most of what Bernie says, and it is only a few rich interests that object?

No, not in context. They are talking about disimformation like, “using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including Covid-19” from Musk. They say:

A mere 0.1% of users share 80% of fake news. Twelve accounts – known as the “disinformation dozen” – created most of the vaccine misinformation on Facebook during the pandemic. These few hyperactive users produced enough content to create the false perceptions that many people were vaccine hesitant.

So if you cut out the the most divisive political accounts, you will not miss ANY actual news, but are likely to miss a huge pile of disinformation.

I’ve played this game enough that I’m tired of it. New DLC won’t change my mind.

The game got me to figure out that I don’t want to play a game where the people are always going to be really unhappy no matter how far I advance. If I’m playing a city/world builder, I want a game where my advancment also means things are better for the NPCs. In this game, my advancement means I can start with some tiny different perks, but nost of those are wiped out by Prestige runs, so the NPCs have really brutal conditions all the time. And if things start going well? Poof! You’re on to the next town before you can enjoy the last one.

Ah, yes, I remember those days with the text-only LYNX browser from the unix terminal and the joy of Netscape Navigator on machines that could handle windows. Searching was difficult until there was Alta Vista, which was AMAZING compared to the competition, but even it failed for D&D-style gamers who tried to search for “role playing games” and got back a list of a million sex sites and zero visible pen/paper/dice games. Happily, you could add boolean operator rules to get rid of some of that (NOT sex NOT babes NOT XXX) – but you’d either be typing a lot of naughty words to skip or you’d have to remember the sites that catered to RPGs because searching could be very hit or miss.

Compared to who? Pelosi? Trump?

Oliver is not qualified.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for holding the presidency. To serve as president, one must:

• be a natural-born citizen of the United States;
• be at least 35 years old;
• be a resident in the United States for at least 14 years.

as if he’d ever sun bathe

I’ve never had that happen (U.S.). I’ve either gone to the pound or accepted someone else’s pet when they could no longer care for care for it (due to: illness/death/move requiring dubious 30 day animal quarantine).

You are correct, but I mow kinda high and my lawn has lots of low flowering weeds and flowering shrubs. In the spring, there is patch of … probably purslane? and daffodils on the border. Then the comfrey has its first bloom, then the clover and dandelions. Right now there’s more dandelions and comfrey’s second bloom. Next comes the invasive morning glorys and rose of sharon. There are a bunch of other things that flower, like wild strawberries, wild violets, and yarrow that is stanted by getting chopped down every week or two – but there’s more and I don’t know all their names.

We also have some type of carpenter/bumble bee trying hard to destroy the edge of the porch overhang. I’m just letting them do their thing and plan on repairing it if/when it becomes a structural issue.

My lawn isn’t totally natural because I mow it, but I don’t use any chemicals. Despite some trees and shrubs, my yard doesn’t have ticks. We have grubs, mice, shrews, squirrels, birds, and occasional poison ivy that we pull up, but no ticks. They are in the park (with forest) a couple blocks away, but not in the trimmed lawns in my chunk of suburbia.

from Wikipedia:

Ticks like shady, moist leaf litter with an overstory of trees or shrubs and, in the spring, they deposit their eggs into such places allowing larvae to emerge in the fall and crawl into low-lying vegetation. The 3 meter boundary closest to the lawn’s edge are a tick migration zone, where 82% of tick nymphs in lawns are found.

Oh there;s lots of new experiences in getting old: going through social security rigmarole, turning grey (or bald), finding yourself unable to do stuff you used to do, arthritis, gout, bone loss, needing a cane, getting up several times a night for the sake of your bladder…

Pekin duck

edit: source: I owned Pekins.

I would make sure the owner knows about this behavior. Napping is probably the pup’s coping mechanism to deal with a potentially scary/chaotic/dangerous new environment, BUT there might be a medical issue. If the pup is sleepy/low-energy all the time or is in pain such that moving hurts, the owner will probably want to tell their veterinarian.

The coloration is ’ tabby ’ – in this case not pure tabby cuz sooo much white belly to snuggle!