When propaganda does not stand the test of time
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman after the November 2016 election: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.” Today, all three major stock indices reached record levels.
Social media: 2 years ago, Google shut down the blog, email and all services of a prominent statistician
In 2017, without warning or recourse, Google shut down all services associated with Salil Mehta, a professor of statistics, editor of a statistics journal, author of a best selling book on statistics, a former Obama administration official and later, a polling statistics adviser to the Trump campaign. His offense? He ran a blog about mathematics! Google, Facebook and Twitter have become the totalitarian governments of the 21st century, stifling speech their algorithms choose to flag. Unlike us peons, Mehta is well connected and a huge outcry caused Google to reinstate his account.
Climate communications: the problem with buying cars based on miles-per-gallon
Nice illustration of how easy we can be fooled by numbers: to save gas, do you upgrade your 36 mpg car to a newer 46 mpg car, or do you upgrade your pickup truck from 15 mpg to 18 mpg? You drive both the same amount per year. Most people will select the 10 mpg fuel improvement – but they’ll save twice as much gas if they updated the pick up truck.
How Negative News Distorts Our Thinking | Psychology Today
News focused on the negative, is overly dramatic, leads us to false conclusions about the world and is largely pointless speculation, fear and dlick-bait headlines designed primarily to attract eyeballs to advertisers. News is also largely a waste of our time, says Psychology Today.
Climate Communications: Much of what we think we know about “sustainability” and “ethical” food choices is wrong, really wrong
Some great examples of how people make decisions – and conclusions – based on marketing propaganda. Many now choose “almond milk” because production doesn’t produce as much green house gases (notably methane) as produced by dairy milk. Except it takes 6.098 liters (1,611 US gallons) to make 1 liter of almond milk, and most almonds are grown in California which has high variability (e.g. frequent drought) in rainfall. People make supposedly environmentally friendly choices based on incorrect information, limited information, or missing critical context.
“Factfulness” is a must read book
Factfulness is an important book that opens our eyes to how our views of the world have been skewed, if not corrupted, by poor thinking skills and various groups, including the media, that focus on the negative and often inappropriately generalize small issues into seeming huge problems. The reality, as well documented in this book, is that the world is getting better, often way better – which is surprising when we are buried in negativity all day, every day.
Social media and the cult of “pseudo-profound bullshit” (heh!)
Social media is filled with “inspirational quotes” that are often nonsensical gibberish, or as one professor suggests “pseudo profound bullshit” 🙂
Gramblr Instagram photo uploader and malware botnot no longer available
Instagram intentionally makes it very difficult to upload photos from a PC. Instagram wants everything to be smartphone-centric. Many people use a variety of tricks to get around this upload problem including processing photos on their PC or Mac and then transferring them to their phone or tablet for upload using the Instagram app.
Because of this (dumb) limitation of Instagram, users wanted an easy way to upload photos from their PC. A malware company developed Gramblr as an easy way to upload from your PC. Their software was very sophisticated on many levels, one of which was that it secretly viewed Youtube videos behind the scenes each time you upload a photo to Instagram. Their business model was to sell Youtube video views and likes, and to deliver those views through the Gramblr bot net.
As of the summer of 2019, Gramblr has disappeared and their website is gone. The Gramblr botnet has been shut down (or at least no new users will get infected).
Research study finds those who post lots of social media “selfies” are viewed negatively by others
Post lots of selfies on social media? Others may view you more negatively than those who do not post lots of selfies.
Social media defined? Miserablism, the philosophy of pessimism and enjoyment of being depressed
Twitter does not represent the views of the people: it represents the views of a very tiny minority of angry and miserable people (most tweets come from about 2% of the population, a group that seems to very outraged and angry). There is a word for this: it’s miserablism, or the philosophy of pessimism and the enjoyment of being miserable.