Did Tesla “invent electricity?
Another social media poster, this one about Tesla, makes the rounds and most of it is misleading or wrong.
Crazy: The U.S. Racial Classification System is Nonsensical
In 1977, the US decided to classify people by race. We decided the world was made up of 4 “races” and 1 “ethnicity”. An indigenous heritage person in North America is “Native American”, but an indigenous person in South America is …. Hispanic. People in Korea, Japan, Singapore, Pakistan, India and more are “Asian” “race”, which makes no sense. And many people are of mixed racial heritage (including my family) – but oddly, even if only a tiny part of the heritage is an ethnic group, it is legal to declare yourself part of that group. As the interviewed professor notes, it is now possible for a majority of the U.S. population to qualify as a “minority owned business”. That’s funny when a majority can qualify as a minority 🙂 It is a big mess that was news to me as I had not thought about these issues before.
“The AI” as the new “appeal to authority argument
The AI – e.g. ChatGPT – may become the “appeal to authority” argument source within another year or so. Disagree with someone or something? Just quote them what The AI says – that will be seen as the authority. And those who control The AI will control the world.
Media: Where did “Bomb Cyclone” come from?
The media loves the term “bomb cyclone”, a technical term from meteorology that sounds super scary. Most of the public has no idea what it means, and even with the official definition, it still is mostly meaningless to the public. But it sounds scary. And that’s the main point.
The media continues to hype a fear monger whose 50 year old predictions have been wrong about everything
“60 Minutes” brings back Paul Ehrlich to make more scary fear-based predictions of the future. He’s been wrong about everything for more than 50 years – so why does the media do this nonsense?
Propaganda comes to restaurant menus
A little more information on restaurant menus could encourage people to choose meals with a lower climate footprint, according to a new study, which found that adding climate impact labels to foods was an effective strategy to reduce red meat consumption. Source: Beef burger or fish sandwich? Climate labels on menus can encourage people to eat less red meat, study shows | CNN To be fair, all restaurant menus are designed to encourage your purchase of higher profit items. They use…
Media myth busted: Suicides do not increase at holidays
Half of recent news reports about holiday suicides spread disinformation that suicides go up over the holidays: Summary:Â Despite media claims that suicide rates increase dramatically over the holiday period, researchers report the average daily suicide rate during the holidays remain among the lowest rate of any period of the year. Source:Â University of Pennsylvania The holiday-suicide myth, the false claim that the suicide rate rises during the year-end holiday season, persisted in some news coverage through the 2021-22 holidays, according to…
The asymmetry of “Freedom of speech”
Academics have long maintained they have a “freedom of speech” to pursue whatever they want to pursue in terms of research; this freedom extends to political opinions. In my state, all public sector workers have protection on their off-the-job speech. Private sector workers have no such protections and may be fired or receive negative performance reviews for their off-work speech. Which means when it comes to speech, some have more freedom than others, and that means, for example, that viewpoints of academics and public sector workers could be more influential because others may not be able to counter their comments.
Spin: Why misinformation didn’t wreck the midterms
Two years ago, we were told by multiple “sides” that misinformation and disinformation on social media threw election results. Two years later, oddly, everyone is pretending the same misinformation and disinformation no longer is an issue – which is not very believable. And then spin: “The amount of content we saw that you could call kind of election disinformation was actually larger than what we saw in 2020 — but overall, the effects were much more muted,” Source: Why misinformation…
How not to conduct a propaganda campaign
Climate hypocrites – they travel about the world with wild abandon while telling us we should not travel. This is how not to run a propaganda campaign and their hypocratic behavior, and not believing in what they are preaching, falls flat on the rest of us.