27 minutes ago, swansont said:

I’m not sure what the rationale is for “not torturing/killing people is just as bad as torturing/killing them”

Indeed. They are scare words. Many in the US don’t know what they actually mean, and the truth is that republicans love socialism when it benefits them. Loosening regulations is one example - companies are e.g. allowed to pollute more and society as a whole pays the price of dealing with it, with the bulk of the burden falling on the poorer people.

Politicians say “socialism/communism” hoping it makes everyone clench up, but when the actual policies are discussed, honestly, they sound pretty good.

It needs to be emphasized more that bailing out failing companies and throwing public money their way is Socialism.

1 hour ago, sethoflagos said:

You seem to have made utterly zero attempt to understand what I posted here.

I guess you never read 1984.

Apparently, I am not smart enough to understand what you have posted because I fail to see what relevance 1984, which I have read, has to do with anything I have written...

Edited November 8Nov 8 by npts2020

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Indeed. They are scare words. Many in the US don’t know what they actually mean, and the truth is that republicans love socialism when it benefits them. Loosening regulations is one example - companies are e.g. allowed to pollute more and society as a whole pays the price of dealing with it, with the bulk of the burden falling on the poorer people.

Politicians say “socialism/communism” hoping it makes everyone clench up, but when the actual policies are discussed, honestly, they sound pretty good.

I think this is very true, and is causing some of the misunderstandings on this site. I think for folks who have not been on both side of the pond, the difference in context is sometimes difficult to assess. And even in the European context, there are differences. In Germany, for example folks wouldn't call social demoractic policies socialist, but instead the term "social" is used. I.e. the difference between mixed economy (which is the reality also in the US) and systemic changes toward collective ownership is clearly delineated, whereas in US rhetoric they are almost fully mixed in common parlance.

1 minute ago, npts2020 said:

Apparently, I am not smart enough to understand what you have posted because I fail to see what relevance 1984, which I have read, has to do with anything I have written..

Okay, let's start with the concept of Newspeak. To save time I'll quote from a Google AI response to the prompt "What is the nature and purpose of Newspeak in 1984"

Nature of Newspeak

Newspeak is a controlled, artificially reduced language designed to replace Standard English (referred to as Oldspeak). Its core characteristics include:

• Shrinking Vocabulary: Words are systematically deleted every year to narrow the range of human thought. If a word does not exist, the concept behind it cannot be named or easily conceived.

• Elimination of Nuance and Antonyms: Complex, independent, or contradictory words are stripped away. For example, words like "bad" are eliminated and replaced by adding prefixes to approved roots (e.g., "ungood" for bad, "plusgood" for very good, and "doubleplusgood" for extremely good).

Purpose of Newspeak

The primary purpose of Newspeak is mind control—specifically, to make heretical or rebellious thought literally unthinkable.

• Preventing Thoughtcrime: In Ingsoc, independent thought or personal identity is a thoughtcrime. By removing words like freedom, justice, morality, or democracy, the Party ensures citizens lack the vocabulary to articulate or even desire opposition.

• Enforcing Orthodoxy and Doublethink: The language forces citizens to accept doublethink—the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously—by merging opposites and removing grey areas.

• Eradicating History: By shrinking how the past can be described, the Party makes it easier to rewrite history and cut off emotional or intellectual connections to a time before Big Brother.

As Orwell notes in the novel's appendix, the ultimate goal of Newspeak is that once Oldspeak is completely dead, any thought departing from Party doctrine will be literally impossible to express or conceive.

Imagine what would happen to chemistry if the periodic table were reduced by criminal law to "H, He, metals"

What would happen to physics if any reference to the discretisation of energy (ie QM) were made illegal?

Now look at what you stated.

On 11/7/2026 at 4:16 PM, npts2020 said:

One of the problems is that words like "socialism", "communism", "capitalism", "oligarchy" etc are defined in such a way as to set off chemical reactions in the dinobrains of many of our fellow citizens, causing no small number of them to be unable to articulate or even follow a logical argument. IMO it is the use of such words, as shorthand for systems that place society ahead of the individual vs systems that prioritize the individual over society in general, does nothing positive for the side of the debate I have seen the majority on this forum seem to take.

If we are robbed of the standard English terms used in sober political analysis, then we are deprived of the ability not only to perform sober political analysis, but even to understand that such an exercise could exist.

This is not a fiction. It happens. You can see the results in this thread. I've made no particular effort to hide my polical opinions, and yet it's clear that there are few here who could distinguish them from those of a Tankie. I'd guess @Sensei and @Otto Kretschmer might but few others would simply because they lacked the necessary language to distinguish them.

O, and since you mention "individualism vs society", Richard Murphy released an interesting take on that this morning.

Enjoy!

44 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Okay, let's start with the concept of Newspeak. To save time I'll quote from a Google AI response to the prompt "What is the nature and purpose of Newspeak in 1984"

Thanks for the breakdown of 1984, Seth.
I've never really understood Catcher in the Rye.
Can you do a similar breakdown of the alienation, rebellion and pain of growing up, in Salinger's book, for me 🙂 .

2 hours ago, StringJunky said:

It needs to be emphasized more that bailing out failing companies and throwing public money their way is Socialism.

Yeah !
No one complained about when the banks were bailed out in 2009-10.
( and that would be the worst kind of Socialism; almost as bad as letting 8 Million Ukrainians starve, so Joe can sell the grain to help industrialize Russia )
But I guess Socialism is 'un-bad' when it benefits your Billionaire cronies.
( see what I did there @npts2020 ... newspeak )

55 minutes ago, MigL said:

Can you do a similar breakdown of the alienation, rebellion and pain of growing up, in Salinger's book, for me 🙂

Beyond me, I'm afraid. Other than Dick and Asimov, I've never been able to make head-nor-tail of American literature. Just couldn't work out who was supposed to be the good guy.

4 hours ago, StringJunky said:

It needs to be emphasized more that bailing out failing companies and throwing public money their way is Socialism.

Except when it's a necessary government intervention in the interests of national security. Ask yourself why Churchill was perfectly okay with Ernest Bevin running British industry during WWII.

On 11/5/2026 at 8:45 PM, sethoflagos said:

Oddly enough, a few hours before the Bernie clip showed up, I was thinking about a Wealth Tax and wondered if going as high as 2% per annum might be politically viable. Didn't realise how myopic I was being.

A bit of an issue is that the difficulties of implementing a wealth tax is that in practice they tended to have issues, and I am not sure whether there has been enough work and suggestions to address those. From what I have read there is possibility that inheritance and corporate tax might be ultimately a better way for redistribution, but I have not read in-depth about that to really have an informed opinion. That being said, I the public discussion is even more superficial than that and really is more about ideology than mechanism.

20 minutes ago, CharonY said:

A bit of an issue is that the difficulties of implementing a wealth tax is that in practice they tended to have issues, and I am not sure whether there has been enough work and suggestions to address those. From what I have read there is possibility that inheritance and corporate tax might be ultimately a better way for redistribution, but I have not read in-depth about that to really have an informed opinion. That being said, I the public discussion is even more superficial than that and really is more about ideology than mechanism.

Since wealth is an umbrella term for buildings, land, investments, and money, and each behave differently when leveraged, treating it as a single thing does seem problematic. As I understand it, the UK could make significant progress by introducing a land tax, and making the existing property tax more progressive in nature. Taxing investments tends to have an immediate adverse effect on growth, and money just disappears all too easily into offshore accounts.

The concept could maybe become significantly easier with international collaboration, but that's hardly a runner as things stand.

1 hour ago, sethoflagos said:

Since wealth is an umbrella term for buildings, land, investments, and money, and each behave differently when leveraged, treating it as a single thing does seem problematic. As I understand it, the UK could make significant progress by introducing a land tax, and making the existing property tax more progressive in nature. Taxing investments tends to have an immediate adverse effect on growth, and money just disappears all too easily into offshore accounts.

The concept could maybe become significantly easier with international collaboration, but that's hardly a runner as things stand.

I think you have nicely summarized the main challenges I have read about.

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

I think you have nicely summarized the main challenges I have read about.

There are national differences. The UK tax authorities are okay with me drawing a pension below the taxation threshold in the UK without reference to any income I might receive from my activities in Nigeria. The IRS are not so lenient with American nationals. Their reach is global, much to the chagrin of some of my drinking buddies over here.

7 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

There are national differences. The UK tax authorities are okay with me drawing a pension below the taxation threshold in the UK without reference to any income I might receive from my activities in Nigeria.

Is that not dependent on Tax treaties ?
I recall my dad used to get a small Italian, or Swiss, pension; it wasn't taxed at the source so he needed to pay tax on that pension in Canada.
If it had been taxed at the source, there would be no Canadian taxation on it.

On a separate issue, I know the UK has had a fairly aggressive inheritance tax for over 30 years.
Has that done anything for wealth inequality ?
It certainly hasn't done anything to help the economy, as it keeps going from bad to worse.
( or is that just caused by bad political decisions )

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Is that not dependent on Tax treaties ?

Yes, but the UK has no such treaty with Nigeria, the UAE, or Gabon which covers me for the last 30 years.

1 hour ago, MigL said:

On a separate issue, I know the UK has had a fairly aggressive inheritance tax for over 30 years.
Has that done anything for wealth inequality ?

I guess. No impact on me so not something I've investigated.

1 hour ago, MigL said:

It certainly hasn't done anything to help the economy, as it keeps going from bad to worse.
( or is that just caused by bad political decisions )

Don''t believe everything you read. The UK economy is performing better than most at the moment.

The only time I recall (not personally, I was pre-zygotic) the US trying for all-out socialism was when Truman tried to nationalize the steel industry during the Korean War. A war situation was seen as the only basis for such a move. The Supremes rejected his attempt, and I don't think the Left was too happy, either, since his socialist moment was kind of stained by the fact that he was trying to bust the humps of United Steelworkers union. 🙄

While there might have been some legitimate worry that a union strike could affect war production, Congress clenched more over socialism than it did over a hypothetical dip in steel production.

And, let the record show, there are other members here who would never mistake @sethoflagos for a tankie. Even his probiotic experiments seem to show a lack of zeal for totalitarian control. 😉

Is 'tankie' an affectionate term for someone who thinks tanks are the solution ?
( eg. Hungarian revolution of November, 1956 )

It's what the rest of the British left started calling those who still supported the Soviet Union during the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. It split the Communist Party of Great Britain into Eurocommunists vs Tankies. They never really recovered.

On 11/8/2026 at 2:14 PM, sethoflagos said:

If we are robbed of the standard English terms used in sober political analysis, then we are deprived of the ability not only to perform sober political analysis, but even to understand that such an exercise could exist.

Bingo!!! That's exactly the problem I was outlining. Many political terms used do not have the same definitions in common parlance as they do when used by experts.

On 11/8/2026 at 2:14 PM, sethoflagos said:

If we are robbed of the standard English terms used in sober political analysis, then we are deprived of the ability not only to perform sober political analysis, but even to understand that such an exercise could exist.

I suspect that many of the people misusing the terminology aren’t much interested in sober political analysis. But the difference in meaning is one reason in some discussions I ask what the poster means by their use of hot-button terminology (e.g. socialism, woke, DEI) I think we have some responsibility to accommodate non-expertise; we do it in science discussions when someone uses terminology that has a technical meaning that’s at odds with the everyday use and understand that the meaning of a claim will differ depending on which definition you use (e.g. acceleration)

10 hours ago, swansont said:

I suspect that many of the people misusing the terminology aren’t much interested in sober political analysis. But the difference in meaning is one reason in some discussions I ask what the poster means by their use of hot-button terminology (e.g. socialism, woke, DEI)

Their intent is to kill the analysis, because they fear the light it would shine on them. But there is a spectrum of usage from outright malice through to simple ignorance. Not much point in dialogue with the former, but you're right in regard to the latter. These terms are unordered pigeonholes with diverse contents. Somewhere in there is a wrong question in need of an insightful reframing. The first stage must be to unpack the pigeonhole. I admire your patience when you do this.

11 hours ago, swansont said:

I think we have some responsibility to accommodate non-expertise; we do it in science discussions when someone uses terminology that has a technical meaning that’s at odds with the everyday use and understand that the meaning of a claim will differ depending on which definition you use (e.g. acceleration)

And 'random'. How often is that word used here correctly? I reckon 9 times out of 10 it should be replaced with 'diverse'.

I can't remember exactly which thread it was, but recently after years of glazed-over ignorance, I finally discovered what you guys mean by the term 'trace'. The fog lifted and I'm left thinking "ffs, is that all it was?". We all have these little bits of shorthand jargon and useful pigeonholes in our respective disciplines. It can be really helpful to others if we occasionally unpack the odd one or two into more accessible language.

Edited Thursday at 06:47 AM3 days by sethoflagos
missing word

I've seen physics noobs trip over "massive particles."

9 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Their intent is to kill the analysis, because they fear the light it would shine on them.

More disturbing on the American political spectrum are those who don't actually know what analysis is, as a tool used in discourse. They don't fear the light, they believe they are casting the light via pithy slogans or aphorisms that arrive in the guise of common sense. Hey, it's common sense like grandpa had, we don't need no stinkin' analysis. We'll just utter the magical words and let the mic drop.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=czp0bb3HlGQ&pp=ugUHEgVlbi1JTg%3D%3D&ra=m

President Trump,

You should have watched this video.

There is a lot of truth here in the link I posted. Trump won because he wasn’t a standard politician. His screw ups were many and no one cared. He beat Hillary because people were tired of traditional politicians. But that worked out to be even worse.

But what he was good at is improving industry. He randomly placed and set rates of tariffs which U.S. citizens pay. But tariffs mean Americans can buy a $10,000 dollar EV and bankrupt the U.S. car industry.

Military and industry were in his view what made America great. To be great you have to have a great economy to influence the World.

But that is a strong business model but people have more needs than a strong economy. People don’t mind standing behind Israel if there was a legitimate reason and every policy wasn’t a lie.

And Bernie touched on AI. Why do we spend billions to replace us? AI makes billions now but why have a race to our demise?

No of it makes freaking sense and is why I was studying to be an engineer and not a politician.

But as I have be told that good politicians are important but they will never fix all the world’s problems.

What is the scientific way to solve problems? Logic does not apply to everything problem. People have conflicting beliefs. Some times it best to not act on a problem. Doing nothing doesn’t fix a problem.

Scientifically can you prove we’d be better off with Harris than Trump? If you are familiar with the sci-fi shoe Quantum Leap where he fixed things right that went wrong, does changing one outcome always mean an improvement. Is that the theme of all science fiction?

Trump is arrogant and is pissing everyone off. But maybe that was needed. Part of his strategy is making everyone mad and confused about what he is doing. But as Bernie said act like he is on the ballet.

None of it makes any sense. Trillions to AI and cut an inexpensive billion to food Aid; building monuments and placing his name everywhere.

I you like or hate Trump it shouldn’t mater. We should be able to debate. It is just Trump cause division in any opposition every speech. Bernie was right the republicans were a rubber stamp. But that is how Trump forced his policies through.

It is probably a good thing the midterms turned out blue. Because there are other issues than the economy.

If you think I am defending Trump in this post, I’m not. Bernie is making sense. I am just giving the reasons people voted for Trump and why politics is a trap. We should be doing science, but you can’t avoid politics because it affects all our lives.

On that socialism thing....

https://theconversation.com/debate-in-new-york-city-over-city-run-groceries-is-not-just-about-food-but-something-bigger-291749

(...) Municipal grocery stores would offer New Yorkers a similar choice alongside private retailers. But as a public option, they would create a visible alternative against which shoppers can judge privately owned stores, setting a benchmark for food prices and service quality. They would also demonstrate how public investment can be used to make an essential good more affordable.

(...)That is why the five grocery stores carry a broader significance, in my view. They offer a different model of public investment that makes the government much more visible in providing an essential service – and more accountable for its results. New Yorkers will get an opportunity to judge that contribution directly.

(...)Municipal grocery stores would offer New Yorkers a similar choice alongside private retailers. But as a public option, they would create a visible alternative against which shoppers can judge privately owned stores, setting a benchmark for food prices and service quality. They would also demonstrate how public investment can be used to make an essential good more affordable.

(...) In 1934, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s administration began selling discounted milk to low-income families, but the initiative drew complaints from grocers about unfair competition. Independent merchants similarly protested the city’s efforts to subsidize a new Pathmark supermarket in East Harlem in the 1990s, warning that it would put local grocers out of business.

A more recent example is the city’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health program, known as FRESH. Since 2009, it has offered supermarket developers and operators long-term tax breaks and zoning incentives to build or expand dozens of stores in underserved neighborhoods.

These incentives have helped increase grocery retail space, but shoppers don’t see the public support behind them.

FRESH is just one example of an approach toward supermarket financing that gained momentum in the 1990s, when governments sought to address social problems by encouraging private investment. Food insecurity was blamed on a scarcity of neighborhood supermarkets, not on prices being beyond reach for local shoppers.

Subsidizing new stores promised better nutrition and economic development without confronting poverty or inequality, and FRESH reflects that approach. Participating supermarkets must devote space to perishable foods, but they’re not required to offer affordable prices. That may be one reason why researchers have found that adding supermarkets to low-income neighborhoods, by itself, doesn’t substantially improve residents’ diets.

(...) This hidden government role is hardly confined to grocery stores. Much of what government does for Americans is delivered indirectly, through tax credits, subsidies and private institutions. Because the public contribution is obscured, people often give credit to private markets for the benefits provided by public policy, from student loans to healthcare.

This invisibility is a consequence of policy design and influences how citizens understand government, a phenomenon that political scientist Suzanne Mettler described as “the submerged state.”(article continues)

16 hours ago, Trurl said:

We should be doing science, but you can’t avoid politics

I hope you do science better than you do politics, because your analysis fails on many levels.

16 hours ago, Trurl said:

Scientifically can you prove we’d be better off with Harris than Trump?

We would be better simply because, even if she did nothing, things would not be as bad as D Trump has fu*ked them up.

Even with tariffs, Americans are willing to pay the higher costs, because it would cost even more to produce/mine/build in the US.
His policies certainly made improvements to stocks ( by eliminating foreign competition ), but you don't go buy groceries or gas with stock futures; he helped Billionaires who make their money from investments, but ordinary Americans got saddled with higher prices and a return of inflation, just to get by.

The simple ( and accurate ) analysis is

"It's the Economy, stupid"

( and the corruption ... and the failed foreign policies ... and the war ... and the inhumane treatment of immigrants ...and the Epstein Files ... and the contempt for Law and Constitution ... and ... )

Edited Friday at 10:09 PM1 day by MigL

On 11/8/2026 at 8:14 PM, sethoflagos said:

Okay, let's start with the concept of Newspeak. To save time I'll quote from a Google AI response to the prompt "What is the nature and purpose of Newspeak in 1984"

Imagine what would happen to chemistry if the periodic table were reduced by criminal law to "H, He, metals"

What would happen to physics if any reference to the discretisation of energy (ie QM) were made illegal?

Now look at what you stated.

If we are robbed of the standard English terms used in sober political analysis, then we are deprived of the ability not only to perform sober political analysis, but even to understand that such an exercise could exist.

This is not a fiction. It happens. You can see the results in this thread. I've made no particular effort to hide my polical opinions, and yet it's clear that there are few here who could distinguish them from those of a Tankie. I'd guess @Sensei and @Otto Kretschmer might but few others would simply because they lacked the necessary language to distinguish them.

O, and since you mention "individualism vs society", Richard Murphy released an interesting take on that this morning.

Enjoy!

Tankie basically only refers to Marxists-Leninist who uncritically support the USSR and other communist/socialist states. Generally, it means the kind of people who say the 1932-33 famine was caused by the peasants who deserved IT, the Great Terror was necessary, the Great Leap Forward deaths are CIA propaganda and so on.

11 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

Tankie basically only refers to Marxists-Leninist who uncritically support the USSR and other communist/socialist states. Generally, it means the kind of people who say the 1932-33 famine was caused by the peasants who deserved IT, the Great Terror was necessary, the Great Leap Forward deaths are CIA propaganda and so on.

Same, same, though since the Western Left didn't experience these events in such a visceral way (a case of 'someone else's problem'), our usage was a bit looser and more directed at teasing the uncomfortable apologists rather than condemning the relatively rare out-and-out Stalinists. I only ever met a handful of those in the UK., and they were more embedded in some of the unions than active in the various parties.

Amused that you include the GLF. In my early adulthood I spent about ten years as a trade union rep and Labour Party activist, and AFAIK Chinese politics was completely off the radar in those circles. I'm really only aware of the 1911 revolution because both PRC and ROC celebrate my birthday.

On 11/12/2026 at 5:36 PM, TheVat said:

More disturbing on the American political spectrum are those who don't actually know what analysis is, as a tool used in discourse. They don't fear the light, they believe they are casting the light via pithy slogans or aphorisms that arrive in the guise of common sense. Hey, it's common sense like grandpa had, we don't need no stinkin' analysis. We'll just utter the magical words and let the mic drop.

You might appreciate this little nugget of analysis

Every 6 months, a company called Adfontis Media releases this chart that you might have seen before. It's a graph of media reliability and bias. The higher up you go, the more trustworthy the news source is. And then you can either go left or right to get an idea of their bias. The graph that hits Twitter shows only about 140 sources, but Advantis actually rates close to 5,000 outlets, podcasts, and even streamers, even YouTubers. And for about a year now, here's where they rate us officially unreliable.

But we'll get back to that. Advontis Media is a media rating agency. There are a few of them out there. Advontis Media, Bias Fact Check and All Sides being the big ones. It's not always clear how they make their money. All sides even told the press they're not profitable, but that doesn't matter. You most likely haven't heard of any of them, but you've definitely heard of these guys. Ground News.

Ground News is proudly not a media bias rating agency. Ground News' pitch is that for any given news item, they will show you how many times it was covered by left, center, and right-wing outlets as rated by those other agencies that they mostly don't pay for. And then Ground News's website will also AI generate a short summary of the left, center, and right-wing article so that you can quickly compare coverage. This methodology, ground news says, produces a neutral and objective version of the news.

...

That's right. Hell, even we did a ground news ad way back when. So, I wanted to take a second to give an example of what recession news coverage looks like using today's sponsor, Ground News. To their credit, there is some evidence that in very particular circumstances, a service like Ground News can help people form opinions they wouldn't normally with their typical media diet. But, it's been a few years since we've thought about them, and we felt like doing a little digging. ground News was maybe not was not was not what it said it was and was not doing what it what it told these YouTubers that it was doing right.

Ground News isn't an objective, neutral, or even apolitical media project. Ground News is a right-wing SCOP. Let's start with the money question. Ground News gets its funding from subscribers. We don't know how many. And according to their website, missional aligned independent individual investors with no ties to corporate media, big tech, or government affiliations. We don't know if most of the money comes from subscribers or investors. And if it's the latter, we don't know who those people are. As Ground News very well knows, the ownership and funding structure of a media company is important to determining its bias and reliability. Here's them revealing other news sources ownership and funding info, but they won't tell us where their money comes from. So we asked Eric, Ground News seems to be funded by Joe Rickettts, who's a major Republican billionaire mega donor.

Now, seems to be is unfortunately the best we can do because all we have on ground news is who serves on the board of directors of their parent company. That list includes the founders, an angel investor, an actual former journalist, which is good, and then this guy, Manuel Matka, who when you look him up, you quickly find seems to also work for an AI education company, an AI consulting company, and Straight Arrow News, a ground news style aggregator and media bias company. All three of which are owned by Joe Rickettts, our major Republican billionaire mega donor from before. Now, there's a lot to say about Rickettts. Most obviously, he's donated at least $3.2 million to Trump's campaigns. Many billionaires do, but there's more to Joe than meets the eye.

.....

.....

Chapter 9: Ground News as a tool

This is why something like ground news, despite having potential and by giving you an insight into media orgs that don't disclose their biases, ultimately fails. I think part of what ground news does is great, but giving you the average output of any given political landscape doesn't tell you what is true, especially not this political landscape.

So to say that, oh, you know, this Fox News report about what Israel is doing in Gaza is, you know, 20% right-wing andthis Democracy Now report about what happened after an air strike in Gaza is 40% leftwing or whatever. I don't know that that adds any helpful context or tools for understanding that media to a reader or a viewer. I think what it does is push people back towards the media that ground news is saying is is in the middle like the the CNN's or the MSNBC's and the New York Times and you know like I do that these aren't purely objective sources. I'm repeating myself, but there is just no such thing, especially when it comes to Israel's genocide. These outlets have repeatedly shown a commitment to presenting the events of the last 3 years comfortably within the framing of the IDF. Even as the Israeli government has shown itself, to put it lightly, particularly anti-journalist, blocking reporters from entering Gaza, killing journalists, destroying international news offices, and outright lying to reporters as a military tactic. Everything I just showed on screen is from 2021, by the way. This is what flu before October 7th. It's only gotten worse.

Chapter 10: Solutions to media bias

But I don't want to end on a pessimistic note. There are solutions to this that aren't ground news. The first one is obvious. It's that we need better media literacy. I think that one of the greatest skills a person can attempt to learn is media literacy. And that applies to to news and journalism, but also film and television and and other cultural products in media. And I think not only does it enrich your understanding of that media and and make it more interesting and fun to look at the spectrum of perspectives and media that's coming out. But I think it also gives you a sense of composure and confidence in understanding what that what that is, where it's coming from.

Anybody can learn these things. They're not like magic. They're not you don't have to be a genius. I think the number one thing is you have to look at what does this person have to gain by advocating for this position. Like why would they want this that they're talking about or why would they potentially be covering this issue in this way? Like what do they stand to gain? If you start to look at media through that lens, things become a lot clearer. And you know, when you see a New York Times op-ed about how we should be all in on AI and people should stop complaining about data centers, who wrote that? You know, is it somebody who works at a venture capital firm that is invested in data centers? Like often times that's the case. And then looking at the other end of it is like, you know, you see the left advocating for universal healthcare. Like what does that person have to gain from that? Are they going to be personally enriched by a program of universal healthcare? No. The second solution is a bit harder.

It's workerowned, self-sufficient media companies that don't need billionaires.

I think amidst a polarized media environment, there's a lot of money and clout to be gained by coming into a space saying, you know, we're doing things differently here. We're unbiased. We're presenting all these different, you know, opinions and options, but I think that we have to look at, are they putting their money where their mouth is? How is this business operated?

Chapter 11: Final reflections

Is it workerowned? Is it operated in a way that is ethical?

Something like ground news, which gives you a very bad idea of the bias of the news outlets it is ripping information from for free, doesn't [music] help. It doesn't make developing media literacy better, and it doesn't help journalism become a more self-sufficient endeavor. and we desperately need and deserve better media. So, if you want to help bring it into being, supporting worker-owned media co-ops like Means could be a first step. And of course, shameless self-plug there. I've been elected to the board of directors at Means. But the fun part about a shameless plug for a worker co-op means that we all benefit from people signing up.

Anyway, I'd like to thank the mostly unknown entities behindAdvontis and their lovely chart for placing our channel so unfavorably and giving us a great opportunity to show our audience just how skeptical weshould all be about unbiased rating aggregators like Adfontis and Ground [music] News. If you can place white supremacists, genocide deniers, antivaxers, and some of the most objectionable slot peddlers on the internet in the same category as someone who produces academically rigorous content that happens to be criticizing the existing power structures that benefit allegedly the people behind these rating sites. I think that's a pretty good indication of where your allegiance lies. But what do I know? We're an unreliable outlet.

Edited 18 hours ago18 hr by sethoflagos