media matters

[cradleandshoot]

https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/ ... inequality

Our nearest dog park is in a large county park with many other amenities. It's in a diverse area, nearby public housing.
The park users, including the dog park & dog beach, are representative of the population in that part of town.
No problems that I've heard about. You're trying way too hard.

Took me less than 3 minutes to pull and scan all those links. Aint me trying too hard, it's called simple research.

Those are 3 minutes of your life you can never get back. I hope it was worth the effort.

[MDlaxfan76]

You're going to need an explanation to go along with that comment, aint buyin' it.
Color me naive, now do some 'splainin'.

Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies politics and government is referred to as political science.

It may be used positively in the context of a "political solution" which is compromising and nonviolent,[1] or descriptively as "the art or science of government", but also often carries a negative connotation.[2] The concept has been defined in various ways, and different approaches have fundamentally differing views on whether it should be used extensively or limitedly, empirically or normatively, and on whether conflict or co-operation is more essential to it.

A variety of methods are deployed in politics, which include promoting one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising internal and external force, including warfare against adversaries.[3][4][5][6][7] Politics is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local governments, companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level.

In modern nation states, people often form political parties to represent their ideas. Members of a party often agree to take the same position on many issues and agree to support the same changes to law and the same leaders. An election is usually a competition between different parties.

A political system is a framework which defines acceptable political methods within a society. The history of political thought can be traced back to early antiquity, with seminal works such as Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics in the West, and Confucius's political manuscripts and Chanakya's Arthashastra in the non-Western cultures.[8]

I would add this is tendentially...er...tangentially related

Dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική, dialektikḗ; related to dialogue; German: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned argumentation. Dialectic resembles debate, but the concept excludes subjective elements such as emotional appeal and the modern pejorative sense of rhetoric.[1][2] Dialectic may thus be contrasted with both the eristic, which refers to argument that aims to successfully dispute another's argument (rather than searching for truth), and the didactic method, wherein one side of the conversation teaches the other. Dialectic is alternatively known as minor logic, as opposed to major logic or critique.

Within Hegelianism, the word dialectic has the specialised meaning of a contradiction between ideas that serves as the determining factor in their relationship. Dialectical materialism, a theory or set of theories produced mainly by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, adapted the Hegelian dialectic into arguments regarding traditional materialism. The dialectics of Hegel and Marx were criticized in the twentieth century by the philosophers Karl Popper and Mario Bunge.

Dialectic tends to imply a process of evolution and so does not naturally fit within classical logics, but was given some formalism in the twentieth century. The emphasis on process is particularly marked in Hegelian dialectic, and even more so in Marxist dialectical logic, which tried to account for the evolution of ideas over longer time periods in the real world.

This doesn't do it for me, here's the statement.

All social interactions involve politics. Don't be naive.

You can start and end that with "all".

My own first response above was "That does seem to be a rather absolute statement, so I too am interested in hearing pizza unpack it."

Indeed, the "All" was the problematic part...I offered my own thought as to how that might nevertheless be fair.

[Farfromgeneva]

I didn't mean you personally, I meant the dog park thing is a real stretch.

The medium.com one was a bit superfluous and whatnot within the numerous links I could pull with limited need to "research" but this one has more data and analysis and note that it wasn't one that was mentioned in reply

https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/ ... inequality

[Farfromgeneva]

You're going to need an explanation to go along with that comment, aint buyin' it.
Color me naive, now do some 'splainin'.

Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies politics and government is referred to as political science.

It may be used positively in the context of a "political solution" which is compromising and nonviolent,[1] or descriptively as "the art or science of government", but also often carries a negative connotation.[2] The concept has been defined in various ways, and different approaches have fundamentally differing views on whether it should be used extensively or limitedly, empirically or normatively, and on whether conflict or co-operation is more essential to it.

A variety of methods are deployed in politics, which include promoting one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising internal and external force, including warfare against adversaries.[3][4][5][6][7] Politics is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local governments, companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level.

In modern nation states, people often form political parties to represent their ideas. Members of a party often agree to take the same position on many issues and agree to support the same changes to law and the same leaders. An election is usually a competition between different parties.

A political system is a framework which defines acceptable political methods within a society. The history of political thought can be traced back to early antiquity, with seminal works such as Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics in the West, and Confucius's political manuscripts and Chanakya's Arthashastra in the non-Western cultures.[8]

I would add this is tendentially...er...tangentially related

Dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική, dialektikḗ; related to dialogue; German: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned argumentation. Dialectic resembles debate, but the concept excludes subjective elements such as emotional appeal and the modern pejorative sense of rhetoric.[1][2] Dialectic may thus be contrasted with both the eristic, which refers to argument that aims to successfully dispute another's argument (rather than searching for truth), and the didactic method, wherein one side of the conversation teaches the other. Dialectic is alternatively known as minor logic, as opposed to major logic or critique.

Within Hegelianism, the word dialectic has the specialised meaning of a contradiction between ideas that serves as the determining factor in their relationship. Dialectical materialism, a theory or set of theories produced mainly by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, adapted the Hegelian dialectic into arguments regarding traditional materialism. The dialectics of Hegel and Marx were criticized in the twentieth century by the philosophers Karl Popper and Mario Bunge.

Dialectic tends to imply a process of evolution and so does not naturally fit within classical logics, but was given some formalism in the twentieth century. The emphasis on process is particularly marked in Hegelian dialectic, and even more so in Marxist dialectical logic, which tried to account for the evolution of ideas over longer time periods in the real world.

This doesn't do it for me, here's the statement.

All social interactions involve politics. Don't be naive.

You can start and end that with "all".

Highlighted the relevant in a mess of words I realize.

[Farfromgeneva]

https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/ ... inequality

Our nearest dog park is in a large county park with many other amenities. It's in a diverse area, nearby public housing.
The park users, including the dog park & dog beach, are representative of the population in that part of town.
No problems that I've heard about. You're trying way too hard.

Took me less than 3 minutes to pull and scan all those links. Aint me trying too hard, it's called simple research.

Those are 3 minutes of your life you can never get back. I hope it was worth the effort.

Look at the timestamp, I don't sleep well more than 4-4.5hrs and couldn't move around because family (and dog sleeps half on my body and turns into a real bi**h when I move) so didn't lose anything.

[old salt]

https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/ ... inequality

Our nearest dog park is in a large county park with many other amenities. It's in a diverse area, nearby public housing.
The park users, including the dog park & dog beach, are representative of the population in that part of town.
No problems that I've heard about. You're trying way too hard.

Took me less than 3 minutes to pull and scan all those links. Aint me trying too hard, it's called simple research.

If dog parks are a perq of white privilege, as one of your links claims,
what does that make publicly funded lax fields. Research that one Professor.
That seems like a more relevant subject for this forum.

[old salt]

I didn't mean you personally, I meant the dog park thing is a real stretch.

The medium.com one was a bit superfluous and whatnot within the numerous links I could pull with limited need to "research" but this one has more data and analysis and note that it wasn't one that was mentioned in reply

https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/ ... inequality

It was addressed in detail, with links, in the reply below, which you subsequently quoted.
You need more sleep. Try not taking your phone to bed with you. Pet the dog instead.

https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/ ... inequality

Our nearest dog park is in a large county park with many other amenities. It's in a diverse area, nearby public housing.
The park users, including the dog park & dog beach, are representative of the population in that part of town.
No problems that I've heard about. You're trying way too hard.

[Farfromgeneva]

I didn't mean you personally, I meant the dog park thing is a real stretch.

The medium.com one was a bit superfluous and whatnot within the numerous links I could pull with limited need to "research" but this one has more data and analysis and note that it wasn't one that was mentioned in reply

https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/ ... inequality

It was addressed in detail, with links, in the reply below, which you subsequently quoted.
You need more sleep. Try not taking your phone to bed with you. Pet the dog instead.

https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/ ... inequality

Our nearest dog park is in a large county park with many other amenities. It's in a diverse area, nearby public housing.
The park users, including the dog park & dog beach, are representative of the population in that part of town.
No problems that I've heard about. You're trying way too hard.

I stopped caring.

[old salt]

Dispatch from the culture wars. This would make for a great episode of Mad Men @2022.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/n ... alenciaga/

New York Times Covering for Sickos at Balenciaga
By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY, November 30, 2022

“When High Fashion and QAnon Collide.”
That’s how the New York Times frames the controversy around a now-withdrawn ad campaign by the ultra-luxury fashion brand Balenciaga. After recalling other provocative fashion shows and events thrown by the brand, the Times describes the controversy this way:

One campaign featured photos of children clutching handbags that look like teddy bears in bondage gear. Another campaign featured photos that include paperwork about child pornography laws. Together, they ignited a firestorm that traveled from the internet to Fox News, fueled by allegations that Balenciaga condoned child exploitation. The controversy has become one of the most explicit collisions of internet culture, politics, fashion and conspiracy theories to date.

Now, that’s not quite the whole of it. The image that caught people’s attention was a distressed-looking child holding the BDSM teddy bear in a scene littered with cocktail glasses. Recent ad images for Balenciaga also featured, in the background, a coffee-table book by painter Michaël Borremans, whose work includes images of castrated toddlers. Another photo taken in an office incorporates a diploma made out to John Philip Fisher, the name of a man convicted in 2018 for molesting his granddaughter. Another image, with a child standing in a messy room, featuring a teddy bear in fishnets, has warning tape with the word “BAALENCIAGA,” a play on the name of the brand and the name of the Old Testament Canaanite god who demanded child sacrifice.

Balenciaga has issued a series of butt-covering Instagram posts about “grievous errors” and ongoing “internal and external investigations.” They’ve announced a lawsuit against one of the photography set designers. The brand is practically pretending that they never saw the photos before they were published across all their brand channels, when anyone familiar with the fashion world knows that top executives and legal counsel would have vetted and signed off on every pixel before they were published. Balenciaga’s paid influencer Kim Kardashian issued a statement saying that she was distressed by the images but has spoken to the brand and believes they will do better in the future.

Nobody has been fired.

But why does the New York Times story go so softly — to the point of refusing to confirm the basic facts? Notice the Times description, “handbags that look like teddy bears in bondage gear.” Well, they don’t just look like that — that’s what they are. Later in the same story. “Social media users zoomed in on images from the campaign that appeared to feature, as a prop, paperwork from a Supreme Court decision on child pornography laws.”

Notice that all the active agency is thrown on the “social media users” whom the headline has already smeared as QAnon types. The “campaign appears to feature.” What is this passivity? As a prop, Balenciaga featured in its ad campaign the decision Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, a ruling that struck down specific laws restricting virtual child pornography. Quite literally, the Times is shifting the blame to those who saw the contents of the image (“they zoomed in, the disgusting prurients”) instead of pursuing the multinational fashion house that deliberately displayed this image.

The only thing the New York Times seemed to uncover in defense of Balenciaga was that the images that came under scrutiny were from two different ad campaigns. But Balenciaga’s creative director Demna Gvasalia has been trafficking in disturbing imagery like this for years. Balenciaga’s stylist, Lotta Volkova, keeps an Instagram account that constantly displays satanic imagery and images of children in distress.

The fashion industry regularly ends up in controversies like this. In 1999, Calvin Klein scrapped a planned Times Square billboard featuring children in their underwear when it was deemed by some observers to be of interest to pedophiles. Calvin Klein had been known for overtly sexual underwear-ad campaigns throughout that decade. But compared to the images produced by Balenciaga in this recent campaign, those old images seem to have the “warmth and spontaneity that you find in a family snap-shot,” as CK claimed at the time.

The Balenciaga ads were designed to appear sinister. It would be helpful for cultural critics as sharp as those at the New York Times to acknowledge this rather than try to blame it on moms who noticed or imply that anyone who saw something wrong is a conspiracy theorist.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Dispatch from the culture wars. This would make for a great episode of Mad Men @2022.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/n ... alenciaga/

New York Times Covering for Sickos at Balenciaga
By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY, November 30, 2022

“When High Fashion and QAnon Collide.”
That’s how the New York Times frames the controversy around a now-withdrawn ad campaign by the ultra-luxury fashion brand Balenciaga. After recalling other provocative fashion shows and events thrown by the brand, the Times describes the controversy this way:

One campaign featured photos of children clutching handbags that look like teddy bears in bondage gear. Another campaign featured photos that include paperwork about child pornography laws. Together, they ignited a firestorm that traveled from the internet to Fox News, fueled by allegations that Balenciaga condoned child exploitation. The controversy has become one of the most explicit collisions of internet culture, politics, fashion and conspiracy theories to date.

Now, that’s not quite the whole of it. The image that caught people’s attention was a distressed-looking child holding the BDSM teddy bear in a scene littered with cocktail glasses. Recent ad images for Balenciaga also featured, in the background, a coffee-table book by painter Michaël Borremans, whose work includes images of castrated toddlers. Another photo taken in an office incorporates a diploma made out to John Philip Fisher, the name of a man convicted in 2018 for molesting his granddaughter. Another image, with a child standing in a messy room, featuring a teddy bear in fishnets, has warning tape with the word “BAALENCIAGA,” a play on the name of the brand and the name of the Old Testament Canaanite god who demanded child sacrifice.

Balenciaga has issued a series of butt-covering Instagram posts about “grievous errors” and ongoing “internal and external investigations.” They’ve announced a lawsuit against one of the photography set designers. The brand is practically pretending that they never saw the photos before they were published across all their brand channels, when anyone familiar with the fashion world knows that top executives and legal counsel would have vetted and signed off on every pixel before they were published. Balenciaga’s paid influencer Kim Kardashian issued a statement saying that she was distressed by the images but has spoken to the brand and believes they will do better in the future.

Nobody has been fired.

But why does the New York Times story go so softly — to the point of refusing to confirm the basic facts? Notice the Times description, “handbags that look like teddy bears in bondage gear.” Well, they don’t just look like that — that’s what they are. Later in the same story. “Social media users zoomed in on images from the campaign that appeared to feature, as a prop, paperwork from a Supreme Court decision on child pornography laws.”

Notice that all the active agency is thrown on the “social media users” whom the headline has already smeared as QAnon types. The “campaign appears to feature.” What is this passivity? As a prop, Balenciaga featured in its ad campaign the decision Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, a ruling that struck down specific laws restricting virtual child pornography. Quite literally, the Times is shifting the blame to those who saw the contents of the image (“they zoomed in, the disgusting prurients”) instead of pursuing the multinational fashion house that deliberately displayed this image.

The only thing the New York Times seemed to uncover in defense of Balenciaga was that the images that came under scrutiny were from two different ad campaigns. But Balenciaga’s creative director Demna Gvasalia has been trafficking in disturbing imagery like this for years. Balenciaga’s stylist, Lotta Volkova, keeps an Instagram account that constantly displays satanic imagery and images of children in distress.

The fashion industry regularly ends up in controversies like this. In 1999, Calvin Klein scrapped a planned Times Square billboard featuring children in their underwear when it was deemed by some observers to be of interest to pedophiles. Calvin Klein had been known for overtly sexual underwear-ad campaigns throughout that decade. But compared to the images produced by Balenciaga in this recent campaign, those old images seem to have the “warmth and spontaneity that you find in a family snap-shot,” as CK claimed at the time.

The Balenciaga ads were designed to appear sinister. It would be helpful for cultural critics as sharp as those at the New York Times to acknowledge this rather than try to blame it on moms who noticed or imply that anyone who saw something wrong is a conspiracy theorist.

Thanks Jasper.

[Kismet]

Take a few minutes and listen to Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa about free speech, social media and the rise of authoritarian government using free speech to stifle free speech. Goebbels type stuff.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Take a few minutes and listen to Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa about free speech, social media and the rise of authoritarian government using free speech to stifle free speech. Goebbels type stuff.

Fantastic. The present moment of the past. That’s something to remember.

[DMac]

Take a few minutes and listen to Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa about free speech, social media and the rise of authoritarian government using free speech to stifle free speech. Goebbels type stuff.

Outstanding!!

[kramerica.inc]

Longtime NBC reporter and newscaster Miguel Almaguere remains suspended for "not meeting NBC standards" on the initial Paul Pelosi story.

But no news on what standards were broken, what was erroneous about the report, or who wrote/approved the script in the first place.

Here is the report in question:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/nbc-news- ... one-damage

[a fan]

Take a few minutes and listen to Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa about free speech, social media and the rise of authoritarian government using free speech to stifle free speech. Goebbels type stuff.

Outstanding!!

We have only one tool in the drawer....the DoJ starts behaving like it did in the Ma Bell days, and starts pulling monopolies apart. They're in EVERY industry.

What would that do to Facebook? It would give us different editors/owners.

Naturally, getting rid of monopolies will NEVER happen in America. They're the one's putting these wankers in Federal office.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Longtime NBC reporter and newscaster Miguel Almaguere remains suspended for "not meeting NBC standards" on the initial Paul Pelosi story.

But no news on what standards were broken, what was erroneous about the report, or who wrote/approved the script in the first place.

Here is the report in question:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/nbc-news- ... one-damage

Who cares.

[jhu72]

Take a few minutes and listen to Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa about free speech, social media and the rise of authoritarian government using free speech to stifle free speech. Goebbels type stuff.

... really smart for such a short person.

[old salt]

Now that Musk owns Twitter, panic is setting in.

[old salt]

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mat ... ia-debate/

Matt Taibbi, Douglas Murray Dominate Trust-in-Media Debate
By ARI BLAFF, December 1, 2022

Toronto — Conservative commentator Douglas Murray and veteran reporter Matt Taibbi soundly defeated their opponents in a Wednesday evening debate on the question of whether to trust the mainstream media, convincing a significant segment of the audience to abandon their faith in an institution they say is hopelessly compromised by bias.

The debate, held at Roy Thomson Hall in downtown Toronto and sponsored by the Canadian cultural non-profit Munk Debates, featured Taibbi and Murray squaring off against the tremendously popular non-fiction author Malcolm Gladwell and New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg, who made the case for continued trust in major American and Canadian outlets.

Pre-debate polling showed the audience virtually split 48 to 52 percent on the question of whether to trust the mainstream media.

However, over the course of nearly two hours, Taibbi and Murray compellingly persuaded over one-third of audience members (39 percent) to abandon their prior allegiance to the position championed by Gladwell and Goldberg.

To date, Taibbi and Murray won by the largest margin ever recorded at a Munk Debate. The result stunned the sold-out crowd of 2,630 viewers normally accustomed to smaller swings.

“I grew up in the press. My father was a reporter. My stepmother was a reporter. My godparents were reporters. Every adult I knew growing up seemed to be in media,” Taibbi said during his opening remarks to start the debate. “I love the news business. It’s in my bones. But I mourn for it. It’s destroyed itself.”

Taibbi’s opening remarks echoed those raised in his most recent book Hate Inc., in which he explores how the mainstream American media abandoned its commitment to neutrality in favor of fan service. Taibbi argues the change was driven by an effort to retain a niche audience of like-minded readers and viewers who remained after the industry was gutted by tech-driven changes in the advertising market.

The Canadian trucker protests featured prominently in the debate. During Murray’s opening remarks, the British commentator and fellow National Review contributor, laid into Prime Minister Trudeau and Canadian media outlets for failing to challenge the government-approved narrative that the protests were organized by bigots of various stripes.

“The Canadian mainstream media acted as an amen chorus of the Canadian government,” Murray argued. “Now why is this is rancid? So utterly, utterly, rancid and corrupt? Because in this country your media–your mainstream media–is funded by the government.”

Goldberg also discussed the truck protest, citing her reporting for the New York Times as evidence mainstream interest in unexpected stories.

“I showed up at the Ottawa protests kind of expecting the sort of things that I’ve seen at Donald Trump rallies, at various even further right events, and didn’t find it. I was really quite astonished…and I told my editors that this is what I found and they said: ‘Great, that’s more interesting than what we thought you were gonna find.’ And it was more interesting,” she said.

Although the panelists repeatedly said they’d like to broaden the scope of the discussion beyond America, the conversation inevitably returned to American culture-war issues, a topic which Murray focuses on in his work as a writer for the U.K.-based Spectator. The discussion featured conversations surrounding the coverage of Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 election, Covid-19, and the impact of hormone therapy on children.

“I was struck, once again, in listening to our opponents by how much their arguments resemble the kind of classic structure of a conspiracy theory,” Gladwell said later on in the evening. “This is a much milder more naive variant on the traditional conspiratorial model.” During the event, Gladwell also scoffed when Murray and Taibbi raised the issue of Hunter Biden’s laptop being censored by Big Tech ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

According to a Gallup poll from October 2022, barely a third of Americans trust the “mass media” to “fully, accurately, and fairly” report the news.

The survey was the first time Gallup ever recorded the percentage of Americans having no trust in the media greater than those that have a “great deal/fair amount” of trust in the media.

[Typical Lax Dad]

What a day.