Fake News

[caroljane]

10 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

No, but on Sundays at the shooting range, for example, I have over-heard them bragging about their Dad’s various exploits and accomplishments.

They do seem to be mighty proud.

Thanks, cunt.

You're welcome!  Braggart kids with guns are so darn cute

[Jon Letendre]

She can't do it.

[Brant Gaede]

6 hours ago, william.scherk said:

What is your best guess about "the attraction," Ellen, given what you know of me both in public postings and backstage discourse?  I mean, it may be time for psychological insight ... if the accused is not answering honestly.

If not desirous of opining on psychological quirks and foibles, what might make a reasonable explanation of 'attraction' -- for someone who is a fan of reason and an examiner of cultish things?  

Five bucks to the OL fund for a useful compilation.  

Intelligence. Rand land was built on brains. This doesn't exclude stupid or wrong behaviour. In fact it magnifies it.

The Enlightenment was built on reason and Objectivism is an extension of  that. But the wrong reason led to communism through Marxism. Moral righteousness led to the ends justifying the means--any means. This saturates the anti-intellectual left today. The intellectual left is dead leaving you with no home. It must be lonely in Vancouver.

--Brant

 

 

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Rand wouldn't like Trump. She was locked into anti anti-abortion.

It's too hard sometimes to move her around topically out of her time.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, caroljane said:

You're welcome!  Braggart kids with guns are so darn cute

One of the greatest things about the United States is the prevalence of guns. And hardly just for hunting. It has to do with the right to self defense, which is a primary right, unlike the Second Amendment which is a secondary legal right. The Founders talked of the "blood of tyranny" hence the Second. Today the military is too powerful. However, who's to say the military won't be on the side of the good guys?

Regardless, you should own firearms and know how to use them in case of societal breakdown. You'll need to get together with your neighbors and fight off the civilian criminal invaders. You see, the cops won't come.

One reason I moved back to Arizona was it's the most gun free State in the Union. You can pack concealed without a permit. People in the People's States of New York and New Jersey and such will someday be feasted upon.

Knock on my door. Don't kick it in.

--Brant

women and children, get behind me (and reload my guns)

[Jon Letendre]

56 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

One of the greatest things about the United States is the prevalence of guns. And hardly just for hunting. It has to do with the right to self defense, which is a primary right, unlike the Second Amendment which is a secondary legal right. The Founders talked of the "blood of tyranny" hence the Second. Today the military is too powerful. However, who's to say the military won't be on the side of the good guys?

Regardless, you should own firearms and know how to use them in case of societal breakdown. You'll need to get together with your neighbors and fight off the civilian criminal invaders. You see, the cops won't come.

One reason I moved back to Arizona was it's the most gun free State in the Union. You can pack concealed without a permit. People in the People's States of New York and New Jersey and such will someday be feasted upon.

Knock on my door. Don't kick it in.

--Brant

women and children, get behind me (and reload my guns)

Bravo, Brant!

My daughters' NRA Marksmanship Certificates were displayed on the walls at the club. They can discriminate which nut to shoot clean off of a guy with a pistol at 15 yards. We train real-life shooting drills on public lands in the mountains, take the occasional hand to hand and knife fighting courses, survival seminars, etc. We're doing our part, we're linked up with fellow patriots and we're quite ready for just about anything.

[Jonathan]

18 MOST MORTIFYING MEDIA MOMENTS OF 2018

‘This was the year when reporters ... began loosening the usual boundaries governing journalism’

https://news.grabien.com/story-18-most-mortifying-media-moments-2018-1

[william.scherk]

Mediagazer round-up on Claas Relotius, the Spiegel reporter who made up a whole lotta shite ...

 

Edited December 22, 2018 by william.scherk
Relotius

[Jonathan]

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

Mediagazer round-up on Claas Relotius, the Spiegel reporter who made up a whole lotta shite ...

 

Buh, buh, but muh fact-checkers! Muh unbiased, objective journalism! Muh safeguards and redundancies!

J

[Peter]

Maybe Sixty Minutes will do an expose on fake journalism. I would watch it.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, Peter said:

Maybe Sixty Minutes will do an expose on fake journalism. I would watch it.

Peter,

A fake news expose on fake news?

They would that journalism of the fake news, by the fake news, for the fake news, shall not perish from the media.

 

Michael

[Peter]

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Peter,

A fake news expose on fake news?

They would that journalism of the fake news, by the fake news, for the fake news, shall not perish from the media.

 

Michael

Say what?  The first sentence was understandable, you big lug.

Did I already send this? I saw it sitting on my computer.  Walter Williams on Fox. Bill Gates? Did he plunder to become rich, as in past generations? Hell no. He found a way to “please you” and now he is living like royalty with billions of honorably and honestly created dollars. Americans have an “instinct” for personal liberty. America, especially considering ALL HUMAN HISTORY, is the greatest empire for personal liberty. Humanity must not lose that instinct.

Later.  Watters is wearing large tennis shoes. On Watter’s World Tonight, a budget dilemma. We have more operations going on in Africa than the middle east. So, if we pull out of  xyz. . . . what then?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

10 hours ago, Peter said:

Say what?  The first sentence was understandable, you big lug.

Peter,

LOL...

You didn't recognize the second?

It was a play on a quote by Abraham Lincoln from The Gettysburg Address.

Quote

... that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Mocking the pompous self-righteous self-importance journalists currently make of themselves as contrasted to the absolute drek they constantly present to their public (including 60 Minutes these days), I gave them a solemn intonation in my comment to you:

Quote

... that journalism of the fake news, by the fake news, for the fake news, shall not perish from the media.

I mean, who can improve on Abraham Lincoln for eloquence?

Certainly not the fake news media itself.

So I borrowed his outline...

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A few comments on the Claas Relotius affair.

Summary: Relotius has been making up stuff, with emphasis on anti-Trump stuff, for years and publishing it in Der Spiegel in Germany (60 articles or so). Relotius won CNN's 2014 Journalist of the Year Award (best print category). The story was “Murderers are Carers” and published in Switzerland, but I haven't discovered if this was made up, too. At first blush, it's reasonable to assume at least parts of it were.

Good job, CNN!

For people who don't have the time to read 80 articles or so in one sitting off an RSS feed (like supplied above  ), here is the most juicy stuff:

Winner of CNN’s ‘Journalist of the Year’ Admits He Fabricated Stories

and 

The Relotius Scandal Reaches a Small Town in America

This last is cute because it lists some far out fantasies Relotius made up.,

But wait!

There's more!

It Gets Better–> CNN’s “Reporter of the Year” Claas Relotius Embezzled Donations Away from Syrian Street Children

From the article (but sourcing Der Spiegel):

Quote

Spiegel said it now had information that Relotius allegedly launched a campaign for readers to give money to help subjects of an article he wrote but that the bank details he gave directed the funds to his own account.

“Der Spiegel will give all the information it collects to public prosecutors as part of a criminal complaint,” it said on its website.

Spiegel said concerned readers had in recent days reported Relotius’s call for donations purportedly for orphaned Syrian children living on the streets of Turkey.

I want to remind readers that modern day reporters in the mainstream no longer check their facts, especially if they come from another reporter. They can't be concerned. They have more important things than journalism to do.

This guy Relotius has been the source for the fake news mainstream reporters for years, but all the while he was totally making shit up. During all that time, nobody thought to check his facts.

Think about that for a minute.

Everything you read from the fake news mainstream media--everything, all of it--is subject to this kind of vulnerability. Reporters are no longer reporters in that arena. They are copy/pasters with a political agenda, and with their toady noses stuck right up the rear ends of their crony corporate masters.

Michael

[Max]

Relotious has won a lot of rewards for his articles, many of them quite prestigious. But that doesn't make him even a good fiction writer. He writes sentimental PC stories, unpalatable for those who are not so PC. That he has had so much success so far, is caused by the fact that he gives his intended readers exactly what they want to hear, what confirms their own political views. Success by confirmation bias.

The reaction by Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn about his fantasy about Fergus Falls is fun to read. But... they themselves are not so much better when they write: "many of us feel a lot of responsibility right now, considering that our friends, family and neighbors voted against their own interests in 2016". They are probably not even aware how condescending their own attitude is. 

[Peter]

From: PaleoObjectivist To: atlantis Subject: ATL: Allie Oops--Bogus Science? Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 11:59:54 EST. Dear List Members: Considering some of the rather striking (not to say outlandish) claims about the "fundamental nature of reality" made on this list recently, it thought would be interesting to consider the following material from a recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Two questions: 1. Are the criteria of "bogus science" valid, or are they overgeneralizations and risky to apply consistently? 2. Do they apply to recent claims by Everett Allie about the basic constituents of nature? all 4 now, REB

========================================

The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science. The Chronicle of Higher Education, By ROBERT L. PARK

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is investing close to a million dollars in an obscure Russian scientist's antigravity machine, although it has failed every test and would violate the most fundamental laws of nature. The Patent and Trademark Office recently issued Patent 6,362,718 for a physically impossible motionless electromagnetic generator, which is supposed to snatch free energy from a vacuum. And major power companies have sunk tens of millions of dollars into a scheme to produce energy by putting hydrogen atoms into a state below their ground state, a feat equivalent to mounting an expedition to explore the region south of the South Pole.

There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. How are juries to evaluate them?

Before 1993, court cases that hinged on the validity of scientific claims were usually decided simply by which expert witness the jury found more credible. Expert testimony often consisted of tortured theoretical speculation with little or no supporting evidence. Jurors were bamboozled by technical gibberish they could not hope to follow, delivered by experts whose credentials they could not evaluate.

In 1993, however, with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. the situation began to change. The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects.

In ruling that such testimony was not credible because of lack of supporting evidence, the court instructed federal judges to serve as "gatekeepers," screening juries from testimony based on scientific nonsense. Recognizing that judges are not scientists, the court invited judges to experiment with ways to fulfill their gatekeeper responsibility.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer encouraged trial judges to appoint independent experts to help them. He noted that courts can turn to scientific organizations, like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to identify neutral experts who could preview questionable scientific testimony and advise a judge on whether a jury should be exposed to it. Judges are still concerned about meeting their responsibilities under the Daubert decision, and a group of them asked me how to recognize questionable scientific claims. What are the warning signs?

I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs -- even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. Thus, scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially. An attempt to bypass peer review by taking a new result directly to the media, and thence to the public, suggests that the work is unlikely to stand up to close examination by other scientists.

One notorious example is the claim made in 1989 by two chemists from the University of Utah, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, that they had discovered cold fusion – a way to produce nuclear fusion without expensive equipment. Scientists did not learn of the claim until they read reports of a news conference. Moreover, the announcement dealt largely with the economic potential of the discovery and was devoid of the sort of details that might have enabled other scientists to judge the strength of the claim or to repeat the experiment. (Ian Wilmut's announcement that he had successfully cloned a sheep was just as public as Pons and Fleischmann's claim, but in the case of cloning, abundant scientific details allowed scientists to judge the work's validity.)

Some scientific claims avoid even the scrutiny of reporters by appearing in paid commercial advertisements. A health-food company marketed a dietary supplement called Vitamin O in full-page newspaper ads. Vitamin O turned out to be ordinary saltwater.

2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The idea is that the establishment will presumably stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the balance of wealth and power in society. Often, the discoverer describes mainstream science as part of a larger conspiracy that includes industry and government. Claims that the oil companies are frustrating the invention of an automobile that runs on water, for instance, are a sure sign that the idea of such a car is baloney. In the case of cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann blamed their cold reception on physicists who were protecting their own research in hot fusion.

3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. Alas, there is never a clear photograph of a flying saucer, or the Loch Ness monster. All scientific measurements must contend with some level of background noise or statistical fluctuation. But if the signal-to-noise ratio cannot be improved, even in principle, the effect is probably not real and the work is not science. Thousands of published papers in para-psychology, for example, claim to report verified instances of telepathy, psychokinesis, or precognition. But those effects show up only in tortured analyses of statistics. The researchers can find no way to boost the signal, which suggests that it isn't really there.

4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. If modern science has learned anything in the past century, it is to distrust anecdotal evidence. Because anecdotes have a very strong emotional impact, they serve to keep superstitious beliefs alive in an age of science. The most important discovery of modern medicine is not vaccines or antibiotics, it is the randomized double-blind test, by means of which we know what works and what doesn't. Contrary to the saying, "data" is not the plural of "anecdote."

5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. There is a persistent myth that hundreds or even thousands of years ago, long before anyone knew that blood circulates throughout the body, or that germs cause disease, our ancestors possessed miraculous remedies that modern science cannot understand. Much of what is termed "alternative medicine" is part of that myth. Ancient folk wisdom, rediscovered or repackaged, is unlikely to match the output of modern scientific laboratories.

6. The discoverer has worked in isolation. The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood's science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life. Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists.

7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. A new law of nature, invoked to explain some extraordinary result, must not conflict with what is already known. If we must change existing laws of nature or propose new laws to account for an observation, it is almost certainly wrong. I began this list of warning signs to help federal judges detect scientific nonsense. But as I finished the list, I realized that in our increasingly technological society, spotting voodoo science is a skill that every citizen should develop.

Robert L. Park is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and the director of public information for the American Physical Society. He is the author of Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press, 2002).

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 12/18/2018 at 2:16 PM, Ellen Stuttle said:

William, you won't like my "best guess."  You like gossip, inquisiting nosily.  You like posting gobs of stuff.  You like getting a rise from people and then whining about their not treating you respectfully.  You crave attention, which you wouldn't have much success at getting on liberal sites. You aren't seeking rational discourse and aren't actually "a fan of reason," as you describe yourself, but Objecivish sites give you a place where you can preen ruffled feathers over people's lack of desire to discuss issues with you and where you can adopt a superiority tone tut-tuting their supposed (sometimes actual, granted) cultishness.

Ellen

Ellen,

Wow.

I missed this earlier. (How in hell did I miss that?) Jon just quoted it elsewhere, but without the quote box, so I looked it up. And there it is in all its glory.

That describes much of what I, myself, observed (and observe) in William's posts. To... a... tee... Very well articulated, Ellen.

When William was doing more intellectual and less activism stuff, I thought his posts were challenging, like the court jester archetype he identifies with. Very good food for thought, even with the shortcomings you highlighted.

But then Trump happened...

And the manmade climate change putsch started losing steam.

 

Now it's just activism.

Oh well... People tend to panic and lose their way when their side is removed from political power.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Re fake news media, if you know where to look, they don't hide it.

How about a former Time Magazine editor at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting? He says he likes propaganda, especially when ysed on Americans. And when it got dicey about third world countries, he said he "hates last questions," and refused to address the issue, and scooted out of there.

At a Council on Foreign Relations forum about "fake news," former Editor at Time Magazine Richard Stengel directly states that he supports the use of propaganda on American citizens - then shuts the session down when challenged about how propaganda is used against the third world pic.twitter.com/ClAT5POv7G

— William Craddick (@williamcraddick) May 11, 2018

Richard Stengel is a man who never has to worry about where his next paycheck comes from. It comes from the globalist establishment creeps.

Michael

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's the full session:

I've only listened to 10 minutes so far and I am getting totally creeped out.

At around 7:21, one of the ladies, Joan Donovan, was talking about the woeful lack of gatekeepers of public information (a woeful cost to society) due to the current low cost of broadcasting, a woeful lack of people she called "good arbitrars of truth." She also said that "truth is a collective response to a problem," that "we decide that things are true," that "we have to socialize people into truth."

Wow...

Not wow in a good way, either...

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

There are no good or innocent members of the Rockefeller Council on Foreign Relations, one of the tools for total elite control. They are the enemy.

[Jonathan]

Fake News and Fake Social Media went apeshit over their Narrative™ that a "smirking white kid" led his gang of haters to surround and taunt and harass a victim of their racist Trumpist fascism.

Yeah, so, smiling while a protestor walks up to you and gets up in your face is now an act of mockery and superiority, and of getting up in the protestor's face, and that smug little shit white punk should be killed for the racist crime that he committed.

Well, after days of this type judging before knowing anything, and not wanting to know, the kid is now responding and giving his side of the story:

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S MARCHSMIRKING MAGA HAT STUDENT RESPONDSTo Accusations of Harassment

 

492.8K

 

 8,072

 1/20/2019 4:17 PM PST 

Smirking MAGA Hat Student Responds to Accusations of Harassment

1/20/19 -- The student who came face-to-face with Nathan Phillips has released a statement to the media about what he claims actually happened Friday. Nick Sandmann, a junior at Covington Catholic High School, says he and his classmates were waiting for their busses to arrive at the Lincoln Memorial when a handful of African-American protesters began shouting "hateful things" at the group of boys. Sandmann says that he and his classmates were given permission by their adult chaperones to sing their school spirit chants in response. At some point during this chanting, Sandmann says a separate group of protesters from the Indigenous People's March approached his group, and claims that Nathan Phillips then "waded" into the crowd with his drum. Other videos that have surfaced online appear to show Phillips doing exactly that...

---

All of the above may be true, but, fuck it, let's crucify the smirky bastard anyway. He got played, and didn't realize at the time how the left would destroy him for being peaceful and pleasant, so he deserves to have the rest of his life destroyed. 

J

[Jon Letendre]

1 hour ago, Jonathan said:

Fake News and Fake Social Media went apeshit over their Narrative™ that a "smirking white kid" led his gang of haters to surround and taunt and harass a victim of their racist Trumpist fascism.

Yeah, so, smiling while a protestor walks up to you and gets up in your face is now an act of mockery and superiority, and of getting up in the protestor's face, and that smug little shit white punk should be killed for the racist crime that he committed.

Well, after days of this type judging before knowing anything, and not wanting to know, the kid is now responding and giving his side of the story:

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S MARCHSMIRKING MAGA HAT STUDENT RESPONDSTo Accusations of Harassment

 

492.8K

 

 8,072

 1/20/2019 4:17 PM PST 

Smirking MAGA Hat Student Responds to Accusations of Harassment

1/20/19 -- The student who came face-to-face with Nathan Phillips has released a statement to the media about what he claims actually happened Friday. Nick Sandmann, a junior at Covington Catholic High School, says he and his classmates were waiting for their busses to arrive at the Lincoln Memorial when a handful of African-American protesters began shouting "hateful things" at the group of boys. Sandmann says that he and his classmates were given permission by their adult chaperones to sing their school spirit chants in response. At some point during this chanting, Sandmann says a separate group of protesters from the Indigenous People's March approached his group, and claims that Nathan Phillips then "waded" into the crowd with his drum. Other videos that have surfaced online appear to show Phillips doing exactly that...

---

All of the above may be true, but, fuck it, let's crucify the smirky bastard anyway. He got played, and didn't realize at the time how the left would destroy him for being peaceful and pleasant, so he deserves to have the rest of his life destroyed. 

J

The sick fucks on the left want him now destroyed and if he had been slain, the sick fucks would right now be celebrating. Fuck the facts to hell, the sick sacks of shit would be celebrating right now. And they would be repeatedly citing the MAGA hats — “the boys should have known better than to wear those hats.” These are disgusting, inhuman people.

[Jonathan]

1 hour ago, Jon Letendre said:

The sick fucks on the left want him now destroyed and if he had been slain, the sick fucks would right now be celebrating. Fuck the facts to hell, the sick sacks of shit would be celebrating right now. And they would be repeatedly citing the MAGA hats — “the boys should have known better than to wear those hats.” These are disgusting, inhuman people.

They are SOOOOO excited about destroying this kid and his classmates.

J

[Jon Letendre]

Our elites want civil war because it could save them. Their brainwashed minions are pushing for it harder than ever.

[Jonathan]

I've been observing a variety of lefties online today. They are super pissed that smirky white boy is being given a chance to explain himself. They're saying it ain't fair, because non-whites would not be given the same chance. Once a whitey is accused of something, that should be it. Guilty. You don't get to change the Narrative™ with facts. They already judged him, so there's no going back, and you don't get to take away their enjoyment of punishing him.

J