#It's because of the disinformation that you initially think he was doing what he was doing because he was ignorant of how it affected | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

simonjadis · 2 months

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Jesus christ. I'm scared to ask but... what the hell happened with The Watcher fandom?

I don't even go here, but here's my understanding

Several years ago, Shane and Ryan left Buzzfeed to launch their own company, teaming up with Steven Lim. Watcher has grown, producing multiple shows. Initially, people were supporting them on Patreon (for discord + early access) and YouTube. both of these are increasingly notorious platforms that take cuts from profits. YouTube payouts are massive if you're just 1-2 people getting a million views per video and a new successful video every week. but it doesn't cover a growing company's needs

To be blunt, for Watcher to continue as a company, they need cut out "middleman" services that both regulate their content and take a cut of their earnings. That means moving off of YouTube and it means changing the Patreon to just be for the podcast.

So, on Friday (April 19) Watcher announced that they're launching their own streaming model. Everything that they'd already shared would remain on YouTube, but future content was coming out on their own service for a $5.99 sub. Which in turn would be lower than or about the same as anyone subscribing on Patreon, and would also be without the horror of YouTube ads

(Again, I don't go here, but I will not watch advertisements voluntarily, least of all on yewchube. I have ublock origin/firefox and when it comes to streaming, I have the ad-free subscription or I don't watch it at all)

To be clear, they made this announcement well in advance of launching, and were making sure that international viewers would still be able to view (something that some major corporate streamers have not done). They also emphasized that they're unbothered by profile sharing, so that $5.99 per month could come down to $2 per month for three friends, or just (as I often do) one person buying it and sharing the login with friends.

Also you can gift subs. All of this is unfortunately moot, and it seems that many of the people reacting to the announcement did not learn or care about any of this.

The reaction to this news was, to be blunt, unhinged. Obviously, it's normal for some people who cannot afford $5.99 per month to feel disappointed. And any change can be unnerving for a fandom. But the vitriol (some of it, like the person who accused them of "ruining Taylor Swift's day," was admittedly very funny) was pretty vicious.

I think that a lot of it was disinformation based (unclear on where the idea that they were removing old content from YouTube originated, as it certainly was not from their announcement video) and a lot of it was (predominantly younger) viewers looking for social media clout by coming out with the coveted "worst new take" to impress their friends.

And so, SO much of it was racism. For some reason, a lot of people have invented a narrative where Shane is being held hostage by the other two co-owners, and desperately wants to release content for free to the detriment of his company, but Ryan and Steven have somehow conspired to make their company profitable so that they can continue to (evilly) pay their employees.

From what I can tell (again, I don't even go here), the bulk of the backlash ended up targeting Steven. People in the fandom are already weird about him and have an ugly tendency to invent mean things about him (a couple of years ago, some of these same ill-behaved "fans" decided that he was homophobic, not because of anything that he did or said).

So this was an excuse for these vicious little beasts to let loose. They were leaving abhorrent comments on his loved ones' Instagram photos -- some from months ago.

On the less overtly racist front, backlash included people saying that they just want Shane and Ryan sitting in a room talking about stuff. It is unusual for creatives to not care about the quality of what they make; of course Shane and Ryan and Steven care about production quality, about being able to film ghost-hunting and other shows. They're not 23-year-olds scraping by, they're artists and storytellers and they are also employers.

I don't know these men and I don't generally feel sorry for men, as a rule, but it must have been pretty devastating to find out how many of their most vocal "fans" seem to despise them, feel entitled to their art for free, and will rage against them like this.

Which leads to Monday's grim announcement, which as I understand it was that they're going to put new Watcher content up on YouTube with a delay. I'm not saying that it's a bad policy; I'm saying that it means that they remain tethered to YouTube for what content they can include, and it's showing these rancid trolls that their cruelty works.

I'm not going to say that this is "letting the terrorists win" because I'm not trying to victim-blame Watcher here. But I worry about what these rotten little beasts will do now that they've felt the rush of victory.

I cannot emphasize enough that I do not even go here. plenty of people very much go here and have written at greater length and in greater detail than i have. I'm just horrified. I don't even go here

#watcher #watcher entertainment #I don't even go here #anon #ask #anon ask

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platoniccereal · 1 year

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If you could undo any of the retcons in DA, what would you choose and why?

the inquisition.

i mean, this is a short answer, but as time goes by, i understand that this is an honest one. this is a tangent, but i guess dai is just an example of electronic arts' production hell if bioware planned the second game only as a bridge for the inquisition's main conflict, and then we get this regarding the mage uprising. like, it's reasonable to assume that since da2 was supposed to be a preamble, the dai's initial main focus was the mage rebellion? and then it's just one main quest in the beginning of the game, and that's it.

but this is not about retcons, it's just me being annoyed. it's just the dai is the most fruitful regarding the topic.

hawke suddenly hating on blood magic. they tried so hard to push it with leandra's death, and then just decided to take the matter in their own hands, ig.

whatever the fuck hawke and varric say about anders. this is not their point of view, at least not in every case, in da2??

whatever the fuck they did to dalish.

like, vallaslin? i guess it's cool if you get inspired by real-world peoples, and then decide to make vallaslin slave marks.

or make their gods powerful slavers Just Like The Nations that inflicted the genocide on them. nothing about andrastianism, tho.

dalish actually kick out the mages is the obvious one.

the point of view on the red crossing. same reason. i count it as a retcon because of the implications that elves actually did that (i.e. the exalted march) to themselves.

also iirc they changed relationships between dalish and city elves/ made it worse to shit on elves again. stop that wtf!! they won't, ofc.

i dunno if it's a retcon or just conscious disinformation, but the presentation of celene and briala in-game. no spoilers, but did they suddenly decide that celene actually didn't do anything she did in the masked empire?

whitewashing of alistair, fiona and briala. they don't look like that, you fuckers???

make these cullen endgame sliders canon again and work from here, cowards. i actually got them in my playthrough even tho they deleted them, afaik. (the ones where he snaps and kills three mages.)

actually, the whole cullen arc. i won't say anything new here, his story was supposed to end in dao, da2 at most.

and i think there are other sliders from dao they retconned and put aside, like with the circle that mages built near orzammar? do it, cowards! it would make such a good plot point in a normal version of dai where your focus is the mage rebellion.

the ending of dragon age absolution. i'm sorry, did anyone find it satisfying? did anyone go, like, hell yeah finally? or i knew that!

the wardens. of course they're suddenly all that stupid to fall for cory's lap dog's lies and shenanigans!

i dunno if the last one counts as a retcon, but it surely falls into the same line of crimes against the previous lore. suddenly bioware felt an urge to shit on every group da:o players held dear. because grey morality. but, you know, even without "i like diversity and opportunity to be a dick, i don't appreciate when the game tries to push an agenda in defense of the oppressors and you can't fucking escape it", sooner or later one should understand that trying to mix grey with every colour in the picture will lead only to it looking dirty and messy. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

thank you for your question! :)

#dragon age inquisition #dragon age #bioware critical #cullen critical #i guess #just should label it #ask

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reflections-in-a-critical-eye · 2 years

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Hi BMT ! How are you ?

What I wanted to talk about was how this fandom just makes theories up and just spread it as if it was a fact ? When I first got into BTS late 2019, I saw all these fans spreading the theory that Jungkook’s army + J tattoo was meant for all the members as if it was a fact Jungkook stated himself and I remember thinking, wtf are these people talking about and why do I have to go through mental gymnastics to figure out which letters represent which member and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Jungkook, someone I consider as a clever and intelligent person, mixed their stage and real names ? And I questioned so many army back then about where they got this information from, where Jungkook might have said it and no one could give me an answer. It’s honestly scary how one individual makes shit up and people just go with it and a very few actually take the time to think about the things that are said instead of just blindly following the mass. I personally saw the tattoo as ARMY + JM and at the time I wasn’t even aware of ships or whatever. I also find it a little weird and boring how everything a duo in the group does (one specifically) becomes or gets turned into a Ot7 moment. I personally think that brotherhood kumbaya OT7 agenda gets pushed way too far and it honestly sometimes makes things not as enjoyable to me. I can obviously see that the 7 of them are really great friends, it’s just that this fandom makes sure any new fan that shows interest in the band must be aware that they’re BROTHERS and a family and my favorite (not), how Jungkook was raised by his members as if he doesn’t have parents and a biological brother as well. Sorry this is probably all over the place but after finding your blog I finally feel like I can express the frustration that I might be feeling towards this fandom without being harassed or called an OT7 anti.

Have a great day!!

Hey, anon! I'm good, I just finished watching Joel Kim Booster's Netflix special, Psychosexual, and now I'm back for some late night blogging 😊

Isn't it crazy how fan theories just become facts in the fandom? And so many people are not even questioning it. And what's worse is that, just as you said, they spread it for new fans when they try to "educate them". Twitter for example or tiktok are platforms that have a major contribution to disinformation. I see it all the time. They don't fact check, even if it's something quite simple that can be easily resolved with a basic google search. Instead they ask other users and if one says it's like that or someone/something is problematic, they just take it as it is and go with it. Laziness and a lack of patience. Residents of social media who don't know how to use the internet outside of their go-to platforms are guilty of this behavior. And once a theory gets picked up, especially if it serves the fans' desires, then they embrace without question. And that's how the word army became also the bts members' initials, despite not making any sense.

I am also with you about the central narrative of Jungkook being raised by the rest of BTS. Of course the people with whom he lived so closely had had an influence on him, but it's not the end of it all. He has his biological family, he has other friends and people in his life. Jungkook did not grew up isolated with only 6 other men, despite the fandom trying to portray it like that. Of course it's a result of mostly seeing Jungkook with them in the past 10 years, but who in their right mind would believe he is mostly a product of sharing experiences with his bandmates? And last but not least, he is his own person, he's not just made up of an amalgam of other people's influence on him. How is this something that needs to be explained? That's not how life works and our relationship with other people and our own self. Once again, I believe this happens because fans look at it as if this is a story with characters and they forget that real life doesn't work like that.

#bmt asks #bts fandom #bts fandom theory #bts fandom behavior #jungkook #jungkook army tattoo

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themovieblogonline · 2 years

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"The Lost King" at 58th Chicago International Film Festival Is Charming Film

“The Lost King” is the story of Philippa Langley and, as its synopsis says: “In 2012, having been lost for over 500 years, the remains of King Richard III were discovered beneath a parking lot in Leicester. The search had been orchestrated by an amateur historian, Philippa Langley, whose unrelenting research had been met with incomprehension by her friends and family and with skepticism by experts and academics. THE LOST KING is the life-affirming true story of a woman who refused to be ignored and who took on the country's most eminent historians, forcing them to think again about one of the most controversial kings in England's history”. I remember when the newspapers of September 12, 2012, carried the news of the discovery of the body of Richard III buried beneath a parking lot in the town of Leicester in the U.K. I doubt if anyone not a resident of that particular city knew the behind-the-scenes story of how, exactly, Richard III came to be found, through the efforts of an obsessed member of the online Richard III Society, who would not give up her quest. Ultimately, as scripted by co-star Steve Coogan in collaboration with Jeff Pope, it is a lovely tale with many messages for us in this age of disinformation. Coogan, it should be noted, also plays Philippa’s husband, John Langley, opposite the wonderful Sally Hawkins, the female lead from “The Shape of Water.”. The film makes the point that “if you get in first with the first lie, and repeat it often enough,” the truth gets lost in the shuffle. And Philippa, for one, does not like it when people put people down. She is determined to gather hard evidence to refute the bad things said throughout history about Richard III, especially in Shakespeare’s play of the same name. Philippa points out that “People find out one thing about you and that’s all that they can see.” She also informs us that it was Richard III over 500 years ago, who, during his brief reign (1483-1485) as the last Plantagenet king of England posited the principle of British law “suspects are innocent until proven guilty.” Philippa’s family, consisting of John Langley (well-played by Steve Coogan, who also co-wrote the script with Jeff Pope) and her two sons, are at first bemused by Philippa’s obsession with her task. One of her sons says, “If I had 2 sons, I would first make sure they had something to eat before I went off searching for Richard III.” The family comes around, however, even chipping in monetarily. Husband John reminds Philippa that he once sold his rare collection of Sex Pistols memorabilia to finance a new kitchen for her, so the affection the two share for each other and their children actually get a needed renewal and boost from Philippa’s new-found passion. The entire idea that one’s reputation can be intentionally sullied because of the motives of others is examined within the framework of this film. Philippa feels that Richard III is not the monster Shakespeare made him out to be in his play, was not responsible for the murders of his nephews in the Tower of London and that researchers should “take the evidence and study it to draw conclusions, not the other way around.” Husband John agrees in principle, saying, “I’m sure Mother Teresa occasionally left the lid off the milk and Genghis Khan occasionally picked up bits of litter.” So much for the character assassination of anyone at any time in history, and a vote for doing one’s homework in getting to the truth. Ultimately, Philippa’s consulting with the University of Leicester, (much as was limned in the film “Nine to Five,”) leads to men taking the credit for work done by a woman. In this case, the University of Leicester, which was initially dismissive, tries to take almost complete credit for the remarkable find. When it becomes clear that the body found under the car park in the chapel area of what was formerly Greyfriars Church really is Richard III, Philippa suffers from not being recognized for her hard work, but she is awarded the MBE by Queen Elizabeth in 2015. Not only the head wound he sustained in the Battle of Bosworth (the last King of England to be killed in battle), but also the DNA examination of Richard’s successors done by John Ashton Hill, (not to mention the evidence of scoliosis of the spine) would all prove conclusively that this was his skeleton, the body of a former King of England. It disproved the incorrect theory that Richard III’s ashes had been scattered in a nearby river. Philippa then fought for the royal coat of arms to be emblazoned on Richard III’s final resting place, over the objections of others. Stephen Frears who is a twice Oscar-nominated director and holds the David Lean Chair of Fiction Direction at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield is more than equal to the task of directing this thoroughly enjoyable film. I hope he scores a third Best Directing Oscar nomination for his efforts. The 81-year-old Frears previously gave us “The Grifters” and “The Queen,” for which his directing was Oscar-nominated. He is also the visionary who directed “Dangerous Liaisons” (1988), “High Fidelity” (2000), and the Meryl Streep vehicle “Florence Foster Jenkins” (2016). The music (Alexandre Desplat and the London Symphony Orchestra) and cinematography (Zac Nicholson) all combine to create a seamless story with relevant messages for our time. It premieres on November 4, 2022. Read the full article

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opedguy · 2 years

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DIA Says Putin Failed in Ukraine

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Sept.16, 2022.--U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] saya 69-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin can’t complete his mission in Ukraine because he can’t occupy or conquer Kiev, or, most recently, the Northeastern Kharkiv region. So any of Putin accomplishments in seven months of war are diminished by the DIA because in the first four days of war Kiev pushed back Russian forces from conquering Ukraine’s capital. ”We’re coming to the point right now where I think Putin is going to have to revise what his objectives are for this operation,” said Lit. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency [DJA]. “Because it’s pretty clear right now that he’s not going to be able to do what he initially intended to do,” Berrier said. Imagine that, Berrier calls Putin’s seven months of war a failure because in the first few days of war he decided to pivot away from Kiev.

So, when you listen to Ukrainian, U.S., EU or U.K. military analysts they give the same story that Putin hasn’t accomplished his main goal of conquering Kiev. But Putin made clear from the outset, he was interested in his special military operation of liberating Donbas, specifically Russian speaking enclaves in Donetsk and Luhansk from Kiev’s control. Putin’s forces over the last seven months have swarmed Dobnas and the Black sea coast, seizing control of Ukraine’s strategic ports. Does that sound like Putin has squandered his time in Ukraine? “The Russians planned for a an occupation, not necessarily an invasion, and that has set them back,” Berrier said, saying nothing about the 25% of Ukrainian territory lost to the Russian Federation. Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky talks about Putin’s failure to takeover Kiev but says nothing about losing the Black Sea coast.

Berrier won’t level with the American public about the real facts-on-the-ground in Ukraine. Repeating the same Kiev talking points doesn’t change what’s on the ground with Russian controlling 25% of Ukraine’s sovereign land, including the Black Sea coast and all its strategic ports. “He’s coming to a “decision point,” Berrier said. “What that decision will be we don’t know. But that will largely drive how long this conflict lasts,” ignoring Putin’s comments in Samarkand, Uzbekistan at the Shanghai Cooperation conference. Putin warned Ukraine that more so-called “counteroffensives” would be met with a firm response, going after Kiev’s infrastructure. Berrier doesn’t consider that there’s method of Putin’s madness, seizing all of Ukraine’s coastline an its strategic ports. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wants Putin to allow Ukrainian and Russian grain shipments.

All Western governments and news outlets are on the same page about Putin losing the war, all because in the first few days he didn’t conquer Kiev. Listening the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Miley say Putin has lost the war shows the kind to disinformation and propaganda coming out Washington. Not one U.S., EU or U.K. news source admits that Zelensky has lost staggering amounts of Ukrainian territory. “I don’t think we should underestimate Putin’s adherence to his original agenda, which was to control Ukraine. I don’t think we’ve seen any reason to believe he has moved off that,” said CIA Deputy Director David Cohen. Cohen interjects some rationality into Berrier’s argument that Putin must pivot, change gears, rethink his objective about not conquering Kiev or Kharkiv. Putin isn’t likely to unleash nukes on the Ukraine battlefield anytime in the future.

Why the CIA doesn’t take Putin at his word in Samarkand, Ubekistan when he says he’s going to get tougher on Ukraine’s infrastructure. Putin has more than enough conventional missiles and strategic bombers to take out all of Ukraine electricity plants, natural gas storage facilities and oil refineries. Zelensky walks a dangerous tightrope thinking that Russian military has been defeated in Kiev and Kharkiv. Kiev and Kharkiv has no strategic influence to Putin, other than saying he controls the entire country. As the war stands now, Zelensky would be fighting for years to get back all the lost territory on the Black Sea coast. Going to the peace table in Istanbul or anywhere else offers no guarantees to Zelensky that he’ll get back his territory lost over the last seven months. Instead of the Berrier or Cohen fantasizing about Putin’s next move, they should evaluate what’s left in his arsenal.

Estimating the depth of Putin’s arsenal has proved Kiev, Washington, Brussels and London wrong. All three predicted that Russia doesn’t have the personnel or equipment to keep up the fight against Ukraine. Yet Ukraine has not, through its ongoing counteroffensive, retaken any of the lost territory on the Black Sea coast. Turkey’s 69-year-old President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the West should not underestimate Putin. Kiev, Washington, Brussels and London like to speculate about Putin’s terminal illness but he seems vigorous and fit making public appearances and press conferences. So with all the disinformation and propaganda coming out of the West, Zelensky can take to the bank that Putin will continue the fight for Ukraine’s territory. If Zelensky wants the war to end, he’s approach Putin about a ceasefire and move the conflict to the peace table where there’s compromise in the works.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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ramrodd · 2 years

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The de-Nazification of America began with your vote for Biden.

Since Democrats believe Trump colluded with Russia without any tangible evidence, why are they offended that people think the last election was fraudulent and Biden is an illegitimate president?

COMMENTARY:

Trump has been doing business with Russian criminals since at least 2013. The tangible evidence is the 2013 Miss Universe Contest and his relationship with Paul Manafort.

Junior brags about Russian money driving the Trump Organization.

The collaboration between the US Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO to ensure the integrity of the 2020 election is tangible evidence of a perfectly conducted election of Joe Biden with a landslide popular vote.

The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election

The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election fact that it was obvious in 2016 Trump was going to try to steal the 2020 vote when he claimed he won the popular vote and his Inaugural Crowd was bigger than Obama’s. That was tangible evidence before the fact that the vote needed to be protected from what was revealed as the January 6 conspiracy. that goes back to William F. Buckley and the Young Americans for Freedom agenda for the Nazification of America.

If you believe that Trump won in 2020, you are being led around by your dick by Fascist disinformation generated by the spawn of William F. Buckley’s version of the 1960 version of the John Birch Society and are a useful idiot. If you agree with Hillary Clinton’s Russian narrative, you’re hatred of Nixon is being exploited by the January 6 conspiracy as useful idiots in Buckley’s marketing strategy. If you still believe that Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate but you voted for her anyway, the neuminal reality of Hillary’s superior candidacy relative to how a reality TV star with dreams of a 1000 Reich actually turned out is a reliable metric of the influence Fascist disinformation has had on your judgement and the degree to which you have been a useful idiot for the MAGA constituency of the January 6 conspiracy.

My objective is to validate the judgement of Biden voters and to promote a second Biden/Harris administration on the path to launching the Green New Deal by 2048. And, if Biden was to die before 2024, nominate and elect K.D. Harris to complete the paradigm shift from the Military Industrial Complex of Reaganomics to the Aerospace-Entrepreneurial Matrix made possible by Apollo 11, described by Werner von Braun and initiated by the Affirmative Action of Nixon and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

The Inflation Reduction Act is part of the capital budget for the physical infrastructure that will allow the global reconfiguration necessary to sustain a NASA-Soyuz base on the moon by 2048, just like the movie. The most constructive thing Trump did consistent with the critical path set into motion by George Washington was the creation of the US Space Force. The capital budget for the Inflation Reduction Act will serve a dual purpose in the mobilization for WWIII. We don’t need to change a thing to get a bang for the buck 4 times the impart of the same capital budget under the Nazification of Reaganomics. The Green New Deal is at least 5 times as productive as Reaganomics and the Supply Side economics of white supremacy and Christian Nationalism.

If you are a Biden voter, plan on doing it again in 2023 and, if he is dead, K.D. Harris as the successor he is grooming for 2048. Eisenhower doubled-down on the New Deal in 1956 because it was working so well. Nixon and Moynihan were doubling down on Eisenhower’s 1956 Presidential Platform with Affirmative Action while, at the same time, the Plumbers were committed to dismantling Affirmative Action in the name of what Steve Bannon calls the “administrative state”.

If carter had been re-elected, what we now call The Green New Deal would have emerged spontaneously in the process of establishing a NASA-Soyuz base on the moon by 2001, just like the movie.

The Nazification of Reaganomics stopped Affirmative Action cold and doubled down on the Military Industrial Complex of 1955. Peter Navarro’s “Vertical Reforms” are based on restoring the Military-Industrial Complex of 1957, when a white American businessman could get a blow job in Berlin for a loaf of bread. Which is why China wouldn’t do a trade deal with him.

So, if you are a Biden voter, rest assured that your vote for Biden was a vote for the Green New Deal and a vote for Liz Cheney’s de-Nazification of the GOP. A vote for Biden/Harris or Harris/Player to be named later in 2024 is a vote for a NASA/Soyuz base on the moon by 2028. A vote for Biden is a vote to pass the generational torch JFK passed to the Woodstock Boomers to the AOC/Liz Cheney generation, moving forward. .

If you are a Biden voter, you are encouraged to scoff at the transparently Fascist disinformation premise of the question and reject it like flushing a satisfying ball of snot in the tissue that captured it down the shitter.

The de-Nazification of America began with your vote for Biden.

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megashadowdragon · 2 years

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Can These Rednecks Stop The Next Rittenhouse Mob?

On this short edition of Out of Frame, we’ll tackle the issue of false accusation and deadly prejudice through “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil”. Although the story is as old as time, the past few years have seen an increase in nonsensical, dangerous, and impassioned mob justice. While some may seek to do away with “pesky” rights and due process, we should actually reemphasize their importance, and maybe screw our heads on a little tighter… comments on youtube

Oddly enough the new spiderman kinda tackles "cancel culture". At least it shows how innocent people that just are too close to the wrong person can have their lives upended. I would also like to point out that the new Spider-man movie is a really good example of the mob mentality too, the only difference between Spider-man and Kyle is that Kyle was supported by the 'conspiracy theorists", while Spider-man was vilified by both them and the mainstream media.

"Why even bother with a trial by jury?" Asks the self-proclaimed anti-fascists Tucker and Dale Vs Evil is a great movie about class differences and definitely a movie about projective identification gone wild. SPOILER There's literally a scene where a college girl accuses the main girl of Stockholm Syndrome when the latter was trying to mediate between the two groups. Also funny was how the relatively sensible one gets killed off first.Show less

I wouldn't exactly say "Misinformation", more as in disinformation. Being deliberately told something completely untrue by some one(media)

Give 'em the Nick Sandman treatment. If fake news costs more than it makes them, then they'll stop People so often forget to place themselves in the shoes of the accused AND of the wronged. You want a system that will defend either's rights. The golden rule is a starting point of sound justice. More trials need to be Livestreamed, so people can see what goes on, and what is presented as fact or dismissed as fiction. As far as I can tell, there's no real downside I think.

There was an interesting trend posted by WTF Happened in 1971 on Twitter about the trend in rational language vs emotional language in media. Rational language rose until the early 70s and then has been falling ever since as emotional reactions and shallow moral superiority took over. Unfortunately, a lot of your factual claims here aren't true and were explicitly disproven during the trial itself. Rittenhouse fled because he was still in significant danger and was subsequently chased down and attacked by several other people, including Anthony Huber, who was ultimately killed while attacking Rittenhouse and Gage Grosskreutz, who was shot in the arm while pointing a gun of his own at Rittenhouse when he was on the ground being beaten. You don't need to be in your own home to use deadly force in the protection of your life, which is exactly what Rittenhouse was found to have done by a jury with access to all the evidence, even in spite of a prosecution that nearly caused a mistrial for prosecutorial misconduct more than once - including for withholding evidence from the Defense during discovery, which is a huge problem. Part of the challenge here is that Rittenhouse actually was being attacked, whereas Huber and Grosskreutz were the attackers - so the claim that they thought they were taking down an "active shooter" doesn't hold up as a defense, even if you believe that that's truly what they believed. It is incumbent on the person initiating violent force to be sure they have just cause and neither Huber nor Grosskreutz did that. Rittenhouse, incidentally, did demonstrate that trait in the moment (on camera) where he actually lowers his weapon when Grosskreutz momentarily pulled back his handgun. Rittenhouse only shot him when he re-pointed the gun at Rittenhouse. That's exactly the kind of restraint I'd want to see in such a harrowing and chaotic situation. But it's not what was shown by Huber or Grosskreutz, let alone Rosenbaum.Show less

#kyle rittenhouse #false accusations #prejudice

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pinelife3 · 3 years

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What’s this Pizzagate in the heart of nature?

The big tech story in Australia last month was Facebook’s decision to restrict people and organisations in Australia from sharing or viewing news content on Facebook. This was in response to the Morrison government’s proposed Media Bargaining legislation which is basically a Murdoch-serving law to try to get tech companies to pay media organisations for news content hosted/linked/displayed on their sites and, most galling of all, share details of their algorithms with Australian media orgs. The idea that Facebook would have to notify NewsCorp every time they want to tweak their algorithm is patently insane. So I admire Facebook’s petty, dramatic manoeuvre: “if the way we share news on the site is such a problem then fine, no more news for you”. After all the fuss, the Australian government agreed to amend the Media Bargaining legislation - evidently with terms more agreeable to Facebook, meaning news has been restored to Facebook down under.

One of the key responses I saw expressed in relation to Facebook’s initial news eradication was concern that disinformation would be able to spread more easily on the site - and that people wouldn’t be able to rebut disinformation with factual news articles.

So far as I can tell, the proliferation of disinformation online wouldn’t matter if people didn’t believe it. And most especially, if people didn’t want to believe it. After all, the web is full of persuasive writing and people who want to convince you of things - for whatever reason, conspiracy theories just seem to be very alluring. So rather than trying to protect people from their own stupidity by hiding disinformation... maybe we could look at why people are so credulous in the first place. Deep state? Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams? CIA Contra cocaine trafficking? The great replacement? Pizzagate?

I’m going to class conspiracy theorists into three categories of my own making:

I believe: well meaning, uninformed people who have been fooled or duped. The fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield which started the vaccines cause autism conspiracy was actually written to support a class action lawsuit. Wakefield knew the results in his paper were not true: in addition to his conflicts of interest, he had falsified data. The paper was eventually debunked and retracted but the conspiracy had its roots and has continued to grow. I think a lot of the people who believe that vaccines are dangerous are parents who are just worried about their kids - and also want to protect other kids from a threat they believe to be real. Why is one debunked article more persuasive to people than a million proving the efficacy of vaccines? It is literally beyond reason.

It suits me to believe: people motivated by self-interest who adopt a conspiracy theory to support their larger world view. Their self-interest could be anything from their own ego to gun rights. The conspiracies around the Sandy Hook Primary School shooting are interesting because you can see a clear motivation for people to subscribe to that theory rather than the truth. If you’re a keen gun-owner, arguining that the shooting was a hoax to generate anti-gun sentiment and thereby allow the Democrats to pass harsher gun restrictions is neat and comforting. No one could argue that the events of Sandy Hook weren’t inhumanly terrible - so the only option is to argue that they didn’t happen at all. Plus, in this worldview, no kids are getting hurt so you can sleep easy knowing you have seven semi-automatic weapons in the house.

I need to believe: the world is disorganised, scary, unknowable. Ocean deep, sky vast, dark impenetrable - and meanwhile our skin is so thin and delicate. So. Wouldn’t it be comforting to think that there’s a race of reptilian overlords that control the planet by whipping their tails against a complicated system of levers and pullies? That would explain a lot of the chaos in our world. Or maybe the problem is an elite coterie of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles? If only we could defeat those accursed pedophiles then life would be peaceful. Luckily, Q and a septuagenarian reality TV host are here to save us.

Across these categories, there are two unifying features:

Rejection of widely accepted truth

Investment in the conspiracy

As a comparison with the conspiracists above, here’s my take on a conspiracy: I think it’s quite probable that Epstein didn’t kill himself. I think that some powerful, shadowy entity took him out to protect itself. But I’m not obsessed by this idea. It would not surprise or upset me if this was officially confirmed - similarly crazy shit happens all the time. I haven’t devoted my life to revealing this truth. I guess I fit into the “I Believe” category: all official information says that Epstein took his own life but my scepticism of the unusual circumstances around his death and Epstein’s powerful connections leads me to doubt the official information. The difference is I don’t do anything about it. I don’t really care if I’m right or not - I’m not that invested in the conspiracy.

And that’s why it seems ludicrous to me that Facebook should be tasked with combatting the conspiracy theories spiralling across our culture. Simply being exposed to bad information does not radicalise you, does not conjure an investment in the conspiracy. If a normal person reads something creatively wrong or misleading they discard it from their mind. If it hits a chord with them, they may adopt that opinion themselves - see: astrology, Armie Hammer as cannibal, tarot cards, essential oils as serious medical treatment, etc. But the evolution from agreeing with a thought to militaristically insisting that the rest of society also agree with it is an abnormal progression. That strange impulse runs deeper in people than their Facebook timeline.

Most people have fears for the planet or believe there are major issues plaguing humanity - and we never do anything about it because it would be mildly inconvenient or because it’s too hard to care about every issue under late capitalism:

"But sorting my recycling is boring”

“Yeah yeah fast fashion is problematic but H&M is just so affordable"

"Of course I hate R.Kelly! But ‘Ignition (Remix)’ is my jam”

“At least they have suicide nets in the Foxconn factories now”

“I only buy free range chicken thighs because I care about animal welfare”

“I retweeted that thing about anti-Black racism. Yay racism solved!”

There are probably lots of people who believe in conspiracy theories but are ultimately apathetic about doing anything: they can’t be bothered talking about vaccines and politics all the time, can’t be bothered going to a protest, can’t summon the interest to care much. So what’s interesting then is that across the three categories of conspiracy theory belief (I believe > It suits me to believe > I need to believe), what a person believes in, and perhaps even the reason for the belief, doesn’t create any impetus to enact real world change. On both the left and the right, the impulse to do something about an issue is rare. Do you think conspiracy theorists, like the left, have a problem with performative activism?

Imagine that you agree that Sandy Hook was a false flag, that ‘they’ hired crisis actors to publicly grieve as if their pretend children had been murdered... do you then get in your car and drive overnight to Sandy Hook and start harassing those crisis actors at the pretend funerals? What do you call someone like that? The hero of their own story.

Just wait!

In their worldview, QAnon are unironically trying to save us from pedophile cannibals. Given what conspiracists believe to be true, they are acting in good faith and doing the right thing. If you believed this shit, you’d be upset too. The fact that they’re doing something about it is kind of admirable: they don’t want our babies to get autism from the measles vaccine, they don’t want a deep state to manipulate our democratic governments. It’s existential for all of us - we just don’t agree on the threat.

youtube

Can you imagine how electric the riot at the Capitol Building must have felt for the people who led it. Brave, romantic, a grand gesture: it was like their Storming of Tuileries. Remember this day forever!

Modern conspiracists are actually similar to the sans-culottes in terms of being avid consumers of propaganda and inflammatory reporting. Disinformation and stirring rhetoric are not new - but shouldn’t people today be less clueless than 18th century peasants?

youtube

Why are there are so many people who believe things which are untrue? They exist on this planet with us but interpret it so differently. These questions really are existential: an ancient, echoing maw pointing to the heart of human nature. The struggle for a more perfect world, whispers about where the danger comes from at night, arguments about how to protect ourselves.

youtube

Has there ever been a society where people didn’t have differing views on how best to shape the world? It’s the central conflict of human existence: epic, older than language - and now we want Facebook to fix it?

#qanon #epstein #trump #anti-vaxxers #facebook #auspol #media bargaining code #pizzagate #sandy hook

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yoyomorse · 3 years

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Scientists said claims about China creating the coronavirus were misleading. They went viral anyway.

The spread of the unverified assertions by Chinese scholar Li-Meng Yan, widely dismissed as “flawed,” show how vulnerable scientific sites are to misuse and misunderstanding.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/12/china-covid-misinformation-li-meng-yan/

Scientists from Johns Hopkins, Columbia and other leading American universities moved with rare speed when a Chinese virologist, Li-Meng Yan, published an explosive paper in September claiming that China had created the deadly coronavirus in a research lab.

The paper, the American scientists concluded, was deeply flawed. And a new online journal from MIT Press — created specifically to vet claims related to SARS-CoV-2 — reported Yan’s claims were “at times baseless and are not supported by the data” 10 days after she posted them.

But in an age when anyone can publish anything online with a few clicks, this response was not fast enough to keep Yan’s disputed allegations from going viral, reaching an audience in the millions on social media and Fox News. It was a development, according to experts on misinformation, that underscored how systems built to advance scientific understanding can be used to spread politically charged claims dramatically at odds with scientific consensus.

Yan’s work, which was posted to the scientific research repository Zenodo without any review on Sept. 14, exploded on Twitter, YouTube and far-right websites with the help of such conservative influencers as Republican strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who repeatedly pushed it on his online show “War Room: Pandemic,” according to a report published Friday by Harvard researchers studying media manipulation. Yan expanded her claims, on Oct. 8, to blame the Chinese government explicitly for developing the coronavirus as a “bioweapon.”

Online research repositories have become key forums for revelation and debate about the pandemic. Built to advance science more nimbly, they have been at the forefront of reporting discoveries about masks, vaccines, new coronavirus variants and more. But the sites lack protections inherent to the traditional — and much slower — world of peer-reviewed scientific journals, where articles are published only after they have been critiqued by other scientists. Research shows papers posted to online sites also can be hijacked to fuel conspiracy theories.

Yan’s paper on Zenodo — despite several blistering scientific critiques and widespread news coverage of its alleged flaws — now has been viewed more than 1 million times, probably making it the most widely read research on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Harvard misinformation researchers. They concluded that online scientific sites are vulnerable to what they called “cloaked science,” efforts to give dubious work “the veneer of scientific legitimacy.”

“They’re many years behind in realizing the capacity of this platform to be abused,” said Joan Donovan, research director at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which produced the report. “At this point, everything open will be exploited.”

Yan, who previously was a postdoctoral fellow at Hong Kong University but fled to the United States in April, agreed in an interview with The Washington Post that online scientific sites are vulnerable to abuse, but she rejected the argument that her story is a case study in this problem.

Rather, Yan said, she is a dissident trying to warn the world about what she says is China’s role in creating the coronavirus. She used Zenodo, with its ability to instantly publish information without restrictions, because she feared the Chinese government would obstruct publication of her work. Her academic critics, she argued, will be proven wrong.

“None of them can rebut from real, solid, scientific evidence,” Yan said. “They can only attack me.”

Zenodo acknowledged that the furor has prompted reforms, including the posting of a label Thursday above Yan’s paper saying, “Caution: Potentially Misleading Contents” after The Washington Post asked whether Zenodo would remove it. The site also prominently features links to critiques from a Georgetown University virologist and the MIT Press.

“We take misinformation really seriously, so it is something that we want to address,” said Anais Rassat, a spokeswoman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which operates Zenodo as a general purpose scientific site. “We don’t think taking down the report is the best solution. We want it to stay and indicate why experts think it’s wrong.”

But mainstream researchers who watched Yan’s claims race across the Internet far more quickly than they could counter them have been left troubled by the experience — newly convinced that the capacity for spreading misinformation goes far beyond the big-name social media sites. Any online platform without robust and potentially expensive safeguards is equally vulnerable.

“This is similar to the debate we’re having with Facebook and Twitter. To what degree are we creating an instrument that speeds disinformation, and to what extent are you contributing to that?” said Stefano M. Bertozzi, editor in chief of the MIT Press online journal “Rapid Reviews: COVID-19,” which challenged Yan’s claims.

Bertozzi added, “Most scientists have no interest in getting in a pissing match in cyberspace.”

Coronavirus fuels prominence of online science sites

Online scientific sites have been growing for more than a decade, becoming a vital part of the ecosystem for making and vetting claims across numerous academic fields, but their growth has been supercharged by the urgency of disseminating new discoveries about a deadly pandemic.

Some of the best-known of these sites, such as medRxiv and bioRxiv, have systems for rapid evaluation intended to avoid publishing work that doesn’t pass an initial sniff test of scientific credibility. They also reject papers that only review the work of others or that make such major claims that they shouldn’t be publicized before peer review can be conducted, said Richard Sever, co-founder of medRxiv and bioRxiv.

“We want to create a hurdle that’s high enough that people have to do some research,” Sever said. “What we don’t want to be is a place where there’s a whole bunch of conspiracy theories.”

Online publishing sites generally are called “preprint servers” because many researchers use them as a first step toward traditional peer review, giving the authors a way to make their work public — and available for possible news coverage — before more thorough analysis begins. Advocates of preprint servers tout their ability to create early visibility for important discoveries and also spark useful debate. They note that traditional peer-reviewed journals have their own history of occasionally publishing hoaxes and bad science.

“It’s very funny that everyone is worrying about preprints given that, collectively, journals are not doing a great job of keeping misinformation out,” Sever said.

He and other proponents, however, acknowledge risks.

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beautiful-de4mity · 4 years

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Hiroto Voicy 2020/09/08

“More than ‘dislike’ or ‘hate’, I feel like I don’t need their presence around me.”

Disclaimer [I’m translating for fun and self-learning purposes. If you listen to the Voicy and happen to find some mistakes, please feel free to correct me☀]

Note: Lately, Hiroto talked about social issues related to the impact of Corona virus pandemic to Japan especially in Tokyo where he lives. Truthfully, it’s kinda tricky to translate this kind of topic since I’m not living in Japan and I’m being careful not to present disinformation to the readers so I selectively pick themes that are more Hiroto-related or band-related.

The talk: “Things that are not Hiroto’s cup of tea, in this case, person.”

Alice Nine just released another cover of SexyZone “RUN” which is also the OST for Kenty’s drama Detective Novice. They purposefully released the cover on the day the last episode was aired as a tribute from Saga chan the Kenty’s hardcore fanboy 😂

Initially, fans from both respective bands were very grateful for this cover. However, Hiroto also found out that there were also people (which he assumed don’t belong to neither Alice Nine nor SexyZone fans) who stated some complaints such as, “You’re in a band, how come you’re covering Johnny’s song? What are you doing? Don’t you have a pride?” Hiroto couldn’t help but addressing them with “self-conceited” and he apologized for it (isn’t he the sweetest? 😭). They said such things only because they wanted to be seen as ‘the most righteous’ and didn’t really consider what other people feel, just arbitrarily said what they have in mind out loud. Hiroto didn’t want these people to be around him or even his life.

For the band to decide doing a cover for another artist’s song, has been thoroughly considered and agreed upon, since the song itself is really good and powerful so it shouldn’t be a big deal. SezyZone’s songs are also surprisingly good in band style, naturally it doesn’t make sense if people said “why would a band cover Johnnys’ song?” 🙄

Moreover, there were also people who said that “This cover version is actually better that the original version.” This kind of comment had been circulated since their previous cover and Saga also said something about it. At first glance, it may sound like a compliment, but Hiroto didn’t think so (even the whole band also didn’t think so). Hiroto would like to emphasize that saying such thing doesn’t make the band happy. In fact, it’ll hurt the fans of the original artis and potentially spark conflict.

And may I add as I paraphrased from Saga’s tweet long time ago, “The cover version will never surpass the original version.”

Cover version will never be existed in the first place if it's not for the original artists, therefore it is very inappropriate to say "cover version is better than original version" out loud. It's not a compliment. Let's note this. Last but not least, Hiroto called out to people who have this kind of thing in mind to stop immediately. Don't say it out loud because it is very inconsiderate and you only care about your own opinion instead of other people's feelings.💕

#alice nine #アリス九號.#ヒロト #alice nine hiroto #hiroto alice nine #hiroto #A9 #Voicy #translation #jrock #jrocker

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generalcreatortiger · 3 years

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Scientists said claims about China creating the coronavirus were misleading. They went viral anyway.

Craig Timberg

Feb. 13, 2021 at 7:48 a.m. GMT+8

“None of them can rebut from real, solid, scientific evidence,” Yan said. “They can only attack me.”

Bertozzi added, “Most scientists have no interest in getting in a pissing match in cyberspace.”

Catch up on the most important developments in the pandemic with our coronavirus newsletter. All stories in it are free to access.

Coronavirus fuels prominence of online science sites

“It’s very funny that everyone is worrying about preprints given that, collectively, journals are not doing a great job of keeping misinformation out,” Sever said.

After Wuhan mission on pandemic origins, WHO team dismisses lab leak theory

He and other proponents, however, acknowledge risks.

While scientists debate — and sometimes refute — flawed claims by one another, nonscientists also scan preprint servers for data that might appear to bolster their pet conspiracy theories.

A research team led by computer scientist Jeremy Blackburn has tracked the appearance of links to preprints from social media sites, such as 4chan, popular with conspiracy theorists. Blackburn and a graduate student, Satrio Yudhoatmojo, found more than 4,000 references on 4chan to papers on major preprint servers between 2016 and 2020, with the leading subjects being biology, infectious diseases and epidemiology. He said the uneven review process has “lent an air of credibility” to preprints that experts might quickly spot as flawed but ordinary people wouldn’t.

“That’s where the risk is,” said Blackburn, an assistant professor at Binghamton University. “Papers from the preprint servers show up in a variety of conspiracy theories … and are misinterpreted wildly because these people aren’t scientists.”

Jessica Polka, executive director of ASAPbio, a nonprofit group that pushes for more transparency and wider use of preprint servers, said they rely on something akin to crowdsourcing, in which comments from outside researchers quickly can identify flaws in work, but she acknowledged vulnerabilities based on the extent of review by server staff and advisers. A recent survey by ASAPbio found more than 50 preprint servers operating — and nearly as many review policies.

And the survey didn’t include Zenodo, which, Polka said, should not be considered a preprint server given its broader mission. Rather, she said, it’s an online repository that happens to host some preprints, as well as conference slides, raw data and other “scientific objects” that anyone with an email address can simply upload. Zenodo has none of the vetting common to major preprint servers and isn’t organized to easily surface critiques or conflicting research, she said.

“Without that kind of context, a preprint server is even more vulnerable to the spread of disinformation,” Polka said. But she added, in general, “Preprint servers do not have the resources to be arbiters of whether something is true or not.”

Yan defends her work

Yan said in her interview with The Post that Zenodo’s openness is what drove her decision to use the site. She had initially submitted her paper to bioRxiv because as a researcher whose work has appeared in Nature, the Lancet Infectious Diseases and other traditional publications, she knew that this preprint server would appear more legitimate to other scientists.

Trump pardons Steve Bannon after ugly falling out early in his presidency

Yan has a medical degree from Xiangya Medical College of Central South University and a PhD in ophthalmology from Southern Medical University — both in China — and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong, she said. That university announced she was no longer affiliated with it in July, following an initial appearance on Fox News, saying in a statement that her claim about the origin of the coronavirus “has no scientific basis but resembles hearsay.”

After she fled Hong Kong, she harbored deep suspicions about that government’s potential to block publication of her work, she said. When she checked bioRxiv 48 hours after making her submission, the site appeared to have gone offline, Yan said. Fearing the worst, she withdrew the paper and uploaded it to Zenodo.

Sever, the bioRxiv co-founder, said he could not comment on an individual submission but said that, despite occasional glitches, he was aware of no “prolonged outage” on the site during mid-September and no sign that the Chinese, or anyone else, had hacked it.

For Yan’s paper on Zenodo, she did not list an academic affiliation, as is customary for research. Instead, she listed the Rule of Law Society and Rule of Law Foundation, which are New York-based nonprofit groups founded by exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, a close associate of Bannon, who in 2018 was announced as chairman of the Rule of Law Society. When Bannon was arrested on fraud charges in August, he was aboard Guo’s 150-foot yacht, off the coast of Connecticut. (President Donald Trump last month pardoned Bannon, his former campaign chairman and White House chief strategist).

Chinese dissidents say they’re being harassed by a businessman with links to Steve Bannon

Yan said she listed the Rule of Law entities out of respect for what she said was their work helping dissidents in China, and that they paid for her flight from Hong Kong and provided a resettlement stipend while she largely lives off her savings. She said her work is independent, and she rejected notions that Bannon was helping her spread political claims.

“I didn’t know he was so controversial when I was in Hong Kong,” Yan told The Post.

On Sept. 15, the day after Yan’s paper appeared on Zenodo, she was a guest on Fox’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” an appearance watched by 4.8 million broadcast viewers and 2.8 million on YouTube, and that also generated extensive engagement on Facebook and Twitter, according to the Harvard researchers. Bannon appeared on Carlson’s show that same week and discussed Yan’s claims. He also interviewed her on “War Room: Pandemic” 22 times last year, both before and after the Zenodo publication.

The political context was obvious in the midst of a hotly contested election in which Trump was attacking Democratic rival Joe Biden for supposedly being overly sympathetic to the Chinese government, dubbing him “Beijing Joe.” Republicans, including White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, pushed Yan’s paper along with the hashtag #CCPLiedPeopleDied, a reference to the Chinese Communist Party.

Archives showed the paper had more than 150,000 views on its first day on Zenodo — spectacular reach for a scientific paper, especially one that had not yet been reviewed by any independent experts.

But this surge of attention also generated backlash, including critical news reports by National Geographic and others, raising serious questions about Yan’s claims.

In the academic world, the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins issued a point-by-point response one week after Yan’s paper appeared on Zenodo, raising 39 individual issues in what it said was “objective analysis of details included in the report, as would be customary in a peer-review process.”

A few days later, the MIT Press online journal “Rapid Reviews: COVID-19” featured four scathing reviews, including one from Robert Gallo, a renowned AIDS researcher and a titan within the field of virology.

He labeled Yan’s work “misleading” and cited “questionable, spurious, and fraudulent claims.” Most points were highly technical, but Gallo also questioned her logic regarding the alleged role in creating the coronavirus for the Chinese military, which Gallo noted would be vulnerable to covid-19.

“And how would the Chinese protect themselves?” Gallo asked in his review. “Well, according to the paper, the military knew it could be stopped by remdesivir,” a drug later shown to have some benefit in treating covid-19 while not necessarily reducing the risk of death. “I would surely not want to be in the Chinese military if they were that naive.”

The idea to recruit Gallo came from Bertozzi, the journal’s editor and dean emeritus of the School of Public Health at University of California at Berkeley. Like Gallo, Bertozzi had worked extensively in AIDS research. After seeing Yan’s appearance on Fox, he was eager to use the online journal founded only months earlier to correct the scientific record.

“I felt it needed to be quickly debunked by people with scientific credibility,” Bertozzi said.

He soon thought of Gallo.

“We need somebody of your stature to say this is garbage science,” Bertozzi recalled telling him.

The reviews by Gallo and three other scientists also came with an editor’s note raising questions about the preprint process itself, saying, “While pre-print servers offer a mechanism to disseminate world-changing scientific research at unprecedented speed, they are also a forum through which misleading information can instantaneously undermine the international scientific community’s credibility, destabilize diplomatic relationships, and compromise global safety.”

But these public rebukes from some of the biggest names in virology did not deter Yan. Nor did a detailed report on Oct. 21 by CNN quoting her critics and documenting flaws.

Yan declined to be interviewed for that story, she said, because CNN did not allow her to address the issues they unearthed, point by point, on live television.

Instead, she published her own response on Nov. 21, on Zenodo, titled, “CNN Used Lies and Misinformation to Muddle the Water on the Origin of SARS-CoV-2.”

In her Post interview, Yan acknowledged — as CNN had reported — that her three co-authors on the original Sept. 14 paper were pseudonyms, used to protect what she said were other Chinese researchers whose families remain in peril back in China. Authors are typically discouraged from using false names in academic work.

Her claims suffered another blow this week, when a World Health Organization team sent to China to investigate the origins of the pandemic issued a statement saying it was “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus came from a lab.

One of Yan’s earliest vocal critics, virologist Angela Rasmussen, who was at Columbia when Yan’s paper first spread, agreed with WHO’s assessment but did not rule out the possibility — however unlikely — of laboratory origin for the coronavirus. But she said the argument lacks concrete evidence.

“There needs to be a lot less speculation and a lot more investigation,” said Rasmussen, now an affiliate at Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science and Security. “It takes a really long time to figure this stuff out... This is going to take years or even decades to solve it, if we ever do.”

Yet Yan continues to double down on her claims and to attack her critics as spreading “lies.” She still argues that the Chinese government intentionally created the coronavirus and continues to do everything it can to silence her.

Yan also offers no apologies for making common cause with Bannon and other Trump allies. As a dissident, she said, she doesn’t necessarily get her choice of supporters.

“If China is going to do this crime, who can hold them accountable?… Trump was the one who was tough” against China, Yan said, adding that her claim “is about real fact. I don’t want to mislead people.”

Even now, she is preparing another paper, nearing 30 pages, that she hopes will refute her critics and bring fresh attention to her claims about China, covid-19 and what she says is an international coverup campaign.

Yan plans to publish it in a few weeks, she said — on Zenodo.

#china covid19 covid-19

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gmebackup · 3 years

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psychology 2 Electric boogaloo

So yesterday I posted about the psychological aspects of the entire stock craze.

Today I want to go a bit more in depth of how PSYOPS (psychological operations) normally work for military, but also how they apply to us today. if someone wants me to go in depth on how psyops is used on businesses feel free to let me know I'll do some research and post here

There is a certain order when it comes to PSYOPSIn order to create a successful PSYOP the following must be established:

1 clearly define the mission so that it aligns with national objectives 2 need a PSYOP estimate of the situation 3 prepare the plan 4 media selection 5 product development 6 pretesting - determines the probable impact of the PSYOP on the target audience 7 production and dissemination of PSYOP material 8 implementation 9 posttesting - evaluates audience responses 10 feedback

Before these steps can occur, intelligence analysts must profile potential targets in order to determine which ones it would be most beneficial to target. In order to figure this out, analysts must determine the vulnerabilities of these groups and what they would be susceptible to.

The analysts also determine the attitudes of the targets toward the current situation, their complaints, ethnic origin, frustrations, languages, problems, tensions, attitudes, motivations, and perceptions, and so on. Once the appropriate target(s) have been determined, the PSYOP can be created. this is the basic outline of how a PSYOPS work, now lets compare that to the entire GME situation

this is the basic outline of how a psyop works, now lets compare that to the entire GME situation

1 they need to find out what we think/feel and find our weakness.

this is the most simple one as we work in plain sight and let everyone see our DD

2 Can they pull this off? can they create FUD and divide our ranks?

Also easily yes

3 the plan:

Divide and conquer, make them doubt themselves and show their comrades are not as brotherly as they imagined.

4 the Media selection is also fairly easy to fill in

modern news media, meaning TV, newspapers, and reddit itself. We’ve all seen the people on tv saying we are idiots, we are dumb etc etc News article after news article stating that it’s over And here is the only one that may have actually shown to have some effect: other users Other users saying we missed the boat, other users showing their “gains” and using others to turn against each other. 5 Product development See how well it’s doing so far? 6 pretesting Can and will these things affect us? Yes and no, the media didn’t work as we could see the facts were skewed across the board, and they are still using short ladder attacks so… no Having other users spread doubt… Yes, this has worked for some people. 7 product and dissemination Normally this is where (if it was used by a military operation) it would be implemented, but due to time constraints I believe they started right after the “planning” phase in 3 8 Implementation Putting it to use, again I believe the implementation begon at point 3 9 posttesting Evaluation of the audiences response, do they react and how do they react 10 feedback If it works, at which points, if it doesn’t where and why? This last one is very easy, noticed how all mainstream news died off about the negativity towards GME BB AMC and NOK? But how the influx of new users on WSB become more prevalent? This is because they knew we didn’t give a fuck about the mainstream media, we cared about our brothers in arms.

Now with knowing some of the basics lets do a quick and dirty analysis of all of this, From end of 2020 to about 18-01-2021 the sentiment was positive. At this date we saw a wide range of implementation of the media. And everyone was saying we were stupid etc etc. Hell we even got a billionaire to cry on tv

This negative attention seemed to only bolster us in our conviction that we were and are correct in what our DD has lined out for us.

Ok so the main media networks don't work, What does?

Ok so the main media networks don't work, What does? Well lets use their main tools (reddit) against them. And what did we suddenly see since the 27th/28th? Suddenly the mod team changes, and this is very important because if you control the people who control the board you control the narrative, skewing it from positive to negative. (as we’ve seen a lot of people getting their positive posts deleted, their DD deleted etc etc) We also seen a massive influx of bots, negative posters, people showing their “gains” And this seemed to work so they stuck with it. Now look at these last paragraphs and compare them to a normal Psyops mission. Do you think they kind of align a lot? Good because this is what we have been using since as long as we can remember Some real world examples of things like this being implemented are for example: The Gleiwitz incident Hitler invaded Poland, took control of their radio tower and made it seem like Poland attacked Germany, this way he could “retaliate” without any repercussions at the time. As he was only defending his country.

Operation Bodyguard A plan to mislead the Germans during WW2 to make them think the time and place of the invasion (D-day) would take place at another time and date then it did. There are a lot of WW2 examples but I think it’s more prudent to focus on modern day as this was the beginning of modern psyops, but it has evolved a lot since then. To most people when you say “PSYOPS” they think of Vietnam, and rightly so as here we were starting to use more and more psychological methods. First off this is a very interesting read; http://www.psywarrior.com/VietnamCommanders.htmlAnd for the people who think PSYOPS are no longer used, they are and they’re still recruiting; https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/special-operations/psyop/psyop-history.html

Vietnam;

The Phoenix program; The program was designed to identify and destroy the Viet Cong via infiltration, torture, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination. The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong". The Phoenix Program was premised on the idea that infiltration had required local support from non-combat civilian populations, which were referred to as the "political branch" that had purportedly coordinated the insurgency.

Operation Wandering soul; Now this one is actually one that is pretty fucked up in my book, this was an OP that screwed with their heads on such a level this one should be criminal.

The VC believed at the time that the dead should be buried at home or else the soul was stuck wandering the earth aimlessly, sounds fairly normal if you believe in those things. But then the US was like “they aren’t at home right? What if we play distorted human sounds and zombie like sounds to fuck with them”. This is the gist of what happened

Check this site out for more on OP Wandering soul: http://www.psywarrior.com/wanderingsoul.html

Now to keep this a bit shorter I will give you a couple of operation names here which you can research if you want, they are important in this grander thing but or else this post would turn into another thesis on PSYOPS. Operation CHIEU HOI Operation MOCKINGBIRD (highly unclear of the scope but it does reflect a lot of what we see today in the ways of media manipulation) Operation FIELD GOAL (leaflet drop mission, much like the recent “GAINS” posts as it has the same effect, either you get convinced the squeeze is squoze or you lose morale)

Modern day(desert storm to now)

Gulf war Banknotes; This one is a very good one, as they used banknotes which had some added text to it, sounds innocent enough right?Nope this one was one of the more effective ones they used in desert storm/shield.http://www.psywarrior.com/GulfWarBanknotes.html

Give it a read because it’s too good to just give a small synopsis here.

Command Radio Solo over Iraq Because Iraq was still a technologically lagging country back then they used radio to give out propaganda, again using mainstream media to push their idiology.http://www.psywarrior.com/CommandoSoloIraqScripts.htmlThis page has everything on it, including the scripts they have used at the time.

Some other golf war things to look into:

http://www.psywarrior.com/Iraqleaflinks.html

Compare those to the disinformation we are receiving when it comes to gains and why we should sell.

Operation OBSERVANT COMPASS 2003 initially an op to get Joseph Kony and to end the “lord's resistance army in central afrika.

Toppling of Saddam Hussein statue Arguably the most visible image of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square in central Baghdad. Allegations that the event was staged have been published.

It is claimed it was actually an idea hatched by an Army psychological operations team. Allegations surfaced that not only were the cheering group of people surrounding the statue in fact smaller than they were made out to be, in media depictions, but that also the group were not local to the area and were instead brought in by the military for the specific purpose of watching and lending credence to the pre-planned toppling.

Use of music in interrogation of prisoners. Again this one is one we all know about, using heavy metal on Iraqi prisoners, as they’ve never heard heavy metal this fucks them up beyond belief. this is a more hands on PSYWAR but it's morale based

Pentagon analysts and the mainstream media In 2008, The New York Times exposed how analysts portrayed in the U.S. news media as independent and objective were in fact under the tutelage of the Pentagon.

According to the NYT:

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance

CNN and NPR interns incident In 2000, it came to light that soldiers from the 4th Psychological Operations Group had been interning at the American news networks Cable News Network (CNN) and National Public Radio (NPR) during the late 1990s. The program was an attempt to provide its PSYOP personnel with the expertise developed by the private sector under its "Training with Industry" program.

The program caused concern about the influence these soldiers might have on American news and the programs were terminated.

National Public Radio reported on April 10, 2000:

The U.S. Army's Psychological Operations unit placed interns at CNN and NPR in 1998 and 1999. The placements at CNN were reported in the European press in February of this year and the program was terminated. The NPR placements will be reported this week in TV Guide.

Conclusion:

Am I saying the army or government is involved? No What I am saying is that most of the information regarding PSYOPS is publicly available, and anyone with a decent understanding of sociology and psychology can use this to their advantage. And I’m sure that not everyone who was in PSYOPS at one point or another, would stay there forever. These people usually branch out and use their acquired skillset and use it on the open market to get some big bucks. And while there are laws forbidding the U.S. government to use misinformation/PSYOPS on their own people, there are none for corporations, so they can still implement this. What you can see here is a fairly simple pattern and Modus Operandi. Just translate it to modern times.

-TV and Radio have been used to spread doubt about “is this over or not”.-They use twitter as an outlet showing “experts” who say we are stupid bad or nihilists, this is bait don't take it ok?

-Leaflets have been updated for the modern day, “LOOK AT MAH GAINS” “LOOK IVE SOLD SO SHOULD YOU AT AN ALL TIME LOW”, pictures are all we need instead of leaflets now. Why sell for losses? If you believed in the stock then believe in it now, even Mark Cuban said “if you can afford to hold, hold. That’s what I would do.”

Infiltration and seed Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Make people lose faith in the cause they are in.We have seen this with bots, and real people who are suddenly in the WSB group and other groups, but it’s funny how it’s mostly concentrated on WSB no ?We have seen other members talking to people on Webull asking if they’re getting paid and they flat out said yes 20 bucks for every post with minimally 3 interactions.When those naysayers get caught on reddit and pointed out suddenly they do an account wipe (seen this at least 5 times myself and seen others post about this).

Control the narrative

This is the most important one can do, if you control the narrative you control the way people think interact etc Since a week or so WSB has become very negative about something they were rallying behind for months, like on the flip of a dime.

New mods instated, old ones removed

And suddenly all the positive things about GME are suddenly gone. u/zjz has been removed out of the blue while being one of the better mods on there.

Right now they are controlling the narrative and spreading “fake news” I fucking hate Donny but I’m ashamed to admit that he might have been right about the entire fake news idea. Because look at the news media; Gme craziness they will crash the market GME craze over now silver Silver now Uranium They all went broke etc etc. EVERYTHING BACK TO NORMAL PLZ DONT LOOK

But if you look at multiple sources…. The shorts are not covered at all The Short ladder attacks (which we can just call ladder attacks at this point) keep going day in day out because we are not selling and they keep shorting it.

Take the facts that you can check yourself. Cross check over and over and over, you will see automatically which ones are correct (if a 100 say the outcome is 120 and 20 say they’re at 50 look at the credibility of those people giving the information).Do your DD, cross check with the DD of other members (this is most likely why WSB removed these)As this is the most powerful one, who is on board who does what why do they do it etc etc.

Normally the announcement that Cohen,fils-aime, Francis, Durkin AND Kruger would impact the stock in a very positive manor, yet the stock went down 20% that day

Compare your findings with the Median of when something like that happens normally the stock shoots up, you can find what’s actually happening and what is being pushed on you.

Like: people have already sold out their shares (while the data shows otherwise https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/lejf39/good_news_apes_are_holding_numbers_are_out_apes/ )My conclusion is that there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes to keep us infighting and divided, as long as we all keep positive we can actually come out on top of this.

Make no mistake gentlemen we are at war. And half the war is a war of hearts and minds

Capture their minds and their hearts and souls will follow

#gme

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robert-c · 4 years

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Forty Years In The (Un)Making

The de-evolution of the Republican Party into principally a bunch of blindly loyal sycophants didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen just under Donald Trump’s watch. It actually began with Ronald Reagan in 1980 and has been on a steady trend in this direction ever since.

The political landscape of 1980 was complicated. President Jimmy Carter was widely regarded as having mishandled the Iran Hostage crisis, and Democrats were heavily split between him and other challengers like Ted Kennedy. It was one of those rare elections in which there was significant third party challenge. Pat Robertson, making noises on the religious right (which would ultimately result in his run for office in 1988), also threatened to weaken the Republican base at a time when the Democrats were vulnerable.

Reagan’s response was to invite the religious right into the upper ranks of the party. How much of this was his personal belief, and how much calculated strategy we’ll probably never know. Nevertheless, this gave a significant role to people who believe regardless of facts, and for whom personal steadfastness of belief is more important than anything else. Reagan also introduced the major fostering of falsehoods that satisfied the personal myths of his supporters. Most notable was the “welfare queen” story. He alleged that there was a woman in Chicago living the high life, driving a late model Cadillac, and doing it all on welfare. Good investigative reporting and persistent demands for facts ultimately exposed this as a fabrication. And yet even today, some right wing people believe this story as true because it matches all of their fears and prejudices about public assistance. [As someone who has known people on public assistance I can assure you it is difficult enough to get a minimum of what you need, let alone become ‘well off’.]

Since then it has been a fairly steady trend of presumptions, assumptions, myths and outright lies. All with the intent of fostering the following ideas:

people getting public assistance are liars and cheats,

regulation of businesses kills jobs or drives them out of the country,

businesses are ‘good guys’ and don’t need to be regulated because they never do anything wrong, and “profit above all else” is the American ideal

immigrants are criminals (if they are people of color),

a medical system that supports the profits of drug and insurance companies is the best way to ensure health care coverage choices,

despite the first amendment of the Constitution, this is a “Christian country”,

the second amendment of the Constitution guarantees unregulated access to any weapon a citizen may want, and somehow intends that citizens take up arms against the government when they think their rights are being violated, and

many more on a smaller scale, but all with the idea that anyone not stuck in the 1950’s is somehow an enemy.

LIES! All lies!

The truth is that people on public assistance don’t get what they need because rules supposedly to prevent fraud end up preventing them from finding and keeping most gainful employment by requiring visits during normal work hours, and other reviews of their situation. All of this while the largest potential for fraud exists in government defense contracts, just based on the amount of money that flows through the programs.

Businesses move jobs overseas because of low wages and lack of regulation. But let’s keep in mind what those regulations do. Most of them were initiated and designed to stop unsafe practices in the business; practices that endangered employees, consumers and/or the public at large. Evading such restrictions shouldn’t be praised as a great avoidance of “socialist” control, but should be seen as the callous disregard of the safety and security of others for the sake of a few dollars more profit.

Profit above all else could hardly be called a moral philosophy but that is exactly what this myth would have us believe. It rests on a couple of myths we all want to believe; that success in this country is because of “building a better mousetrap” and that gaining wealth is somehow proof of superior intellect or work ethic, while neither could be farther from the truth about how real wealth is acquired and kept.

Casting immigrants as criminals (if they are people of color) is right in line with centuries old racial prejudices. Little more should need to be said to explain their sick justification for these ideas. Anyone even tempted to believe it should be suspect. Any sweeping generalization based on something someone can’t control (like their ethnicity) is automatically racist.

Portraying “socialized medicine” as a situation where patient choices are limited and/or unavailable is, at best, a recollection of old, failed implementations OR the fears that the rich cannot use their wealth and influence to jump to the head of the line, past real life or death cases just to be sure that their headaches aren’t brain tumors. Oddly enough, the insurance companies, who are somehow cast as the “heroes” in these tales, would if they could limit choices even more. In their best profit interests people with pre-existing conditions (which is all of us, eventually) get no coverage at all, or if they do it is at a premium designed to cover all of their likely expenses in the year, which amounts to no insurance at all and just paying everything out of pocket. Ultimately, they would like to sell their coverage to people who will never use it, or use it sparingly if at all, while at the same time, if they must, charging others with a premium that will at least cover what they expect to payout in claims. This is a perfect example of where capitalistic, free market enterprise does NOT result in the best product or service at the best price. Attempts by competitive insurance companies who want to balance the premium and risk over the largest possible group, will have higher rates for the young who are less likely to use or need insurance and so will be uncompetitive in that group. The so called “free market” system is biased in favor of this ridiculous, anti-competitive arrangement.

Likewise, drug companies make more money selling treatments, than cures. There doesn’t have to be a cover up or secret directive; budget allocations for research and development will naturally favor the most likely profitable drug or approach and that will always be treatment. Cures are more likely the accidental byproduct of researching treatments. The scientists at work in the labs won’t even suspect, they will think they are working toward cures by learning how to develop treatments. Again, think about the idea that the “sacred” profit motive produces only good, and think it out for yourself as to which is the most profitable approach.

At the founding of this country, the mother country, England, had just been through several centuries of warfare and persecutions based on people’s religion. The new country of the United States of America wished to avoid such a situation, and so the first amendment to the Constitution establishes a separation of church and state. It doesn’t matter that most of the Founders could never have imagined how far this separation would have to go; great ideas usually far exceed their originators’ imaginations. Whether it is not lending support to one Christian sect over another, or Christianity versus Islam, or even total disbelief in religion, the concept of separation is the only way to ensure that everyone has the broadest freedom to believe as their conscience dictates. While things like the motto “In God We Trust” on the money are small issues, generally not worthy of a major effort to remove them at this time, they are part of the disinformation that portrays the USA as some sort of religious government or society.

By creating the impression that there has to be (or ought to be) some “general” religion of the US, they have already won half the battle, because the various Christian sects still make up a majority of the populace. BUT the principle of freedom and liberty of belief means that a person should have equal rights to believe as they wish even if they are the only one in the world who believes as they do. This is not abstract, but relates directly to people’s ability to choose abortion, end of life choices, how their remains are to be disposed of (did you know that cremation used to be illegal if anyone of your relatives objected? This was due to the religious notion that at the “end of days” people would be raised up from the cemeteries), and a host of other restrictions including what could be sold at stores on Sundays.

As for the second amendment, it begins with the phrase “well regulated” so any idea that it meant unrestricted access to weapons is stupidly at odds with the actual language of the amendment. There is also absolutely nothing in the Constitution, or its development, that suggests the point of this amendment was to provide a mechanism for people to overthrow the government. In addition to laws against taking up arms against the government (and the definition of treason in the Constitution itself), the Founders thought that the representational nature of the republic would prevent the need for such an uprising. To the extent that the second amendment had anything to do with the preservation of a free government it was that armed forces would be recruited from the citizenry. It NEVER was intended to ensure that criminals, and those with the intent to overthrow the government of the United States (if and when they think it has strayed from its proper role) had access to any and all weapons available.

The other issues are everything from abortion to Sunday closing laws, from consensual prostitution to adult book and movie stores. Once again, it doesn’t matter that you or I wouldn’t want to participate, it’s that as long as there is no coercion involved it is none of our business and if you think it is a sin against God, then God can take care of it – He/She/It doesn’t need our help.

BTW, this is where I should share an experience I had with one of these religious fanatics. Her belief was that the USA had never had a famine because of the “In God We Trust” motto on the money. I will spend no time dismantling the obvious idiocy of this idea. What was significant about her unhinged belief, was that she used the principles of “externalities” to justify her position. To refresh, the principle of externalities is why you cannot drive drunk or without insurance. Your actions that can affect others are rightly regulated under this principle. Her idea, clearly given to her by someone else as she was nowhere near smart enough to have thought this on her own, was that to avoid the retribution of God (as she understood Him) we all had to adhere to at least a minimum of His instructions (again conveniently interpreted for us by self-appointed ‘experts’ in these matters).

It is past time to reject these superficial and self-serving myths.

#Republican lies #conservative myths

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omfgtrump · 4 years

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The Tale of Two Viruses: Part 32, The Virus Strikes Back

So much has been written about the travesty of the debate, but I wouldn’t call it a debate. I would call it more an American Carnage. Carnage in the sense that there was one man literally trying to eat the other, the way a lion tears at its captured prey.

Can’t you just see Chris Christie and Rudy G in the debate prep telling The Don: “Don’t worry about facts, just eat his lunch! Better yet, skip the lunch and just eat him!”

I found it mind-boggling that anyone was surprised by The Don’s behavior. When are people really going to understand how disturbed and evil this man is?

This is what despairing bullies do. They rage. To be losing to a man he considers weak and impotent is humiliating. When The Don feels humiliated, he goes low, lower and lower.

I searched for takeaways. Initially, I settled on three things:

Cows.

When responding to the “Green New Deal” (which Biden unfortunately doesn’t support), The Don snipped “They want to take out cows, too.”

No more hamburgers. No more ice cream. And most importantly, no more Yoo-hoo. Those scoundrels, those heartless Democrats! So bad, so bad. And they got upset at us for taking babies away from their parents or taking uterus’s out of women’s bodies without them knowing.

Proud, as in Proud Boys.

When asked to condemn White Supremacy, The Don told the White Supremacist group The Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” Taking a page out of James Brown’s songbook he might have as well said: “I’m White and I’m Proud.

youtube

Forest cities.

Name your top five forest cities. You can’t? Don’t worry because they don’t exist. But The Don, who couldn’t be bothered to have a national plan to get PPE to all who needed it, is ready to sign a new bill in to law. It’s called The Sweep Act. The Sweep Act has two components: A broom for every American, and a national commitment to sweep the pandemic under the rug.

Here’s The Don on our raging forest fires.

“In Europe, they live—they’re forest cities, they’re called forest cities. They maintain their forest. They manage their forest. I was with the head of a major country—it’s a forest city.”

Name of head of country please?

But after the news broke that The Don tested positive for Covid, I decided to abandon those takeaways and go with mask.

During the debate, The Don was derisive of Biden’s mask wearing.

“I don’t wear masks like him. “Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

Too bad they couldn’t have created a mask big enough to surround the entire White House, as who knows how many people working there were infected by the Super-Spreader-in- Chief!

And all those well-wishers out there: I understand what you are doing. You are trying to take the high road, do the opposite of what he would do. Show compassion. Just like the compassion he showed during the debate when Biden spoke about his son, Beau, who died of cancer or his son Hunter, who overcame substance abuse. Just like the compassion he showed back in 2016 when Hillary nearly collapsed form pneumonia.

youtube

Just like the compassion he showed when he mocked a journalist with disabilities.

I have no compassion for this man. None. He is evil. If you let your guard down and find a soft spot for him, thinking: oh now he will finally become human, chastened by this existential experience, you are naïve and deluded as he is.

There is no one this man won’t abuse, hurt, and try to destroy if given the opportunity.

When the devil is weak, make sure he doesn’t get another shot at it.

Who here doesn’t wish someone didn’t kill Hitler before he wiped out 11 million people?

Oh, but he isn’t that bad you say. Hyperbolic, you declare? Bullshit! He is that bad.

He has separated babies from their families.

He has deregulated environmental policies that will result in illness and death for thousands of Americans, particularly poor people of color.

He has and will continue to foment and support violence by White Supremacists-the potential for violence around the election growing each day.

He wants to take away health care and wipe out coverage of pre-existing conditions for millions of people, which will eventuate in thousands of avoidable deaths. And he wants to do this during a pandemic, when millions will be dealing with the medical fallout of the pandemic for years to come.

And then there is his response to the pandemic.

He knew in late January that it was lethal and spread through the air and said nothing.

Despite information to the contrary, he has downplayed the virus and put the entire country at risk.

He told the American people to use bleach, ultraviolet inside the body. Some of his devotees went out and swallowed bleach and a few died.

He is creating false hope and a narrative that a vaccine is around the corner. Ironically, his pathological lying and his attempt to rush a vaccine through without the rigorous testing it needs, has made the American public very skeptical about getting the vaccine. In fact, in a survey about who to trust regarding the validity of a vaccine, only 19% trusted The Don. I think more would trust cows (sorry to drag you through the mud, cows). Cornell University researchers analyzing 38 million English-language articles about the pandemic found that President Trump was the single most promoter of disinformation regarding the virus than anyone else. His malicious misinformation campaign will cause the death of many more Americans and perpetuate the pandemic.

His anti-mask attitude, disregard of truth and science, dismissal of social distancing as a method of prevention, has led to tens of thousands of unnecessary and preventable deaths. His delusional belief in his own invincibility put him in harms way and now he too is positive for the virus.

Even when he knew he was exposed to the virus (Hope Hick’s positive diagnosis), he went to a fund raiser in New Jersey and exposed all his rich supporters.

Most recently, he defied medical advice and decided to surprise his supporters by taking a joy ride around Walter Reade Hospital putting all the secret service members at risk. Here’s what one doctor at Walter Reade had to say about The Don’s publicity stunt:

“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” Dr. James P. Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed, wrote on Twitter. “They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”

He has no shame, and cares not one iota about the impact of this stunt. In fact, this action is a perfect reflection of who he is and how he has handled the pandemic. Isn’t there a crime called reckless endangerment? In some states, if you knowingly are H.I.V. positive and you infect someone else (without telling them you are positive) you can go to jail.

In addition to these most recent egregious acts, he has knowingly, willfully and amorally acted in a manner to foster a genocide of neglect.

I have said this many times: The Don’s and his Republican collaborators are making choices that lead to people dying.

Let’s call it what it is. Evil. No act is heinous enough when it comes to his (and their) desire to hold on to power.

Knowing The Don’s ability to overcome adversity, he, unlike 208,000 Americans, will most likely survive this. Trust me, there will be no transformation, no come to Jesus moment like Boris Johnson. His response will be more like President Bolsonaro of Brazil, who recovered from the virus and declared himself victorious, an Adonis in the face of death. He will return to the campaign trail and revert to his vulgar, vituperative self, denigrating others, destroying everything in his wake, including our democracy, if that’s what it takes to win.

Do you still want to know why I have no compassion and do not wish him well? All I can hope for, if he does get well, is that he is defeated in an historic landslide, takes down the Republican Senate with him and then he and his family will prosecuted and convicted for their many crimes, spending many years wearing an orange jumpsuit to match his absurd orange hair.

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skippyv20 · 5 years

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💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU SO MUCH DEAR MM ANON, I KNOW YOUR TISK IN DOING THIS FOR US, TO SEEK THE TRUTH AND GET IT OUT IN THE OORN🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜 Did l ever tell you all, l do the riddles from bottom to top? I don’t know why, l used to look at the Sears catalogue from the back too, l still look at magazines back to front. A fun wacky PG fact!🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂☺️ MM Anon

skippyv20 MM ANON …… Cape Town closure ……bells and whistles farewell … on returning, a tour… an unpopular reluctance …… disinformation …… the fence that won’t mend…… club class flying isolation …… Heathrow paps…… no rest for the wicked …… “Hello Boys”…… “He needs a parade”…… “ not another bloody investigation” …… now D&G not H&M. …… cosmetic records!!!! O,no

… Cape Town closure They officially closed the Cape atone part of the tour and flew out September 29,2019. I was going to say today but l know this is a worldwide blog so l thought l would put that in there. The itinerary has them leaving from Johannesburg, and returning to London. I am sure most of Cape Town citizens had no idea they were there, if they did, no one cared really.

bells and whistles farewell This whole entire holiday has been just bizarre, her behaviour, a real live baby, was that baby really a boy or just presented as such. We all know the baby shower was for a girl baby, the BRF/LG so so so clever!!! Turned things around that it was a boy baby, that video of them showing amw to a few selected UK and US/CBS reporters was bizarre, at Windsor Castle. She looked so nervous, and PH said they grow so much in two weeks, the glare she gave him!! You know it, you all saw it! Will there be a whiz bang goodie doo? I think likely, paid, bussed in, waving goodbye. I have visions now of O showing up!

on returning, a tour Oh my goodness, is SS already planning a return trip, as she has been showered with love and praise by thousands and thousands , the crowds have been massive and amazing , kind, amazingly kind, and kind of amazing! NOT!!! I hope you got my attempt at using her favourite words and l tried her amazing kind of word salad, so kind and amazing of me to be so amazingly kind!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😁😁😁😁😆😆😆😛

an unpopular reluctance Reluctance means unwillingness or disinclination to do something. She is unwilling in any way shape or form to put celebrity aside and take on her proper duchess role. But this makes sense because there was never supposed to be a wedding let alone a baby. Using the word unpopular putting it mildly. I do think this may refer to PA and his reluctance or downright refusal to be part of the F.B.I. requests for an interview with him regarding his friendship with JE, GM. and other things like VRG allegations. I do not know how long his refusal can go on.

disinformation PR PR PR PR constant disinformation. One might use the word lies!! It’s been sickening to see and read in the papers. It has Albee’s thus wth her and it will forever be. Oh l just had to let out a big sigh because it’s so sad, and the baby ring used, disinformation about his age, everything about him is one huge example. There is nothing worse than using a child. Scripture says “Suffer the children to come unto Me, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven “ the exact is Matthew 19:14 King James Version (KJV) 14 But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven..

the fence that won’t mend… Mending fences has an obvious meaning, fix a broken fence. However it can be used as a metaphor, fixing a brook relationship for example. I think this is what MM ANON is referring to. Madam, initially when she came on the scene was ‘a breath of fresh air’, marvellously inclusive and welcomed into the U.K. and Commonwealth, and into the ‘family she never had’. Many , including PW had grave concerns. It didn’t take very long for the bloom quickly began to fade. There is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE IN A MILLENIA INFINITY! that her relationship with the British public, most members of the BRF, the Commonwealth and many around the world , can ever be mended. It has been irrevocably broken. Complete disregard and blatant disrespect for HMTQ! And a laundry list of grifting, disgusting behaviour, plus her complicated filthy past. No mending of this fence is even wanted, never mind attempted. GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

club class flying isolation The return flight, again commercial l am sure, back to London should be interesting. She and her team, will again be prattling on about how successful and awesome the tour is, IF BY THE WAY, she and her smuggled alleged living diamond , amw, if she wants baby in London, or just leave is SA. and carry on with dollies. My sentence structure is horrendous but IF BY THE WAY, l meant IF she can get through customs. Do babies need passports, Royal Allegedly babies? Was he sleeping on arrival and she got archficial through that way. I don’t know how, strict customs are with royalty. On the flight, Harry will be alone, not involved in anything because it’s all about a madam. I noted today how sloppy he looked catching that flight in t shirt and jeans, wrinkled, he has been wearing those ratty brown suede shoes the entire time. He suited up well though earlier and l an certain when he means the High Commissioner he will hopefully be dressed for it. I keep repeating myself, but his looks and behaviour are SCREAMING FOR HELP, HE HAS COMBAT FATIGUE! I am so worried, he’s wasting away, remember the interview when he was in uniform and something urgent was happening, he took off his mic and ran to see what needed doing? Remebhow fit and muscular he was? Look now, dishevelled clothes, those brown shoes😩, looks like he cannot sleep etc etc etc. I know l keep repeating myself but please LG, l know he is getting help behind the scenes, but our Harry is at such risk now, in his depression, l do worry greatly for him!!🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Heathrow paps Oh my my my my my!!!! The media and paparazzi will be waiting at Heathrow, if that’s where they land, they might be cheeky and land at Gatwick or elsewhere. The media when they return and subsequently is going to be scathing!!!!! Again read her twitters, petal is in SA talk about the Sussexes non-stop but denies being her, petal calls her baby bubs has done for quite sometime. In SA, big reveal, amw nickname is Bubba ☺️☺️☺️🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂. We are not talking about Einstein here! It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous!

no rest for the wicked She had all her private things planned during this holiday. Yet she still manages centre stage by foisting herself via IMessage or Skype l think to be with the classroom where PH was in Malawi. All about CAMFED campaign for female education . She just cannot let him go, except when he could have really needed love and support, in Angola, the mine field, him sitting all alone by the tree named after his mum. Oh self seeking narcissistic behaviour, she lives a Master Class of it.

“Hello Boys” I can’t remember the name of the film, it might be Hello Boys actually! It’s fantastic Bette Midler at her finest, set further war, WWII, she goes on tour to entertain the troops, she would appear on stage all gussied up looking gorgeous and sing for them, she is amazing. Great film! I wonder MM ANON are you relating madams behaviour to the character in the film?? Going on tour and putting on a show!!! I might be way off but that’s a great film!

“He needs a parade” Support and love for Harry! Agree wholeheartedly! Yes he made a bad choice of bootycall that was his choice,who of us is without sin and can cast the first stone? This was all pre-planned, they would have kept at it, until it worked. I think he needs medals of the highest order for service to the Crown, HMTQ, his granny. He needs away time, months of privacy, therapy, perhaps medication, he ,Ishtar we’ll be on anti-depressants already! HE NEEDS PRAYER🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻. This is evil at work, it’s a nefarious web planned, he was shared in it.

“ not another bloody investigation” What now? What’s the next thing? Well PA is in a spot of trouble, putting it mildly. He has hired a new PR guy, Jason Stein, former Amber Rudd’s bulldog, lost his job when she quit recently! The paper says he is a ‘master of the dark arts’! The same was said about SS. What are the ‘dark arts’ these PR people use??? Anyhow, there are more accusers , resulting further Epstein investigations in America. The F.B.I. are more insistent upon an interview. The palace statement and PA years ago when this first came up, were emphatic he had NO sexual contact or interaction with VRG. They are not commenting today, read the article in the Daily Mail, if you’re inclined. They are saying, royalty is not an issue, years ago it was swept away. Since the #metoo movement the world has changed. Many many famous men have been charged, Bill Cosby, many famous American media personalities, actors, Weinstein, . This week l was chuffed to hear Wexner been charged in connection with Epstein! If you don’t know Les Wexner, look him up. He’s an American billionaire, one of his many businesses is Victoria’s Secret! Buy from them, you give money to an alleged sexual predator! I am not recalling just now his other businesses, but very very wealthy men have been and are being brought to justice. PA is in serious trouble. The ,ore he refuses to cooperate and scream he’s royalty, he is dragging out the inevitable. Poor poor HMTQ, l just feel so bad for her!

now D&G not H&M Baby Archie wore H&M to meet DT, which was subsequently marched and appeared officially on H&M advert and website l think website. Now baby Archie will appear wearing D&G. Dolce and Gabbana highend designer Italian clothes. This woman never fails to put a foot wrong. I don’t know if Archie was wearing it while she carried him to catch the plane to Johannesburg , the photos again captured through a clear glass walled corridor. Did anyone else think the ‘baby’ she was carrying looked a lot smaller than amw who met DT? Or was it just me? I would love a side by side photo. Maybe l am totally off.

cosmetic records!!!! O,no. I am not sure if these two clues go together but this is how they appeared to moi. Are there records surfacing or in possession of the BRF and LG’s team of investigators that show the extent of work she has had done, especially since coming onto the scene with PH? We know something was up at U.S. Open, she had that invisible medical tape over her nose 👃🏻, yes l purposely use that colour of nose! We all have seen her nose appears to be collapsing, those darn hobbies can show up in real physical manifestations ie wide eyed , dilated pupils, agitation, hyperness, just read the twitters feeds that will show you bizarre behaviour, also noted the times tweets are sent! As far as O, no…..PH is/ has reportedly been working with an O on mental health programs for a fruit tv channel. I have no idea where things are st with that. Is she going to come back on the scene in Africa. I know she has sponsored a school there, where there had to be some firings of l think the administrator , look it up!! I have visions now of her showing up for a surprise appearance with madam. Oh gracious, make it stop! PLEASE😩😩😩😩😫😫😫😖😖😖

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you so much dear PG! Seems much coming....Seeing your humour and wonderful personality shining through....is wonderful, you are BACK! Thank God for our Dear PG!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

#Ask Skippy #submission

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