#explanation livestream

[finexbright]

.

[beeapocalypse]

hey everyone. im still here

[somethingshifted]

what i wouldnt give to hear russel and noodle talk abt music production esp the pop tracks for cracker island. i believe damon had high praises for the producer. damon saying in that recent french interview, that he wants to retract from being present in interviews in the future, could be a plus on both him & the gorillaz aspect, where he can escape the negativity/stress, and then there'd be a space for the band to explain songs? or maybe he can talk about them via the band and not have to be present? toss russ and noodle up onto those genius videos and give em mocap 👍

[soft-husbands]

Apo blowing kisses at Mile while accidentally joining the live like we didn't see him is blowing my MIND! Like, we can see you! We see you, buddy. Everyone sees you. I'm still not over that.

I saw this and ykw it’s so tru poor bab he panicked so fast seeing that he was on live he just wanted to kiss his sick baby he forgot he was on live and everyone can see him 🥹

[altruistic-meme]

the desire to make a youtube video. despite everything. why.

[gutsfics]

i think alongside insects one of Baxter's other special interests happens to be parasites so when they figure out what's wrong w Gwyneth theyre so stoked & at some point just start. infodumping about the specific parasite she has

[hollowsart]

Woke up to the aftermath of the Spamton livestream chaos of yesterday

And I still have no idea what the heck is going on. I feel like someone who woke up after sleeping through the rapture.

Which is honestly hilarious

[ind1c0lite]

ok first of all: actor wants to play the leading role in the story. he wants to be the main person behind it and what better than being the literal title character. not only that but date/hiest/space mark have the same name as actor mark which is mark i plier. Actor is well an actor so hes able to play the hero role very well, hence why a lot of people like date/hiest/space mark. Actor is making these stories in order to enertain us the viewer (aka da). He wants an audience for his stories and us stuck in the mirror is the perfect choice. However even though actor is a narristic asshole hes still techinally human and cant act forever. hence why he might whine or pount when we wont seperate in hiest or why he might apologize to us iswm because he does indeed regret things even if he is an asshole. also there is the whole meta ending in date and the moment he shows up in iswm part one.

mmm yeah that does make sense! I can totally see that asshole playing it all out for us GJKHLJ;

[naruwasnthere]

an apparent flagging???

Hello, this is for anyone who was in my late night hangout stream, I was apparently flagged for nudity I'm not sure where but please forgive it and I'm guessing that late night hangout will be dismissed for the night

[journen]

How Ghost eats a taco, based on Samuel Roukin's explanation on his livestream. 🤣

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Imagine being a Fig and the Cig Figs fan. The band takes a pause in touring to actually to their schoolwork over spring break and you're like, weird time to be doing school, seems like it's more efficient to go to school during school time and tour your teen band during the holidays when your fans aren't in school, but they do go to that weird adventuring academy. Suddenly, the lead and lead drummer abruptly give away their entire fortunes to charity with no explanation, both at the same time. They then livestream some kind of "shrimp party" that they and their friends are having in a random executive's house (the executive was neither invited nor informed). The house is trashed; by the time they leave there'll be a hole in one wall and a hot tub full of rotten shrimp.

The next day, some kind of weird illusion goes up on their Fantasy Twitter, blue-and-white/black-and-gold dress style, where most people see a still pool and some see a tabaxi woman in it; it immediately goes viral. They then start uploading and streaming random stuff from INSIDE THE FOREST OF THE NIGHTMARE KING like a man in shining gold armour just absolutely tearing apart legions of devils while screaming that he's hurt his penis. No explanation for any part of this is offered at any point. Also, it's probably not immediately obvious, but it's gotta come out eventually that at some point during all of this Fig became a literal archduke of hell.

As a teen punk rock band, these guys are marketing geniuses.

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

Hbadvb yeah I knew he was crying the second time I meant if the first image and the second were one and the same hcddcbb (very cool explanation though!!!! I like it when people gush about stuff :DDD) -🌟

I REALIZED I READ THE ASK WRONG AFTER I POSTED IT SO MY BAD 😭 YEAH

technically no hsdkgjhs i made the shower joke b/c he's a dramatic ass mfer who would sit in the shower crying like that instead of going out in the real rain

in the original art piece though for the record yes he is bleeding he ripped out his own heart i think you'd bleed if you did that 🧍‍♀️but no he's not in the shower for that one. he's... somewhere? i don't know where though; i suck shit at backgrounds and place characters in some sort of aesthetically pleasing abstract pattern void that has no plot relevance

[inthelittlewood]

im here to provide you with things you have said before

"honestly at this point, how can we describe who owns a horse"

"what is comfort? i'm not entirely sure i know what comfort is"

"you're coming in, and this is exactly what you think it is. i'm making myself as a maid, as a rat. no explanations."

"you don't become a donut and live. i just have to point that out. that doesn't happen."

"even after a world shaking, life threatening situation, i still end up with TWO HERONS ON MY BOAT"

"that was weird, stood on food and ate it. pirate martyn canonically chews through his toes"

"i'm not a jerk after all, i'm just a beta tester"

"cherri's definitely the kind who would just tie me up to a electrified chain fence, let's be honest"

"i like the ass song because it says ass and ass is funny"

"i've got ptfd, post traumatic farm disorder"

"any child left in the small intestine has to stay there"

"those're some big boots to fill, but don't you worry, i've got half a thousand rats to put in em"

"you ever thought to yourself: "man, i'm really hungry for a lilypad right now." i have."

"that's a kaleidoscope of colins, it's a coleidoscope"

enjoy the knowledge that these things have come out of your mouth at some point

Who let's me just livestream whenever I want? It seems very unwise

[pepi-nillo]

i'm pretty sure this is my first time pulling off a full all-nighter, i've had less than one hour of sleep before but now i'm at 25hr and counting lmao

if svt gives us a free livestream of past concerts then who am i to let the opportunity go to waste?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A media literacy handbook for Israel-Gaza

Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

Media explainers are a cheap way to become an instant expert on everything from billionaire submarine excursions to hellaciously complex geopolitical conflicts, but On The Media's "Breaking News Consumers' Handbooks" are explainers that help you understand other explainers:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-and-gaza-edition-on-the-media

The latest handbook is an Israel-Gaza edition. It doesn't aim to parse fine distinctions over the definition of "occupation" or identify the source of shell fragments. Rather, it offers seven bullet points' worth of advice on weighing all the other news you hear about the war:

https://media.wnyc.org/media/resources/2023/Oct/27/BNCH_ISRAEL_GAZA_EDITION_1.pdf

I. "Headlines are obscured by the fog of war"

Headline writers have a hard job under the best of circumstances – trying to snag your interest in a few words. Headlines can't encompass all the nuance of a story, and they are often written by editors, not the writers who produced the story. Between the imperatives for speed and brevity and the broken telephone between editors and writers, it's easy for headlines to go wrong, even when no one is attempting to mislead you. Even reliable outlets will screw up headlines sometimes – and that likelihood goes way up in times like these. You gotta read the story, not just the headline.

II. Know red flags for bullshit

The factually untrue information that spreads furthest tends to originate with a handful of superspreader accounts. Whether these people are Just Wrong or malicious disinfo peddlers, they share a few characteristics that should trip your BS meter and prompt extra scrutiny:

High-frequency posting

Emotionally charged framing

Posts that purport to be summaries or excerpts from news outlets, but do not include links to the original

The phrase "breaking news" (no one has that many scoops)

III. Don't trust screenshots

Screenshots of news stories, tweets, and other social media should come with links to the original. It's just too damned easy to fake a screenshot.

IV. "Know your platform"

It used to be that Twitter got a lot of first-person accounts from people in the thick of crises, while Facebook and Reddit contained commentary and reposts. Today, Twitter is just another aggregator. This time around, there's lots of first-person, real-time reporting coming off Telegram (it runs well on old phones and doesn't chew up batteries). Instagram is widely used in both Israel and the West Bank.

V. "Crisis actors" aren't a thing

People who attribute war images to "crisis actors" are either deluded or lying. There's plenty of ways to distort war news, but paying people to pretend to be grieving family members is essentially unheard of. Any explanation that involves crisis actors is a solid reason to permanently block that source.

VI. There's plenty of ways to verify stuff that smells fishy

TinEye, Yandex and Google Image Search are all good tools for checking "breaking" images and seeing if they're old copypasta ganked from earlier conflicts (or, you know, video-games). The fact that an image doesn't show up in one of these searches doesn't guarantee its authenticity, of course.

VII. Think before you post

Israel-Gaza is the most polluted media pool yet. Don't make it worse.

There's plenty more detail on this (especially on the use of verification tools) in Brooke Gladstone's radio segment:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-gaza-edition

The media environment sucks, and warrants skepticism and caution. But we also need to be skeptical of skepticism itself! As danah boyd started saying all the way back in 2018, weaponized media literacy leads to conspiratorialism:

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2018/03/09/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you.html

Remember, the biggest peddlers of "fake news" are also the most prolific users of the term. For a lot of these information warriors, the point isn't to get you to believe them – they'll settle for you believing nothing. "Flood the zone with bullshit" is Steve Bannon's go-to tactic, and it's one that his acolytes have picked up and multiplied.

It's important to be a critical thinker, but there's plenty of people who've figured out how to weaponize a critical viewpoint and turn it into nihilism. Remember, the guy who wrote How To Lie With Statistics was a tobacco industry shill who made his living obfuscating the link between smoking and cancer. It's absolutely possible to lie with statistics, but it's also possible to use statistics to know the truth, as Tim Harford explains in his 2021 must-read book The Data Detective:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

There's a world of difference between being misled and being brainwashed. A lot of today's worry about "disinformation" and "misinformation" has the whiff of a moral panic:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10/are-we-having-a-moral-panic-over-misinformation.html

It's possible to have a nuanced view of this subject – to take steps to enure you're not being tricked without equating crude tricks like sticking a fake BBC chyron on a 10-year-old image with unstoppable mind-control:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/28/fog-o-war/#breaking-news

[confinedinthisflesh]

lotb thing pt 2