#i dont suffer misinformation or bias when i can help it

[atthebell]

it's really interesting that you say that vodwatching is harder for you to summarize/liveblog cause i find it so much easier :o at least when i've been working through phil's blogs for the wiki. i think it's cause i already know where the story is headed that I have a clearer idea of what I'm looking out for (well and also, qphil isn't steeped in quite as much federation/enigma/etc, so i do think you've got much more complex things going on than me)

that being said ur killing it on the cellbit wiki stuff :] really glad you're in on this project too!

i wrote like a few paragraphs of cellbit's wiki page yesterday and it took me. five hours? that's with irl stuff getting in the way and i am VERY particular about how i cite and how to summarize so things aren't super crowded (since that can go in the day-by-day history instead) but like i have to reference SO many vods to talk about stuff and because of how long he streams, all the stuff he's involved in, every investigation he does, and especially just how busy his early days were (and the sprint really didn't stop until the eggs disappeared) it means there is SO much content to cover so i end up hopping across so many different vods to grab details, and i'm also trying to vodwatch as like. a fun activity for myself, so i don't want to burn myself out.

i also take very quick notes and can note down timestamps far easier live than when i'm rewatching a vod and trying to find a specific moment, because then i'm having to scrub through and try to figure out what moments are important and what are just him fucking around in a google doc. like i cannot stress enough cellbit used to stream qsmp for at least 4 hours 5 days a week that's SO much streams to trawl through (best wishes to bbh wiki folks, although at least he's not doing a ton of detailed investigation). and it's a lot of catching up, because i didn't use to keep detailed notes and so now i have to find things that i only half-remember (picture me sprawled over my desk with my head in my hands, that's me considering whether it's worth it to search twitter for an update tweet to cross reference for a timestamp)

cellbit has so much content honestly a huge part of the work is the condensing it element, wherein deciding what is important enough to go on the regular history vs. what is too detailed takes quite a while. i have two separate google docs for his lore, one that's personal and one that's specifically for the wiki, and i spend ages just going through and making sure things aren't me going on and on about something that isn't necessary for a brief summary. and i want things to be easy to understand and possibly catch up on for folks who missed a lot of his earlier stuff, which means explaining it well but not with like. essays and essays about his character progression, and keeping it as factual as possible-- once again, meaning a lot of vod citations.

also i think a lot of folks don't realize how much cellbit's investigations tie in with larger server lore-- he's debunked a bunch of theories about the federation and found out SO much info about them and the eggs and things like that, and a lot of that info gets lost over time. so documenting everything he's found means documenting quite a bit of overall server lore with sources. i'm like very lucky that i have a pretty good memory, especially for mysteries, so i know that i do need to find that stuff, even if i don't remember exactly when it was.

anyway back to your original point yeah i just find it leagues easier when i'm not having to go back and find a specific moment in a 9 hour vod and instead i can just have a google doc open jotting down everything important, and then later on all that info is just there for me to pull from. it makes the writing element easier along with everything else

[patriotsnet]

Why Do Republicans Lie About Everything

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-lie-about-everything/

Why Do Republicans Lie About Everything

Which Came First: Republican Hate Or Gop Misinformation

Do Honest Republicans Still Exist?

Hate is a great motivator. All political parties have used it to get out the vote. Generally, those who seek elected office shape information in a way that helps a certain voting block hate their opponent. Thats how we elect people in America. That is a sad reality we just have to accept in order to fix it. Hope doesnt fix it.

Whats unique and new about negative politics in the post-Obama era is that we have this thing called the Internet and dare I acknowledge itSocial Media. ;Social media has completely isolated the Republican Party base. The Internet and social media have created hard-edged, isolated buckets of information where facts dont matteragreement;and emotion matter. For republicans, agreement with their own bias is considered fact, whereas disagreement is a lie they literally transform reality to support their own opinion: the Post-Truth Era. In order to maintain that alternate reality, they have to hate those who dont agree, otherwise their reality bubble starts to break apart.

This is the case on both sides of the aisle, but the hardliners have taken it to a new level, which is why they seem to hate everything. Theyre even taught to hate things that help them like the ACA, unions, and public education.

Social media and 1000 cable channels dont increase the information we receive they focus the information and repeat it 1000 times more often. Anything can become the truth when its repeated enough times.

The Big Lie Is Gop Gospel

Cheney is not alone in suffering consequences for challenging Trumps allegations.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defended the states counting process against Trumps attempts to interfere with it, was stripped of his voting power on the State Election Board as part of Georgias new voting restrictions law.

In a special House election in Texas held on in early May, the Trump-critical Republican in the race Michael Wood got 3 percent of the vote.

In January, Michigan Republicans removed Aaron van Langevelde, a GOP attorney who broke with the party to certify Bidens victory in Michigan, from his post on the states Board of State Canvassers.

At the Utah Republican Partys convention this weekend, Sen. Mitt Romney perhaps the GOPs leading Trump critic was booed and called a traitor.

At the same time, Republicans who have embraced falsehoods about the election have been elevated.

Rep. Elise Stefanik , who appears likely to replace Cheney in the No. 3 spot, backed Trumps anti-election efforts to the hilt. Most egregiously, she falsely asserted that there were 140,000 illegal votes in Georgias Fulton County alone which would amount to more than 25 percent of all the votes in the entire Democratic-leaning county. The breakout Republican stars in the House of Representatives, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert , both egged on the January Stop the Steal rally that culminated in the attack on Capitol Hill.

Why Do Conservatives Soak Up Lies

The evidence that conservatives crave lies is abundant.

Conservatives loved George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s lies about “Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction” — loved them so much, that the researchers who wrote “‘There Must Be a Reason’: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification” surveyed 49 conservative Republicans, during October 2004, who admitted that they still believed Saddam Hussein had caused the 9/11 attacks, and these researchers found that 48 of those 49 extreme conservatives were entirely impervious to the overwhelming factual evidence that was provided to them by the presenters contradicting this false belief they held. Then, a showed that when Republicans were offered the official 2004 Duelfer report that had concluded Iraq hadn’t possessed any weapons of mass destruction for years before the United States invaded it in 2003, the percentage of Republicans who believed that Iraq did have WMD immediately prior to the invasion shot up, instead of going down . Even all of the exposés that had already been published about Bush’s faked WMD “proofs” didn’t persuade Republican voters that they’d simply been deceived by the people they trusted and supported. They didn’t resent it at all; they just asked for more, from those same discredited liars.

So: why do conservatives sop up lies, on topic after topic?

They do it because, if they didn’t, they couldn’t be themselves; they couldn’t be conservatives. Lie-lovers is whom they are. It’s their identity.

———-

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The Gop Elite Gave Us This Party

This dire outcome was not inevitable: The best evidence we have suggests that the rise of the Big Lie is the direct result of strategic choices by Republican leaders.

A new paper by Dan Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, analyzes data from a panel survey, which looks at roughly the same group of people over time, running between 2007 and 2020. The survey asked people to rate the fairness of the US electoral system on a scale of 1 to 5, and tracked the changes over time.

What they found was a striking consistency: Support for the American system is both high and reasonably stable when assessed via this measure, Hopkins writes. Though there are some fluctuations, with partisans evaluating the system as somewhat less fair when the other party is in power, generally theyre small.

Hopkinss last survey wave was in October 2020 which means the results dont reflect the false allegations lobbed in the aftermath of Bidens victory. The stability documented here was very likely shattered by Trumps post-election actions, Hopkins concludes.

Other data confirm this supposition. A report from the Voter Study Group analyzed Pew surveys, conducted after every presidential election since 2004, on whether voters thought their vote was counted fairly. You see the same general stability documented in Hopkinss paper, with a majority of voters in both parties saying they were very confident their vote was counted accurately in every year except 2020:

Republicans Have A Good Reason Not To Want To Investigate Jan 6: Theyre To Blame

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Our nations preeminent bipartisanship fetishistsJoe Manchin, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowskiare deeply disappointed that they cant get Republicans to back an investigation into the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill. Indeed, they seem outright baffled that their efforts at compromise have fallen short on plans for a bipartisan panel. There is no excuse for any Republican to vote against this commission since Democrats have agreed to everything they asked for, Manchin said in an angry statement on Twitter. It would be so much better if we had an independent outside commission, Collins, a moderate Republican, told reporters Thursday. Is that really what this is about, one election cycle after another? added Murkowski, blasting Mitch McConnells anticipated filibuster. Or are we going to acknowledge that as a country that is based on these principles of democracy that we hold so dear, and one of those is that we have free and fair elections.

I kind of want that to endure beyond just one election cycle, the Alaska moderate Republican told reporters.

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More Great Stories FromVanity Fair

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In 2009 Republicans Predicted That The Economic Stimulus Package Would Only Make The Recession Worse And Cause More Unemployment

The results show they couldn’t have been more wrong. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ended the recession after only a few months. Although 750,000 people were losing their jobs each month when Obama took office, after the Recovery Act was passed the rate of job loss immediately decreased each month and within a year the economy showed positive job growth.

Considering the severity of the 2008 economic collapse and the total opposition by Republicans to do anything at all to stimulate the economy, it is remarkable that the US economy recovered as quickly as it did.

Looking at the rate of job loss and job creation, its easy to see that the stimulus of 2009 was highly successful in stopping the job losses and turning the economy around.

Republicans Predicted That We Would Find Iraqs Weapons Of Mass Destruction Even Though Un Weapons Inspectors Said That Those Weapons Didn’t Exist

The Bush administration continued to insist that WMDs would be found, even when the CIA said some of the evidence was questionable. As we all know, the WMDs predicted by the Bush administration did not exist, and Saddam Hussein had not resumed his nuclear weapons program as they claimed. Ultimately, both President Bush and Vice President Cheney had to admit that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

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Republicans Said President Obama Would Raise Taxes Sky High

It never happened. Income taxes for over 95% of Americans remained the same or lower than they were before Obama was elected. The only people whose income taxes increased were those who make more than $400,000 per year, and their taxes rose only 3%. For most Americans, taxes are still lower now than they were under Reagan.

In 1993 When The Brady Law And The Assault Weapons Ban Were Passed Republicans Predicted Increasing Rates Of Crime And Murder

Republicans Are Lying To Themselves About Trump’s Toxicity

Thankfully, just the opposite happened. While the rate of violent crime had increased steadily from the 1970s into the 1990s, it suddenly began to drop after 1993 and continued to decline for more than ten years. What could have happened in 1993 to precipitate such a sudden and prolonged drop in crime? Thats the year Congress passed the Assault Weapons Ban and the Brady Law, which mandated background checks and a waiting period to buy a gun.

Despite Republican predictions to the contrary, the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban were followed by the most dramatic reduction in violent crime since the FBI started keeping statistics. The graphs below, based on the actual numbers from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports website, show how the rates of murder and violent crime in the US dropped suddenly after the 1993 Brady Law and Assault Weapons Ban were passed.

These charts show the rate of murder and violent crime over 35 years based on numbers from the FBI Uniform Crime reports.

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Here Are A Few More Things Republicans Have Been Wrong About:

Republicans said that Obamacare would have death panels to decide who would live and who would die. Wrong. No such death panels were ever proposed and nothing of the kind ever happened.

They said the 2009 laws to improve automobile fuel efficiency standards would kill the US auto industry. Wrong. The new standards were followed by a resurgence of the US auto industry enabling them to hire back tens of thousands of workers.

They said environmental protection laws requiring companies to clean up their pollution would create an undue burden and kill businesses. Nope, it never happened.

They said Ebola would spread across the country because President Obama allowed American Ebola patients to be treated in the US. The outbreak never happened. Only three people contracted Ebola in the US and all three survived.

They said President Obama would open our borders to illegal immigrants. Wow, were they wrong about that. Under Obama, we set new records for most illegal immigrants stopped at the border and sent home.

They said Obama would drive up the Federal budget deficit. That didn’t happen. Obama cut the $1.4 trillion deficit he inherited by two-thirds.

While someone could no doubt find instances where Democrats engage in over-the-top rhetoric, nothing compares to the consistently false and erroneous claims made by the GOP in recent years. When a political party has been so dismally wrong about nearly everything over the past 30 years, that party should lose all credibility.

‘nothing There’: More Republicans Are Calling Out Trump’s Election Lies

WASHINGTON The more we learn about Donald Trumps baseless, false and discredited claims about the 2020 election, the more baseless, false and discredited those claims have become.

Just consider the revelations over the past week from Republicans:

In Michigan, a GOP-led investigation by its state Senate concluded that it found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud in Michigans prosecution of the 2020 election.

Regarding Arizona, a report co-authored by former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson criticized the so-called audit of the election results in that state, saying it does not meet the standards of a proper election recount or audit, and that its being conducted by an inexperienced, unqualified contractor.

And over the weekend, ABCs Jon Karl writing for the Atlantic had former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr debunking Trumps claims about the 2020 election results. If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there, Barr said. It was all bullsh!#.

Predictably, Trump lashed out at those GOP findings.

Michigan State Senators Mike Shirkey and Ed McBroom are doing everything possible to stop Voter Audits in order to hide the truth about November 3rd, the former president said in a statement, which even included those state senators phone numbers.

Even Bill Barr doesnt buy them.

Read Also: Who Won The House Republicans Or Democrats

Get Ready For Another Possible Crisis Like 2020

This is not the first time that Republicans have declared a Democratic president somehow illegitimate. They impeached Bill Clinton on flimsy grounds, after previously accusing him of crimes ranging up to murder; there was a widespread campaign to label Barack Obama an unlawful foreign-born president . These campaigns were effective: A 2019 poll found that 56 percent of Republicans still believed that Obama was born in Kenya.

Nor is this the first time Republican elites have ginned up suspicion of voter fraud for political purposes. After Republicans won a series of statehouse elections in 2010, they spent the next few years falsely claiming that voter fraud was a serious threat in order to pass voter ID laws that were nakedly designed to suppress the vote among Democratic-leaning minority groups. Research has found that, even prior to Trump, this convinced Republicans that voter fraud was a real problem when its exceptionally rare.

These earlier campaigns laid the intellectual groundwork for 2020. Republicans were already primed to believe elected Democrats were somehow illegitimate and to believe in widespread fraud in the American electoral system. Trumps innovation claiming that an entire presidential election result was fraudulent was pushing on an open door.

Paying Lower Taxes Hurts Taxpayers

Less revenue means fewer handouts. Thats bad news for Democrats who lie obsessively year after year about how tax revenue never gets the job done in distressed communities because we still arent spending enough.

Why is it that even when the party is in power, when Democrats call the shots every single year like they do in Illinois, the poor stay right where they are most valuable in poverty?

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Times Republicans Were Wrong

It’s no secret that politicians tend to use exaggerated political rhetoric to get people to vote for them. In recent decades, Republicans have repeatedly made very ominous predictions about the horrors that will result from Democratic policies while painting a rosy picture of what will result from Republican policies. Now we have the luxury of looking back over the years to examine those predictions and policies. Below, you will find twenty-one examples of times Republicans were blatantly wrong.

Most Republicans Said That President Obama Should Be Impeached Because Of The 2012 Attack On The Us Consulate In Benghazi

Their own investigations, however, proved them wrong. Every Congressional inquiry, including those by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee, concluded that the Obama administration did nothing wrong regarding Benghazi, that there was no stand down order given, and that neither the President nor anyone in his administration lied about it. Each and every Republican investigation has reached this same conclusion, but Republicans continue to exploit this tragedy for political gain.

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Truth Matters Which Is Why I’m Telling It

I take comfort in knowing that I am doing the moral thing by telling the truth to my constituents.;I also;happen to believe;telling the truth;about;the 2020 election;is good politically.

If Republicans;become the party of the Big;Lie if we encourage this madness much longer we;will lose credibility with;the majority of;Americans on issues where I believe we have better ideas.;We will do;lasting damage to our republic.

True Republicans would never dream of wasting taxpayer money to hire an unknown cybersecurity firm with no elections auditing experience to audit an election that has;already been audited.;This is what the Arizona Senate is doing with their Cyber Ninja audit.

True Republicans would not;stand idly by while auditors paid with taxpayer dollars;chased;insane rumors that ballots were flown in from South Korea to change the outcome of the presidential race, or;that;secret watermarks;on the ballots;revealed by UV lights;would;expose fraud;once and for all.

This is what the Arizona Senate is doing with their Cyber Ninja audit.

Lies Damned Lies And The Truth About Joe Biden

Saagar Enjeti: Media Lets Biden SHAMELESSLY LIE About Hunter Bidens Business Dealings

Joe BidenKentucky state lawmakers vote to scrap school mask mandate Arkansas governor pushes back against Biden’s vaccine mandate RNC vows to sue over Biden vaccine, testing mandate MORE. I know him, said the House Speaker authoritatively, and that was that.

Does Bidens record warrant such confidence? Not really. In fact, Biden has a long history of lying about himself, about his past and about events that never took place.

Democrats want the 2020 campaign to be a referendum on President Trump. Fine, but if this is to be a contest of characters, it is only appropriate that Joe Bidens history of fabrication and deceit often intended to bolster his intellectual credentials also be fair game.

Over the past year, Biden thundered that the Obama administration didnt lock people up in cages. He also claimed that, Immediately, the moment started, I came out against it. And I was always labeled one of the most liberal members of Congress. Politicos rating of all three assertions? False.

No one should be surprised. Lest we forget

A video is making the rounds in which Biden boasts at a 1987 rally, “I went to law school on a full academic scholarship ended up in the top half of my class.”

Biden also maintained that he “graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school” and was the outstanding student in the political science department.

That commentary holds up well, as today more than ever Biden blunders into conversational crevasses, with no way out.

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[angieaprilfool]

The antidote for what ails us during this pandemic

What the f---, y'all? Where are we as a country right now when we believe conspiracy theories against the very people who are tasked with providing guidance to keep us safe during a pandemic. At a time when we could bind together to protect one another, to help one another against a common threat, folks are instead suspicious of the very same folks who are providing solutions?  This seemed to coincide with a six week period where definitive answers were few and far between. The unknown makes some of us uneasy. Is it possible that conspiracy theories have their origins in the search for answers to ease our anxiety? I decided do some reading on conspiracy theories using some skills I learned from a recent research course from grad school.

 Here are some tips on good research from the Big 6

1. Task Definition

1.1 Define the information problem

1.2 Identify information needed

2. Information Seeking Strategies

2.1 Determine all possible sources

2.2 Select the best sources

3. Location and Access

3.1 Locate sources (intellectually and physically)

3.2 Find information within sources

4. Use of Information

4.1 Engage (e.g., read, hear, view, touch)

4.2 Extract relevant information

5. Synthesis

5.1 Organize from multiple sources

5.2 Present the information

6. Evaluation

6.1 Judge the product (effectiveness)

6.2 Judge the process (efficiency)

   Jan-Willem van Proojien (2020) did a meta-analysis of the body of conspiracy theory research. As a result, he developed a model on the genesis of conspiracy theories. Simply put, he says that people who feel an existential threat1 to their life or worldview go through a sense-making process2 where they find "patterns," what appear to be causal relationships, and assign "agency" to antagonistic groups3 that intentionally seeks to harm others.

Existential Threat1

  In reaction to a force that threatens the safety, predictability of the future, or established mindset, people seek to protect themselves and others from the threat.

 Sense-making2

  In reaction to existential threats, folks seek simple answers for complex problems. This sometimes results in extremist political movements, as it "promotes political views that offer perceivers epistemic clarity by reducing a complex reality into a coherent set of assumptions about the world" (van Prooijen, 2020, p. 18).  

  Conspiracy theories requires two crucial criteria: patterns and agency: Patterns are the causal relationships between people, object and concepts, and agency is assumption of  person or group's intentions. In times of uncertainty, people can assign patterns to random items or occurrences. Similarly, moments of anxiety or hardship increases the tendency to detect agency by an antagonistic group. This group could be an elite power out to control a system, a low-power group out to undermine an established system, or an entity that has harmed others but will not accept responsibility.

  While belief in conspiracy theories satisfies a need to have control over the anxiety the person was feeling, belief in conspiracy theories gives rise to belief in other conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, folks who are consistently suspicious of others' intentions and sense agency in seeming innocuous sources tend to suffer from heightened anxiety.

  Unfortunately, in the time of coronavirus and social media, we not only live with a desire to make connections between occurrences in an attempt to exercise control over the unknown, we also live at a time where more than half of the tweets about coronavirus are generated by bots and spin doctors on YouTube are churning out misinformation for their own personal gain. All of these conspiracies are spreading like wildfire.  

   Guys, this is particularly worrisome because arguing with others online almost never changes minds. It simply forces a person to defend his/her opinion and solidifies their position even further. In fact, when a person's argument is debunked, the person simply denies the established evidence and instead provides "evidence" using resources that confirm their own bias. "Motivated reasoning is what social scientists call the process of deciding what evidence to accept based on the conclusion one prefers" (Bardon, 2020).

  Y'all, I am frankly more worried about this problem than I am of the coronavirus itself. I have strategies from medical professionals on how to keep myself and others safe. I just am not certain how to address the politicization of mask wearing. Seriously?

I just hope and pray that our common humanity supersedes our desire to find patterns in the randomness and our ability to assign agency to our enemies to prop up our skewed worldview. As Governor Burgum from North Dakota so deftly said, "This is a senseless dividing line, and I would ask people to dial-up  your empathy and your understanding." He stated that folks are not showing their political affiliation when they wear a mask, they are wearing it to protect the vulnerable among us. They are doing it as an act of love. It's possible that summoning our love for one another might just be the best tool against this existential threat.

 Empathy and compassion are the vaccine I want to see shared at warp speed.

 References

Bardon, A. (2020). Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview. Accessed May 25, 2020. https://theconversation.com/humans-are-hardwired-to-dismiss-facts-that-dont-fit-their-worldview-127168

 van Prooijen, J.-W. (2020). An existential threat model of conspiracy theories. European Psychologist, 25(1), 16–25. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000381