Important Issues We SHOULD Be Discussing…

wv wrote:

bnw wrote:

This isn’t a “hint”. Your “fact” is BS. Please do tell how your efforts make the planet “a better place”! Wow.

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Well, even if climate-change was a myth, dont you think cutting down on pollution
and moving towards less-toxic energy sources would be good for the plants, animals and talking-monkeys?

w
v

Depends upon what you consider pollution. Elevated CO2 levels throughout history have been boom times for the human race.

Energy use I believe is a personal choice. Not only of type of energy but of quantity used. We drive very efficient vehicles. We dry our clothes on the line. We incorporate passive solar far more than most in this part of the country. We grow a mean garden and maintain a very small orchard as organic as possible for both. We zone heat during the winter. All of what we do has an economizing component in addition to personal preference.

Until a new energy technology can replace the necessity of fossil fuels I will strive to use as little as possible to maintain our lifestyle with a clear conscience.

Speaking of the Enviroment:

Trump just proposed ending all federal clean energy development He’d end all research on solar, wind, efficiency, batteries, clean cars, and climate science, too.

Excerpt:

In the last week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to zero out all federal spending on clean energy research and development. And the plan he released would also zero out all other spending on anything to do with climate change, including the government’s entire climate science effort.

You may have missed this bombshell because team Trump did not spell out these cuts overtly. In a campaign where the media has “utterly failed to convey the policy stakes in the election,” as Vox’s Matt Yglesias explained recently, it appears only Bloomberg BNA bothered to follow up with the campaign to get at the truth of Trump’s radical proposal.

Polling guru Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com fame gives Trump a one in three chance of becoming president. So I agree with Yglesias that we ought to seriously look at the implications of Trump’s proposals — especially since if Trump wins, he’s all but certain to have a GOP-controlled Congress to back him.

Another issue: The FB(facebook)ization of media, news, information. Heard a discussion on BBC radio this morning, caught just waking up. So I didn’t get all of it. But it hit me as one of those “duh” things, and provoked more thought beyond what they were saying.

Algorithms. Riffing off the Netflix idea of personal likes and dislikes generating suggestions for other films and TV, etc. We’re heading toward a day when the only sources we consume will be on our likes list, or those the algorithms suggest. Which obviously means folks will build their own little bubbles, and won’t venture beyond them.

Rather than “the democratization of media,” we’re regressing into little feudal fiefdoms of our own making. Example: I’ve been struck by comments from several Trump supporters who say it will be a landslide in favor of their candidate, because all the people they know — on facebook and in their neighborhood — are huge Trump supporters. Of course, it’s likely they’ve blocked or “unfriended” people who don’t agree with them about Trump . . . and this is likely happening a lot on the Dem side too.

Customized ignorance, basically, with a major assist from software programmers.

Well, i know nothing about Assange. I’ve never read a single thing about him till today.

He’s seems to have some interesting folks on his side:

wiki
“…On 25 July, following the Republican National Convention (RNC), during an interview by Amy Goodman, Assange was quoted saying,”Choosing Between Trump or Clinton is Like Picking Between Cholera or Gonorrhea… Personally, I would prefer neither.”[196][198][199]

wiki
“….Opinions of Assange at this time were divided. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard described his activities as “illegal,”[62] but the police said that he had broken no Australian law.[63] US Vice President Joe Biden and others called him a “terrorist.”[64][65][66][67][68] Some called for his assassination or execution.[69][70][71][72] Support came from people including the Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva,[73][74] Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa,[75] Russian President Dmitry Medvedev,[76][77] Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn,[78] Spain’s Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias,[79] UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay,[80] Argentina’s ambassador to the UK Alicia Castro,[81] and activists and celebrities including Tariq Ali,[82] John Perry Barlow,[83] Daniel Ellsberg,[84][85] Mary Kostakidis,[86] John Pilger,[87][88] Ai Weiwei,[89] Michael Moore,[90] Noam Chomsky,[89] Vaughan Smith,[91][92] and Oliver Stone.[93]

The year 2010 culminated with the Sam Adams Award, which Assange accepted in October,[94] and a string of distinctions in December—the Le Monde readers’ choice award for person of the year,[95][96] the Time readers’ choice award for person of the year (he was also a runner-up in Time’s overall person of the year award),[97][98] a deal for his autobiography worth at least US$1.3 million,[99][100][101] and selection by the Italian edition of Rolling Stone as “rockstar of the year.”[102][103]

Assange announced that he would run for the Australian Senate in March 2012 under the newly created WikiLeaks Party,[104][105] had his own talk show on Russia Today in April–July and Cypherpunks[49] was published in November. In the same year, he analysed the Kissinger cables held at the US National Archives and released them in searchable form.[106][107] On 15 September 2014, he appeared via remote video link on Kim Dotcom’s Moment of Truth town hall meeting held in Auckland.[108]

The following February he won the Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal for Peace with Justice, previously awarded to only three people—Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Buddhist spiritual leader Daisaku Ikeda.[109] Two weeks later he filed for the trademark “Julian Assange” in Europe, which was to be used for “Public speaking services; news reporter services; journalism; publication of texts other than publicity texts; education services; entertainment services.”[110][111][112] For several years a member of the Australian journalists’ union and still an honorary member,[113][114][115] he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in June,[116][117] and the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism in November,[118][119] having earlier won the Amnesty International UK Media Award (New Media) in 2009.[120]…..”

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by wv.

Billy_T wrote:

zn: From what I gather he’s basically a libertarian. Which is probably why we never get anything from him (that I know of) about corporate wrongdoings.

I’ve noticed the lack of corporations (and capitalism more generally) too. His leaks have only been directed at — as far as I know — the public sector. And, as already mentioned, with few exceptions when it comes to America, just the Dems.

My editorial: personally? I don’t suspend that criteria. Wikileaks is libertarian and serves a libertarian agenda. There’s no scrutiny of business interests. I don’t suspend my criteria for him–he either recognizes the private sector needs major exposure, or he serves their interests. I don’t care beyond that. I have that criteria for everyone I discuss politically. There is just absolutely no way I make him an exception.

…

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

zn: From what I gather he’s basically a libertarian. Which is probably why we never get anything from him (that I know of) about corporate wrongdoings.

I’ve noticed the lack of corporations (and capitalism more generally) too. His leaks have only been directed at — as far as I know — the public sector. And, as already mentioned, with few exceptions when it comes to America, just the Dems.

My editorial: personally? I don’t suspend that criteria. Wikileaks is libertarian and serves a libertarian agenda. There’s no scrutiny of business interests. I don’t suspend my criteria for him–he either recognizes the private sector needs major exposure, or he serves their interests. I don’t care beyond that. I have that criteria for everyone I discuss politically. There is just absolutely no way I make him an exception.

…

Just minor, pedantic quibbling here: He’s probably <e>right-libertarian or “propertarian.” As you know, the American version, which is right-wing, is pretty recent. “Libertarian” means something quite different in most of the rest of the world. It’s more like “libertarian socialism” elsewhere.

Good article on the right-wing version’s origins, here.

But, yeah. I agree with you. Purposely leaving out capitalism and corporate interests is a deal-breaker for me as well.

Didn’t catch this edit in time. Should be formatted as:

He’s probably right-libertarian or “propertarian.”

Billy_T wrote:

I can see that, WV. That makes a lot of sense. At the same time, the one-sidedness of their critique gives me pause, and makes me less likely to believe them wholesale. In part, yeah. I’m guessing they’re expressing at least part of the truth, and telling us things that are important to know. Like you, I suspect (but don’t know) — just how much of it is true, though.

————

Sometimes i think its getting harder and harder to evaluate information, in this here
modern world. There are so many corporations funding ‘science’ and so many secret interests
funding ‘news’ sites etc, etc, etc.

We all do the best we can sorting and sifting and piecing things together as best we can
but it seems to me its getting harder and harder to figure out whats ‘true’ and whats not.

w
v

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

I can see that, WV. That makes a lot of sense. At the same time, the one-sidedness of their critique gives me pause, and makes me less likely to believe them wholesale. In part, yeah. I’m guessing they’re expressing at least part of the truth, and telling us things that are important to know. Like you, I suspect (but don’t know) — just how much of it is true, though.

————

Sometimes i think its getting harder and harder to evaluate information, in this here
modern world. There are so many corporations funding ‘science’ and so many secret interests
funding ‘news’ sites etc, etc, etc.

We all do the best we can sorting and sifting and piecing things together as best we can
but it seems to me its getting harder and harder to figure out whats ‘true’ and whats not.

w
v

Yep. Perhaps we’ve developed society, media, technology, etc. etc. too much, and it’s produced diminishing returns. Pitting us against one another in needless, everlasting competition.

The proverbial genie is out of the bottle, but I often think we’d be far better off if we could go back to ancient societies, but update them in certain ways. Pick and choose which advances in various technologies to keep, which to throw out.

Ideal for me would be small, organic farms and forests, spread out across the countryside, with small university towns in the center. Huge amounts of culture packed into those small university towns — all the arts, etc. But forests and farms, lakes and streams, mountains and pristine valleys covering the vast majority of our landmass.

Perhaps like a highly literate, musical, artistic, scientific version of the Shire. But we’d be much taller.

;>)

Billy_T said:

Another issue: The FB(facebook)ization of media, news, information. Heard a discussion on BBC radio this morning, caught just waking up. So I didn’t get all of it. But it hit me as one of those “duh” things, and provoked more thought beyond what they were saying.

Algorithms. Riffing off the Netflix idea of personal likes and dislikes generating suggestions for other films and TV, etc. We’re heading toward a day when the only sources we consume will be on our likes list, or those the algorithms suggest. Which obviously means folks will build their own little bubbles, and won’t venture beyond them.

The Black Mirror series sorta touches on this stuff.

One aspect of the Facebook-ization of media that is really disconcerting is the endless list of agenda driven “news” producers that inundate news feeds with bogus stories. Seems like there are thousands of them representing libertarian, tea-party, conservative and liberal viewpoints and most of their ‘news articles’ or memes are patently and sometimes ridiculously false yet they are swallowed up like a Gino’s cheesesteak as the truth. And these fictional articles are being paraded around as proof in social media political arguments. It’s frightening how easily people are duped by this stuff. Whenever I see one of these shared stories in my newsfeed I just post the snopes.com refutation and move on.

People are just not willing to view a claim with a discerning eye when it supports their belief system no matter how ridiculous it is.