memfree @ memfree @beehaw.org

Posts

100

Comments

314

Joined

2 yr. ago

Ah, you are running into the problem that has lead nearly all English dictionaries to become descriptive rather than prescriptive. People make up new definitions for old words and new words for new things and everyone ends up needing to define terms to uncover who is using which words in what way. While not exactly on-point, I am reminded of this piece on finding nice words for latrines and imbeciles: https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/08/ableist-language-and-the-euphemism-treadmill/

I am very aware of how insincere, petty and close minded the right can be, but your words have taught me that the left can be just as bad. Thank you for the lesson. If you didn't understand what I said about a Rush-y take, I can't help and you won't hear. I remain angry that FAIR has misled y'all into misquoting data, and continue to maintain that we should expect better of them.

Article tells women to compromise with Republicans

But, no, it does not. Verbatim, it says, "This mismatch means that someone will need to compromise."

If you were someone like Rush Limbaugh, you would tell the right that this is another example of Bezos using his media spin machine to disenfranchise conservative men, calling them stupid, unsuitable and telling them they have to compromise. Rush would never tell them the piece said no such thing and they'd never read the source to see for themselves.

FAIR could have written an article that explained that POV as well and described included details left out, but instead chose to rile up the left with half statements the same way the right would do.

I apologize for being so bothered by this, but I have to deal with relatives who are conservatives as a matter of Faith. Their church friends won't hear reason so they won't either UNLESS it is broached in an extremely fair and unbiased manner. Sometimes I can give them a nudge in such a situation, but not the way FAIR is doing here.

Look, we should be on the same side. The most obvious thing missing from the piece was that some people might choose a same sex marriage. I think there might also be something about happiness and longevity differences between the sexes such that marriage is a great deal for men, but not so much for women -- but I don't remember enough details to back that up with anything, I simply noted the absence of statistics on if men or women had any difference in their level of happiness in a not-so-great marriage versus being single (because I think I remember something like that, but I'm not sure).

Anyway, I'm aware that journalism has never uniformly reached its own ideal of unbiased factual reporting, and because of that, I try to keep track of who is spinning things in which direction. Heck, Yellow Journalism became a phrase more than 100 years ago. Today's drive for clicks and eyeballs means "spin" becomes a frequent, nigh on incessant issue. If no one calls it out, people might think their trusted source is spouting a 'truth' that the mainstream media refuses to publish for fear of their stockholders. Fox viewers and their ilk would certainly tell you the WaPo piece is attempting to take away their guns and turn 'Mr. Burly Man' into 'Mr. Yes Ma'am'. When you tell them they're delusional, they pull a what-about-ism on sites like FAIR for doing the same thing in reverse. As you rightly point out, the conservative side is typically more outrageous than the liberal side, but I don't want to give them ANY ammunition! These people think commies and fascists are the same thing and that their glorious orange leader is neither.

So, perhaps it is unfair of me to hold Democracy Now and FAIR and a bunch of other sources to a higher standard than, say, FOX and NEWSMAX but those latter two fail to reach the lowest of bars. They lie and spin and rarely offer opinions that acknowledge any validity to another point of view. We know how conservative sites manipulate the narrative. Is it asking too much that more liberal sites refrain from stooping to their level? All they had to do was make a title like, "Veiled WaPo Nudge to Women: If You Want Marriage, Compromise With Misogyny." Too wordy? How about, "WaPo Hints: Ladies, If You Want to Marry, Try Misogynists." Better? It is the same sentiment without the lie that "WaPo tells Women," which is too gross an overstatement for me to let slide.

I do not think the headline of the FAIR article is inaccurate.

Bullshit. At no point does the article tell women to compromise with misogyny. That is what the (un)fair title says and that is a lie.

That said, I do agree that there are subtle messages throughout society that women ought to do the compromising, 'boys will be boys' and all kinds of other BS. It is wrong, it ought to change, it is there. Still, it isn't fair to make all those implications and accusations the fault and sole responsibility of the Washington Post. Regarding political 'sides', the WaPo piece pointed out:

Unfortunately, Americans have not equipped themselves to discuss, debate and reason across these divides. Americans have increasingly sorted themselves according to ideological orientation. They are working, living and socializing with people who think the same things they do.

Can we agree that sensationalistic media coverage is generally a bad thing? I remember a time before FOX -- a time when journalism was supposed to be unbiased -- and the headline here is just as bad as some of mis-spun crap I've seen there (like referring to undocumented as 'criminals' to promote the idea that cities are not safe).

The headline is a lie. I wish I could trust fair.org to be honest, but they are being ... unfair. WaPo gives the male/female liberal/conservative ratios and rightly concludes that the numbers don't match. At no point do they say which sex should compromise. Here's what they say:

As the researchers Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox have noted, about 1 in 5 young singles will have little choice but to marry someone outside their ideological tribe. The other option is that they decline to get married at all — not an ideal outcome considering the data showing that marriage is good for the health of societies and individuals alike. (This, of course, is on average; marriage isn’t for everyone. Nor is staying in a physically or emotionally abusive marriage ever the right choice. But, on the whole, while politically mixed couples report somewhat lower levels of satisfaction than same-party couples, they are still likely to be happier than those who remain single.)

I'm not saying that the Washington Post should be trusted on all things, or that we should forget that it can act as a billionaire influencer project, but I DO think we should expect fair.org to be more credible than to make up such misleading click-bait headlines.

The bits that hit me most:

It wasn't just author profiles that the magazine repeatedly replaced. Each time an author was switched out, the posts they supposedly penned would be reattributed to the new persona, with no editor's note explaining the change in byline.

authors at TheStreet with highly specific biographies detailing seemingly flesh-and-blood humans with specific areas of expertise — but ... these fake writers are periodically wiped from existence and their articles reattributed to new names, with no disclosure about the use of AI.

We caught CNET and Bankrate, both owned by Red Ventures, publishing barely-disclosed AI content that was filled with factual mistakes and even plagiarism;

Infocom.

Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide, Leather Goddesses of Phobos.

    
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
>
  

Dang. For the last two days I've been trying to work some Killing Joke into a playlist to be heard by classic-rock dudes at their work. It's been an enjoyable struggle because everyone should have some Killing Joke in their lives. Rest in Peace, Mr. Walker. You will be missed.

oh, and here's a pic (from https://www.meatsandsausages.com/fermenting-pickling/sauerkraut/fermentation)

I've done this. We used a big cookie jar on the counter and fermented for about a month (cold kitchen). It came out well, but we were kinda scared of it and the jar was always in our way so we never bothered again. We have local places that sell 'raw' sauerkraut and that is a better work/life balance for us.

Side note: there are 3 stages to fermentation with different bacteria taking the main stage in each. Check out this article and its links for even more details: https://www.makesauerkraut.com/how-long-to-ferment-sauerkraut/

The amazing thing is that almost ALL the staff signed a letter and threatened to quit, too! From: https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-altman/

“The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company,” the letter reads. “Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI.”

Remarkably, the letter’s signees include Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist and a member of its board, who has been blamed for coordinating the boardroom coup against Altman in the first place. By 5:10 pm ET on Monday, some 738 out of OpenAI’s around 770 employees, or about 95 percent of the company, had signed the letter.

Supposedly, Microsoft has said they'll hire the whole team... but I wonder if it'll really play out that way or if they'd just become short-term hires and then kicked out once OpenAI collapses. Note that Microsoft has invested a lot of money in OpenAI.

Vox also has a lengthy article with lots of details and consideration of what it all means, such as:

... There is an argument that, because OpenAI’s board is supposed to run a nonprofit dedicated to AI safety, not a fast-growing for-profit business, it may have been justified in firing Altman. (Again, the board has yet to explain its reasoning in any detail.) You won’t hear many people defending the board out loud since it’s much safer to support Altman. But writer Eric Newcomer, in a post he published November 19, took a stab at it. He notes, for instance, that Altman has had fallouts with partners before — one of whom was Elon Musk — and reports that Altman was asked to leave his perch running Y Combinator.

“Altman had been given a lot of power, the cloak of a nonprofit, and a glowing public profile that exceeds his more mixed private reputation,” Newcomer wrote. “He lost the trust of his board. We should take that seriously.”

Wanna be the bigwig on your block? Have I got a product for YOU! Solar Panels! Make your house shine with newfangled tech that'll be the envy of all your neighbors! Go solar, baby! Stick it to the electric company and make THEM pay for a change. Solar! You'll be beaming.

ok, I suck at faking ai chat

Yeah, I think that PR spin died after getting debunked so thoroughly, but I liked this article's blast-from-the-past 'need' to set the record straight with lots of details.

“Godfather of AI” Geoff Hinton, in recent public talks, explains that one of the greatest risks is not that chatbots will become super-intelligent, but that they will generate text that is super-persuasive without being intelligent, in the manner of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson. In a world where evidence and logic are not respected in public debate, Hinton imagines that systems operating without evidence or logic could become our overlords by becoming superhumanly persuasive, imitating and supplanting the worst kinds of political leader.

Why is "superhumanly persuasive" always being done for stupid stuff and not, I don't know, getting people to drive fuel efficient cars instead of giant pickups and suvs?

By chance are you using adblockers? I noticed it loads scripts from youtube.com, googletagmanager.com, and so on, so I bet there are some hooks in there. What I don't understand is why a .GOV site includes commercial junk that the citizenry might opt to block.

They will tell you "controlled" visits are for safety, but I remember in the post 9-11 Gulf War reporting how the Pentagon went all in for "embedded journalism". Yeah, sure, it keeps the press 'safe', but it changes what gets covered. The media initially loved it, but later realized there were valid criticisms of the process.

More to the point: yeah, covering news should not be a death sentence. Even if you are covering a war, as civilian non-combatants you shouldn't be targeted by any military... a la the 'Collateral Murder' wikileaks video of journalists shot by US helicopters.

Nice! Thank you!

Yes, that is a much better representation of what is growing in a given spot, but I can see why the hardiness map is more useful for gardeners who will: choose how to amend their soil, how much watering to do, and what protection to give. For people actively choosing the plants they will to tend to, the threat of temperatures is the hardest to handle. That said, I have plants I bring inside for the winter, so even frost is avoidable if you don't have too much to insulate.

Oh, I've also made this with 4-5 dried bay leaves and a dozen juniper berries. I liked the bay leaves in there, but the juniper berries weren't noticeable except as an unwelcome texture.

Have any good links for that handy?