merc @ merc @sh.itjust.works

Posts

10

Comments

2,979

Joined

2 yr. ago

Now you just need to slay the Apostrophe Monster.

An impossible standard of evidence? You think proving someone lied is impossible? And yet, despite knowing you can't prove it, you want to throw around accusations that someone lied.

In that case, you're a liar. I don't need to prove it, because proving someone lied is impossible. I can just say you lied and then call it done.

Who's consenting?

So, are you admitting you can't actually find a single lie told by Vladimir Putin?

I never made any claims about Putin. You, however, did make claims about the media. Back up your claims.

Except Gates is a piece of shit. You don't need to shout at Gates, but nobody should ever meet him and treat him like a human.

No she wasn't. She was never part of IBM at all.

She simply knew the chairman of IBM because they both served on the United Way board of directors. She was also a lawyer, as was Gates' dad, which is a likely reason that the contract that Bill signed with IBM was so incredibly friendly to Microsoft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates

Who's Gate?

If Microsoft hadn't been around Apple would have probably defined the early PC era. The Apple II was released in 1977, 4 years before IBM decided to enter the home market with the PC.

Or Commodore might have been the one to dominate. They sold about 5 million Amigas.

Or it could have been NeXT after Jobs was forced out of Apple and started a new computer business.

The winner turned out to be Microsoft, but desktop computers were well on their way to being a standard thing long before Microsoft / IBM got into the market.

it's the reason so few people use FOSS products.

It's a reason. Another reason is all the stuff that Microsoft was found guilty of doing during their conviction for abusing their monopoly.

The alternative isn't "nothing", it's getting precious cultural artifacts out of high risk countries where there's a high likelihood of the artifacts simply being destroyed.

If there's no way to corroborate or refute what Israel said, don't print what Israel said.

Why? What they said is newsworthy.

"Israel bombed this building"

"Why?"

"Dunno, didn't ask."

Even if you don't believe the answer, getting an answer is still newsworthy. Everyone should be aware that it's not necessarily the truth, but it's newsworthy as the justification they're using. If it comes out later that the building was an orphanage, you can't use that to challenge the government's justification that it was a command and control center if you never got them on the record saying they bombed it because it was a command and control center.

I don't know, but it definitely seems like it. OTOH, it seems like journalists really care about the truth and bend over backwards to fact check things.

So, are you admitting you can't actually find a single lie told by the press?

It was probably a more stressful job than just being an advisor. An advisor could probably try a joke here or there if they wanted, but they weren't expected to always be making wisecracks. A jester was probably having to push the limit a lot more often and going over the line could be a problem.

Certainly a better job than 99% of the population, but one joke bombs and it could be the end.

The only opinion that should matter is that of the people the artifacts belong to.

Which people? The government? So in Afghanistan it's up to the Taliban? If you don't trust that the government of a country represents the will of the people, then how do you determine what the people want?

And, again, which people? Is a totem pole in a museum in Canada the property of the Canadian people? Or is it something that belongs to the Haida people, and it doesn't matter what other Canadians want? If it is up to the Haida, it is up to the Council of the Haida Nation, or is it up to the band the original artist belonged to?

What about a Tatar artifact found in Donetsk? Who gets control over that? Is it the Russians since they occupy Donetsk? The Ukrainians because they used to occupy it? Do you have to study the blood of various Ukrainian people to figure out who has the most surviving Tatar DNA?

if a museum feels under threat

If you run a museum in Afghanistan and are afraid that the Taliban is going to execute you unless you destroy some blasphemous statue, are you going to risk your life to send the artifact to the British Museum, or are you just going to destroy it? Yeah, some heroes will definitely risk their lives, but most won't.

That's true, a motorcycle is transportation. And, I suppose if you just go for a ride around the city taking pleasure at annoying people with the sound of your loud pipes, it serves a "useful" function for you, in that it brings you pleasure.

I have literally zero negative or positive opinions about Harleys as motorcycles, I don't own one or know anyone who does, I don't even have a motorcycle license so feel free to correct me if you have a differing opinion

Ok, well that's where I differ. Harleys are terrible motorcycles. They use engine technology from the 1960s while bikes from every other manufacturer use tech that's decades more advanced. The power to weight ratios of their bikes are absolutely terrible, and not just because they're cruisers, every other cruiser out there has a better power to weight ratio. Then, even worse is the price. The performance you get per dollar from a Harley is just awful.

With Harley you're paying for the brand name. You get a bike that in every measurable way is worse than a bike by virtually any other manufacturer, but because Harley has done such a good job of establishing a certain image, people will overpay for an underperforming bike as long as it has that brand name attached, and as long as it has the Harley sound and feel. (And that "sound and feel" is basically an engine that is going to shake the fillings out of your teeth because it's using ancient technology that every other manufacturer has ditched.)

The Nazi-adjacency is part of the mystique. They're the "outlaw motorcycle gang" brand, and a lot of the outlaw motorcycle gangs are not just violent, they're also racist, sexist, homophobic, and so-on. It's really the brand for dentists and lawyers who have boring office jobs but want to spend money to feel like they're badasses. They're not going to commit heinous crimes, but they can dress up like the people who do, and feel a bit of a thrill that maybe the people that see them on their bikes are going to be a bit afraid.

I'm still waiting for a single example of a lie. It's a very simple request, and if you can't find one, you claim that the media lies is wrong.

I see what you're saying here: if the media prints lies from a government it's not the media lying, it's the government

If the government manages to fool the media, yeah. If the government says to the media "the truth is X, but we're going to pretend that it's Y, so you print Y, ok?" and then the media goes along with it, then you can blame the media. In many cases, the media isn't able to fact check the things the government tells them. But, relaying what the government is saying is still important. Similarly, even though the media can't independently fact check the numbers that the Gaza Health Ministry reports, it's still valuable to have those numbers released too.

If the media is lazy about their fact checking you can call them lazy, but you can't call them liars, because lying requires knowing the truth and intentionally saying something untrue.

Here's the thing: if a government lies all the fucking time and the media keeps printing what the government claims anyway, then that makes them complicit in spreading the government's lies.

If the government says "the truth is X" and then the media says "X is true" then sure, you're right. But, if the media says "the government said that the truth is X", then it's up to readers / viewers to understand that the media isn't endorsing what the government said as being true, the media is simply telling you what was said.

The media doesn't get to wash its hands of the things it prints just because it puts "Israel says" before the headline.

Why should it need to wash its hands? That is exactly what Israel said. Because Israel has a complete ban on reporters in Gaza, for example, there's no way to corroborate or refute what Israel said. It's newsworthy to repeat what Israel said, but you can't blame the media when someone reads that and assumes that the government is telling the truth. As you said yourself, the government lies all the time, so why would you assume that "the government said X happened" means that "X happened".

The media told all sorts of lies to justify the war in Iraq

A lie is something they were aware was not true and published it anyhow. What sources do you have that the media was publishing stories it knew weren't true about Iraq? What examples do you have?

more recently, the New York Times published a false story about Hamas committing mass rape

What story are you talking about, and what specific allegations do you think it got wrong?

if you want to go further back they lied to get us into Vietnam

You're saying the media knowingly made up stories because they wanted to trick the US into going to war in Vietnam? What specific examples do you have of that? Again, if this is your claim, it isn't enough to show that they got some reports wrong. It's not even enough to show that they printed some things that in hindsight they should have known were wrong. Your bar is to prove that they knew ahead of time that they were publishing things they knew were untrue and did it for the express purpose of trying to get the US into war in Vietnam.

I don't think the media is necessarily "on his side". When the media sticks to just reporting the facts, people interpret it as the media taking the other side.

Also, his approval rating never got up to 90%. It was in the 80s in the days after 9/11 (which was sickening) but it dropped pretty quickly, and by the time the Iraq war began it was back down to almost 50%. It briefly went up after the war started, but then kept going down and down until he finally left office.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2008/12/18/bush-and-public-opinion/