Political Custard @ politicalcustard @beehaw.org

Politics, queer politics, techno, gayming, Linux and books. Lots of books.

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Joined

1 yr. ago

There have been a couple of recent (post-October) studies into BBC coverage, the issue I raise concerning the language used in the title is consistent with its use of language elsewhere. For example, Israelis are "killed" and Palestinians "die".

        "About 700 people have been killed in Israel since Hamas launched its attack on Saturday, with a further 500 having died in Gaza in retaliatory air strikes."
    "Some 1200 people have been killed in Israel, while more than 1000 have died in retaliatory air strikes on Gaza."
    "More than 700 people have been killed in Israel since Saturday and over 500 people have died in Gaza."


  

[...] the openDemocracy analysis found that the phrases “murder”, “murderous”, “mass murder”, “brutal murder” and “merciless murder” were used a total of 52 times by [BBC] journalists to refer to Israeli deaths – but never in relation to Palestinian deaths.

When I read this sort of coverage on a daily basis, I see these patterns repeated again and again, it's a subtle reframing that many don't notice but editors (and headline writers) at the BBC will be very aware of how they are using language. Space is not an excuse to remove the perpetrator from the picture regardless of how obvious that perpetrator might be, it is disingenuous.

Study shows BBC 'bias' in reporting on Palestinian and Israeli deaths - The National

One very important word missing from that headline. The BBC should be ashamed of its coverage as they do this again and again.

Corrected version: "World Central Kitchen halts operations in Gaza after ISRAELI strike kills staff"

That's a good idea about the VPN on the router but it's just my computer and phone that connect to the internet and I maintain a non-"smart" home. It would be nice for guests though. That's interesting about Matrix, I didn't know about that. Sadly, for the moment it will be something I have to live with; I'm in a few groups that use Matrix, but it's good to know though, thanks.

Well, it's now Tuesday and the world hasn't ended. I guess things went okay then.

I am finally really happy with my privacy setup, I am not feeling like there's anything more I need (or want) to do at the moment...

1. NextDNS on PC and phone
2. Linux on PC - I do have a drive with Windows (AtlasOS with no Microsoft login) on it for dire emergencies (Rust and Destiny 2)
3. Mullvad VPN
4. Degoogled phone with LineageOS
5. Non-self-hosted Nextcloud
6. Browsing: FireDragon and Mullvad Browser on PC and Mull on phone
7. FreeTube for YouTube

Some of the responses here have me laughing at how uptight they are. What you did was perfectly normal, he was rude and you're best off not thinking about him ever again. Fuck that guy!

I am against MTX because they have put parents in debt when their children have racked up huge MTX bills and it's very difficult/impossible to get refunds. Yes, parents can protect themselves against this but many parents are not particularly tech savvy and games companies will see these as potentially huge revenue streams and abuse the hell out of them... like EPIC did.

Also, gaming addicts should also be considered and potential routes to indebtedness avoided.

Knowing a game has MTX just makes me less likely to buy it. Price the game correctly in the first place, and offer DLCs if you want some extra revenue.

Oh, this looks great. Honestly, I am very happy when closed-source apps become worse, these are all just opportunities for open source to move in and take over.

Matt Mahmoudi, a researcher with Amnesty International, said Israel’s use of facial recognition was a concern because it could lead to “a complete dehumanization of Palestinians”

Oops, bit late for that, mate.

Welcome to the modern day equivalent of wrist tattoos...

I really wish they had; I was playing again today and her character was just being so awful to people. It would be fine to have such a character if over the course of the story she realises she has attachment issues and gradually tries to deal with them throughout the game, but she doesn't, she just keeps being mean. I have no idea why you would have someone like this as the main character, I have no sympathy for her and the game is not even attempting to get me to empathise or sympathise with her. She's meeting some really lovely people and I'm getting embarrassed by her behaviour! 😅

Games, for everything else I've found a foss alternative that I prefer. I will do a google search once every couple of days if I'm really struggling to find something but even as a last resort search engine it's been getting worse - I heard they put an ad person in charge of search... so that would probably explain that descent.

It's still clunky and repetitive. I didn't finish Zero Dawn and the more I play Forbidden West the more I feel it likely I won't finish this either. I think you're right to make a comparison to Ubisoft. Fine looking games with loads of potential but I suspect fear of bad sales result in bland, generic characters and storylines that are just not engaging.

The main thing is that Plasma 6 comes with some HDR support and it is possible to have it in some games now as well as in some apps like mpv that also have HDR support.

As for the Garuda Gamer version of the distro, it comes with a bunch of gaming stuff preinstalled and a Garuda Gamer app which makes it really easy to install gaming related apps, emulators, and hardware support for controllers, rgb, and all that kind of thing. It's just all handled very well and would make a nice distro to recommend to gamers who might want to make a switch to Linux from Windows, mainly because things are made so easy - which is nice for an Arch based distro because you have access to yay without it being overly complicated.

Horizon Forbidden West, stunning graphics. I find the main character a bit off-putting as she can be a bit arrogant and rude and those are traits I don't have a lot of patience for, but it really does look good.

I use Garuda Linux and FireDragon is maintained by the same people so it's been customised to have the same look. FireDragon was previously a fork of Librewolf (another fork of Firefox I have always liked), so I just switched over to FireDragon to try it out. I'd also used Floorp in the past and really liked that, so to have FireDragon and Floorp become one was really nice. FireDragon is nifty and has the privacy focus that LibreFox has. Garuda Linux is also a really nice distro and a lot of care and effort has gone into it - it also has a Plasma version for gamers... which is lovely for me. It's late and this is a dreadfully rambling answer... but hopefully you get the idea (roughly!) 😅

The service is really good but I stopped using it when they gave a donation to Bellingcat.

Proton Mail: Imperialist Stooge?

It's the dementia.

Thanks for the edit and link to discussion, I am a FireDragon (Floorp fork) user and it seems like this issue is in hand and I'm not going to be concerned for the moment.

Thank you. 🤗

I will always recommend the classics...

• Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm
• The Authoritarian Personality, Theodor Adorno

I read Escape from Freedom 20 years ago when I was trying to understand the Holocaust and then again a few years ago when it was clear we were seeing another rise in fascism and authoritarianism. Thanks for the link, I will read it later, I've only just got up and on my first cup of tea... 😅