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Anatomy of a Moral Panic

idlewords.com

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Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#141

Post by factsaresacred »

> Missing in these reports is any sense of proportion or realism.

Funnily enough I get the same sensation when reading Maciej's Twitter.

Trump is going to go to war to approve his ratings, apparently. And it seems Twitter employees have an obligation to prevent Trump from using the 'Block' button. for some reason. Also, Peter Thiel (a pet hate/obsession) runs a company that 'powers ICE deportations' and needs to be ostracized for his beliefs.

Some 'sense of proportion or realism' would be nice. That aside, great writing, as usual.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#142

Post by ocfnash »

jjoonathan wrote: post #39
idlewords wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this correction. Do you know whether Al + Fe2O3 thermite as normally prepared (meaning, not ground up into nanoparticles) will detonate? I'll update the piece accordingly. Moreover, are you sure this was a detonation (shock wave) rather than a deflagration?

Given that ocfnash's page never uses the term detonate, never discusses the difference between detonation and deflagration, and doesn't describe the experiments that would distinguish them, I'm pretty sure they were not in fact performed, and the (informal) explosion he witnessed was not a (formal) detonation. That's not to say it isn't worth a footnote to explain that "doesn't detonate" does not mean "won't go pop a…

Thanks for these helpful words of clarification!

As I commented above, I was rather sloppily using the words "explosion", "detonation" to mean flash and boom.

On the two occasions on which I witnessed this event, it was stunningly powerful but I now believe most likely just a deflagration.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#143

Post by pjc50 »

wolf550e wrote: post #81

Wasn't the "baseball test" an accepted norm in journalism? "A reporter should not be assigned to cover subject X unless he has as good an understanding of X as a baseball writer is expected to have of baseball."[1] Shouldn't media outlets be embarrassed into retracting stories written by people who know nothing about the subject? Shouldn't the reputation of the media outlet suffer? 1 - https://www.theatlantic.com/per…

Baseball coverage once included broadcasts made by reconstructing games from telegraph reports, in some cases making up the game from whole cloth. Or, in modern parlance, "fake news".

(Story often told about Reagan, but he's not the only one. https://www.thoughtco.com/ronald-reagans-radio-career-284336... para 5-7)

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#144

Post by pjc50 »

dogruck wrote: post #102
wolf550e wrote: post #81

Wasn't the "baseball test" an accepted norm in journalism? "A reporter should not be assigned to cover subject X unless he has as good an understanding of X as a baseball writer is expected to have of baseball."[1] Shouldn't media outlets be embarrassed into retracting stories written by people who know nothing about the subject? Shouldn't the reputation of the media outlet suffer? 1 - https://www.theatlantic.com/per…

It's an ilformed test. Can a writer truly understand baseball as well as a baseball player? But, isn't a baseball player bound to be heavily biased toward the consensus baseball view? Or, take finance. If a financial journalist truly understood finance, wouldn't they be running a hedge fund instead of scraping by pumping out articles?

There's an entire sub-industry of financial journalism which is extremely well paid. It's just that it's paid for by charging the recipients (investors) a lot, and the people involved are called "analysts" rather than journalists. It's the sort of stuff available on Bloomberg terminals.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#145

Post by eeZah7Ux »

groby_b wrote: post #130
Iv wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the context, this proposal was made by this journal director to JL Mélenchon, the far-left candidate in the election (who got 19% of votes, i.e. not a marginal) hoping it would be included in his political program. It is a well-thought proposal by someone who knows the press industry well. It of course has leftist bias but I suspect that while there can be political criticism, it is probably pretty solid. I don't…

For context on "far-left" - it's nothing like the far left in the US. France has an extremely well-developed set of leftists. It's the only country I ever visited where people had deep discussions about the difference between Trotskyism and Leninism when debating actual political events. The US far left would maybe, possibly, pass as moderate left in France. Obama would be considered... center right? OK, centrist. Th…

Obama is not close to the center according to https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2012

Clinton and trump are on https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016

I find the site reasonably unbiased.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#146

Post by jacalata »

e9 wrote: post #96
jacalata wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little difficult to explain without actually knowing about you. And it's true that if you're not American/don't now or ever intend to live in the US, it probably doesn't affect you.

I live in California. I am happy to share some more info. Edit: I am fine with answers that talk about average Americans. I just want to understand the issue and hear different perspectives.

Edit: my first response is all too detailed. The broad effect will be that employers aren't encouraged to provide health insurance, and people trying to buy coverage individually may be completely unable to do so because the combination of "no individual mandate" and "no denial for pre-existing conditions" will lead to insurance companies dying and/or premiums being raised astronomically. Or they'll bring back rejections for pre-existing conditions and then if you ever get sick you'll be actually refused insurance after that.

---my original answer:

Here's one example: If the current bill passes, every health insurance plan that offers coverage for elective abortions will stop being eligible for subsidies on December 31. Every plan in California is required to include this coverage, so effectively all subsidies for individually purchased plans in California will end this year. Another: most federal funding to Planned Parenthood will be banned, leading to the closure of almost all their facilities. About 1 million Californians visited Planned Parenthood last year, perhaps you or your partner were among them (more likely if you are lower income). Or perhaps you weren't, but any medical care you needed was better because your doctor wasn't also trying to meet the needs of all those people who did use Planned Parenthood.

Some links which cover these in more detail: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-tax-credits-abort..., https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/03/05/if-feds-strip-planned-p..., http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/09/graham-cassid...

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#147

Post by musage »

treehau5 wrote: post #34
Cleisthenes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was your lesson from this? Stick your head in the ground and pretend politics is pointless? Ignorance of politics is a luxury afforded only to citizens of authoritarian regimes. You live in a democracy (assuming that discussion of Trump in politics means you live in the US). Politics is how society chooses to make and use government. People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignora…

> You live in a democracy > People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignorance never cease to amaze me. First of all, we don't have a direct democracy. This concept that everyone has to be 100% engaged (or even 90, or 80, or whatever subjective figure in your head that qualifies good enough is, which is another issue, your concept of being engaged enough doesn't match another) need not…

> Most people care more about their issues locally (which is in line with human psychology, we weren't meant for these large social networks) but people who sit here and cast stones at people who aren't keeping up with what happens with the Mueller investigation, for example, (which something happens every 2.5 seconds)

The actual context here is someone talking about how they pay zero attention, while mocking people who talk about "the apocalypse" or anything, really. So clearly not people worrying about their local issues.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#148

Post by WillReplyfFood »

ekimekim wrote: post #75
Laforet wrote: post #58

I might be wrong about this, but I think thermite is used more often as a simple welding method. Railroad workers doing track maintainence routinely use thermite to repair damaged sections. https://youtu.be/5uxsFglz2ig

True, but I suspect they wouldn't be buying it on Amazon. The retail market means you need to look at hobbyist uses, not industrial.

Why would you buy that? Its just aluminium powder and iron-rust.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#149

Post by WillReplyfFood »

dom96 wrote: post #33
dwaltrip wrote: post #21

Is there no robust way to hold publications accountable for carelessly peddling bullshit? I fear it will be incredibly difficult to improve the existing incentives.

This is a good question and I have given some thought on this. One quick idea would be to somehow shame publications for incorrect coverage, but doing so seems like an uphill battle. It will always be significantly easier to peddle bullshit than it is to disprove that bullshit.

Some gatekeeper like google would be needed to raise exposure by verifyability. The problem for a algorithm is to quanitfy truthfullness- it needs some feedback by the audience for that- and it needs to learn whos feedback is qualified.

Doubt that even google could build such a curating search engine.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#150

Post by cisanti »

Cleisthenes wrote: post #22
cisanti wrote: post #20

Well written piece. I stopped reading news after Trump got into office and I have no shame about it. It feels great and I don't I miss out on anything. When people talk or ask me about politics I just say I don't know because I don't read. They make s surprised face and then continue talking and arguing about absolutely pointless topics and about the upcoming apocalypse. I just hope someone tells me an hour beforehan…

That was your lesson from this? Stick your head in the ground and pretend politics is pointless? Ignorance of politics is a luxury afforded only to citizens of authoritarian regimes. You live in a democracy (assuming that discussion of Trump in politics means you live in the US). Politics is how society chooses to make and use government. People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignora…

I live in eastern-Europe and your bipartisan politics leak here too.

If I was an American, I would read politics even less since you already know who to vote for, you pretty much have 2 choices. It's a bit more complex here.

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