I stayed at an airbnb a couple years ago where the hosts were the sort to just leave the news on. Having not watched for a long time and having been studying psychotherapy at the time I was immediately struck by the similarities of the structure of the newscaster speech to hypnotic patterns. Only here the payload of the hypnosis was 'pay attention, be afraid.' Extremely creepy.
Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
551–560 of 741 posts
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
As to the slow shifts, I said they were the opposite of rare, and indeed constantly happening as consensus shifts and is rebrokered. Which was a response to the comment I was replying to, regarding distinguishing actual danger from everything else. Danger, to me, means subversion of democracy and/or individual freedoms. Which means either a minority wilfully shifting the zeitgeist out of proportion with their strengt…
Awareness of current news allows you to see that a shift is happening at all.
Does it? It feels like current news would be a poor method for tracking multi-year cultural changes.
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the Economist seems to hide their agenda I think that they are pretty clear about their agenda to be honest. E.g. they explained and even gave a name to their stance ("extreme centre"), they openly endorse candidates in many elections worldwide, they often include sentences in articles such as "this paper believes that..." etc. I don't agree with some of their points, but by making them explicit they also make them…
>They don't hide it. I think that they are pretty clear about their agenda to be honest. E.g. they explained and even gave a name to their stance ("extreme centre") My point exactly, that's anything but clear and honest! Calling their views, which are objectively right-wing neoliberal capitalist, calling them "centre" or "moderate" is part of an attempt to naturalise (if that makes sense) their worldview into somethi…
I don't think there is objective agreement that the Economists views are right-wing neoliberal capitalist.
AllSides rates them as "Leans left": https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist
They've endorsed Democrats for US President since 2004.
Ad Fontes also rates them slightly left leaning: https://adfontesmedia.com/the-economist-bias-and-reliability...
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come to think of it have you considered writing an article about this? You have a very unique perspective since most people experienced it as it happed (proverbial frog in the boiling pot). I bet a number of outlets might be interested in publishing it, or you could DIY on Medium or Substack or something.
Yeah no. Already have a heavy load and my life is already F'd enough, I can't be putting any more rocks into my load by amplifying attention on me in any way thanks. Plus a guy six months out still has a lot of mental issues, not back to being human yet :) A year living in a space smaller than an elevator with another person, a bunk bed, and desk with no out time because COVID doesn't help. On the plus side when you…
Aye, I nearly did a stint in prison but had a great lawyer. Wish you success adapting back to this crazy society.
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come to think of it have you considered writing an article about this? You have a very unique perspective since most people experienced it as it happed (proverbial frog in the boiling pot). I bet a number of outlets might be interested in publishing it, or you could DIY on Medium or Substack or something.
Yeah no. Already have a heavy load and my life is already F'd enough, I can't be putting any more rocks into my load by amplifying attention on me in any way thanks. Plus a guy six months out still has a lot of mental issues, not back to being human yet :) A year living in a space smaller than an elevator with another person, a bunk bed, and desk with no out time because COVID doesn't help. On the plus side when you…
I appreciate your anecdote about reading the same magazine over and over. Really is true you can become a connoisseur about anything! I'm glad you have a good humor about it. https://xkcd.com/915/
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#556What I ended up doing was crawling news from major news services and do aggregation myself. My algorithm was simple : cluster news that was reported by multple different services or multiple reports within 36 hours. By showing multiple news titles in a same box and order them by cluster size, I could just skipped those which isn't important at all.
If anyone was interested the website is available here : https://todayheadlines.live/?locale=en-US
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
In college we were required to get a subscription to FT and I found it quite liberal. As was the professor who required the subscription.
Hmmm ... they are certainly right of center afaict. If they are quite liberal, what do you call the vast landscape to the left of them? Who is a centrist?
This may be a case where the word “liberal” means something different in the US than the rest of the English speaking world.
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
>They don't hide it. I think that they are pretty clear about their agenda to be honest. E.g. they explained and even gave a name to their stance ("extreme centre") My point exactly, that's anything but clear and honest! Calling their views, which are objectively right-wing neoliberal capitalist, calling them "centre" or "moderate" is part of an attempt to naturalise (if that makes sense) their worldview into somethi…
I don't think there is objective agreement that the Economists views are right-wing neoliberal capitalist. AllSides rates them as "Leans left": https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist They've endorsed Democrats for US President since 2004. Ad Fontes also rates them slightly left leaning: https://adfontesmedia.com/the-economist-bias-and-reliability...
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Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the Economist seems to hide their agenda I think that they are pretty clear about their agenda to be honest. E.g. they explained and even gave a name to their stance ("extreme centre"), they openly endorse candidates in many elections worldwide, they often include sentences in articles such as "this paper believes that..." etc. I don't agree with some of their points, but by making them explicit they also make them…
>They don't hide it. I think that they are pretty clear about their agenda to be honest. E.g. they explained and even gave a name to their stance ("extreme centre") My point exactly, that's anything but clear and honest! Calling their views, which are objectively right-wing neoliberal capitalist, calling them "centre" or "moderate" is part of an attempt to naturalise (if that makes sense) their worldview into somethi…
It's fine to be upset about the Overton window of American politics, but I don't think it's too egregious that an American publication describe their politics within the usual political language of their country.
Or, at the very least, it's not deceptive to call themselves "centre" as neoliberals in a country where the majority understand "centre" to mean "neoliberals" (even if they don't actually know what "neoliberals" means.)
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#560Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly I think people put too much stock in (a very flawed notion of) biased vs unbiased. Everything has a bias. Everyone has a lens they perceive events through and you can’t write without that lens having an impact. I challenge anyone to present a truly “objective” piece of historical writing or news from any era.
Objectivity is an ideal to be stived for. It's a reasonable point of view to suggest that striving for that ideal is worthwhile. When I think about no engineering design is a perfect trade-off, it becomes obvious that acknowledging this inevitable flaw does not make every trade-off equally useful. Some get closer to an ideal for the circumstance, usually they have to sweat to get there. And so it is with history and…
Objectivity as an ideal often prompts people with otherwise good integrity to both-sides issues where one side is clearly malicious or dishonest. Objectivity isn't the goal of journalism and shouldn't be: truth and clarity should be.