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The Onion buys Infowars

nytimes.com

631–640 of 1001 posts

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5'500'000'000 people on the internet, which means an average of 27 cents per user. To say that there is "no possible way" of reaching that level of emotional damages is a stretch.

he wasn't paying for emotional damages done to the users of the internet. He was paying for emotional damages to 15 plaintiffs. 100 million is a lot of emotional suffering. Civil damages would have been lower if he killed the children himself. OJ paid 30 million civil damages for murder, and that was outstandingly high. The courts might as well have assigned a 1 trillion dollars of damages.

You could argue that he was fined for wilfully communicating his lies to everyone on the internet (at least in the anglosphere). The award made by the jury (not the court) was explicitly for punitive damages. They picked a number to ensure he would be wiped out financially, and I think he deserves every bit of suck he is currently experiencing.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#632
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's all the assets of the website. I believe that the current state of play is that Jones has to pay $1.1bn damages even post bankruptcy so maybe any future successes will lead to money for the Sandyhook families. I certainly hope so. Ironically he may live longer to earn more for them - he'll never be able to afford a cigar again.

Wait am I understanding this right? - Collins buys InfoWars - Auction money ends up going to SH victims - SH victims have an anti-gun organization set up - This org enters into a long term ad deal with Collins - Some of the money therefore flows back to Collins, effectively helping with the auction buy

That's what I guessed from the story - I suppose that there would be a lot of reticence about buying this site from a lot of corporate actors, but maybe there are a lot of crazy people who could have bought it if the price was right. So, this way it is for sure a "dead" property.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#634

The onion should just keep Alex Jones without any filters but put the onion logo on every page. The joke is already good enough, just keep it going.

Sources: Hackers Vandalized Drudge Report For Last 15 Years

https://theonion.com/sources-hackers-vandalized-drudge-repor...

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#635
post #81

Funny concept. Shame that The Onion's writing these days so mid.

I think the Babylon Bee has been a good replacement.

The Babylon Bee has gotten better, but it's still pretty amateurish compared to the best of The Onion. It's nice to have a satirical publication that leans the other way for balance.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is governed by the European Commission, which is not elected. Say what you will about reactionary British conservatives, the fact remains that the EU is not a particularly democratic organisation.

How is that true, if the body that nominates the European Commission _is_ elected?? By the same argument you could say UK or US or any other solidly democratic is not democratic, because some commission or organisation is not directly, by the people, elected. (If you go for the direct election argument, the UK fares pretty badly BTW.)

The body that nominates the Commission isn't elected.

In theory the Commission is mostly made up of civil servants who answer to commissioners, who are themselves nominated by each country's own government or civil service. Each commissioner has one area of responsibility only, and they answer to the head of the Commission who is their boss. So someone in the UK votes for a politician, who votes for a party leader, who appoints some ministers, and those ministers may or may not have much of a say in whoever gets nominated to be a commissioner - one of many. But there is at least a path there, even if long and indirect and the person your vote ends up influencing doesn't do anything important to your country or needs.

In practice it doesn't actually work that way. In practice, the head of the Commission has veto power over the nominations. They aren't supposed to according to the treaties but the treaties are ignored. This means that in reality it's the head of the Commission who picks the Commissioners, because they can just reject anyone who isn't sufficiently aligned with their own agenda.

So that leaves the question of how the head of the Commission is picked. Once again there is theory and practice. In theory, it's a decision of the heads of each state that they take together to select some candidates, and the Parliament then gets to vote for their preferred candidate. In practice ... nobody knows how the head is picked. Ursula von der Leyen was recently re-appointed despite being plagued by scandals and having a long career of failing upwards. Parliament was sidelined by giving them a voting list with only one candidate on it (her). Seek out an explanation of how she got this job and you won't find one because:

1. The heads of state don't talk about how they decide as a group. Is it a vote? Some sort of horse trading? Do they take it in turns? Are they even all able to take part? Nobody knows.

2. There's no record of which country voted for who, or why.

3. The process by which someone even becomes a candidate is unclear.

4. Because no head of state has any control over who gets onto the candidate list, they never talk on the campaign trail about how they will "vote" (assuming that's how it works) for who runs the EU.

In other words, the process is entirely secret. The potential for corruption is unlimited.

So when critics say the EU Commission is a bunch of unelected bureaucrats, they are right and those who argue otherwise here on HN are wrong. People who got their jobs via a process so opaque and indirect that how it functions can't be explained, not even in principle, cannot claim to be democratically selected.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core idea of satire, which is often missed in supposedly satirical works is that you should not only make fun of the thing you don't believe, but you should also explain what you do believe under the cover of pretending to dismiss it. For example everybody knows Swift's Modest Proposal does not seriously intend that the problems in Ireland ought to be fixed by literally eating children , but if you read it, the p…

> The core idea of satire, which is often missed in supposedly satirical works is that you should not only make fun of the thing you don't believe, but you should also explain what you do believe under the cover of pretending to dismiss it. I often suggest that satire is a dangerous double edged sword and not a good primary vehicle for positive change. Part of your audience will understand it's satire, but a signific…

Those are all still far more positive than negative examples, even if they each spawned small contingents of people who don't get the irony. Plus, if you know that's gonna happen anyway, then steer the dumb ironic interpretations towards something equally useful - or so ridiculous it at least educates other people.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#639

I'm watching his stream just to see how the drama goes down and a silly tech-adjacent bit popped up when he started ranting about Linux and how if "they" were trying to take Linus Torvalds down, they still couldn't ever own Linux!

And I believe he is wrong in this case. Linus is absolutely a lynchpin for Linux control. He can be replaced, but whoever replaces him then becomes that lynchpin. He's the benevolent dictator for life after all.

You're assuming that would be one person and one organization, the way it is now.

I think that's the most likely outcome, but it isn't a safe bet by any means.

In any case I hope it's a good long time before we have to find out, since I wish Linus long life and good health.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#640
post #23

Funny concept. Shame that The Onion's writing these days so mid.

Kids these days will never know how funny the onion used to be They used to distribute hard copies in big cities because people actually read it

You can buy hard copies again if you subscribe. They used to give it away free in the 1990s because the world wasn't as hyper-capitalistic and it was practical to publish a free paper and put metal boxes on the street to distribute it while making a modest profit with advertising.
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