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Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

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Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#221

Post by heavyset_go »

serial_dev wrote: post #184
p_j_w wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people, even here, are infected with “It can’t happen here.”

The best predictor of future events is past experience. Every US president in history has left office peacefully, the most probable outcome is that future presidents will too. Similarly, some people always think that the current president will crown himself a king and the Other Party will never ever be able to get into power. And these people have been so far always wrong. I’m not saying it can’t happen this time, bu…

> The best predictor of future events is past experience.

> Every US president in history has left office peacefully

Considering the current US President tried to have his VP and Congress killed by an angry mob if they didn't hand over a second presidential term to him, we should expect the same this time, but better organized and with ~8 years of planning.

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#222

Post by saulpw »

rkomorn wrote: post #152
findthewords wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about the world's poorest man, and how disconnected he is from the rest of humanity. Now think of the world's richest man. They are equally disconnected.

The world's poorest man probably has tens millions of peers within an order of magnitude of "poorness". The world's richest man has at most a few hundred.

Exact numbers as of today: Elon Musk has $500b. 32 other people have at least $50b. 827 people have at least $5b.

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#223

Post by cratermoon »

ribosometronome wrote: post #191
serial_dev wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best predictor of future events is past experience. Every US president in history has left office peacefully, the most probable outcome is that future presidents will too. Similarly, some people always think that the current president will crown himself a king and the Other Party will never ever be able to get into power. And these people have been so far always wrong. I’m not saying it can’t happen this time, bu…

I'm not sure how you can say every President left office peacefully when four of them left by way of being assassinated, but I do see that's not quite the point you're trying to make. I'm not sure why we'd be so narrow as to only examine US history, rather than history at large unless we're operating under some guise of American Exceptionalism.

Nixon? Very technically left office peacefully but he would have been impeached and removed had he not. Strange to note that his crimes would hardly warrant mention in the context of the current occupant of the oval office.

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#224

Post by [deleted] »

metabagel wrote: post #67
skybrian wrote: post #13

My initial reaction to the White House ballroom was “the next president should tear it down and put it back the way it was, just on principle.” I was surprised by that editorial and thought it made a good (or at least arguable) point that it’s needed and the next president will be glad to have it, instead of doing large official gatherings in tents. I’m more neutral on it now. I don’t really know what facilities the…

Trump doesn't have the right to tear down the White House. It doesn't belong to him. It needs to go through a design approval process. By law, any money spent by the executive needs to come from Congressional appropriation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antideficiency_Act > The Antideficiency Act prohibits federal employees from ... accepting voluntary services for the United States, or employing personal services no…

[deleted]

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#225

Post by heavyset_go »

boston_clone wrote: post #109
pestat0m wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your browser is out of date. Update your browser to view this site properly." it always makes me sad when i see this. you are not reaching your target audience. fyi this seems to be a cloudflare thing. i see it everywhere. The World Wide Web seems to be going down a dark path. perhaps i do need to update my browser, but why should that matter for just reading a news site. it's like someone wants you to not have acce…

does it similarly make you sad if your operating system tells you to update for new security patches or indicators? the sheer volume of browser exploits - including in-the-wild exploited zero-click zero days - is frankly insane. intentionally leaving yourself unprotected is a bad choice that should be shoved back in your face, often. > i see it everywhere. i see it nowhere. update your software! and don't use chrome.

That's just the generic Cloudflare blocking warning. You can use an up to date browser and if they decide to block you, you will see that message.

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#226

Post by sgentle »

serial_dev wrote: post #184
p_j_w wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people, even here, are infected with “It can’t happen here.”

The best predictor of future events is past experience. Every US president in history has left office peacefully, the most probable outcome is that future presidents will too. Similarly, some people always think that the current president will crown himself a king and the Other Party will never ever be able to get into power. And these people have been so far always wrong. I’m not saying it can’t happen this time, bu…

That's a very... pre-1748 kind of philosophy. Hume, Keynes, Russell, Popper and others have written at length about the limitations of prediction from past experience. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

Even if we accept that extrapolation is the best you can do, you'd still need to justify why the domain of "past experience" is exactly wide enough to generalise across current and previous US presidencies, but not so wide as to include even one of the numerous populist strongman takeovers in non-US political history. Proof by American Exceptionalism, perhaps?

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#227

Post by terminalshort »

bpt3 wrote: post #170
terminalshort wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The typical "we have two right wing parties." It's a stupid pedantic thing people on the left like to do.

It's really the people on the far left, who think that way, way more than 10% of the US is progressive or socialist/communist and wonder why they can't win any elections.

Yes, I should have said that instead of just "left". Most center left Democrats don't do this.

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#228

Post by tpmoney »

overfeed wrote: post #141
tpmoney wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that the followup contradicts the idea that there has been a change of any note. If I tell you in one breath: "Bernie Sanders has reduced is fighting for civil rights in worrying ways" And in a second breath tell you that: "Bernie Sanders has resolutely fought for civil rights in the past and even now does so as a matter of routine" You would probably find those statements at odds with one another. You q…

> Bernie Sanders has resolutely fought for civil rights in the past and even now does so as a matter of routine" I see where the disconnect is. Please read the sibling thread about the differences between Opinion (responsible for editorials, and subject of the NPR article) and news department (does reporting on actual news journalism). Opinion & News have different org charts under the WaPo banner. In my prior commen…

> In my prior comment, A = disclosures in journalism, B = disclosures in editorials. They are not the same thing in a way that can be applied to a singular Bernie.

I can see that reading but even with that, comparative numbers are still useful. If we continue to assume that the words in this story were carefully chosen to be what they are (which I think we both are doing that, so I don't think I'm making an out of bounds assumption here), why the "3 times in the past 2 weeks" phrasing? Why not "has stopped" (or even "appears to have stopped" if you want to hedge)? Back to my original question of "is 3 times in the past 2 weeks" 100% of the time? Is it 50%? 1%?

If 3 times is 100% of the number of times it should have happened, how many times did it happen in the 2 weeks prior to that? Or the month prior? Is 3 "conflicted" op-eds in 2 weeks high? normal? low?

Have they missed disclosures in the past? Multiple in a short window? How frequently? How many?

The current incidents were apparently corrected without any specific call out (a practice becoming far too common in the news I agree), how does that compare to previous times when they have corrected a disclosure?

We have no facts to go on. We have information, as you put it:

> about the vibe-shift at the Washington Post ... words of people who used to work there ... [mention of] the waves of resignations and subscriber cancellations, noted WaPo declined to comment on this story.

So we have implications that this means something, and maybe it does, but again we have implications. What I "make of it" is that the Post continues to be in a state of disarray, as it has been for some time now. And that's about all I make of it. And I specifically decline to make anything about "declining to comment" on a story. Second only to the police, you should shut your mouth and say nothing to the press. Everything you say can and will be used against you.

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#229

Post by rgblambda »

goatlover wrote: post #207
Gud wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? Trump has destroyed what little good there was in the Republican Party.

It's amazing how much he's turned it into a cult of personality to the point that things like states rights, free markets and Federal overreach no longer matter.

I imagine, post-Trump, it will take possibly a decade for a cohesive conservative party in the U.S. to re-establish itself.

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#230

Post by HEmanZ »

Only tangentially related, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what media format for consumption would inherently produce the least biased, most informed public.

After reading “Amusing Ourselves to Death” last week I’m convinced that in a democracy, political media consumption format is destiny (or at least shapes the equilibrium) and has more to do with the information bias in the system (when that system consists of profit maximizing news sources).

Current major models seem fundamentally less biased (on average) as a form of media than either television or social media. And they have a built-in incentive not to be too biased in the long run (maybe, this is just a vague thought): being too biased makes you have more incorrect predictions.

Could the right kind AI consumable media reverse the trend of ever more biased media?

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