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LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

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Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#191

Post by azernik »

kibwen wrote: post #147
azernik wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed they do - because video game journalism does not have the same ethical standards (not in the Gamergate sense) that film and literary journalism do.

How so? Until I got to college my second job (after "sandwich artist" at Wendy's) was as a paid contributor to one of the two powerhouse gaming blogs at the time (the one that wasn't Kotaku; if you were in the scene back then, you'd heard of us), back when blogging was first coming to the public consciousness and the term "blogosphere" had yet to be coined. And while in retrospect I'd classify the quality of my own w…

The blogs on that scale sadly do not set the standard; as long as IGN and Gamespot are willing to put up with these shenanigans, the game companies can get away with it.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#192

Post by azernik »

banku_brougham wrote: post #142
azernik wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the politician being bribed, the relevant calculus isn't the size of the service done for the briber - it's their perceived risk of discovery and punishment, which is already low enough before taking into account the human tendency to undervalue low-probability risks.

This implies that the moral cost of corruption (knowing you are responsible for banrupting the city you represent for example) means absolutely nothing to the elected official.

There exist officials for whom that is true, even if that's not the norm.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#193

Post by hsod »

JPKab wrote: post #187
hsod wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Trump won, and we didn't foresee it, so it must have been Russia tricking stupid, dumb rednecks into voting for him" strawman. Some other theories about why black turnout was low this election: Voter suppression: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/voter-suppressio... Russian-funded fake social media activism specifically targeted at black people: https://www.npr.org/2017/10/20/559113232/russian-operatives…

I agree with voter suppression possibly being a factor. However, any narrative involving "tricking" gullible voters with fake ads is, again, playing to a very dark place in the minds of too many voters on the left. Instead of Russia tricking dumb rednecks into voting FOR Trump, it's tricking poor, helpless black people into NOT voting for Hillary. Both narratives are virtually impossible to prove or disprove, which m…

You're the one thats bringing in all this insulting classism. No one said "dumb rednecks" except you. No one called black people "poor and helpless" except you. No one in this thread suggested poor people have high levels of gullibility except you. I implore you to let go of this straw man.

Everyone is susceptible to propaganda and information warfare. Rich and poor, black and white, urban and rural.

Critically examining the way false information is spread via social media is not insulting or classist.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#194

Post by bduerst »

jacquesm wrote: post #189
bduerst wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It worked for Scott Walker in the Wisconsin recall. He outspent his opponent 10:1 to win only by a couple points.

That's because a very large fraction of the voters there has their mind made up long before the elections and only a small fraction will end up deciding the vote. So all that money goes towards targeting a very small number of people and whichever way the vote goes in Wisconsin it will only be won by a few percentage points. To go beyond that you'd have to go back to Johnson vs Goldwater, which was before I was even…

This was advertising spend to blanket the state, across different broadcast mediums (radio, tv, etc.) It wasn't "highly targeted" to just a small demographic.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#195

Post by ksk »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #166
praneshp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Netflix/Amazon/HBO still has not dropped everything that Harvey the Stain makes money off from its catalogs. For what? Hasn't being fired from his company, etc, stopped Harvey the Stain from making money anyway? If not, make that happen. It's stupid to drop all movies he produced; I'd probably cancel Netflix if they did that.

Additionally, what's to gain by making art unavailable to the public? Many of the things these people produced are very high quality artistically. Polanski is responsible for Chinatown for instance. Limiting the reach of these works ould not be a good thing for society. What we need is a mass critical reevaluation to help us better understand these works in the context of these monstrous artists/producers.

I think it is a bit of a moral gray area. Should one use data from unethical human experiments that were already conducted, and the perpetrators punished (e.g. Nazi doctors)?

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#196

Post by JPKab »

hsod wrote: post #193
JPKab wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with voter suppression possibly being a factor. However, any narrative involving "tricking" gullible voters with fake ads is, again, playing to a very dark place in the minds of too many voters on the left. Instead of Russia tricking dumb rednecks into voting FOR Trump, it's tricking poor, helpless black people into NOT voting for Hillary. Both narratives are virtually impossible to prove or disprove, which m…

You're the one thats bringing in all this insulting classism. No one said "dumb rednecks" except you. No one called black people "poor and helpless" except you. No one in this thread suggested poor people have high levels of gullibility except you. I implore you to let go of this straw man. Everyone is susceptible to propaganda and information warfare. Rich and poor, black and white, urban and rural. Critically exami…

Examining social media spreading disinformation is interesting and should be done.

If you think that the fervor with which this is being done isn't being pursued due to a narrative that it caused Trump to win, you're being very naive.

I also resent the fact that you are insinuating I CALLED black people poor and helpless. I didn't. I simply characterized a belief that I believe many pushing the Russian meddling are running with: That these campaigns were not only run (of course they were) but that they were persuasive enough to have had an effect on the outcome of the election.

You aren't wrong about all classes being susceptible to propaganda. I've been shocked by how many well-off people I work and socialize with (fellow left thinking people) have begun to resemble the right-wing people I witnessed for years jumping to conclusions about the fake-scandal that was Benghazi. Rational people who latch onto rumors as facts.

Steve Bannon = White Supremacist (he's not, just an asshole) Donald Trump being blackmailed by Kremlin with tapes of him with hookers (zero evidence) Russians hacked voting machines in key states (zero evidence) Russian ads on social media influenced voting outcomes (zero evidence)

I want to point out that none of these are things that sway people's existing opinions. They are all just confirming their existing biases.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#197

Post by rhcom2 »

gooseus wrote: post #173
rhcom2 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After two years of getting through the back catalog I'm almost done with The History of Rome. I highly, highly recommend to it anyone who likes history or Rome or just a good story.

Oh man, I'm excited for you, I cried when I got to the end of THoR... you gonna continue with The History of Byzantium or Revolutions Podcast? I find Robin Pierson to be pretty good (THoB), but I find I can't stop listening to Duncan... I'll buy the audio book for Storm Before the Storms just to keep listening.

Oh boy, I had heard of Revolutions but not that he did the history of Byzantium. Looks like I'm sticking with Romans, thanks for the heads up :D

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#198

Post by newlyretired »

existencebox wrote: post #184
colemannugent wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who also has friends and family in middle America I honestly believe that the best way to ensure that Trump gets re-elected again in 2020 is maintaining the "only redneck bigots voted for Trump" argument. Roughly half of Americans voted for Trump, to insinuate that they are all bigots is to insult half of the country. Obviously most of the bigots voted for Trump, but they are still a very small minority. T…

I normally avoid arguments about this, but factually you're incorrect. There was approximately 61.4% adult voter turnout. Not only that, trump LOST the popular vote with only 46.1% of the ballots. What this comes out to is that roughly 30% of eligible voting adults supported Trump. This is _nowhere near_ "roughly half of Americans". (I'd add the additional factor that only ~130[EDIT: 250] million of the ~323 million…

The actual number of eligible voters was about 250 million in the last presidential election, up from 235 million in the 2012 race.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St...

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#199

Post by jeffdavis »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #127
jeffdavis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's intellectually honest. The last presidential election was a clear counterexample of the "money buys the presidency" narrative. After the fact you can always think of a reason that the counterexample is a special exception, and doesn't really invalidate a claim. Someone who likes Trump could just as easily call his campaign grassroots from an outsider who didn't try to use his vast wealth to buy t…

The last election shows, among other things, that the media so grossly overplayed their hand that it backfired on them greatly, and Trump was there to take every advantage that was possible to take. Meanwhile, Clinton literally acted as if the election were merely a formality and coasted (although she spent a huge amount of money). I can say personally that the media's breathless spittle-flecked coverage of Trump did…

What you describe is similar to a heroic moment in a dystopian novel: the elites have already chosen for you, elimated all of your other reasonable options, left you with only one horrible alternative that you'd be a fool to exercise.

But you, the protagonist, defy wisdom and reassert your free will by choosing the horrible option.

Though your chance at heroism does place you in real risk of becoming a villian, in this case. I hope that doesn't happen.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#200

Post by thaumasiotes »

williamle8300 wrote: post #88
hxegon wrote: post #8

Classic Streisand effect. I wouldn't have heard of this had Disney not tried to "punish" the person who brought it to light.

Many times people don't have the "star power" to meet the threshold for the Streisand effect inflect.

I would suggest that Disney is even more famous than Barbra Streisand.
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