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Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
251–260 of 359 posts
Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm genuinely happy that SF is seeing peaceful protests, but I spent 2 weeks driving through National Guard checkpoints in my city due to violent unrest, and I'm aware of at least 5 other cities who were similarly affected. Minimizing the presence of violence on either side is wrong. The "few bad apples" narrative doesn't work for cops or protesters, or we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing.
The police and the general population have very different flavors of bad apple. The "good" protestors have no ability nor obligation to remove or control the "bad" ones. It's shameful that some see fit to dismiss the message of them all for the actions of a few. And anyway, the goodness or badness of violent or riotous protests through the lens of history is more than a little bit complicated. The police do have such…
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Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to think this proves the point. Healthcare and childcare and education are in fact (largely though not comprehensively) nonessential goods that are already in very many ways far better than they were 50 years ago. Childcare wasn't even a thing except for the incredibly wealthy until pretty recently. It would be very difficult to argue that the overall options for post-secondary education (and the number of peo…
Saying things like, "look, it really is better!" when wages haven't gone up in 50 years as college has gotten twice as expensive in the last 20 I think is really missing the point and being overly dismissive of people's life experiences. Price gouging because kinds of healthcare most people weren't really getting a few years ago? My best friend was billed 1100 dollars for an ambulance ride and 4000 dollars for a rece…
> when wages haven't gone up in 50 years
This argument is made time and time again as though it's a self-evident truth...except it's not true at all. The inflation-adjusted median personal income is higher than it's ever been.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
The median disposable income in the US is in the top 3 in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
Since 1967, the middle class has been shrinking...because the upper class has been growing:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/25/upshot/shrink...
Yes, college has gotten more expensive (and there are a lot of reasons why), but it's also worth contextualizing: the median number of years to recoup the cost of a bachelors degree, adjusted for inflation, has gone down since the 1980’s, from about 22 years to about 10 years.
https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-va...
This is all information you're not going to read in most news media today, because it's, well, pretty boring and doesn't generate revenue.
Yes, there are always improvements that we need to make. Healthcare is indeed a bit of a mess. There are a number of ways to fix it (and not just the one proposal you keep hearing about). Does that mean society is crumbling? Absolutely not. We're living in just about the best time in human history. But climate change is very real, and just about the most catastrophic thing we have to worry about.
Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Ignoring the world around them is how so many Americans still think Iraq had something to do with 9/11. Consider that maybe them ingesting news from the President and other "news sources" are the reason they think this. Not because they are ignoring the world. If they ignored the world around them, they wouldn't have an opinion at all. So in that case, how good is the consumption of information? This is a lot like…
I don't mean to be dismissive of your argument. I'm trying to follow it. However, your argument seems to be for a country of passive, ignorant sheep that let whoever is in the White House do whatever they want? The problem in '03 wasn't that people were reading too much, it was that they had no idea what was going on. The more you read, the more news from the President becomes contextualized, and you can have a more…
>> However, your argument seems to be for a country of passive, ignorant sheep that let whoever is in the White House do whatever they want?
My argument is that people have vanishingly little power as-is anyway, as evidenced by both executive and legislative branches ignoring the popular sentiments and securing their power first and foremost. In which case, time spent in that area is an absurdly low ROI compared to just helping your neighbors with the groceries, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, or stocking your Little Free Libraries/Pantries near you, rather than worrying what is happening in Tibet.
Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to think this proves the point. Healthcare and childcare and education are in fact (largely though not comprehensively) nonessential goods that are already in very many ways far better than they were 50 years ago. Childcare wasn't even a thing except for the incredibly wealthy until pretty recently. It would be very difficult to argue that the overall options for post-secondary education (and the number of peo…
Saying things like, "look, it really is better!" when wages haven't gone up in 50 years as college has gotten twice as expensive in the last 20 I think is really missing the point and being overly dismissive of people's life experiences. Price gouging because kinds of healthcare most people weren't really getting a few years ago? My best friend was billed 1100 dollars for an ambulance ride and 4000 dollars for a rece…
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Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
#256The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know what's going on in the world is really debilitating. I spend probably an hour a day reading headlines from major outlets with a bunch of different political alignments, and to be honest, I don't really know why I even do it. By the end of it, all I really have is a vague silhouette of a picture of what might have happened, according to a handful of corporations…
> The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know what's going on in the world is really debilitating. Honestly, I think the standards you seem to be setting for yourself are too high. As far as I know, none of us are God, so it is completely impossible for us to know what's going on in the world. > according to a handful of corporations whose job it is to turn the smallest amount of factual raw material int…
> As far as I know, none of us are God, so it is completely impossible for us to know what's going on in the world.
Or.... all of us are: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
Also... I feel for GP. I check out all kinds of sources because there are all kinds of biases. It's crazy how clickbait has changed the news business.
That... and thinking about it --- the REMOVAL of brand authority from media. Instead of democratizing, it has devolved in some ways - though clearly empowered in others.
Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unschooling/Home-schooling + https://www.sjc.edu/ (if they want to) IMO
Looking at https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo... , this is definitely a good list of "foundational texts of Western civilization" as they say, but the world is a lot more interconnected than it was in 1696, and this curriculum leaves out most of it. There's nothing wrong with studying one part of the world or one community of ideas as long as you're open about it, but I don't think I would b…
> It reminds me a little of some culinary schools where the whole curriculum is based on French cooking, and you take like one class on "global cuisine" that covers the entire rest of the world. You can't pick one focus area and claim it's all you need for a full education.
Who said school had anything to do with having a full education? That's kind of the whole point of the unschooling movement.
Culinary Schools primarily focus the curriculum around French cooking because thats the predominant skillset that you will be required to know to work in a volume, commercial kitchen. French cooking training is a broad test of their ability to execute important techniques. It's fitting the curriculum to the students and the expectations that they have.
If you're in culinary school to begin with, you probably care about food and you will be able to teach yourself the rest from that base.
SJC is the same way. They're fitting the curriculum to the expectations and desires of their incoming students. The whole point of that education is to teach you how to think for yourself, not to fill your head with data points.
School, ...ANY... school, is just about establishing a baseline to make you comparable against your peers. Rigorous education has very little to do with it.
In both cases, I don't think you really understand the point of what you're looking at.
Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean to be dismissive of your argument. I'm trying to follow it. However, your argument seems to be for a country of passive, ignorant sheep that let whoever is in the White House do whatever they want? The problem in '03 wasn't that people were reading too much, it was that they had no idea what was going on. The more you read, the more news from the President becomes contextualized, and you can have a more…
>> However, your argument seems to be for a country of passive, ignorant sheep that let whoever is in the White House do whatever they want? My argument is that people have vanishingly little power as-is anyway, as evidenced by both executive and legislative branches ignoring the popular sentiments and securing their power first and foremost. In which case, time spent in that area is an absurdly low ROI compared to j…
I very much agree with you, actually!
I disagree in that I believe that states and localities can be an agent of broader change. Sure, the feds won't reform drug laws, but locally our states and localities are simply working around the feds! So we should know what's wrong in a broad sense to push our localities in the right direction. And I believe in keeping tabs on the feds so if we get a chance to nudge them in the right direction, we can.
Despite disagreeing with you on that point, I think you are 100% right, and if we were all acting locally to make the world a better place....well, it probably would be.
Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
This reads to me like saying "the best way to determine if god exists is to read the hebrew bible, the koran, and the book of mormon and take the average". It starts with the assumption left, right, and centrist sources all have biases, but those biases cancel out. That the "middle" of those things is meaningfully better. I see no evidence that that's the case. All popular news sources these days seem to be biased to…
Well said. The problem is not bias but just the absence of any real content. What happened in the world today? CNN: Trump is rude and orange! etc.
I know it's hip to be pathologically cynical about the news media, especially in a thread like this, but that hot take flies past hyperbole and right into farce.
Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
#260What’s more insidious than the accuracy of what you read in the media is the control the media has on what they actually cover.
If you cast a wide enough net, it pretty quickly becomes apparent that the media is very selective about what they cover. One human rights issue may get front page coverage, while another is completely ignored.
The vast majority of people think they are focused on important issues, when in fact, they are just focused on what the media tells them is important.