631–640 of 646 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Starlink: $600 + $120/month Radio: $20 + $0/month
My Comcast monthly cable bill is more than that. And how much is your cell phone bill?
But I set myself up to have to interact with cable providers, ISPs, and cellular carriers a bare minimum. Because they are just the worst.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sadly, we've lost Sagan and Randi. I had the privilege of meeting both Sagan and Randi at different points. Along with Paul Kurtz, also sadly gone now, these were some of the most in influential people in the beginnings of the modern skeptical movement. If you aren't familiar with Prometheus books and CSICOP (now CSI), look them up. You'll find years worth of groundbreaking skeptical reading material.
> I had the privilege of meeting both Sagan and Randi If the story is even remotely interesting and something you'd be willing to share I would really appreciate the read. Will definitely look into those books. Thanks for the recs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
lol, I stopped caring about them because they weren’t willing to say anything about Gaza and bent over backwards to excuse what Trump was doing. If center-right NPR is too liberal I shudder to think of your politics
Many major establishment news orgs are similarly guilty of a heavy pro-Israel bias (WSJ and NYT as other examples), but I would argue this is more on the establishment vs independent spectrum, rather than the left vs right spectrum. Equating a for-profit news corporation's politics with how they handle a singular topic like Gaza would be a bit reductive.
NPR is better than most as their are not owned privately by a billionaire or collectively by billionaire shareholders. But they play the “both sides are reasonable” game annoyingly often with every issue, as if there is some sort of sensible middle ground to be reached somewhere between Obama and Hitler.
Seeing Gaza in particular covered this way - one the most appalling human rights catastrophes of my lifetime aided and funded by my own government - was too much for me to stomach.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the center in modern American politics has historically been neoliberalism, which explains why the center keeps holding. Neoliberalism is only now having to respond to populism on the left and right, which has caused the balance of power to shift on each side. The neoconservative bloc has attained power on the right with the rise of Trump and the Tea Party before him, and some folks on the left have acquired…
Sanders and AOC are fringe socialists who hold no power in either the press, or the political establishment. MAGAnuts are now the mainstream face, body, and soul of the political establishment. Where exactly is the 'center' between the latter and Chuck Schumer? Where is that 'center' going to be in three years , as every month, MAGA picks up the goalposts and moves them a few miles right-wards?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWpRCoQ2wWE
AOC is doing the important work that Congresspeople do. I don’t know if it’s fair to say that she’s fringe. She’s showing up and doing the work that other people don’t show up and do. If it’s fringe work, that is fair to say I guess if you feel that way. I was surprised to see her in this video but at the same time it seems totally in character for her to be there. I think she’s probably going to run for president or vice president at some point in the next few cycles if I had to guess, and these are baby steps to build trust with the Muslim community and get in front of reporters on a national issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if I'm the only one that finds fault with: > GBH, which produces Frontline, gets $177MM in revenue from major donors and viewer subscriptions. Given Frontline is a production for public consumption, for public good, it shouldn't have to be financed by donations, it absolutely should be financed by the federal government. I find your tone (sorry) offensive, in the sense that you DON'T find it dramatic and…
Frontline is a product, just like all the rest of journalism. The time to have gotten on this high horse was when Craigslist slaughtered local media.
Elon Musk talks about wanting X to be a super app, and I think he’s jealous of Zuck and Meta. Meta is a super app without having to be one, but since the failure of Libra Meta has been trying to get another bite at a similarly large apple, and general purpose AI isn’t a bad one to bob for, and X is trying to swim in those same waters.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The flagship big-city / large-state stations will very likely continue to function. The real hit for this action will be in rural regions where alternatives to the local NPR translator station are typically religious stations, right-wing talk, and increasingly Spanish-language programming. If you've access to streaming media, podcasts, or shortwave, you still do have options. There are several excellent national broa…
That's nice, but I'm not looking for news - I already get that from better sources than NPR. I'm looking for good, thoughtful, engaging content .
Philosophy, history, issues and ideas, language instruction, narrative, amongst others.
Again, podcasts and streaming expand your universe markedly.
That said, terrestrial radio still has its place, which is depicted well in WNYC's "Divided Dial" series:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/divided-dial>
This is a giant thread full of people lamenting the demise of public broadcasting so it seems like someone should write the comment that points out that CPB doesn't do PBS programming. They don't develop content. They're a grantmaking organization that manages the distribution of the congressional PBS appropriation. The actual PBS and NPR shows you're familiar with are generally developed and produced privately, and…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I appreciate the poetic response and think that the point I believe you're making: "people who are inclined to criticize anything which isn't exactly as they'd like it will never be pleased, so you can't spend all of your time trying to please them." is correct and useful generally. Where I might disagree with you, if I understand you correctly, is in how applicable your comment is as a response to my mine. At the ou…
>the importance of exercising the right to vote - especially if your ancestors didn't enjoy the right So we shouldn't talk about the 19th Amendment[0] because it's no longer an issue because your mom, sister, wife and daughter are now allowed to vote? As such, we should actively stop talking about the fact that there was ~150 years of activism, protest and discussion before half the population was "allowed" to partic…
The original premise of the first comment I replied to was that PBS kids programming does not include political content, and I wanted to provide examples of two kinds of political content it included.
I don't in any way blame you for misunderstanding what I was trying to say, because I think a lot of people who read my comment did based on the negative point score (?) it ended up with. I think that we (and I include myself in this we) tend to jump past the specific content of a response, and only "hear" the tone of the response and presume intention from it. This isn't necessary an ineffective strategy online where there's a Tsunami of legitimately (from my perspective) evil positions (some of which I previously held and now am ashamed of, shout out God) and the odds are that a person (or bot or person working for an influence campaign) stating anything other than complete excited agreement is probably trying to convince people they should also hold a particular evil view.
The trouble is, this tends to kill nuanced conversation. I get it, I'd be furious if I thought the person I was replying to online was telling me they don't want me to be able to vote, but it's entirely possible that's not what they're saying.
Another example might be "How many Jewish people died in the Holocaust". If you asked me this I would answer, based on my limited knowledge "Somewhere between five and a half and six and a half million, probably closer to six.". I would do better socially if I simply said "like six million what a terrible tragedy", but my goal wouldn't be honesty it'd be social positioning. I understand that most people who don't instantly say "six million what a terrible tragedy" are doing so because they are trying to do an evil thing (Holocaust denial/revisionism), but that's not the only possible reason someone could do it.
I hope this makes sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>the importance of exercising the right to vote - especially if your ancestors didn't enjoy the right So we shouldn't talk about the 19th Amendment[0] because it's no longer an issue because your mom, sister, wife and daughter are now allowed to vote? As such, we should actively stop talking about the fact that there was ~150 years of activism, protest and discussion before half the population was "allowed" to partic…
No sorry, I was including that example because it's something "political" that is also pretty universally accepted and uncontroversial, and as a consequence could only really upset the most upsetable. I meant it as a contrast to the other more controversial political topics that would require more consideration before putting into a children's show. The original premise of the first comment I replied to was that PBS…
Fair enough. However, you didn't really (at least IMHO) make that much of a contrast, especially considering the "contrasting" example (a teacher misnaming their student because they can't even be bothered to try pronouncing their name properly). You've significantly clarified that in the comment to which I'm currently replying -- and thank you!
>I think that we (and I include myself in this we) tend to jump past the specific content of a response, and only "hear" the tone of the response and presume intention from it.
That said, the negative reaction to your comment[0] isn't all that surprising, given what appears to be the tone you've taken.
While the HN guidelines clearly state that one should try to see the comments of others in the best possible light (and I tried to do so -- which is why I asked about it), but there's a more universal idea: who you are -- at least as far as others are concerned -- is how you are perceived by those others.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be true to yourself and your principles. Rather the opposite. That said, it might not be a bad idea to try and see how others might perceive you based on what you write.
I am emphatically not telling you what to do here. Rather, I'm just pointing out that others likely don't see the decent, fair-minded person you consider yourself to be -- because all they have to go on is what's right in front of them.