#because of misinformation spread to people who lack the ability to critically think

[randomshenaniganery]

Imagine having a president who is the son of a dictator and a dictator apologist 

Sometimes I want Magwayen to swallow my entire country whole back into the oceans where it belongs. 

[piscadilly]

can i call you something? syssy, perhaps? /j

long ass rebuttal with the original text included for references and transparencies sake. @justanothersyscourse

So apparently none of these things are up for debate because no one can reblog or comment

Nice

[I didn't tag my post as anything because I very specifically did not want any input, whether or not people agree with me. I do not like to engage in discourse outside of when I have something to actually say or on impulse (which has been said and can be found on my pinned post on my blog). I do not owe people debate, my time nor energy, nor my spoons. this includes you.]

@/amaranthis

Go ahead, "make an example out of me," but only after I make one of you.

[cringe.]

First, I swear to god, the only ones making #miserablyDID a thing are people like you. What people like me are trying to tell people like you is that dysfunction is a fluctuating label, and the DSM entry for DID explains that dysfunction can be minimal to non-existent and you can still be disordered, and that's okay.

[as I said in my post that you are ""referencing"" from is that if you do not think what I said happens, happens ever, then you have not seen what I have, and I hope you never do. I have known I was a system since I was 12 years old and I have been both on the pro-endo camp, and the critical/neutral camp of them (as I am currently, the latter.) I have seen a ton of shit both from the Astraea's web truthers and the people I call did elitists, who actually do not believe that you can be functional as a system unless you stop being one by achieving final fusion. and that any variation from their own personal experiences of being a system puts into question their validity at all. they also believe that you HAVE to have amnesia and blackouts or you are faking. you cannot know you are a system because it is a covert disorder or you are faking. you cannot have healthy and consistent communication with your alters, or you are faking. these are all things I have seen people around me online say over the years. perhaps you should do your own research?]

Disordered isn't a bad word and it's not synonymous with dysfunction, and the DSM explains why and how. You just don't want to listen and instead continue to spread the idea that you have be miserable and struggling every day if you're disordered. As if people don't live fulfilling, happy lives with all kinds of disorders.

[i'll take things I never said nor implied for 500 alex. I desperately want you to learn and practice reading comprehension and critical thinking skills because you are sorely lacking that here. I specifically pointed out ONE definition that did elitists use to mean disordered, I never said I personally believe in that, nor that everybody does. I know of other anti-endo or endo-neutral people that I am either friends with or have an acquaintance with that do not think like that. lol.]

No, DID is definitely the exception, right?

You ignore that the DSM allows for someone to reach final fusion and still have DID based on their ability to split later in life.

[the people I am calling did elitists disagree with that idea and will not hesitate to actually say so, because to them final fusion means you no longer have OSDDID, meaning you are no longer disordered.]

You ignore that the DSM explains that a disorder doesn't mean need for treatment, and you silence and hide voices trying to explain that under the guise of protecting endogenics from "hate", meanwhile, the misinformation you're pushing is actively harmful to DID systems.

[again, shit I never said, thought, or intended. you are also CATACLYSMICALLY missing the entire point of my post and that it was that harassing endogenics is not helping traumagenics! when people harass endogenics around where i can see it, I do not feel more validated or safer. I feel uncomfortable and worried because what's to stop them from going further and creating abstract rules on how to be a system, that I may or may not actually fit into, thus in turn causing them to fakeclaim ME as well? fakeclaiming traumagenics is harmful to traumagenics. endogenics can shrug that shit off if they're serious about going around being a system, because that's just par for the course of the kind of shit they get. majority of traumagenics are not actively faking so to accuse them of such is an act of violence against them. sorry you cannot grasp that concept.]

You ignore when we explain that the DSM states that you can be trans without dysphoria, and that in most cases, dysfunction in that case comes from failures on the side of medical practitioners and deniers. Transmeds go against the DSM and current research, and comparing syscourse to that is hugely dismissive of the fight trans people have fought.

[SHIT I NEVER SAID AND THIS IS WHY I SAID YOU WERE INSINUATING I WAS A TRANSMED. was it because I used the term transtrender? was it that? i was hoping that what i said came off as satire-esque and that i genuinely didn't think like that, because i DON'T and it's EXTREMELY obvious when you take a glance at my pinned post. i am mogai, nonbinary, and trans myself and i did not make the comparison lightly, and it is well within my right to do so. i also, in case you missed it, explicitly said that i do not agree with the usage of the terms sysmed or traumascum, but i can understand why and how they might have gotten started and why they are still used by some people.]

In terms of DID/OSDD, the DSM explains that it IS a trauma-based disorder, but no one bothers to read beyond the criteria (which also mentions trauma? The and/or doesn't mean trauma is optional, but go off I guess). Sysmeds support the DSM and current research.

[so are you against or for the term sysmed then? also please take note of your own language here, Current Research. we do not fully understand the brain, once again, and that includes how trauma affects it and that also includes dissociative and trauma based disorders. we have an IDEA, not a full understanding. i am eager to read about groundbreaking ideas and research into the phenomenon of being plural, both from a traumagenic and endogenic viewpoint because i value knowledge over what others may think exists or not. i'm not a sheep that follows the herd, i formulate my opinions based on what is available to me in the form of facts or peer reviewed opinions, and my own experiences, and my ability to have common sense and critical thought. also why are you saying "go off i guess" like what part of anything i said or am saying is implying that did/osdd are not trauma based. are you conflating me for some other shmuck i saw briefly on your blog? that person and i are not the same person. i do not subscribe or have a rhetoric outside of wanting people to shut the fuck up about how endos are singlehandedly ruining the lives and community of traumagenics.. you guys sound so fucking silly to me honestly. that and stop fucking fakeclaiming systems. period.]

The fight isn't comparable, and you're basically denying science and history at this point in favour of an argument that doesn't actually apply.

[you are lying abt what i said and believe in. would be funny if i wasn't so fucking exhausted.]

You ignore the very real damage that IFS has done to the treatment of DID/OSDD, and you ignore our concerns when we say we see the same things coming with endogenics if the language used isn't changed and the line clearly separated.

[i have like, zero idea about what IFS is or what it means because, in case you didn't read between the lines, i stay out of the way of the greater community because you guys are exhausting. i don't like syscourse. i do not like talking about syscourse, and i especially do not want people to fakeclaim me for some extremely arbitrary reason, like me having good communication with my alters, or me being frontstuck, or me being a little/mid ageslider when i am both fronstuck, AND the shell/main fronter, or, fuck, i dunno. spin a wheel, dude! I've been called fake in the past for all sorts of reasons, i cant even remember them all tbh.]

You ignore that we have answers to all of those questions you asked in the tags. We know why and how the cut off age works, and how autism can increase that age to about 12. From the writers of the DSM.

[MY understanding was that it was just a rule because of the CURRENT understanding of the brain and how it works when people age, also that's great to know because about a year ago when i went looking for stuff related to autism and did/osdd there was basically nothing for it. that's great actually thank you for informing me. :) ]

Image In b4 hypothesized, because we can see it now, and the DSM 5 TR has been updated to reflect this new understanding.

[i cannot see the image because of the format of the text editor i am using but i'll look at some point soon.]

You ignore that we already understand how and why those with DID have alters and how trauma plays into that.

[no, not ignoring, issuing a challenge and a call for new information that either solidly confirms or puts into question stuff that's already known. again, i value knowledge. i like to know things, especially related to psychology. it's a SPIN. i am not in a position to be able to conduct my own research and talk about my own findings because i am not in a psychology course at this point in time. but i definitely want to be able to fully understand the brain, the mind, and the related mechanisms, both from a spiritual and scientific point. am i weird for that? maybe.]

You ignore that this means that: those biomarkers, or injuries = DID/OSDD, and that if someone is apparently a system without those injuries, it is completely, 100% different. How can it not be? Those injuries affect every aspect of our lives-- the way we retain, recall, and manage memories and information, our emotional reactions to things. Someone without them isn't going to understand it, but people like you demonize people like me for pointing that out, despite the fact that it's kind of obvious when you think about it.

[i am assuming biomarkers is related to the image i can't see at this exact moment. no, again, not ignoring. i do not spend every waking hour studying did/osdd and committing everything to memory. my mind does not work that way and it sounds tiresome. i look things up when my interest is piqued. like now when i am dealing with you. call me lazy if you want, idk. i do things the way i do things because again, i am a spoonie. i do not demonize you for pointing it out, in fact part of my original post was also about how educating endos and people new to being a system is infinitely more helpful and meaningful than just gatekeeping them and directing vitriol to them. please do reread my post a few times, i find it may help.]

You ignore that the DSM is quite clear about what kind of cultural experiences are excluded and why and how, and it's not for teens on tumblr, and saying it is, is denying the long, hard fight to keep spiritual and religious practices out of the DSM, because they're not the same things.

[personally i find it extremely weird how you are discounting endogenics, pro-endos, and endo-neutrals to only being teens on tumblr and that there aren't any on other sites, irl, or that some of these people may also be adults of varying ages. i never mentioned spirituality anywhere in my post that i know of, as that wasn't the cusp of the matter i was speaking on. if i did then i forgot, so my bad! but i do think i didn't. that is a whole 'nother can of worms that i do not want to talk about because my opinions on the matter are conflicting and complicated.]

We already have the answers, you just don't like them, and you just proved on this post that you don't actually care about education, you care about silencing people who disagree and try to point out that you're misreading and misunderstanding things.

[where the fuck am i silencing anybody? i am not forcing you or anybody else to agree with me and stop harassment of people, both endogenic and traumagenic (who get caught in the crossfire, like i have been by you) i am just inviting people to maybe rethink the way they approach shit and go for education or ignoring them instead of any harassment or bullying. stop using buzzwords lol.]

my text now:

anyway, you in fact did NOT know i was prof dx'd until i said so to you, all it says on my blog is that i have did/am traumagenic, you could've assumed i was lying or that it was a self dx. i can tell by your language in this post that you suspected i was an endogenic by the way you said "people like you" and "people like me"

we are the same. we are both traumagenic systems. you do not have to backpedal and insist you knew all along and that i was wrong in my skimming and understanding of what you said prior, you can admit that you were wrong about something. like i did when i mentioned the cut off age in relation to being autistic not being known. i didn't actually know they figured it out! so again, thanks for informing me. if you have a link to the study(ies) on it i'd love to receive it.

[mbti-notes]

Hi mbti-notes, hope you are doing well. I am an INFP who is easily taken by persuasive people with questionable opinions. I was a part of an online forum about women prioritizing their wellbeing in relationships that quickly devolved into something ugly. I want to do better next time. When people speak with a lot of conviction, I am easily persuaded because I see the confidence that I lack. I will be utilizing the resources you have already linked on critical thinking. I need to be less gullible

I understand your sentiment because this issue is quite close to my heart. I always try to place truth as my highest ideal, so it pains me greatly to see myself or others be misled by false information. Part of my motivation for running this blog is to try to warn people against quick-fix ideas that end up doing them more harm than good. Critical thinking skills are more important than ever because we unfortunately now live in a social media world that allows misinformation and disinformation to spread like wildfire. There are too many opportunities for people to find information that engages them at the expense of information that is true.

Generally speaking, Fs tend to be trusting, especially when it comes to people they like or relate to. They need this trait because it is essential for relationships to thrive and love to blossom. Having healthy and happy relationships is one of the major factors that determines whether you will live a good quality of life.

However, every personality trait has its upsides and downsides. The downside of being trusting is that you might end up putting faith in people who don't deserve it. You can think of critical thinking as a form of self-defense training. It helps you spot threats and neutralize them quickly, before too much damage is done. This doesn't mean that you'll never get deceived or hurt. If someone is determined to take advantage of you, they will use all sorts of devious tactics. The most important thing is that you're able to detect them and protect yourself as soon as possible.

Do you understand why people often fall prey to false information? I would argue that the main reason is low self-awareness: they don't know themselves very well and aren't aware of what really motivates them. Most people are at low levels of ego development, which means that they are, by and large, unaware of being driven by underlying emotional issues.

You brought up a great example. One of your main underlying issues is that you lack confidence. Thus, your approach to people is often framed by this issue. You (unconsciously) seek out people who are able to lend you their confidence. You're definitely not alone there. Numerous studies have revealed how easily people are taken in by empty confidence and charisma in leaders. This is why psychopaths and narcissists achieve leadership positions more easily than the average person. The average person is usually more honest, in that the degree of confidence they exude matches their actual level of knowledge and capability. As an average person, you then assume that others are similarly honest. If they exude high confidence, they must know better than you... right? Oftentimes, the more confident someone appears to be, the more likely it is that they're trying to persuade you for ulterior motives rather than educate you for altruistic motives.

There are several aspects to tackling this problem of low self-awareness. Improve your emotional intelligence to make it more difficult for people to emotionally manipulate you. Improve your critical reasoning ability so that you know how to evaluate information on your own. Properly vet your sources of information.

1) Emotional Intelligence: What are your emotional vulnerabilities? We all have them but we are not all aware of them. For example: What sorts of things about people trigger your awe, envy, jealousy, admiration, resentment, self-loathing, etc? It's a lot harder for people to exploit your emotional vulnerabilities when you're fully aware of them and know to tread more carefully whenever they get triggered.

The consumer economy and the social media world run on emotional manipulation. What does that mean? There wouldn't be so many "influencers" out there if not for the masses of people wanting to feel something. There's pleasure in the engagement, the inspiration, the novelty, the shock, the outrage, the possession, the tribal validation, isn't there? If you're looking to get hooked by something, someone will use that opportunity to hook you for their own ends.

If someone is hitting hard on your emotional vulnerabilities (i.e. it seems as though they know exactly what to say to trigger a response in you), have a strategy for maintaining some emotional distance for awhile, in order to give yourself enough time to properly evaluate the person and what they are saying. It could be as simple as shutting off your device or walking away to clear your head.

For example, let's say you go to the store and the salesperson is using high pressure sales tactics on you. Politely tell them that they're making great points and you appreciate their help, but you need some time to mull it over. Leave the store, whip out your phone, and start doing research. You might soon discover that there's another store selling the same product for a lower price or that the product has gotten very poor reviews. Always give yourself the time and opportunity to seek out the truth.

I have a friend who loves to solicit my opinion on random things. However, I noticed that they'll never show any signs of agreement or disagreement when listening to my arguments. The conversation always ends with them saying that they need some time to think on it. They obviously place a lot of trust in me because they often seek out my input, but they don't automatically trust that everything I say is true or the full story, no matter how confident I appear to be. This brings me to the next point.

2) Critical Reasoning: One of the most important aspects of critical reasoning is making the effort to be as objective as you can, which is something FPs often struggle with. Objectivity means that you try to understand the whole picture, from every vantage point available to you. Objectivity means that you evaluate information impartially, from a position of someone who is disinterested (i.e. someone with no stakes in the matter either way). The reason objectivity is difficult is that when you get interested in something, you become emotionally invested in it, maybe you get your hopes up, and that can cloud your judgment.

One easy way to be more objective is to focus less on the person and focus purely on the content of their words. Whether you like, admire, or hate someone is irrelevant to the factuality of their statements. Evaluate the claims and statements for factuality in isolation, apart from who happened to utter them. Several of the books that I recommended on the resources page under critical thinking teach people how to evaluate information carefully, step by step.

When we like someone, we tend to assume that they are a good person, so we believe that they wouldn't intentionally mislead us. However, good people don't know everything and can still have false beliefs, right? When we hate someone, we tend to assume that they are a bad person, so we dismiss their words. However, bad people can still be in possession of some facts, can't they? In other words, moral character and intellectual knowledge are two different realms of existence. You can be morally good and intellectually ignorant at the same time. You can be morally bad but intellectually knowledgeable at the same time.

3) Vet Your Sources: You are human. Humans have limited time and energy for doing research. You can't know everything. You will make mistakes out of ignorance. Be forgiving of yourself. Throughout life, we sometimes have no choice but to rely on others and trust in their knowledge and expertise. What makes a source trustworthy? Here are some important points to consider:

- What is the source of their knowledge and expertise? Do they have the relevant educational and/or experiential qualifications? If they are a professional, do they have the requisite certificate, license, and/or other documentation that proves their qualifications? If you're not sure about these things, there are lots of forums online where you can ask questions to people who actually work in the field - use social media to your advantage. One sentence structure I always laugh at is "I'm not a scientist but..." Stop listening right then and there because they're basically telling you not to trust them!

- Is there a better source out there? Do you have a tendency to be loyal against your better judgment? When you're young and/or lack worldly experience, you're more easily taken in by interesting ideas and the charismatic people spouting them. However, once you've been around the block a few times, you start to see how ideas get recycled and regurgitated and repackaged. Truly new and revolutionary ideas are few and far between. Whatever idea you're enamored with, there are probably lots of people out there who are already familiar with it. Talk to those people to get a more realistic perspective on the matter (this is especially important for Ns to do). The idea may indeed be a good one, but that doesn't mean there isn't a darker side to it as well. One important thing that modern society has lost, to its great detriment, is respect for elders and their wisdom. With the hyperfocus on youth, we forget that there are people out there who've been there and done that, perhaps many times over. Tap into that treasure trove of information and you could save yourself quite a lot of heartache. In my teens, my parents always side-eyed me for making friends with older people, probably because they were afraid I would get groomed for abuse or something (a very valid concern!) Actually, I was only interested in learning from their experience.

- Are they principled in their dealings with people? Do they have a "code" or standards of conduct that they always follow? Do they make a strong effort to be objective, honest, fair, and well-rounded when they present information? What stake do they have in earning your trust? How do they stand to benefit from your trust? Are they completely transparent about the benefits they receive? When you enter a relationship with someone, even if it's a parasocial relationship, make sure that you understand what each party stands to gain and lose from the interaction. What are you being asked to give? Is it going to be a fair exchange?

Relationships, real-life or virtual, come and go and end for all kinds of reasons. Throughout it all, it's important to remember that being trusting is a virtue. If someone chooses to take advantage of your trust and exploit it for their own self-interest, THEY are in the wrong, not you. Don't blame the victim! All you wanted was to improve yourself and your life. Your intention is good.

In case it needs to be said, just because you've been burned before, doesn't mean that there aren't any trustworthy people out there. The world is full of good and bad and everything in between. The remedy to social threats isn't to become cynical and give up on trusting people, as this would just plunge you into a new form of hell where you've lost your humanity and live in paranoid isolation.

The remedy is to make sure that you take the time to really know someone well before placing too much trust in them. Don't let excitement override your better judgment. Also, Si types often approach trust and loyalty as "set it and forget it". Remember that trust should be earned over time and loyalty should be constantly negotiated throughout a relationship. You can and should revoke your trust and loyalty at any point a person shows you that they aren't deserving.

[jordanas-diary]

Seaspiracy

This documentary seems to be the talk of the time at the moment and I have to say that initially, I was super excited to see issues that I have been studying for the last four years, being brought to the forefront of people’s minds after having banged on about them for who knows how long. But boy oh boy was I disappointed in how the issues were being portrayed. Where to begin?

The first thing that frustrates me with this is the science/data/information these people are using. Or the lack of it. Sure it has sources for some of the data being used, but not once do I see the utilisation of a credible science journal with peer-reviewed articles. Nor do I see a lot of scientists providing input on the questions they are posing to ocean conservation organisations. With some googling, you will find a lot of the data isn’t backed up by scientists working in these areas of study in reports or in articles - so what’s the truth? The graphics in this documentary too ... a great white shark on coral reefs? Un-fucking-likely. Two heccing ridiculous claims were made in this documentary: 1. Dolphins are only killed bc they're pests; and 2. Ebola was caused by decreased fish stocks????? I will elaborate on these later. But anyways ...

This brings me to my next issue - the demonisation of ocean conservation organisations. Somehow BP oil came out looking like a good guy in comparison to these organisations. How in the world did that happen? These organisations provide funding for ocean conservation, research, clean up and education - if we stop funding these organisations, how can we continue to learn about the ocean and educate our younger generations?

What's more is the interview tactics used were shady as hell, and just aiming to paint the narrative they wanted. Now I was ok with this in the beginning, but the less they tried to paint a more balanced picture of the industry, the more frustrated I became. The narrative they were aiming for will have some detrimental impacts on these organisations as mentioned above.

Furthermore, this documentary is incredibly white-centric. Sure there are problematic practices across the world, but painting Asia as the worst? Have you ever wondered why? One of the key drivers for unsustainable fishing practices is the demand - but this demand is not only domestic, but international as well. Now, where internationally is the demand coming from? The West. It is our demand for more and more seafood, drives for the supply to become higher and higher CAUSING these businesses and countries to find more seafood in order to turn a profit.

I also had an issue with the spread and demographic of people contributing throughout the documentary. All of these people were white/white-passing, mostly male, majority activists/journalists, all bringing exceptionally similar perspectives and ideas as to what they see as the ideal future. But without diversity of thought - how can we create a truly encompassing and servicing society for all?

Back I will return to the "dolphins are pests" claim. This i n f u r i a t e d me to the absolute max. Why? Because not once did these people even THINK to acknowledge or even explore indigenous practices in the marine environment, or the significance these animals hold to these people culturally. Which then brings me to the intent of the documentary. 

This documentary was not created to explore sustainable modes of fishing - or even the idea of it for that matter - but to stop the consumption of fish. There are so many issues in this. I mean to unpack this from a science perspective - the lack of scientific backing of the majority of the claims this documentary made is laughable - but to go and completely disregard years of research and experiments and exploration is just plain ignorant. Why only tell one side of this complex issue? Where is the balance between science, governments and protection organisations? Heavily weighting this documentary to the side creates the misinformation that has scientists pressed from the get go fam. Science and technology have evolved [and will continue to evolve] to help us better understand fish stocks and populations, as well and feeding and breeding patterns. Genetics can be used to understand where fish are coming from and whether or not their capture was legal or not, making it harder for fishing vessels to lie about where and how stocks were caught. New Zealand is a good place to look at when exploring sustainable fisheries if you are interested in what this might look like. 

AND THEN from a cultural and social perspective - well if all fishing is banned then how do we put millions, if not billions of people into jobs to feed, clothe and house their families? What assistance will be given to these people from governments or international institutions? My guess? Very little. Most fisherman probably get paid dirt nothing and have skills for a specialised field - how can we ask them to go out and retrain? They most likely will not have the finds to do so. Many of these people will live in vulnerable communities, lacking infrastructure and opportunity to provide them with jobs if the fishing industry was to just ... stop. The expectation that Asian nations that make up a lot of international seafood trade will immediately have the capacity to if not give jobs, but provide assistance to millions of people without jobs and their families is so unrealistic that even on an international level this would be a huge ask. 

THEN we come to the question of what happens to indigenous people, coastal communities and island nations that literally r e l y on the ocean for everything? If we ask these people to stop relying on the ocean, not only will they lose their source of income and sustenance, but also lose their cultural practices and knowledge of the ocean that they can no longer pass on through action. Indigenous peoples and coastal communities have such a different relationship with the environment and the ocean, it is hard to comprehend let alone explain if you do not possess this. There is an inherent as well as learned intuition that is passed down between generations where you learn the right times of the year to harvest through the. understanding of the lifecycle and breeding patters, without specific scientific knowledge have the ability to know the difference between mature and juvenile species, and so much more. The knowledge that these people hold is integral to the survival of our oceans, yet not once was this mentioned throughout the documentary. 

Urging people to stop eating fish is incredibly ignorant. Some people many not be in a position to - whether that be culturally, socially, for health reasons - whatever. Sure reduce consumption, find an alternative if you have the ability and means to do so. Don’t do it just because a documentary told you to. The reason why a lot of organisations made no comment on this is because people deserve the right to choice of what they seat - and in some cases, seafood might be their main source of protein and energy. 

What this documentary did do right though, is raise all of these issues by bringing them to the front of public mind. Ghost fishing, overfishing, shark finning - all of these practices take an absolute toll on our oceans - without halting these specific practices, I cannot see how our oceans can survive, let alone sustain the human race.  

For me, Seaspiracy comes from a place of privilege and stubbornness. There is very little attempt to better educate themselves on these issues, lack of will/want to learn about cultural aspects in fisheries, and the spread of misinformation through data and “facts”. If this documentary has made some how emotionally charged you to do something to protect our oceans - WOOO!!! This issue has been so underrated for far too long. However, do not take this documentary as gospel - go and do some of your own research! Explore the topics raised! Educate yourself! Critically analyse every piece of information you come across, check if it can be backed/verified by other articles/reports released on the same/similar topics! 

Happy to answer any questions people might have on this. Hopefully this sheds more light on our ocean issues and that people think more critically about this documentary before, during and after watching it. 

Tagging: @lightacademiasworld

[randomposterofstuff]

Why I still appreciate AOT/SNK despite how it ended

Hi, all!

I still have a lot of thoughts running rampant in my mind. I plan to express each idea individually. By this, I mean that one idea will be the subject matter of one post. I have many thoughts, and it would be a really long post if I include all of them in just one. Haha.

But for this particular post, I would like to express that even though I have mixed feelings about the conclusion, I still appreciate Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin. I admit that I only joined the fandom recently. Haha. But I became invested in the story and its characters fairly quickly.

I have mixed feelings about the ending. And as of now, they lean more towards disappointment and frustration. (I will elaborate more on what I think of it in another post.) Haha. But despite this, the series still gave us many, many incredible scenes and exciting plot lines. Furthermore, it also offered critical insights on complex subject matters.

Fair warning: This is another lengthy post. Haha.

A. It is entertaining

AOT/SNK is very entertaining. The action scenes alone had us on the edges of our seats. And those epic fight scenes were nicely complemented by compelling storylines involving deception, mystery, and power struggles. A personal favorite scene of mine is Levi Ackerman’s fight scene against Kenny’s Anti-Personnel Squad. The action and the conspiracy which led to it were amazing and jaw-dropping. (Side note: Ackerman Supremacy forever!)

B. It offers critical input on relevant issues

But the series is more than just enjoyable. It is also critical and reflective. Many people have said that AOT/SNK is a commentary on the many ills that plague human civilization and society. And I agree with this.

The series has invited us to think critically about war, violence, and trauma and their various effects on different people. It also has encouraged us to reflect on the power of information and perspectives.

1. AOT/SNK on war, trauma, violence and their effects

It showed us how a once innocent girl like Mikasa Ackerman became a highly skilled combatant because she feared losing her loved ones to violence. After witnessing her parents get killed in front of her while she was helpless to do anything, Mikasa became motivated to fight to protect the very few precious people left in her life.

It showed us how a former thug like Levi Ackerman realized that he could put his exceptional skills to better use by staying with the Survey Corps/Scouting Regiment instead of returning to the Underground. When he lost Isabel and Furlan to Titans, he felt unadulterated rage and pain. This also caused him to see the threat that the Titans posed to humans and influenced his decision to remain as a soldier.

It showed us how a once self-centered Jean Kirchstein transformed into a dedicated soldier and reliable leader after seeing the decimated corpse of his closest friend and companion. Jean’s change of heart was admirable. However, it was unfortunate that the change was caused by something as tragic as losing Marco.

It also showed us how a cowardly Floch Forester became a violent and narrow-minded extremist. When he was first introduced, he was afraid of dying in battle. But the war and struggle against Marley caused him to view anyone who wasn’t an Eldian as the enemy, even if they were only unarmed civilians. Ironically, his extremist views had made him a braver fighter. At one point, he had even told his allies to dedicate their hearts to the new Eldian Empire.

2. AOT/SNK on the effects of prejudice, propaganda, and indoctrination

I think that the series had also brilliantly portrayed how prejudice, propaganda, and indoctrination affect different people from different sides.

i. Propaganda in Marley

It showed us how the current generations of Eldians were forced to pay for their ancestors' sins. The old Eldian empire under King Fritz and his successors until Karl Fritz mercilessly conquered lands and destroyed many lives. Understandably, this caused the other nations and peoples of the olden times to hate Eldians. However, this hatred was unfortunately passed down from generation to generation. The crimes of the old Eldian Empire were committed thousands of years ago. Yet, the Eldians who were borncenturies afterward were still despised and viewed as devils.

This millennia-old hatred was also used by Marley to spread propaganda to keep itself in power and to keep Eldians in the internment zones across the world in check. They taught Eldians that because of their ancestors' sins and their supernatural ability to transform into Titans, they were monsters and plagues upon the Earth. They were also taught that they needed to repent to absolve themselves of the crimes of their forefathers.

This propaganda led to many Eldians believing that they deserved to be treated poorly and that they had to work hard to be respected as actual people. This mindset was what allowed the Marleyan Warrior Program to become successful. One privilege that came with being a Warrior of Marley and a family member of such Warrior was being granted honorary Marleyan citizenship. It was viewed as an honor and a sign of respect.

It was because of this that Gabi and Reiner Braun both aspired to become Warriors. Gabi trained as a Warrior because she wanted to prove to the world that there are Eldians who are good people. She herself had admitted that the struggles she faced as an Eldian were what motivated her to work hard. On Reiner’s part, he joined the program because he assumed that becoming an honorary Marleyan would complete his broken family. He thought his Marleyan father would live together with him and his Eldian mother once he became a Warrior. But alas, he was proven wrong since his father rejected him despite his efforts.

On the flip side, it also caused other Eldians to become hateful and resentful of superpowers like Marley. They were tired of being treated as second-class citizens and formed the Eldian Restorationist Movement. The Restorationists believed that Marley was feeding them deceitful propaganda. While this is indeed true, they instead believed that the source of all Titan power, who they reverently called the great Founder Ymir, was a benevolent being who would never harm anyone. It was eventually revealed that this was not true either.

The Restorationists had extreme views. These views caused Grisha Yeager to use his first son Zeke as a means to an end. The Restorationists had wanted to overthrow Marley utilizing the power of the Titans. And Grisha had immediately offered his son without any hesitation to their cause by enrolling him into the Warrior Program to become a spy for them. The Yeager patriarch was so focused and engrossed with their goal that he had neglected to act as an actual father to his then young son. He was more invested in Zeke's progress as a Warrior candidate than in the latter's growth and happiness as his son.

ii. Propaganda in Paradis

It was also revealed that the inhabitants within the Walls were also taught propaganda. As readers and viewers, we all know that the people of Paradis were initially ignorant of the truth of the world and of the Titans because King Karl Fritz erased the memories of the island’s first inhabitants. We all knew that most of them believed that they were the last living humans in the world and that the rest were wiped out by Titans around 100 years ago. The misinformation spread by Karl Fritz endangered the people of Paradis. It cultivated and propagated ignorance which left them vulnerable to attacks from other nations.

As such, they were clueless and defenseless against the Warriors of Marley when they first attacked. And they would’ve continued to be defenseless had it not been for Grisha’s journals and the memory-related powers of Eren’s Attack Titan. The lack of information and the misinformation they received had placed them in great jeopardy.

When the truth came to light, the Eldians of Paradis were divided. One side sought to broker for peace with the other nations. They wished to show that the people of the island mean no harm. The people of this side were willing to overlook the terrible deeds that Marley had committed if it meant that they could finally achieve true peace.

The other side saw the other nations, especially Marley, as enemies who wished to exterminate them. They were disgusted and infuriated by what Marley had done. These Eldians wanted to take arms and fight for the establishment and freedom of the new Eldian Empire.

2. AOT/SNK on the power of narrative in relation to the cycle of hatred

One thing that the series masterfully executed is the portrayal of the importance of narratives.

i. The Paradis Perspective

During the first arc, it was shown how helpless the people inside the Walls were when Titans attacked the Shiganshina District. We also saw the trauma that a young Eren Yeager experienced when he saw his mother get eaten by a Titan. We witnessed first-hand how a young child lost his parents and his home. And how this loss cultivated his understandable anger and became his primary motivation for becoming a soldier for humanity.

Fans, readers, and viewers sympathized and supported Eren because of this. By presenting how the destruction affected him, we all rooted for him and his allies. This narrative also showed us how countless soldiers of the Survey Corps/Scouting Regiment lost their lives during the fight against the Titans. From a spectator's point of view, the Titans were beasts that killed humans who were significantly weaker and smaller than them and monsters that laid waste wherever they went. As such, this perspective had led many of us to resent Bertolt, Annie, and Reiner when they were revealed to be the Colossal, Female, and Armored Titans, respectively.

ii. The Marleyan Perspective

But this all changed when we were shown the Marleyan perspective. When the Marleyan Arc began, we were shown how Eldians on the other side of the sea were poorly treated. We saw how they were brainwashed to believe that Paradis Island's inhabitants were the true devils beyond salvation, whereas they could still be redeemed. When these things were gradually revealed to us, we eventually understood why Bertolt, Annie, and Reiner did the terrible things they did. Because of these revelations, we started to become more sympathetic towards the Warriors.

The power of narrative was especially emphasized in the Raid on Liberio. During Willy Tybur’s declaration of war against Paradis, he revealed the world's true history and King Karl Fritz's plan. He also announced that the founding Titan's power was stolen from the royal family inside the Walls by Eren and that the latter had planned to use it to attach the rest of the world.

Not soon after his announcement, Eren transformed and attacked the people in attendance. The Survey Corps had also arrived to provide manpower and backup. In the process, hundreds of civilians and visiting dignitaries were killed.

All of these things lent credence to the propaganda about Eldians being devils. From the eyes of a bystander, Eren and the Survey Corps were murderers who destroyed a city full of innocents. This was how Gabi Braun viewed them at the time. She was raised with Marley's propaganda. As such, her already present hatred was amplified when she saw her hometown get destroyed and her friends and neighbors get killed in front of her. While her general prejudice towards the Eldians of Paradis was unjustified, the pain and anger she felt during the Raid on Liberio were very much valid and understandable.

iii. On the cycle of hatred and how to end it

It is because of these narratives that the cycle of violence continued on for so long. No one narrative is more right or less wrong than the other. This is because the losses and struggles that each side suffered were all very real and very valid. It is not fair to quantify the validity of a person’s pain.

The neglect and loneliness that Zeke felt as a child were valid. The grief and rage Gabi felt when her friends were killed were also valid. The heartache that Niccolo experienced when Sasha died was also valid. The depression and trauma Reiner sustained after his mission on Paradis Island were likewise valid. The hurt Connie felt when he was betrayed by people he trusted was valid. Jean's sadness at losing Marco and Sasha was valid. The anguish Levi felt when he was left with no choice but to slaughter his transformed comrades was valid. The point here is that no one's pain is more valid than that of others. There are different types of pain, and they are all valid.

It is from these losses and pain that anger stems. Anger is a very valid emotion. However, the way people choose to act on their anger is not always valid. On this, the choice to express anger through violence is the root cause of the cycle of hatred. It is also what perpetuates the vicious cycle. I think that this message was executed well in the scene where Niccolo confronts Gabi and reveals her as Sasha’s killer to the Brauses.

It is also during this scene that the answer to ending the cycle of hatred was explained through the wise words of Mr. Braus.

Screenshots taken from Season 4, Episode 13 of the Attack on Titan anime.

Mr. Braus acknowledged that the world is like a giant forest where violence is nearly always afoot. He understood that violence will continue to exist unless people put a stop to hatred. He sagely advised that it is up to the older generations to bear the sins of the past and their effects and consequences. This is so that the youth of the future could live in peace. And he backed his words with action by choosing not to take revenge on Gabi despite his own grief and pain.

The series also showed that another answer to ending the cycle was through understanding. This was exemplified through Gabi’s character development. Prior to her arrival on Paradis, she thought that its inhabitants were devils that were beyond redemption. But after spending time with the Brauses, she became enlightened. Gabi eventually realized that she was wrong about her prejudices. And it was because of this realization that her hatred disappeared, and she asked for forgiveness.

Screenshot taken from Chapter 118 of the Shingeki no Kyojin manga.

----

Final Words: There are actually a lot more things that the series had touched upon. But I don't think that I can comprehensively cover all of them in this post. Hahaha. In any case, I still like AOT/SNK because overall, it is an epic tale full of action, mystery, intrigue, and most of all, valuable lessons and insights to ponder upon. I know that many fans feel that the ending ruined the series for them. And I understand why they feel that way. But personally, I think that many great things about it deserve to be appreciated. I know that not everyone will agree with me, but this is my take on it.

So, despite my disappointment and issues with Ch. 139, I still thank Isayama-sensei for giving us Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin. Thank you, Isayama! Shinzou Wo Sasageyo!

[rosalesbeausderholle]

Honestly i agree with that post of yours. tbh i think most people who are getting mad over it are the ones who think radical feminism is making fun of genderists on tumblr. like obviously radical feminism is fully against gender ideology but it’s not some sort of movement whose sole and only purpose is to go against it on the internet. Some People on here are getting much too comfortable calling themselves radfems after sharing a few memes about TiMs and insulting a 14 year old who says she’s nonbinary. Even if there Weren’t any trans people, radical feminism would still exist and there would still be a need for it. framing radical feminism as only being anti-trans is basically playing into the misinformation people spread about it and detracts from our ability to have useful conversations. I’d much rather have a constructive discussion on, let’s say the porn industry, with a woman who has a gender identity, than call her an insult, further cementing her belief that radical feminism is out to get her.

(anon's language is obviously not the language I would use to talk about trans people but i can't control what words other people put in my inbox and also i know her intentions aren't bad)

Radical feminism as it is now lacks very basic empathy for trans people. In a way that makes sense as an immediate reaction because many trans people and people who are activists for trans rights lack empathy with us (see how easy everyone talks about killing and choking terfs etc) and will say and do incredibly misogynistic things but it making sense as a human emotional reaction does not make it good or justifiable (neither is misogyny in the supposed name of trans rights, obviously, anyone who cannot conceive of advocating for the rights of trans people without falling back on incredibly misogynistic ideas and who won't listen to criticism of that is nothing but a run of the mill self-serving misogynist).

For years both groups have been isolating one another each getting more and more extreme in their thinking and language and actions to the point that now they can't even communicate with each other properly (see how each of you use different buzzwords to mean the same thing and will keep stubbornly doing so even when it prevents effective communication within the well-intentioned people within each side).

This leads to a mindset that's basically tribal, but feminism is a political movement for women's liberation, that means everyone affected by misogyny. A political movement for the liberation of half the human race from the oppressive institutions set up and the violence done by the other half can't be tribal.

Some people seem to wield the "well, so and so who does this and that can't BE a radical feminism" like attaining 'radical feminist' status is some kind of prize or badge of honour. BUT 'radical feminist' isn't a chosen identity you have to perform or a club one belongs to, it's a set of principles and ideas (that so many people who call themselves radfems now don't even follow themselves) You either agree with them or not, you either act in accordance with them or not and you can even agree with one of them and not the others. I'm a lot less interested in who "is" a radical feminist in an identitarian way, than in who agrees with this or that radical feminist idea, and who incorporates that in their actions and feminist activist. Ie: what are your actual politics are much more important to any political movement than what political label you use. What do you believe? What do you do?

There have always been different branches of feminism, but people are allowed not to subscribe to any one of them and people are allowed to take one idea of radical feminism they agree with, and another one of marxist feminism they also agree with and so on and so forth and all of those different ideas end up forming their own personal political beliefs. And the people with different political beliefs are still allowed to participate in radical feminist actions, or socialist organizing, or even liberal feminists organizing even if they don't neatly fit perfectly any of those labels. We conceptualize these different currents because we need to categorize and organize different concepts in our own head to make sense of them, but that doesn't mean they constitute some kind of exclusive club.

People are allowed to participate in politics with groups they agree with even if they don't agree with everything they say. A trans man may have his own reasons to criticize and be against the sex industry, a thought that would usually fall under radfem ideas, but he may not agree with radfem conceptions of sex and gender due to being trans. He is still allowed to participate/attend events and seminars and read theory about the harms of the sex industry even if he's not a Pure Radical Feminist because of his ideas on gender. He'd be then actively participating in radical feminist thought and action, are you going to tell me that he can't because of his gender identity? Even when his beliefs about the harms of the sex industry and sex trafficking and the violence against women in it are in earnest?

And this is a sorta extreme example. The one that my post was referring to was people who believe in basically everything radical feminist teaches but they continue to identify as trans/nb despite that. It's even more bonkers to me to say that they can't be radical feminists when they're people who believe in gender abolition and recognize that sex matters (their sex also, their bodies! Their own lived experiences that they're talking about!) in the way one is treated by the patriarchy and in who suffers from misogyny! But they're dysphoric and use other pronouns oh no! Out of the VIP club!

People have to analyze whether they care more about the label or about trying to build bridges with other female/afab people also affected by misogyny. They also have to analyze whether the discomfort with trans people getting involved with radfem activism and ideas has more to do with their discomfort with trans people as a whole period. Surprise, despite the violent misogyny of a lot of queer activists in the name of trans rights it turns out that trans people are not a monolith and they also have different opinions about gender and sex!

[countrysunshine]

The Pandemic Gave Us a Very New Vocabulary

China announced the first case of a Novel Coronavirus in December 2019. (Covid-19). In late 2019, it had spread exponentially and was declared a pandemic in March 2020 by World Health Organization. Modern quarantine measures, such as lockdowns, curfews, banning community gatherings, cancellation of scheduled social and public activities, closure of mass transit networks, and other travel restrictions, have been implemented internationally to halt the spread of the COVID19 virus. These have impacted the majority (if not all) of the world’s population, dramatically altering what was previously considered normal and complicating aspects of everyday life that were previously easy and uncomplicated. Many people’s daily life has been drastically altered, and “normal” ways of life as we know them have been suspended indefinitely as well.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed catastrophic threat to human civilization in terms of health, environment, and lifestyle. The primary impact of the virus is on human health, including direct respiratory system injury, compromise the immune system, aggravation of underlying medical conditions, and ultimately systemic failure and death. Furthermore, as quarantine or isolation has been imposed that involves separation from friends and family, as well as a change from normal daily routines, it jeopardizes the social, mental, and spiritual health of individuals.

When the virus spreads, so does the risk of misinformation and false evidence, which the WHO refers to as an "infodemic." The internet has become a common resource for learning about health and researching one's own health condition before claiming, "I am healthy!" without testing its legitimacy. So, what does health mean to you? Considering our current normal environment., does your own view of health changes? Are you one of those individuals who share fake news to scare? How and why should you avoid doing it? Do you keep yourself informed? Why do you think it is relevant to be informed and learn our current health status in this time?

As we embark in this new normal, the term “health” has become stereotyped. Health appears to be a straightforward concept, but as we draw closer and attempt to define and explain it, the solidity disappears. In this feature, health will be defined along with health education in a new normal setting.

Health is dynamic and ever-changing. Each person has their subjective definition of health. However, traditionally health has been defined in terms of the presence or absence of disease. As for the World Health Organization (WHO), “Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social, and spiritual well-being and not merely the absence of disease.” The four dimensions of health are physical, mental, social, and spiritual.

Physical- characterized in terms of functional status and the capacity to perform a wide range of activities, including self-care, household work, and leisure activities.

Mental- focused on anxiety disorders, positive well-being, and self-control

Social- developing relationships with others, both with people in immediate surroundings and with the larger community through cultural, spiritual, and political activities.

These dimensions are all interconnected, which means they affect one another. If one dimension is affected, the other will follow as well. For example, if an individual tested positive for the virus, some of his/her daily activities will be restricted. Must also avoid social environments so that he/she does not infect others, which may lead to feelings such as depression.

In this new normal setting, stereotyping health would be, not being infected by the virus. Being negative with the virus could mean that an individual has strong innate immunity with a good diet and healthy lifestyle thus enable them to perform daily living activities. We can then conclude that an individual is healthy. Nonetheless, health is more than just biological elements or social role performance and absence of the virus; it is a complex balance with the world setting and the “ability to live physically, emotionally, and socially.”

Health in the new normal setting is linked to governmental regulations. COVID-19 is a public health crisis that has imposed steep obstacles. The pandemic response poses significant challenges for the physical and mental health and social wellbeing, which are essential cornerstones of overall health. These measures have disproportionately impacted the marginalized and disadvantaged populations-especially those living in poverty, working in the informal economy, or lacking stable housing-threatening sustained access to the essential determinant of health.

Orders to “stay at home” impoverish societies by limiting public life keeping individuals out of it. The general populations freedom to move freely has been limited. The social isolation associated with the new normal setting has been shown to have a negative impact on a variety of mental health indicators. Loneliness, for instance, causes mood swings, depression, and an increase in overall mortality. Health necessitates more than disease eradication; it must be described and interpreted holistically since health is a human right that must be rendered clear.

However, although the negative outcome of this new normal setting is immense, we can also say that health is much like the yin and yang concept. Whereas yin represents darkness and positivity, and yang presents light and activity like improved hygiene. These concepts are necessary to maintain life’s balance and harmony. Health is greatly influenced by personal feelings—energy, comfort, and the ability to perform. Also, health is personal but an elastic concept and must not be compared to a species-wide baseline, but a personal phenomenological baseline. If an individual has the capacity to adapt well and maintain balance, stress and resultant disease, or limitation of action including social capacity are minimized.

In a new normal environment, health can also be defined as instrumental. The idea of health as an instrument is a different way of describing a contribution to society, both individually and collectively. In short, we are talking about how an individual's behavior and decisions that can affect improvements in health status. My ‘being healthy and keeping my family healthy is an instrument for preventing the spread of this disease in the population. Coronavirus does not only affect the elderly and others who are medically vulnerable. We are aware that it has the potential to impact and us. As a result, it is also our mutual duty to prevent the virus from spreading from person to person.

Pandemic is a word that if misused can cause unreasonable fear or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over leading to unnecessary suffering and death. As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across the world, it has been accompanied by an enormous misinformation which the WHO described as an ‘infodemic’. At a time when reliable information is vital for public health, fake news and propaganda about COVID-19 is spreading even faster than the facts and is just as dangerous. It is important to protect the public false information.

At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, health officials provided alerts and recommendations via various channels such as television and infographics on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This was often accompanied by the implementation of safety parameters on people's movement, which led in some degree of success in combating the virus. Some preventive measures, such as social isolation, regular hand washing, wearing face masks, and avoiding close contact with sick people or suspected Covid-19 cases, reduce the risk of infection with COVID-19. However, putting these steps into effect regularly is a major challenge.

Hence, health education may serve as a catalyst for the public to be informed to avoid risking their lives from the spreading  ‘appears to be true news’ ,  to promote behavioral change and empower communities which will assist them in adapting beneficial habits in this long battle against COVID-19 while we are in the new normal setting. Health education is not just for individual’s benefit but also that of others and to provide resources and opportunities to make such changes.

Some people may claimed they were at low to no risk because they underestimated the severity of the issue.

Therefore, improving people's habits necessitates motivating people to incorporate preventive behaviors in their everyday lives by supplying them with a clear rationale. The health education and information should be structured in a way that is understandable to the public and can connect with their own experience, but it should also be timely, factual, and acceptable to the relevant subgroups in the population.

At this time of the global pandemic, all of us can be a health educator. It is critical to remain an advocate for those in the society that are especially vulnerable—those who are facing this pandemic with all the anxiety and uncertainty that comes with it—in the context of existing mental health and related social challenges in this new normal setting. However, let us all be responsible and fight misinformation. Let us help and guide each other to pave a new path forward to the return of day amidst differences of behaviors, habits, and perspective.

[atheistforhumanity]

The things i heard at church this sunday.

Hello Ryan 

I’ve been an atheist for about 14 years now. I’ve read the bible, studied its history and even studied other religions a bit. (All religions are equally wrong after all) In my opinion I was pretty good at discussing religion with theists. Although recently I haven’t been quite as passionate about it as I use to be. 

I attend a religious service from time to time and this past week they talked about something a bit different. They talked about historical evidence, “statistics”, and so called secular data to prove the bible is correct. The things they talked about include…

Secularist historians trying to prove Jesus didn’t exist but found more proof that he did. (Apparently they wrote books)

Archeological and historical evidence that proved events in the bible happened.

Numerous proven miracles and stats that show the improbability of a single one, but Jesus made hundreds happen.

This one was more open ended but….claiming scholars, historians, archeologists, and scientists have had countless failed attempts in providing inaccuracies in the bible.

There were more but they were mostly open ended statements about science that they didn’t understand so they think God must have done it.

(Unfortunately they didn’t provide resources for their information)

Now I know enough to know the guy talking was either making this up or copying another theists work. I’ve dealt with the general statements like “the bible is proven to be historically accurate” but this guy talked for 2 hours about this. I really like how you phrase your answers so I wanted to know. Do you know of these “secularist” authors. What kind of historic bible questions have you received in the past and how did you go about answering them. How can I sort the fact from fiction and are there any specific examples I can use to call them out on their claims.

Sorry this is a long post and I hope what I’m asking makes sense.

(Submitted by 1-am-that-1s)

__________________________________________________________

Hello, 

I am very sorry that I did not get to this sooner. Thank you for writing in and asking these questions, I think it’s important for everyone to hear. 

The great thing about sermons are that they don’t require you to show your sources. Furthermore, a priest gets to address a crowd full of people already convinced he’s an authority. So the question is whether this person is flat out lying or if they are correct? 

Well, that’s a trick question, because it’s neither. The problem with religious figures discussing scientific fields or work is that they know nothing about the process or the standards, and they generally lack critical thinking to begin with. I guarantee you that he is getting this information from websites and magazines of faith that deeply misreport things they hear in scientific communities. They are not receiving their information from academics, and if they do 90% of the time these people have been discredited in their field. 

For instance, if you do a Google search for archeology on the Bible, you’ll find a website like ChristianityToday. If you look at the link I provided, you’ll see an article about the top ten archeological evidence for the Bible. Here’s an example: Semitic Abecedary Found in Egypt. This is referring to a tablet found in Egypt that contained the Jewish alphabet. Christianity Today promotes this as proof of Moses writing everything down. Even though they say the tablet dates back to 1450 BC and Ramses II ruled in the 1200′s BC. Christianity Today got their information from The Times of Israel, which has more serious discussion of the find, but never outright claims it proves anything about Moses. 

This is how misinformation spreads through Christian communities. The faithful only need the slightest reassurance and they rarely will scrutinize such claims. I absolutely guarantee that this preacher is getting his information from some type of religious journal or magazine with no scientific credibility. 

So, is there historical evidence that supports the Bible? What people would call evidence is the fact that in the Bible they name real rulers and kingdoms etc. throughout the stories. They take the fact that we know some of these people existed as evidence that the events must have happened too. That’s not a logical conclusion. Just because King Herod existed does not prove that he sent soldiers to slaughter babies, which there is no evidence at all for. 

When the faithful get into discussions like this, they want you to prove a negative. Prove that there is no evidence. Well, you can’t show a lack of evidence to people who won’t expose themselves to the breadth of credible academics. The only thing you can do is ask them to present their evidence and determine if it is flawed or not. It’s usually not very hard. 

I can tell you this. Out of all the archeology and historical research that has been done over the centuries, no one has ever discovered anything that made the Bible more believable. Everything we know either directly disproves or presents facts that never line up to the story. I wrote a good piece on Jesus that illustrates this point. Basically, my entire post is about the complete lack of evidence for Jesus. Not a single contemporary figure or historian of Jesus’ time wrote about him. All available evidence points to him being fabricated out of thin air by his cult. No one has ever had trouble disputing biblical claims, and they definitely never became confronted with more evidence for the Bible. 

Let me just comment on miracles quickly. There has never, in all of history, been a single proven miracle. There are events which may not yet have solutions, but the lack of an explanation does not equal miracle. This comes from people truly not understanding the scientific method and the concept of proof. To prove a miracle, we would need all available information on the matter and the ability to observe, experiment, etc., be stumped, and THEN find a connection to a higher power. 

Look at it this way. Dark Matter is a catch all phrase for a phenomena that we do not yet understand. However, we don’t even have a handful of information on the matter. To say that dark matter is a proven miracle of God would be completely illogical. There are many things we didn’t understand and now we do. Black holes being one of them. We know a tremendous amount about black holes now, when in the past we weren’t even sure if they existed. 

Let’s look at it this another way. There have been some pretty famous magicians that have attempted to fool the world into believing they had real magical powers. Of course there are a host of psychics out there claiming to have real powers. However, these people always end up being debunked. A famous magician named James Randi is famous for debunking psychics and those pretending to do real magic. Everyone just thinks a miracle until it gets debunked. 

If you want to challenge people like this then go straight for their sources or their lack of critical thinking. They will far apart quickly if you can get answers from them. Although some will avoid giving their sources so they can’t be scrutinized. 

I hope everyone found this post helpful. And remember, if someone is claiming some amazing evidence exists that has never hit the mainstream there is a good reason for it! 

[tinyshe]

Why I’m Removing All Articles Related to Vitamins D, C, Zinc and COVID-19

source

Over the past year, I’ve been researching and  writing as much as I can to help you take control of your health, as  fearmongering media and corrupt politicians have destroyed lives and  livelihoods to establish global control of the world’s population, using the  COVID-19 pandemic as their justification.

I’ve also kept you informed about billionaire-backed  front groups like the Center for Science  in the Public Interest (CSPI), a partner of  Bill Gates’ Alliance for Science, both of whom have led campaigns aimed at  destroying my reputation and censoring the information I share.

Other attackers include HealthGuard, which ranks  health sites based on a certain set of “credibility criteria.” It has sought to  discredit my website by ensuring warnings appear whenever you search for my   articles or enter my website in an internet browser.

Well-Organized  Attack Partnerships Have Formed

HealthGuard, a niche service of NewsGuard, is funded  by the pharma-funded public relations company Publicis  Groupe. Publicis,  in turn, is a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call  for a “Great Reset” of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of  life.

HealthGuard is also partnered with Gates’ Microsoft company, and drug advertising  websites like WebMD and Medscape, as well as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — the  progressive cancel-culture leader with extensive ties to government and  global think tanks that recently labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine  as a national security threat.

The CCDH has published a hit list naming me as one  of the top 12 individuals responsible for 65% of vaccine “disinformation” on social  media, and who therefore must be deplatformed and silenced for the public good.  In a March 24, 2021, letter1 to the CEO’s of Twitter and Facebook, 12 state  attorneys general called for the removal of our accounts from these platforms,  based on the CCDH’s report.

Two of those state attorneys  general also published an  April 8, 2021, op-ed2 in The Washington Post, calling on Facebook and Twitter to ban  the “anti-vaxxers” identified by the CCDH. The  lack of acceptance of novel gene therapy technology, they claim, is all because  a small group of individuals with a social media presence — myself included —  are successfully misleading the public with lies about nonexistent vaccine  risks.

“The solution is not complicated. It’s time  for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to turn off this  toxic tap and completely remove the small handful of individuals spreading this   fraudulent misinformation,” they wrote.3

Pharma-funded politicians and pharma-captured  health agencies have also relentlessly attacked me and pressured tech monopolies to censor and deplatform me,  removing my ability to express my opinions and speak freely over the past year.

The CCDH also somehow has been allowed to  publish4 in the journal Nature Medicine, calling for the “dismantling” of the “anti-vaccine”  industry. In the article, CCDH founder Imran Ahmed repeats the lie that he “attended and recorded a private, three-day   meeting of the world’s most prominent anti-vaxxers,” when, in fact, what he’s  referring to was a public online conference open to an international audience,  all of whom had access to the recordings as part of their attendance fee.  

The CCDH is also  partnered with another obscure group called Anti-Vax Watch. The picture below  is from an Anti-Vax Watch demonstration outside the halls of Congress.  Ironically, while the CCDH claims to be anti-extremism, you’d be hard-pressed  to find a clearer example of actual extremism than this bizarre duo.5

Gates-Funded  Doctor Demands Terrorist Experts to Attack Me

Most recently, Dr. Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin  Vaccine Institute,6 which  has received tens of millions of dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates  Foundation,7,8,9 — with funds from the foundation most recently being used to create a report  called “Meeting the Challenge of Vaccine Hesitancy,”10,11 — also cited the CCDH in a Nature article in which he calls for cyberwarfare  experts to be enlisted in the war against vaccine safety advocates and people  who are “vaccine hesitant.” He writes:12

“Accurate, targeted counter-messaging from the  global health community is important but insufficient, as is public pressure on   social-media companies. The United Nations and the highest levels of government  must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to  dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.

Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber  security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A  high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could   assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced  measures.

The task force should include experts who have  tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear  armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It  is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a   counteroffensive.”

Why is Hotez calling for the use of warfare  tactics on American citizens that have done nothing illegal? In my case, could  it be because I’ve written about the theory that SARS-CoV-2 is an engineered   virus, created through gain-of-function research, and that its release was anticipated  by global elites, as evidenced in Event 201?

It may be. At least those are some of my  alleged “sins,” detailed on page 10 of the CCDH report, “Disinformation Dozen:  The Sequel.”13 Coincidentally enough, the Nature journal has helped cover up gain-of-function  research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, publishing a shoddy zoonotic origins study relied upon my  mainstream media and others, which was riddled with problems.14,15

So, it’s not misinformation  they are afraid of. They’re afraid of the truth getting out. They’re all trying  to cover for the Chinese military and the dangerous mad scientists conducting  gain-of-function work.

You may have noticed our  website was recently unavailable; this was due to direct cyber-attacks launched  against us. We have several layers of protective mechanisms to secure the  website as we’ve anticipated such attacks from malevolent organizations.

What This Means for  You

Through these progressively increasing  stringent measures, I have refused to succumb to these governmental and pharmaceutical  thugs and their relentless attacks. I have been confident and willing to  defend myself in the court of law, as I’ve had everything reviewed by some of   the best attorneys in the country.

Unfortunately, threats have now become very  personal and have intensified to the point I can no longer preserve much of the   information and research I’ve provided to you thus far. These threats are not  legal in nature, and I have limited ability to defend myself against them. If  you can imagine what billionaires and their front groups are capable of, I can  assure you they have been creative in deploying their assets to have this  content removed.

Sadly, I must also  remove my peer reviewed published study16 on the “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and  Its Severity.” It will, however, remain in the highly-respected journal   Nutrients’ website, where you can still access it for free.

The MATH+ hospital treatment protocol for  COVID-19 and the iMASK+ prevention and early outpatient COVID-19 protocol —  both of which are based on the use of vitamins C, D, quercetin, zinc and  melatonin — are available on the Front  Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s website. I suggest you bookmark these resources for future reference.

It is with a  heavy heart that I purge my website of valuable information. As noted by Dr.  Peter McCullough during a recent Texas state Senate Health and Human Services  Committee hearing, data shows early treatment could have prevented up to 85% (425,000)  of COVID-19 deaths.17 Yet early treatments were all heavily censored and suppressed.

McCullough, in  addition to being a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Texas A&M  University Health Sciences Center, also has the distinction of having published  the most papers of any person in the history of his field, and being an editor  of two major medical journals. Despite that, his video, in which he went  through a paper he’d published detailing effective early treatments, was  summarily banned by YouTube in 2020.

“No wonder  we have had 45,000 deaths in Texas. The average person in Texas thinks there’s  no treatment!” McCullough told the senate panel.18 Indeed, people are in dire  need of more information detailing how they can protect their health, not less.  But there’s only so much I  can do to protect myself against current attack strategies.

They’ve moved past censorship. Just what do you  call people who advocate counteroffensive attacks by terrorism and cyberwarfare   experts? You’d think we could have a debate and be protected under free speech  but, no, we’re not allowed. These lunatics are dangerously unhinged.

The U.S. federal government is going along with  the global Great Reset plan (promoted as “building back better”), but this plan  won’t build anything but a technological prison. What we need is a massive   campaign to preserve civil rights, and vote out the pawns who are destroying  our freedom while concentrating wealth and power.

[yoyomorse]

Scientists said claims about China creating the coronavirus were misleading. They went viral anyway.

The spread of the unverified assertions by Chinese scholar Li-Meng Yan, widely dismissed as “flawed,” show how vulnerable scientific sites are to misuse and misunderstanding.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/12/china-covid-misinformation-li-meng-yan/

Scientists from Johns Hopkins, Columbia and other leading American universities moved with rare speed when a Chinese virologist, Li-Meng Yan, published an explosive paper in September claiming that China had created the deadly coronavirus in a research lab.

The paper, the American scientists concluded, was deeply flawed. And a new online journal from MIT Press — created specifically to vet claims related to SARS-CoV-2 — reported Yan’s claims were “at times baseless and are not supported by the data” 10 days after she posted them.

But in an age when anyone can publish anything online with a few clicks, this response was not fast enough to keep Yan’s disputed allegations from going viral, reaching an audience in the millions on social media and Fox News. It was a development, according to experts on misinformation, that underscored how systems built to advance scientific understanding can be used to spread politically charged claims dramatically at odds with scientific consensus.

Yan’s work, which was posted to the scientific research repository Zenodo without any review on Sept. 14, exploded on Twitter, YouTube and far-right websites with the help of such conservative influencers as Republican strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who repeatedly pushed it on his online show “War Room: Pandemic,” according to a report published Friday by Harvard researchers studying media manipulation. Yan expanded her claims, on Oct. 8, to blame the Chinese government explicitly for developing the coronavirus as a “bioweapon.”

Online research repositories have become key forums for revelation and debate about the pandemic. Built to advance science more nimbly, they have been at the forefront of reporting discoveries about masks, vaccines, new coronavirus variants and more. But the sites lack protections inherent to the traditional — and much slower — world of peer-reviewed scientific journals, where articles are published only after they have been critiqued by other scientists. Research shows papers posted to online sites also can be hijacked to fuel conspiracy theories.

Yan’s paper on Zenodo — despite several blistering scientific critiques and widespread news coverage of its alleged flaws — now has been viewed more than 1 million times, probably making it the most widely read research on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Harvard misinformation researchers. They concluded that online scientific sites are vulnerable to what they called “cloaked science,” efforts to give dubious work “the veneer of scientific legitimacy.”

“They’re many years behind in realizing the capacity of this platform to be abused,” said Joan Donovan, research director at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which produced the report. “At this point, everything open will be exploited.”

Yan, who previously was a postdoctoral fellow at Hong Kong University but fled to the United States in April, agreed in an interview with The Washington Post that online scientific sites are vulnerable to abuse, but she rejected the argument that her story is a case study in this problem.

Rather, Yan said, she is a dissident trying to warn the world about what she says is China’s role in creating the coronavirus. She used Zenodo, with its ability to instantly publish information without restrictions, because she feared the Chinese government would obstruct publication of her work. Her academic critics, she argued, will be proven wrong.

“None of them can rebut from real, solid, scientific evidence,” Yan said. “They can only attack me.”

Zenodo acknowledged that the furor has prompted reforms, including the posting of a label Thursday above Yan’s paper saying, “Caution: Potentially Misleading Contents” after The Washington Post asked whether Zenodo would remove it. The site also prominently features links to critiques from a Georgetown University virologist and the MIT Press.

“We take misinformation really seriously, so it is something that we want to address,” said Anais Rassat, a spokeswoman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which operates Zenodo as a general purpose scientific site. “We don’t think taking down the report is the best solution. We want it to stay and indicate why experts think it’s wrong.”

But mainstream researchers who watched Yan’s claims race across the Internet far more quickly than they could counter them have been left troubled by the experience — newly convinced that the capacity for spreading misinformation goes far beyond the big-name social media sites. Any online platform without robust and potentially expensive safeguards is equally vulnerable.

“This is similar to the debate we’re having with Facebook and Twitter. To what degree are we creating an instrument that speeds disinformation, and to what extent are you contributing to that?” said Stefano M. Bertozzi, editor in chief of the MIT Press online journal “Rapid Reviews: COVID-19,” which challenged Yan’s claims.

Bertozzi added, “Most scientists have no interest in getting in a pissing match in cyberspace.”

Coronavirus fuels prominence of online science sites

Online scientific sites have been growing for more than a decade, becoming a vital part of the ecosystem for making and vetting claims across numerous academic fields, but their growth has been supercharged by the urgency of disseminating new discoveries about a deadly pandemic.

Some of the best-known of these sites, such as medRxiv and bioRxiv, have systems for rapid evaluation intended to avoid publishing work that doesn’t pass an initial sniff test of scientific credibility. They also reject papers that only review the work of others or that make such major claims that they shouldn’t be publicized before peer review can be conducted, said Richard Sever, co-founder of medRxiv and bioRxiv.

“We want to create a hurdle that’s high enough that people have to do some research,” Sever said. “What we don’t want to be is a place where there’s a whole bunch of conspiracy theories.”

Online publishing sites generally are called “preprint servers” because many researchers use them as a first step toward traditional peer review, giving the authors a way to make their work public — and available for possible news coverage — before more thorough analysis begins. Advocates of preprint servers tout their ability to create early visibility for important discoveries and also spark useful debate. They note that traditional peer-reviewed journals have their own history of occasionally publishing hoaxes and bad science.

“It’s very funny that everyone is worrying about preprints given that, collectively, journals are not doing a great job of keeping misinformation out,” Sever said.

He and other proponents, however, acknowledge risks.

[generalcreatortiger]

Scientists said claims about China creating the coronavirus were misleading. They went viral anyway.

Craig Timberg

Feb. 13, 2021 at 7:48 a.m. GMT+8

Scientists from Johns Hopkins, Columbia and other leading American universities moved with rare speed when a Chinese virologist, Li-Meng Yan, published an explosive paper in September claiming that China had created the deadly coronavirus in a research lab.

The paper, the American scientists concluded, was deeply flawed. And a new online journal from MIT Press — created specifically to vet claims related to SARS-CoV-2 — reported Yan’s claims were “at times baseless and are not supported by the data” 10 days after she posted them.

But in an age when anyone can publish anything online with a few clicks, this response was not fast enough to keep Yan’s disputed allegations from going viral, reaching an audience in the millions on social media and Fox News. It was a development, according to experts on misinformation, that underscored how systems built to advance scientific understanding can be used to spread politically charged claims dramatically at odds with scientific consensus.

Yan’s work, which was posted to the scientific research repository Zenodo without any review on Sept. 14, exploded on Twitter, YouTube and far-right websites with the help of such conservative influencers as Republican strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who repeatedly pushed it on his online show “War Room: Pandemic,” according to a report published Friday by Harvard researchers studying media manipulation. Yan expanded her claims, on Oct. 8, to blame the Chinese government explicitly for developing the coronavirus as a “bioweapon.”

Online research repositories have become key forums for revelation and debate about the pandemic. Built to advance science more nimbly, they have been at the forefront of reporting discoveries about masks, vaccines, new coronavirus variants and more. But the sites lack protections inherent to the traditional — and much slower — world of peer-reviewed scientific journals, where articles are published only after they have been critiqued by other scientists. Research shows papers posted to online sites also can be hijacked to fuel conspiracy theories.

Yan’s paper on Zenodo — despite several blistering scientific critiques and widespread news coverage of its alleged flaws — now has been viewed more than 1 million times, probably making it the most widely read research on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Harvard misinformation researchers. They concluded that online scientific sites are vulnerable to what they called “cloaked science,” efforts to give dubious work “the veneer of scientific legitimacy.”

“They’re many years behind in realizing the capacity of this platform to be abused,” said Joan Donovan, research director at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which produced the report. “At this point, everything open will be exploited.”

Yan, who previously was a postdoctoral fellow at Hong Kong University but fled to the United States in April, agreed in an interview with The Washington Post that online scientific sites are vulnerable to abuse, but she rejected the argument that her story is a case study in this problem.

Rather, Yan said, she is a dissident trying to warn the world about what she says is China’s role in creating the coronavirus. She used Zenodo, with its ability to instantly publish information without restrictions, because she feared the Chinese government would obstruct publication of her work. Her academic critics, she argued, will be proven wrong.

“None of them can rebut from real, solid, scientific evidence,” Yan said. “They can only attack me.”

Zenodo acknowledged that the furor has prompted reforms, including the posting of a label Thursday above Yan’s paper saying, “Caution: Potentially Misleading Contents” after The Washington Post asked whether Zenodo would remove it. The site also prominently features links to critiques from a Georgetown University virologist and the MIT Press.

“We take misinformation really seriously, so it is something that we want to address,” said Anais Rassat, a spokeswoman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which operates Zenodo as a general purpose scientific site. “We don’t think taking down the report is the best solution. We want it to stay and indicate why experts think it’s wrong.”

But mainstream researchers who watched Yan’s claims race across the Internet far more quickly than they could counter them have been left troubled by the experience — newly convinced that the capacity for spreading misinformation goes far beyond the big-name social media sites. Any online platform without robust and potentially expensive safeguards is equally vulnerable.

“This is similar to the debate we’re having with Facebook and Twitter. To what degree are we creating an instrument that speeds disinformation, and to what extent are you contributing to that?” said Stefano M. Bertozzi, editor in chief of the MIT Press online journal “Rapid Reviews: COVID-19,” which challenged Yan’s claims.

Bertozzi added, “Most scientists have no interest in getting in a pissing match in cyberspace.”

Catch up on the most important developments in the pandemic with our coronavirus newsletter. All stories in it are free to access.

Coronavirus fuels prominence of online science sites

Online scientific sites have been growing for more than a decade, becoming a vital part of the ecosystem for making and vetting claims across numerous academic fields, but their growth has been supercharged by the urgency of disseminating new discoveries about a deadly pandemic.

Some of the best-known of these sites, such as medRxiv and bioRxiv, have systems for rapid evaluation intended to avoid publishing work that doesn’t pass an initial sniff test of scientific credibility. They also reject papers that only review the work of others or that make such major claims that they shouldn’t be publicized before peer review can be conducted, said Richard Sever, co-founder of medRxiv and bioRxiv.

“We want to create a hurdle that’s high enough that people have to do some research,” Sever said. “What we don’t want to be is a place where there’s a whole bunch of conspiracy theories.”

Online publishing sites generally are called “preprint servers” because many researchers use them as a first step toward traditional peer review, giving the authors a way to make their work public — and available for possible news coverage — before more thorough analysis begins. Advocates of preprint servers tout their ability to create early visibility for important discoveries and also spark useful debate. They note that traditional peer-reviewed journals have their own history of occasionally publishing hoaxes and bad science.

“It’s very funny that everyone is worrying about preprints given that, collectively, journals are not doing a great job of keeping misinformation out,” Sever said.

After Wuhan mission on pandemic origins, WHO team dismisses lab leak theory

He and other proponents, however, acknowledge risks.

While scientists debate — and sometimes refute — flawed claims by one another, nonscientists also scan preprint servers for data that might appear to bolster their pet conspiracy theories.

A research team led by computer scientist Jeremy Blackburn has tracked the appearance of links to preprints from social media sites, such as 4chan, popular with conspiracy theorists. Blackburn and a graduate student, Satrio Yudhoatmojo, found more than 4,000 references on 4chan to papers on major preprint servers between 2016 and 2020, with the leading subjects being biology, infectious diseases and epidemiology. He said the uneven review process has “lent an air of credibility” to preprints that experts might quickly spot as flawed but ordinary people wouldn’t.

“That’s where the risk is,” said Blackburn, an assistant professor at Binghamton University. “Papers from the preprint servers show up in a variety of conspiracy theories … and are misinterpreted wildly because these people aren’t scientists.”

Jessica Polka, executive director of ASAPbio, a nonprofit group that pushes for more transparency and wider use of preprint servers, said they rely on something akin to crowdsourcing, in which comments from outside researchers quickly can identify flaws in work, but she acknowledged vulnerabilities based on the extent of review by server staff and advisers. A recent survey by ASAPbio found more than 50 preprint servers operating — and nearly as many review policies.

And the survey didn’t include Zenodo, which, Polka said, should not be considered a preprint server given its broader mission. Rather, she said, it’s an online repository that happens to host some preprints, as well as conference slides, raw data and other “scientific objects” that anyone with an email address can simply upload. Zenodo has none of the vetting common to major preprint servers and isn’t organized to easily surface critiques or conflicting research, she said.

“Without that kind of context, a preprint server is even more vulnerable to the spread of disinformation,” Polka said. But she added, in general, “Preprint servers do not have the resources to be arbiters of whether something is true or not.”

Yan defends her work

Yan said in her interview with The Post that Zenodo’s openness is what drove her decision to use the site. She had initially submitted her paper to bioRxiv because as a researcher whose work has appeared in Nature, the Lancet Infectious Diseases and other traditional publications, she knew that this preprint server would appear more legitimate to other scientists.

Trump pardons Steve Bannon after ugly falling out early in his presidency

Yan has a medical degree from Xiangya Medical College of Central South University and a PhD in ophthalmology from Southern Medical University — both in China — and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong, she said. That university announced she was no longer affiliated with it in July, following an initial appearance on Fox News, saying in a statement that her claim about the origin of the coronavirus “has no scientific basis but resembles hearsay.”

After she fled Hong Kong, she harbored deep suspicions about that government’s potential to block publication of her work, she said. When she checked bioRxiv 48 hours after making her submission, the site appeared to have gone offline, Yan said. Fearing the worst, she withdrew the paper and uploaded it to Zenodo.

Sever, the bioRxiv co-founder, said he could not comment on an individual submission but said that, despite occasional glitches, he was aware of no “prolonged outage” on the site during mid-September and no sign that the Chinese, or anyone else, had hacked it.

For Yan’s paper on Zenodo, she did not list an academic affiliation, as is customary for research. Instead, she listed the Rule of Law Society and Rule of Law Foundation, which are New York-based nonprofit groups founded by exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, a close associate of Bannon, who in 2018 was announced as chairman of the Rule of Law Society. When Bannon was arrested on fraud charges in August, he was aboard Guo’s 150-foot yacht, off the coast of Connecticut. (President Donald Trump last month pardoned Bannon, his former campaign chairman and White House chief strategist).

Chinese dissidents say they’re being harassed by a businessman with links to Steve Bannon

Yan said she listed the Rule of Law entities out of respect for what she said was their work helping dissidents in China, and that they paid for her flight from Hong Kong and provided a resettlement stipend while she largely lives off her savings. She said her work is independent, and she rejected notions that Bannon was helping her spread political claims.

“I didn’t know he was so controversial when I was in Hong Kong,” Yan told The Post.

On Sept. 15, the day after Yan’s paper appeared on Zenodo, she was a guest on Fox’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” an appearance watched by 4.8 million broadcast viewers and 2.8 million on YouTube, and that also generated extensive engagement on Facebook and Twitter, according to the Harvard researchers. Bannon appeared on Carlson’s show that same week and discussed Yan’s claims. He also interviewed her on “War Room: Pandemic” 22 times last year, both before and after the Zenodo publication.

The political context was obvious in the midst of a hotly contested election in which Trump was attacking Democratic rival Joe Biden for supposedly being overly sympathetic to the Chinese government, dubbing him “Beijing Joe.” Republicans, including White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, pushed Yan’s paper along with the hashtag #CCPLiedPeopleDied, a reference to the Chinese Communist Party.

Archives showed the paper had more than 150,000 views on its first day on Zenodo — spectacular reach for a scientific paper, especially one that had not yet been reviewed by any independent experts.

But this surge of attention also generated backlash, including critical news reports by National Geographic and others, raising serious questions about Yan’s claims.

In the academic world, the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins issued a point-by-point response one week after Yan’s paper appeared on Zenodo, raising 39 individual issues in what it said was “objective analysis of details included in the report, as would be customary in a peer-review process.”

A few days later, the MIT Press online journal “Rapid Reviews: COVID-19” featured four scathing reviews, including one from Robert Gallo, a renowned AIDS researcher and a titan within the field of virology.

He labeled Yan’s work “misleading” and cited “questionable, spurious, and fraudulent claims.” Most points were highly technical, but Gallo also questioned her logic regarding the alleged role in creating the coronavirus for the Chinese military, which Gallo noted would be vulnerable to covid-19.

“And how would the Chinese protect themselves?” Gallo asked in his review. “Well, according to the paper, the military knew it could be stopped by remdesivir,” a drug later shown to have some benefit in treating covid-19 while not necessarily reducing the risk of death. “I would surely not want to be in the Chinese military if they were that naive.”

The idea to recruit Gallo came from Bertozzi, the journal’s editor and dean emeritus of the School of Public Health at University of California at Berkeley. Like Gallo, Bertozzi had worked extensively in AIDS research. After seeing Yan’s appearance on Fox, he was eager to use the online journal founded only months earlier to correct the scientific record.

“I felt it needed to be quickly debunked by people with scientific credibility,” Bertozzi said.

He soon thought of Gallo.

“We need somebody of your stature to say this is garbage science,” Bertozzi recalled telling him.

The reviews by Gallo and three other scientists also came with an editor’s note raising questions about the preprint process itself, saying, “While pre-print servers offer a mechanism to disseminate world-changing scientific research at unprecedented speed, they are also a forum through which misleading information can instantaneously undermine the international scientific community’s credibility, destabilize diplomatic relationships, and compromise global safety.”

But these public rebukes from some of the biggest names in virology did not deter Yan. Nor did a detailed report on Oct. 21 by CNN quoting her critics and documenting flaws.

Yan declined to be interviewed for that story, she said, because CNN did not allow her to address the issues they unearthed, point by point, on live television.

Instead, she published her own response on Nov. 21, on Zenodo, titled, “CNN Used Lies and Misinformation to Muddle the Water on the Origin of SARS-CoV-2.”

In her Post interview, Yan acknowledged — as CNN had reported — that her three co-authors on the original Sept. 14 paper were pseudonyms, used to protect what she said were other Chinese researchers whose families remain in peril back in China. Authors are typically discouraged from using false names in academic work.

Her claims suffered another blow this week, when a World Health Organization team sent to China to investigate the origins of the pandemic issued a statement saying it was “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus came from a lab.

One of Yan’s earliest vocal critics, virologist Angela Rasmussen, who was at Columbia when Yan’s paper first spread, agreed with WHO’s assessment but did not rule out the possibility — however unlikely — of laboratory origin for the coronavirus. But she said the argument lacks concrete evidence.

“There needs to be a lot less speculation and a lot more investigation,” said Rasmussen, now an affiliate at Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science and Security. “It takes a really long time to figure this stuff out... This is going to take years or even decades to solve it, if we ever do.”

Yet Yan continues to double down on her claims and to attack her critics as spreading “lies.” She still argues that the Chinese government intentionally created the coronavirus and continues to do everything it can to silence her.

Yan also offers no apologies for making common cause with Bannon and other Trump allies. As a dissident, she said, she doesn’t necessarily get her choice of supporters.

“If China is going to do this crime, who can hold them accountable?… Trump was the one who was tough” against China, Yan said, adding that her claim “is about real fact. I don’t want to mislead people.”

Even now, she is preparing another paper, nearing 30 pages, that she hopes will refute her critics and bring fresh attention to her claims about China, covid-19 and what she says is an international coverup campaign.

Yan plans to publish it in a few weeks, she said — on Zenodo.

[ahmed119589]

ID:119589

Number of words: 1500

Assignment 2

————————

Introduction:

The Media toady consists different methods that led to be the most powerful sector on the countries. It is a tool to effect on all aspects of human life in modern times. In this subject, we learned many issues of media in a critical way and analytical thinking framework analysis, discussed the most important issues carried out by the media, control the minds of the world with specific strategies and mechanisms followed by great countries to influence public opinion by using scientific thinking or things can affect the opinion of people. And we discussed about many new issues which opened our mind in new things can happen in this world and understand a lot of things that we should think about it, and look at things from different sides.

So we learned about different subject talk about many issues and we understood the media by choose specific questions to ask and the impact of the media on social changes, MIL relies mainly on critical thinking that prove the media contain some fake news or alternative fact facts used to deliver subliminal messages to the unconscious mind, media literacy depends on the role of the media in popular culture and the effect of television on people's beliefs. In addition, Media history has included many changes that started from the printing press in 1450 and ending with the start of Facebook in 2004, reading is a key factor in media understanding of the distinction between fact and fiction, societal reaction theory to illustrate the method used by social groups to create and apply definitions of deviant behavior and confronting media bias by asking critical questions and many of issues.

Submitted material:

So we have searched and wrote about allot of issues which we learn a lot of things from it and as we see it makes us with a large benefits and with more knowledge like the first submission was about the disinformation and we know Disinformation is the deliberate and purposeful distribution of false information. The term has become especially associated with the spread of "fake news" on social media as a strategy of negative political campaigning. Especially the governments and Organizations have use this (disintegration) which is a false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors. After that we talked about the cognitive strategy which is understanding the small data of the audience and the ability to successfully communicate between the audience and the media because the media is based on understanding our behaviors and emotions in order to achieve the communication process and the success of the media campaigns through the media, for example when television offers a program that must understand the audience's behavior and what they needs in order to influence The target audience, it is every time focusing on emotions and feelings because it increase the percentage of persuasion. Next submission was about Communication used in the wars, Recent introduction of electricity- and radio-based communications revolutionized the art of war. Because they use every new machine in that time and every modern communication systems. In addition, there were many forms of technology during World War II. Many, of these were new developments, never used in previous wars. .Examples are propaganda, newspapers, radio that were used for the communication between generals and forces and also between the land and air. also the Communication used in the Cold War, the media extended the propaganda to every aspect of life, from radio, film, television and print, paperback novels, and comics and all that was with a massage make the people vote the things without thinking and they reach their goals like that, Because They know the large benefits from that to shape public opinion and effect their tend for things and influence public opinion to gain their votes. Also we talked about how America invade Iraq in 2003 because America said that Iraq has the weapon of mass destruction. After that, they used a different technology to communicate and spread their power over the world to discredit the reputation of Iraq.

Then we submit about how media outside Oman percent race gender and class. Of the many influences on how we view men and women, media are the most pervasive and one of the most powerful. Woven throughout our daily lives, media insinuate their messages into our consciousness at every turn. All forms of media communicate images of thesexes, many of which perpetuate unrealistic, stereotypical, and limiting perceptions. Then in some media women are underrepresented, which falsely implies that men are the cultural standard and women are unimportant or invisible. And some media allowing women to represent their full rights in public without hiding because they respect their rights, to show that they care about the women. If we talk about the 3rd gender some societies accept the idea of the same-sex marriage through the media and they show the people it's something normal and they bring it in every film they made as we see in ( Netflix). Also we talk about class The social class has existed since ancient times in the world, and It's always been violence for the black class of human beings, unlike whites, even though whites are more offensive and bad. Or the people from different civilization live in any other and they face class. So the media express the feelings of this group by showing their suffering through films, and make it clear that the social class must be eliminated because this is considered a cultural backwardness and inhuman behavior. After that we talk about Selfie and narcissism- fame online and we understand that people on social media and internet, some of them show their lives to the public too much because, they believe that they are the best and that they deserve the admiration of people, and they generate vanity and self-love. The social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are an easy way to help narcissists practice their habits. Then we submit about the role of media in health education and we learn that the media is important in our life for many things, like awareness of health and prevention. By many ways, such as Tv program or pictures and video on social media and internet. Also, we talked about hypotheses that media faces and we understand that Citizens have the right to know the facts about state policy, duties and rights. On other hand, citizens shouldn't know everything that cause to appearance people looking for issues, snoop for responsible and searching for intrigues, and have balance between these hypotheses to returns benefits for society. After that we talked about media ethic challenges and we understood that use the media in a bad way will make a huge problem and leads to a lack of respect for media ethics. So spread news like these will rumor abound and the news that is published through them always becomes unreliable and hidden for negative reasons affecting society and destroy the media ethics.

Analysis: These materials we studied and discussed in the previous lines are very important, as its main target is to develop a very aware conscious able to separate the truth from the media productions. As we learn issues of media more things which is don't accept everything from the media because some time it will be disinformation or cognitive strategy they use it in a wrong way so we have to think critically and use our mind to see what is right and wrong. Also media has a critical role in determining the winner or loser in war by the various means that it uses. And we can see the media show and share the things that depend on background of that country and also depends on its policy to promote their culture for others. Also the media express the feelings of Low class by showing their suffering through films, and make it clear that the social class must be eliminated because this is considered a cultural backwardness and inhuman behavior.also The social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are an easy way to help narcissists practice their habits. In addition Today’s the media one of the easiest and fastest way to share health information in everywhere in the world. And we know mass media can avoid or make lese of crisis situation and the media make link between health workers and the public to make a prevention. Moreover, should convey information to the citizens as quickly as possible.

Conclusion:

At last, we understand that media is great for connecting people, sharing information about everything can happen in the world. and it can make our life easier to know about everything but it's also a stronger weapon at this time. It can make who use it stronger country and it can destroy others like what happened between America and Iraq, so we barely see the truth without any misleading news which means that need different and critical steps to follow to avoid this misinformation.

#Mass2620_20 #SQUPR

[threewaysdivided]

Quality Should Not Be Binary

In my wanders through life in general - and the internet in particular - I’ve noticed a strange mindset regarding the quality of media and the people who produce it.  It’s this weird idea that something is either 100% perfect, flawless and ‘how dare you claim to be a real fan while suggesting there’s anything wrong’, or that it’s completely awful, valueless and ‘you’re a terrible person for enjoying that or thinking it has anything to offer’ - sometimes flipping from one to the other as soon as a ‘flaw’ is revealed, or a ‘bad’ work does something suitably impressive.

This mindset has never really made sense to me.  Maybe I’m a just habitual over-thinker who spends unhealthy amounts of time analysing things, but I can’t see how this sort of absolutist approach would do anything other than shut down discourse, limit the value to be had from a piece and maybe make people angry.

So in honour of that please enjoy some indulgently long navel-gazing about critical analysis and media quality.

Disclaimer: This post is going to summarise my personal philosophy. Everyone approaches life - and especially art - in their own way and far be it for me to say you’re wrong if you prefer a different approach.  You do you.

Blindness Hurts Both Ways

To an extent I get the simple yes/no mindset.  Analysis takes time and it would be exhausting to give an extensive, nuanced breakdown on your view at the start of every discussion.  Plus the whole ‘dissecting the frog’ thing can definitely apply to enjoyment of media.

However, taking it to the point where you’re denying the positive side of things you dislike or refusing to acknowledge faults in works/people you enjoy has the potential to swing around and bite you in the butt.

Why deny yourself a useful experience? I think there’s an important distinction to make between being good and being useful. Subjective, technical or, ethical ‘badness’ is not the same as having no value. Similarly, being touching, entertaining or otherwise enjoyable doesn’t preclude something from having genuine problems.

Personally, I can find it difficult to work out exactly what’s going right in a generally positive piece.  After all, ‘good’ doesn’t hinge on a single point - it’s usually the product of a lot of things working well together, and it can be hard to figure out cause and effect in a system like that. It’s much easier to look at a failed attempt and identify the specific elements that caused problems, where it had the potential to recover, and places where it might be succeeding in spite of those issues. Similarly, some works can be very strong except when it comes to ‘that one thing’, which in itself is a useful reference.  Negative examples can be just as beneficial as positive ones, and turning a blind eye to a piece’s weaker aspects just denies you that tool.

On the other hand, sometimes a piece and/or creator can be ethically awful while being technically strong or succeeding at its intended purpose. In this case, while they’re not positive it can certainly be valuable to analyse the techniques they use, and even apply those tools when selecting and creating things for yourself.

It’s important to remember that acknowledging where something is strong isn’t the same as endorsing or supporting it, and that there’s a huge difference between pointing out a genuine weakness or failing and maliciously hating on a work or creator.

Why give something that much power? Starting with the gentler side, I think it’s important to remember that a work being ‘good’ on the whole shouldn’t be an excuse to gloss over possibly troubling elements or to give creators a free pass on their actions.  Sure, even the best-intentioned artists make bad PR and creative decisions sometimes but it’s also valid to acknowledge and call out possible misbehaviour when it crops up, rather than blindly playing defence until it reaches critical mass and undermines the good of their work (or worse, actually hurts someone).

There can also be a danger to simply writing off and ignoring ‘bad works’, especially if you dislike them based on ethical grounds.  If something ‘bad’ is becoming popular it’s usually a sign that it’s getting at least one thing right - whether that be plugging into an oft-ignored hot-button issue, or simple shock-value and shameless marketing.  Attributing the success of such pieces to blind luck and ignoring any potential merits that got them there opens up the potential for other, similarly objectionable works to replicate that outcome.

Not to mention the issues that can come from letting these things spread unchecked.  Think about how many crackpot theories and extreme notions have managed to gained traction, in part due to a lack of resistance from more moderate or neutral parties who at the time dismissed them as ‘too stupid’ or ‘too crazy to be real’.  Unpleasant as it may be, I think there’s some value in dipping into the discourse around generally negative media.  If nothing else, shining a spotlight on the misinformation or insidious subtext that a work might be propagating can help genuine supporters notice, sidestep or otherwise avoid the potential harms even as they keep enjoying it.

Why lock yourself into a stance like that? Maybe it’s just my desire to keep options open, but it seems like avoiding absolutist stances gives you a lot more room to move.  Publicly championing or decrying a work and flatly rejecting any counterpoints runs the risk of trapping yourself in a corner that might be hard to escape from if your stance happens to change later.  If nothing else, a bit of flexibility can help you back down without too much egg on your face, not to mention shrinking the target area for fans or dissenters who you might have clashed with in the past.

A little give and take can also help build stronger cases when you do want to speak out.  Sometimes it’s better to just acknowledge the counterpoints you agree with and move on to the meat of the debate rather than wasting time tearing down their good points for the sake of ‘winning’.  The ability to concede an argument is a powerful tool - you’d be surprised how agreeable people become when they feel like they’re being listened to.  

Finally, from an enjoyment perspective, is it really worth avoiding or boycotting what could otherwise be a fun or thought-provoking experience just because you don’t 100% agree with it or have criticised it in the past? Sure, there are absolutely times when a boycott is justified but why deny yourself a good time just because it involves an element that’s been arbitrarily labelled ruinous.  ‘With Caveats’ is a perfectly acceptable way to approach things.

Existence vs Presentation of Concepts

A rarer argument that occasionally pops up is the idea that certain works are inherently ‘inappropriate’, ‘distasteful’, or should otherwise be avoided purely based on their subject matter.  Usually this revolves around the presence of a so-called ‘controversial’ topic; things like war, abuse or abusive relationships, sexual content, bigotry and minorities (LBGT+ relationships being a big one right now).

Personally I think this is a reductive and pretty silly way to choose your content.  No topic should be off-limits for any kind of media. (With the possible exception of holding off until the target audience has enough life experience and critical thinking skills to handle it.  There is some value in TV rating systems.)  Yes, some concepts will be uncomfortable to confront, but they are part of life and trying to keep them out of mainstream art simply stifles the valuable real-world discussions and conversations they might spark.

What we should be looking for is how a work handles the concepts it chooses to use.  There’s a world of difference between presenting or commenting on a controversial topic as part of a work, and misrepresenting or tacitly condoning inappropriate behaviour through sloppy (or worse, intentional) presentation choices.  The accuracy of research and portrayals, use of sensitivity and tact, consideration for the audience and overall tone with which a topic is framed are much more worthy of consideration than simply being offended that the idea exists in media at all.

‘Bad’ Art, ‘Good’ People and Vice Versa

I think it’s important to remember that our content creators are, well, people.  They’re going to have their own weird taste preferences, personal biases and odd worldviews that will sometimes show through in their output. They’re also going make mistakes - after all, to err is human.  Unfortunately, in the creative pool you can also find some genuine bigots, egotists, agenda-pushers, abusers and exploitative profiteers who don’t care about the damage their work might be doing.

It can be discomfiting to notice potentially negative subtext in the work or actions of a creator you like, and upsetting to realise that a work you love is the product of a person who you can’t in good conscience support.  Which of course leads to the discussion of art, artists, whether they can be separated and what to do when things go wrong.

Obviously I’m going to be talking primarily about the ethical/moral side of things, as I think most of us are willing to forgive the occasional technical flub, production nightmare or drop in outward quality from creators we otherwise enjoy.

It can also be a touchy subject so I’d like to reiterate that this is just an explanation of my personal philosophy.  My approach isn’t the only way and I won’t say you’re wrong for taking a different stance or choosing to stay out of it entirely.  

‘Bad’ art from an apparently ‘Good’ person In general, when it comes to apparent bad behaviour or negative subtext from otherwise decent creators, I favour the application of Hanlon’s Razor.

Hanlon’s Razor Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence - at least not the first time.

Art is a subjective medium, with multiple readings and interpretations being possible from the same piece.  It’s definitely possible for an author to lack the  awareness or experience needed to notice when unintended implications or alternate readings have crept into their work.  Sensitive topics are tricky to handle at the best of times and seemingly harmless edits or innocuous creative choices can stack into subtly nastier tonal shifts. Similarly, being a good creator doesn’t automatically make them good at PR or talking to fans - it’s easy to get put on the spot or to not realise the connotations of their phrasing and how it may have come across.   Of course this still means someone messed up, and it’s totally reasonable to call them out for ineptness, but I’d take an unfortunate accident over malicious intent any day.

Then there are times when the negative subtext is a lot less unintentional.  In that case I think it’s important to make the distinction between creator sentiment and the sentiment of the work, character or their production team (if collaborating) before making a judgement on them as an individual.  For example, the presence of casual bigotry might be justified in historical piece that’s attempting to accurately portray the culture of the time, and a creator/actor might write/portray a protagonist with biases and proclivities that they personally disagree with for the sake of a more compelling story.  The presence of a worldview within a work doesn’t automatically translate to the opinion of it’s creator.

Similarly, when considering a problematic production or team it’s worth acknowledging which positions hold creative power, if every member is complicit and why a dissenting individual might stay silent; whether out of contractual obligation, a desire not to throw colleagues under the bus or just because they don’t have the financial security to risk rocking the boat or walking away from the role.   It’s important to figure out who the buck stops with before we start pointing fingers.

Overall, I don’t think there’s much value in passing judgement on an artist for the troublesome content in a single work.  You’ll get more mileage and a fairer assessment from looking holistically across their collection and personal/private channels for telling patterns of subtexts and behaviours.  For the most part I prefer to offer the benefit of the doubt until there’s enough supporting evidence or they do something to definitively out themselves.  Speculation fuelled witch-hunts are no fun for anybody.

‘Good’ art from ‘Bad’ people Exactly what defines a ‘bad’ creator will vary (there’s a reason I’ve been putting the terms in inverted commas).  Whether it’s a disagreement with a key opinion/ creative philosophy/ method, that they’ve done something actually heinous/ illegal, or anywhere in between, enjoying a work while being in conflict with the creator can be a difficult situation to reconcile.  Personally I think there's power to the Death of the Author argument in these cases:

Death of the Author An author's intentions and biographical facts (political views, religion, race etc.) should hold no special weight in determining an interpretation of their writing.

If you’ve found value or enjoyment in a work then you’re well within your rights to enjoy the work on those grounds, even if the message you’ve personally taken from it runs counter to the original author’s opinions or intentions.  

It’s also important to remember that a creator’s personal and/or moral failings don’t retroactively invalidate their skill and achievements in their field.   It’s possible for a person to continue offering valuable insights, observations and lessons on their chosen speciality in spite of their other behaviour or stances.  Their work can have value in isolation, although it may be worth taking the information with a grain of salt when it comes to possible biases.

This becomes a little harder when the disagreeable sentiments bleed directly into their creations but, again, there’s no reason why you can’t decide that the strengths of a work are worth looking at even if they take some squinting past uncomfortable elements to appreciate.

The question should never be ‘can I still enjoy the art?’ because that answer is always yes - if you liked it before learning about the artist then you’re allowed to keep doing so afterwards.  The new context may add caveats to the discussion but it doesn’t demerit the existing positive aspects.

However, Death of the Author runs into problems when the creator is still alive.  If the artist is out of the picture then you can engage freely without any financial support or publicity going back to them.  When they’re still around the question becomes ‘do I still feel comfortable supporting them?’ This is particularly relevant when it comes to online creators, as just interacting with their content can generate passive ad revenue, increase view counts and contribute to algorithm boosts.

I honestly don’t think there’s any one answer to this particular question.  It all comes down to a personal case-by-case judgement; weighing the severity of the conflict against how much you value their work and, in the case of creative teams, whether you think their colleagues are worth supporting despite them.  Even if you decide to pull back there are soft options before going for a full boycott; using ad-block to limit passive financial contributions, buying physical media second-hand or lending/borrowing hard copies to avoid generating any new purchases.

There are creators that I disagree with politically but continue to enjoy because their stance isn’t especially harmful or is relatively minor compared to the value of their work.  There are creators who I no longer want to support but whose pieces I like enough that I don’t regret having purchased from them in the past.  On the other hand, there’s a creative team whose content I adore in isolation but who I’ve had to drop entirely after their leader was outed as an emotionally manipulative office bully.  Where someone else would draw that line comes down to their own personal standards, and it wouldn’t surprise me if another person took a completely different approach.

Don’t be a Jerk

I feel like this should go without saying.  Rational discussion is great.  Being able to have a critical discourse - even one that’s focused on the more negative sides of a work - is wonderful.  Opinions are fun.

However, the thing with opinions is that a lot of them differ.  We aren’t always going to sync up and there are times when you shouldn’t, and won’t be able to, force someone to agree.  In that case, please don’t attack them over it.  You don’t have to like or respect their views but some basic civility would be appreciated.  You’re trying to have a conversation, not win a catfight.  Condescension, derision, high-horsing, ad hominem and otherwise getting personal doesn’t tend to win many friends or endear them to your perspective.   And to the rare few who go so far as to threaten or harass fans, creators and their families; that’s an awful, completely unnecessary, out of line thing to do. (Seriously, never do this, it won’t help and just makes you look crazy.  Also, it can be considered criminal behaviour.)

It’s also important to know when to let things go.  You’re not always going to be able to turn the tide and constantly chasing the argument, stirring the pot and fighting waves of push-back eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns.  No matter how important the issue is there’ll be times when you’re just screaming into the void.  The best you can do is make your peace, say your piece and take your leave.  After all it’s not the school playground.  And unlike the playground, we’re not obliged to stick around.

Value Judgements: It’s Good to Examine Your Tastes

At the end of the day I think you get more mileage from reaching an opinion based on a value judgement of a work’s positive and negative sides than you do from just bandwagoning into blind adoration or hate.  ‘Perfect’ and ‘Unsanctionable’ aren’t binary boxes - they’re points on a scale, and figuring out where you stand on a piece can be a useful mental exercise.  Even if your opinion ends up matching the general consensus, at least you know how you got there and can defend yourself if challenged.  

If nothing else this kind of thing can help you figure out what elements you like, dislike and prioritise in media, and where your personal boundaries lie in regard to different issues.

Still, even after all this there are plenty more factors that determine whether or not you’ll enjoy something.  I’ve dropped way more pieces for not being to my subjective liking than I have due to technical or ethical flaws.  Your tastes are your own, and if needed you can stop the conversation at ‘it’s just not my thing’.

In the end there’s no ‘correct’ way to be a fan of something.  We’re all just here to have fun.  So try not to be an ass when you run across someone who does things differently.

[voyageviolet]

There’s more I want to say about To Siri With Love, because I think a lot of people discussing it have overlooked a major issue the book has: It spreads misinformation about autism, which is a serious problem considering how many people are already ignorant on the subject.

There are a lot of examples I could cite, such as: the author, Judith Newman, frequently refers to studies on autism without any kind of citation. There’s no way to know if these studies are outdated or flawed, and the reader is expected to take the author’s word without any critical thought. At one point in the book, Newman refers to an April 2016 article on Spectrum which “explains why up to 84 percent of children with autism have high levels of anxiety, and up to 70 percent have some sort of sensory sensitivity: they are lousy at predicting the future.”  After doing a search for the month of April 2016 on Spectrum, I could find no such article. I did, however, find an article called “Living Between Genders”about the intersection between the trans and autistic communities, which Newman could read if she wanted to stop disrespecting transgender people.*

The most egregious example, though, is Newman’s repeated statement throughout the book that autism makes people solipsistic. By this, she means not the philosophical theory, but the second definition, which Dictionary.com describes as: “extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.” To put it more simply, Newman endorses the common stereotype that autistic people lack empathy. In her own words, from the introduction to To Siri With Love:

...every person with ASD I’ve ever met has some deficit in his “theory of mind.” Theory of mind is the ability to understand, first, that we have wishes and desires and a way of looking at the world—i.e., self-awareness. But then, on top of that, it’s knowing that other people have wishes and desires and a worldview that differs from yours. It is very hard, and sometimes impossible, for a person with autism to infer what someone else means or what he or she will do.

Again, there is no citation to back up this claim.

It’s true that people on the autism spectrum struggle with theory of mind, but Newman’s definition of the term is a complete misunderstanding. Here’s a more accurate definition of theory of mind, from the 2006 study “Who Cares? Revisiting Empathy in Asperger Syndrome”:

Theory of mind can be defined as the ability to understand the feelings, intentions, and motivations of others (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). This definition of ToM is remarkably similar to the concept of cognitive empathy (understanding another person’s perspective or feelings) and for this reason, ‘‘cognitive empathy’’and ‘‘ToM’’ are often used synonymously (e.g., Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004; Royeurs et al., 2001).

In other words, having a deficit in theory of mind means that autistic people may struggle to understand what other people’s feelings are. It does not mean that autistic people don’t understand the fact that other people have feelings. Here’s a quote from the conclusion for the same study:

Our data indicate that individuals with AS appear to have as much care and concern for other people as unaffected individuals do. Although this finding is at variance with previous reports of deficits in empathy in individuals with AS(Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004; Flor-Henry, 1998;Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2002), it is in keeping with anecdotal reports from parents and clinicians that suggest that autistic individuals can be very caring. 

...

The low scores on the PT scale of the IRI suggest that individuals with AS have difficulty understanding the feelings and perspective of others. Consequently, individuals with AS may not react to situations as expected and may therefore seem cold or uncaring. However, our data would suggest that when individuals with AS are given the information that allows them to understand the point of view of others, they have as much concern and compassion as unaffected individuals.

Throughout the book, Newman relies on her false claims of “solipsism” to draw conclusions about her son Gus. From chapter four:

It doesn’t matter how good he gets [as a musician]; I can’t imagine him performing in any way. Or, rather, before he does, he has to have that thing he has yet to develop, that theory of mind, so that he understands he is doing this for others, not just himself. You can’t be a good performer if you haven’t mastered the concept of audience, of playing for the enjoyment of others.

From chapter six, in support of her own claim that Gus is incapable of feeling embarrassment (discussed in more detail in my last post):

If one of the primary manifestations of autism is the inability to understand that other people have thoughts, feelings, emotions, and needs different from ours, then it makes sense that many aren’t self-conscious; they don’t have a sense of who they are in relation to other people.

The most harmful example is Newman’s reasoning for wanting to have her son forcibly sterilized. From Chapter 8:

Gus should not be a parent. Not just because he’s still shaky on the whole concept of where babies come from, but because the solipsism that is so much at the heart of autism makes him unable to understand that someone’s needs and desires could ever be separate from his own, let alone more important.

Newman’s misunderstanding of “theory of mind” leads her to draw false conclusions about the capabilities of her son, as well as those of all autistic people. It is part of her reasoning for wanting to forcibly sterilize her son, even knowing the horrific history of eugenics behind such an action. Also, among the discussion of #BoycottToSiri, there has been some upset from some autistic parents who (quite fairly, in my opinion) feel that To Siri With Love undermines their abilities to care for their children. However, the worst effect is, to my mind, the fact that this misinformation is being spread to unknowing individuals who happen to pick up this book. Considering that To Siri With Love has has celebrity endorsements and has appeared on the New York Times’ list of 100 Notable Books of 2017, it’s fair to assume that its reach will be quite far. Thanks to Judith Newman, this misinformation will be spread far and wide, encouraging the stereotyping of autistic people for some time to come.

*From Newman’s author’s note at the beginning of the book:

I will also defer to the masculine pronoun when I am talking about people in generalities, because I learned that it was correct to do this sometime back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I mention this because a friend just wrote an excellent book on parenting using the pronoun “they” instead of “he or she,” and she uses the term “cisgender” to refer to anyone who is well, cisgender, which is one of the at least fifty-eight gender options offered by Facebook, ranging from Agender to TwoSpirit. She did this at the insistence of her teenage daughter. Language needs to evolve, but not into something ugly and imprecise. I read her book simultaneously loving her parenting philosophy and wanting to punch her in the face.

[apprenticebard]

“Sealioning” is probably one of my least-favorite New Internet Terms, tbh. I guess it was originally meant to meant to indicate the behavior of a person who insists on trying to have debates with disinterested parties and criticizing them for not wanting to engage, which is a thing that people do sometimes and is super rude, but I mostly see it used to mean “this person is asking questions that I think are easy to find the answers to, so clearly they’re only asking for the purpose of wasting my time or pissing me off, and I am therefore justified in harshly criticizing them for either feigning ignorance or being totally apathetic and insensitive.” Which is a horrible position to default to when people ask you obvious questions!

“I’m just venting in private, it wasn’t an invitation to debate”--fine, I understand this, everybody vents at some point and it can be hard to judge how public a particular venue should be considered, especially on social media; we can quibble about whether venting within metaphorical earshot of people who might reasonably be hurt by it is a good idea or not, or whether venting about certain people or groups of people might cause harm even if the subjects never become aware of it, but it's obviously a complicated topic, and it doesn’t mean you should be piled on by people who want to debate when you’re not ready to do so.

“It’s not my job to educate you”--yes, fine, this makes sense if you are not an activist, if you don’t wish to engage in forms of activism that involve spreading information, or even if you’re an educator who isn’t on educating duty at this particular moment. No one is entitled to your time and effort in this specific matter, and you do not bear a responsibility to defend all of your views to all of the people on a consistent basis, even though eventually communication must occur if people are to learn and grow.

“This thing is obvious to me, and has been explained somewhere in the world at least once before, so if you claim it isn’t clear to you or that you want to learn more about why I believe it, you must be baiting me and acting in bad faith, and shall be mocked for doing so”--no, stop, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Consistently reliable research is beyond a lot of people’s abilities, especially if they’ve never been to college or, through no fault of their own, live in an ideological bubble that is isolated from particular truths. It can be really hard to tell the legitimate authorities apart from weirdos with an axe to grind if you have no experience in a field. Even if it’s within their abilities, it may be really time-consuming for them, they may have no idea where to start, they may have a life outside being Right about everything and not know whether the issue is important (”the world’s getting warmer? so what?”), or they may be from a different background that makes your claim look as outlandish as a flat-earth conspiracy theory, something they shouldn’t waste their time on unless someone can give them a reason why they should. And that’s just for things that actually are obvious; topics that are more complex, where both sides make good points, are even harder to get to the bottom of.

It’s not that people never argue in bad faith; that happens all the time.  It’s that accusing people of intentionally trying to piss you off or waste your time, just because they ask questions about things that seem obvious to you, will give you a lot of false positives, will discourage people from asking questions in the future, will turn people away from your position who might otherwise have been persuaded, and is rude as heck. I’ve seen people be accused of “sealioning” for asking one question about the evidence for the gender wage gap, which IMO is not the sort of simple and obvious thing from which you can tell that your conversation partner is necessarily being unreasonable or acting in bad faith.

I don’t think anyone should be required to defend their beliefs on a constant basis. It’s OK to disengage even if your opponent isn’t hostile and does want to learn, and people who don’t respect that are being rude and, in some cases,  harmful. But we all know how easy it is to spread misinformation, so I also think that people shouldn’t be expected to amend their beliefs without getting the chance to dig through and look at all the evidence, and I realize that that can be a time-consuming process. The least we can do is remember not to assume that the apparent desire for more information is evidence of malice.

Also, the lady in the original comic was being kind of rude, and the sea lion was way more calm and polite in the face of her “I just don’t like sea lions” opinion than I would have been in the face of some guy’s “I just don’t like women” opinion. I dunno what the relative systemic power of sea lions is in this ‘verse, but criticizing the sea lion for wanting to start a dialogue with someone who disdains him for something he has no control over seems rather callous, and turning the character into a verb that gets used to mean “this person is being willfully ignorant just to piss me off and then claim they won the argument” strikes me as a slightly worrying failure of cognitive empathy. Yes, he refused to let the matter drop and insisted on following the lady into her house in order to have a debate with her, which is totally inappropriate, but I hardly think his crime was the fact that he dared to ask why someone hated him.

(Yes, I know the author has issued a clarification that sea lions are meant to stand in for people who exhibit the particular behavior of wanting to debate casual statements and refusing to let them lie, not any immutable characteristic of the sea lion, but since “I just don’t like X people” is very often not an innocuous statement, and being a sea lion is immutable in the real world, I don't think the metaphor works very well. It’s not a horrifically insensitive comic, or anything, but it seems like a bad thing to reference when trying to explain why you object to somebody asking questions about your beliefs and worldview. Especially if they’ve only asked a single question and have not done anything analogous to following you into your house.)

If this seems like a petty thing to worry about, I’ll add that I grew up in a church/school environment where questioning Facts like The Earth Is 6000 Years Old or America Is The Greatest Country In All Ways was seen as evidence of either a lack of faith or intentional malice. I’m in a different place now because I had parents who encouraged me to ask whatever questions I wanted, no matter how obvious, tedious, or disturbing, and because I eventually ran into Catholics, and Catholics consistently answered my questions instead of just warning me about hell over and over. They debated, they disagreed, they educated. They discussed things with non-Catholics without acting like they might be infected with something, or like they were afraid that a little investigation might cause their worldview to come crashing down. They sought the truth, and delighted in all those who came to them for help in seeking it.

So yeah, mocking people for not knowing stuff you know is rude, and I think we should try not to be rude. But refusing to tolerate questions and debate in general is dangerous, both to your movement and to the individual people in it. And yeah, as I said, you don’t have a responsibility to debate with people or educate them at any given moment. Maybe not ever, if debating is just not your thing and you think there are better ways for you to use your time. I’m not that good at debate either, honestly! Constructive and honest debate is hard! There’s no shame in saying that you’re not able or willing to answer someone’s questions, unless you have some particular obligation to that person. But mocking, belittling, or punishing people for having questions, for seeking debate, for trying to do the things one does when one wants to understand and lacks the necessary equipment to do so--that is poison to any community, and is most toxic of all to a community that is trying to change the hearts and minds of the people around them.

TLDR: Refusing to respect people’s boundaries and leave them alone when asked is bad. Asking people questions is not in itself bad, even though people don’t generally have an obligation to answer. These behaviors should not be conflated.

[edris120324]

critically compiled document on the topics addressed in the blog, plus a correlation to course material.

  ID: 120324

#MASS2620_20

Issues in Mass Communication spring 20

Date: May 31, 2020

#SQUTR

  Introduction:

The media and communications in the modern era have become major roles in the educational, informative and educational communication process, opening the doors of knowledge legitimate, as they have become the first means that transcended borders due to modern technological development, and due to the spread of information and communication technology, and we have become in front of one village that has no limits except illiteracy.  The alphabet and information.. The production, dissemination and use of information in light of media globalization and globalization of information has become among the most important manifestations of technological progress that produced knowledge societies, and made knowledge contributions in various fields, whether it comes to high Humanitarian or social, so that interest in development has become an urgent requirement and the media spotlight on issues is more urgent.

The world today, with its openness and the interconnection of its means of communication with each other, is no longer immune to the necessity of seeking to achieve the development of peoples who are still underdeveloped, far from achieving human dignity in a decent life, away from achieving prosperity and prosperity with light years.. Therefore, interest in development  By harnessing all the mass communication tools associated with information and communication technology, it would at least contribute to raising awareness and creating a new, more positive, Dynamics to advance the standard of living of the individual and the group

  We have great strides ahead of us today, as media professionals, challenges that we must all work to overcome for a society that is aware of its responsibilities, a society that enjoys freedom of expression, freely circulates information, ideas and knowledge ... a society that has rights and duties, integrated in work

So I will analyze some topics related to media issues

Submitted material:

We begin the analysis with the most problem facing the media and the most harmful to society, which is misleading, which is caused by this problem emotional, physical and financial damage.

  What's more, misleading can also be on purpose or not.  The first is clear, but how misinformation can occur without the intention of the data source to deceive the person.  This may happen when a person misunderstands the information provided by the source or the source may want to convey a specific message to the audience but the way the information was written indicates something else that was not planned by the data source.

  And also from the problems faced by the media

Concerning misinformation and prejudice is hate speech. Online communication stations have become a slope of many natural disasters and armed conflicts;  Social media and messaging apps will help people keep their family and friends, and get information, such as where they can be provided or medical help.  These messages are often applicable analog and democratic communication systems that have a special ability to feel tensions between different groups and failures in violence between their members, and this information can directly affect how people are prepared to confront, confront and solve these types of problems.

  Cognitive strategies are the major goals of many intervention approaches, including cognitive behavioral therapies, mindfulness interventions, treatment, acceptance, and commitment.  Cognitive strategies are groups of mental processes that are consciously implemented to organize intellectual processes and content in order to achieve goals or solve problems. Theories of self-regulation of behavior focus on cognitive strategies as they play a critical role in guiding goal-oriented behavior.  Also, attention must be paid to knowledge strategies in the media to facilitate the delivery of messages to consumers and markets by identifying consumers and target markets.

  As for the means of communication used in the Cold War, the first and the second, they were all used in different means of communication, such as lamps, fires, smoke, birds, and dogs, and all of these methods were used based on decisions and responsibilities that were studied after deep and conscientious thinking. As for the Iraq war here  The methods differed, as modern technology was used, such as telephone, radio and television.

  It is clear that societies are increasing in their anger towards those who see that the celebrations of communication sites have become more and more open and open and exceed the rules and norms recognized in society, which led to the forgetting of old customs and the recognition of new customs or new fashion;  New technology gave us a kind of the era of freedom, but it took some of our valuable habits from us.

 Technology strives to convince society of behaviors and habits that are not identical to society and make it daily behaviors and habits so that it becomes one of the habits welcomed in society through fashions and people famous in social networking sites; Which affect their behavior with the people of the society, which becomes the habits of these fashions, as if they were welcome ideas in society and become influential in the behavior of society .

  In the face of the absence and distortion of sexual minorities in the media and their unprofessional and self-use of these minorities and the continued violation of the rights of sexual minorities and the spread of hate speech and calls for violence against homosexuals on social networks, the media should have the power to defend this group and decisions must be taken in whom  It harms them, there is an alternative strategy that aims to spread the culture of accepting the other, without discrimination or prejudice, and to combat "homophobia" as the main cause of homosexual violations and attacks.

  In light of the multiplicity, diversity and escalation of crises, the importance of the media's role in crisis management is clear in terms of its role in its events or contributing to its exacerbation or resolution, as the media agencies control information and action. To determine what news the audience gets and how to interpret it. Therefore, the media must present the information without misinformation as well as without prejudice, and they must bear decisions and responsibilities

   The main role of the media is to emphasize the interest of the citizen, to be aware of everything that could harm him, create a sense of collective responsibility, and emphasize the spirit of complementarity and cooperation between citizens.

  Caricature is one of the plastic arts that loved the hearts and minds of people, not only because it "makes them laugh" and relieves them of some of what they find in their difficult reality, but also for his boldness in expressing them and interests.

   However, the question remains about its impact and its ability to solve or ridicule problems.  But in my view, this animation helps to understand the problem and solve it through the ability of all age groups to understand the problem through this animation without talking about the problem in its details.  In addition, it increases people's awareness of the seriousness of this problem and how to deal with it.  Moreover, it is seen as a warning to people about the negative consequences of their neglect of this problem.  Therefore, the media must be proficient in choosing cartoons and not use it to harm a certain group.

  Conclusion:

The media plays an important role within every society, in terms of educating people with news, information and ideas, and the media is an important source of awareness and building community thought, as it has a significant impact on the process of forming public opinion, as well as influencing the formation of their interests and attitudes of attention to societal issues that Society may be oblivious or distracted from it for several reasons, including:

- The familiarity between the community and these issues, to the extent that the community considered them familiar despite their seriousness

Desperation to fix it.

- Fear of talking about it in order not to impose on ourselves a commitment to a particular political or intellectual position that some of us do not like to commit themselves to or disclose to others about it

The lack of experience and the lack of sufficient awareness among media professionals and society activists in general of the importance of these issues

- Search for easy and ready media activity such as news, press releases, and general political and social criticism.