#is NOT a media researcher

[fanaticalthings]

the muskification of twitter except it's lex luthor instead of elon lol

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[tam--lin]

In light of increasing anti-trans and anti-abortion laws in the United States, I am once again humbly requesting you inform yourself about jury nullification, your ability as a juror to vote against convicting people being prosecuted under unjust laws. Nullification was instrumental in legalizing abortion in Canada - it informed jurors can use it to help protect healthcare workers and protesters in the US, too.

[elumish]

I know that I am preaching to the anti-AI choir, but I genuinely believe that skills like summarizing, articulating, and refining an argument, engaging with existing research or information yourself, and going through the process of crafting materials are core skills for life but also for many careers, and outsourcing those degrades people's ability to think critically and engage with ideas.

Even ignoring the fact that generative AI is awful for the environment and based almost entirely in intellectual property theft and has a bunch of other ethical issues, using gen AI as a crutch will actually just make you worse at both engaging with life and doing many professional jobs.

But also, beyond this, you will benefit from actively engaging with research and the news and shaping, summarizing, and articulating arguments.

Can you read a piece of news or an article and understand the point it is making? Do you know how to identify the biases of the source? Do you know how to understand what you are reading in the context of that bias?

Can you shape an argument based on information you have engaged with? Can you validate that argument by seeking out additional relevant information? Can you describe that argument to someone who is familiar with the subject matter? Can you describe or summarize that argument to someone who is not familiar with the subject matter?

Can you articulate your point--whether it is an argument or just a question--in written format? Can you articulate it out loud? Do you know how to shape what you are expressing to a given audience?

Being able to articulate yourself clearly, in a logical structure that is based on verified evidence, is important for so much of life.

[godlesshasideas]

Write more characters with physical disabilities. Write more characters with mental disabilities. Write characters with neurodivergence (more than one specific type too). Write characters with mobility aids. Write characters who have good and bad health days. Write characters who are chronically in pain, but don't express it every second. Write characters who were born with a disability. Write characters who developed one. Write characters who have adapted to the world around them because the world won't adapt for them. Write about their strengths and weaknesses due to their disability. Write about accessibility. Write about inaccessibility. Make it realistic.

Don't make the disability magically disappear or be cured (or at least be mindful of how you write that). Don't make it their entire personality but also don't skip over it. Don't use stereotypes (and that's not just with disabilities). Don't make the character actively hate their disability; they're allowed to be upset but most people with disabilities have learned to accept it as part of their life and accept it as part of their identity.

[sableeira]

You know how “the moon is beautiful tonight, isn’t it?” is used as an expression for love confessions? It’s said that Natsume Soseki came up with it after overhearing a student translate “I love you” to Japanese in a very literal sense. While there is no source confirming that this exchange actually happened, I still think a scene referencing the expression with Natsume randomly appearing would be hilarious

[reality-detective]

Sounds like Asheville NC is another Maui 🤔

[communistkenobi]

The deeply moralist tone that a lot of discussions about media representation take on here are primarily neoliberal before they are anything else. Like the shouting matches people get into about “purity culture” “pro/anti” etc nonsense (even if I think it’s true that some people have a deeply christian worldview about what art ought to say and represent about the world) are downstream of the basic neoliberal assumption that we can and must educate the public by being consumers in a market. “Bad representation” is often framed as a writer’s/developer’s/director’s/etc’s failure to properly educate their audience, or to educate them the wrong way with bad information about the world (which will compel their audience to act, behave, internalise or otherwise believe these bad representations about some social issue). Likewise, to “consume” or give money to a piece of media with Bad Representation is to legitimate and make stronger these bad representations in the world, an act which will cause more people to believe or internalise bad things about themselves or other people. And at the heart of both of those claims is, again, the assumption that mass public education should be undertaken by artists in a private market, who are responsible for creating moral fables and political allegories that they will instil in their audiences by selling it to them. These conversations often become pure nonsense if you don’t accept that the moral and political education of the world should be directed by like, studio executives or tv actors or authors on twitter. There is no horizon of possibility being imagined beyond purchasing, as an individual consumer in a market, your way into good beliefs about the world, instilled in you by Media Product 

[grand-line-shenanigans]

You made a mistake, Murderbot, a really bad mistake. How the hell was I supposed to know there were transports sentient enough to be mean?

[fuck-hamas-go-israel]

Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? Apartheid?

Throwing around these buzzwords to describe the Israel-Hamas war because you’ve seen them on social media doesn’t make you right, and it doesn’t make you an activist.

It makes you ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and lazy for parroting biased talking points with no concept about what these terms actually mean.

What is apartheid?

Well, it was first used to describe the political system in South Africa and today’s Namibia whereby racism was institutionalised. This manner of governance meant that clear racial segregation would occur, in a manner that benefited the white race and would actively oppress those who had darker skin.

This meant that there were white-only spaces, white people would get prioritised when it came to education and jobs, and relationships/marriages between white peoples and coloured people were illegal.

Is Israel objectively an apartheid state? There are no laws that actively favour one group over the other. There is a sizeable population of Israeli Arabs that can thrive in the same way as the Israeli Jews can. There are laws against discrimination on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Palestinians from Gaza are allowed to work in Israel through a work permit system. There are about 150,000 Palestinians working in Israel, most of which live in Israel and some come from Gaza/the West Bank. They aren’t denied rights institutionally.

Is it harder to get a job or education in Israel if you’re a Palestinian from Gaza? Sure, because of different governments. It’s like how it’s a lot easier for you to find a job in your own country (in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy) than overseas. But you’re not denied the right to apply.

Of course, if you have a history of violence, a criminal record, or your family has ties to terrorists, then it’ll be a lot harder to get an approved work permit. But that’s not apartheid. That’s common sense, and a regulation practiced by all countries that minimally desire to protect their own population from danger.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide

These two concepts can go hand-in-hand. Ethnic cleansing refers to the mass expulsion or killing of a group of people based on their ethnicity. Similarly, genocide is the purposeful killing of a group of people solely with the intention of annihilating them.

Famous examples? The Holocaust, of course, where the Nazi regime believed in the superiority of the Aryan race and decided to declare genocide on the Jews, Romanis, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, people with “Asian features”, and many many other groups. Anyone who they didn’t think was “pure”.

Their aim was to ensure that the Aryan race propagated without having “impure” blood affecting the bloodlines. They even started a eugenics programme called Lebensborn to ensure that more pure Aryan babies were born.

More recent examples? The Rwandan genocide where the Hutus attempted to wipe out the Tutsis on the basis of ethnicity. They mandated that Tutsis mention their ethnicity on state-issued ID cards in order for the Hutus in power to be able to identify them and then kill them.

Or the Yazidi genocide which happened so recently, in which ISIL killed, raped, and sent thousands of Yazidis into conversion camps on the basis of their ethnicity. They also took Yazidi women as sex slaves and raped and tortured them.

Or the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine State in Myanmar, and how there was a mass killing and expulsion of them from the country, forcing them to flee to Bangladesh to take refuge, crating the world’s largest refugee camp.

Or how ISIS killed thousands of people from Christian groups in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Libya because of their faith, leading the US, EU, and UK to label this as religious genocide and condemned their actions.

Has Israel been practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on Palestinians all these years?

Well, the birth rate of the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank, and in Israel has been steadily increasing all these years.

So, no. No ethnic cleansing, no genocide. They are free to have as many children as they desire.

The UN Genocide Convention

The United Nations has 5 actions that constitute genocide.

1. Killing members of a target group

Israel is targeting Hamas officials with the aim of wiping out the terrorist group and ensuring that such a deadly attack on Israeli soil doesn’t happen again. I suppose you could call it genocide against Hamas, but they’re killing Hamas because they’re terrorists, not because they’re Palestinian. Shouldn’t everyone believe in genocide against terrorists?

But look at Black Saturday. Look at Hamas’ rhetoric. They repeatedly call for the annihilation of Israel and genocide of Jews. When will the media start believing what they say, word for word, instead of trying to spin it into “hmm maybe they want to kill all the Jews because they’re freedom fighters!”

War has collateral damage. Of course the innocent civilians don’t deserve to suffer just because of the actions of their government, but there have been warnings given to the Palestinian civilians prior to Israel striking the areas. There are consequences of attacking a country first, and then having that country attack you back.

2. Causing people of the group serious bodily or mental harm

The UN refers to sexual violence as the prime example of non-fatal harm.

Sexual violence has occurred. Hamas have kidnapped and raped women and even paraded the bodies of half-naked women around. But I f Israel had done the same, it’ll be the first thing appearing on everyone’s BBC push notifications (without even being confirmed as true).

3. Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group

Many people refer to the blockade that Israel imposed around the Gaza Strip as an example of this.

This blockade was imposed by both Israel and Egypt in 2005. Its aim was to prevent smuggling of weapons into Gaza, and isolate the reign of Hamas to the region. This was to ensure the safety of Israel and Egypt.

Did this blockade pose serious challenges to the Gazan civilians? Of course. But that’s a consequence of having a terrorist government. If you have a terrorist group running your country, don’t be surprised if neighbouring countries are extra careful about who or what they allow in or out of the borders.

Many authorities from other Arab nations have also expressed approval of Egypt’s border restrictions, and even encouraged Egypt to flood the terror tunnels that Hamas has dug under the city. As a side note, other Arab nations have not historically been very kind or welcoming to Palestinians. Syria has killed over 4000 Palestinians, and many Arab countries are now refusing any refuge for Palestinians. But no one cares about that because it doesn’t make Israel look bad. All they do now is use the images of dead Palestinians under the hands of Syria and reuse them to propagate fake news.

The blockade has been labelled as a human rights violation because of collective punishment. Many humanitarian organisations believe that the blockade has caused the Palestinian civilians disproportionate harm.

Contrary to popular belief, Israel isn’t disallowing humanitarian aid from coming through the borders. Fuel, food, hygiene products, clothes, and shoes have been coming through the borders regularly for years. The Gaza Strip also has electricity and internet access and water.

Do all these items reach the Palestinian civilians? Well, there has been evidence that Hamas has been intercepting a lot of the supplies sent by humanitarian groups. This is not surprising since the UNRWA tweeted that Hamas has stole fuel from hospitals in Gaza in order to launch more rockets at Israel (but quickly deleted it after realising that it goes against their agenda to paint Hamas in a bad light.) In addition, the returned hostages have mentioned that there are many aid supplies hidden in the terror tunnels by Hamas. Instead of giving them to the civilians, they are hoarding it for themselves.

There has also been video evidence that some people are reselling these aid items in stores at exorbitant prices in order to turn profits. This has been well-documented for the last 10 years.

Is blockading the region to mitigate terrorism a disproportionate response? Well, it’s like asking if heightened security and stricter border control at airports is a disproportionate response after 9/11. Is being cautious and worrying about the security of your country an irrational reaction to the constant threat of terrorism?

4. Preventing births

Gaza’s population growth rate per annum is about 1.99%, which is the 39th highest in the world! Their population is allowed to propagate freely.

Israel isn’t preventing births of Palestinian babies.

5. Forcibly transferring children out of the group

No, Israel hasn’t been taking Palestinian children and forcing them to convert/keeping young Palestinian girls as sex slaves. Like I said, if this was truly happening, all the news outlets would be so quick to publish the story before verifying it.

Can we trust the UN Genocide standards?

The UN is known for corruption and have been exploiting the Palestinian people by selling them the humanitarian supplies instead of distributing them for free, which they should because these supplies literally are donations.

The UN also has differing standards of what they would label as genocide. For example, they refuse to call what China is doing to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as genocide, even though the situation does fit many of their own criteria.

Hence, to all of you out there overusing these terms without knowing what they mean, make up your own mind about things. No one can force you to believe anything and no one can force you to change your mind.

But at the very least, do your due diligence and educate yourself before spouting tired buzzwords. Repeating misinformation doesn’t help anyone and can be very harmful.

[plutoons]

oauuuuuuuuuu

[linktoo-doodles]

top 10 telepaths in modern media

[jayflrt]

i'd like everyone to notice that her career is still intact after speaking up for palestine. nicola coughlan's career is still intact. bella hadid, zayn malik, louis tomlinson, jenna ortega, avantika, renee rapp, dylan o'brien, melanie martinez, florence pugh, the weeknd, chappell roan, etc, are all still relevant. don't let these celebrities or influencers convince you that they can't do anything!

[meamiki]

croissant shark

[realjdobypr]

Editor and SEO Researcher Dr. Jerry Doby Releases Book for Digital Journalists and Newsrooms

Excited to have released my first book...would love to know your thoughts! SEO Essentials: A Journalist's Handbook is as up to date as it gets!

For his first published book ever, editor and published SEO researcher Dr. Jerry Doby just released SEO Essentials for Online Magazines: A Journalist’s Handbook on MagCloud. This book is based on his published research paper SEO-optimized Writing: Removing the Mystery, featured in the Cognitionis Scientific Journal (2023) and sponsored by Logos University International (UNILOGOS).SEO Essentials…

[reality-detective]

THE INJECTABLE BIOWEAPON IS REAL

After taking the covid shot:

The 300% increase in all-case-mortality is real

The dying suddenly is real!

The myocarditis is real.

Pericarditis is real.

Gillian Barre Syndrome is real.

Turbo Cancer is real.

VAIDS is real!

Sterility is real!

THE GENOCIDE IS REAL !

[pagesinmylife]

Am I ready to watch TBoSaS? YES

Am I ready for all the horrible takes from strangers on the internet that don’t understand the point of the story and the complexities of the characters??

No.