#junk news

[canadianabroadvery]

In a recent episode of his podcast, The Rest is Politics, Alastair Campbell described opinion polls as the “junk food” of journalism. He has a point. Both politicians and commentators tend to gorge on them, but come away with little nourishment and are more likely to succumb to intellectual bloating.

The by-elections on 20 July largely supported this. If you’d last checked the polls at Christmas, you’d have been expecting the Tories to lose previously safe seats to both Lib Dems and Labour, which they did. You could have ignored all chatter in between about Conservatives clawing back a couple of points here and there. Equally, the local intensity of dislike for Ulez in Uxbridge is largely disconnected from national, or even London-wide, polls about air pollution.

The attraction of polling to those hooked on politics is clear. Numbers tell an accessible story, and resolve into an easy narrative to spin – who is up, who is down. Like a stock ticker, however, those who watch every movement are often less well informed than those who check in every so often to observe the general trend.

In the modern news and social media cycle, there’s new polling released almost every day. Few observers have the skill or the patience to interrogate them, so instead craft a convenient narrative. A slight shift that may be the result of a change of sample or weighting becomes immediately linked to the last few days of news, to create a story which is then easily countered by the next set of numbers.

Partisan players can take this even further. There is usually a poll to support every perspective, or else one can be conjured up, with leading questions or massaged numbers. Both within parties and in the public sphere, dubious research can be spun to lead a story in one direction or another.

This is especially true when polling moves beyond voting intentions to focus on issues of policy. Public opinion is often complex and contradictory, and polling is often available to confirm any bias. As has been shown recently, polls can show how the public oppose increasing immigration, but then go on to support more immigration in every category when it’s broken down by the types of people who move here. Polls often show a broad support for measures to tackle climate change, then disapproval when individual policies seem to inconvenience people.

The same deficiencies of understanding come with polling’s cousin, the focus group – an increasingly powerful force in Westminster. Here political parties or the media test particular issues with a selected half-dozen ordinary voters. Yet without proper curation, these just become another tool for confirming the inquisitors’ biases. Focus groups are even easier to cherry-pick from than polls – you can listen only to the comments that support your position. Equally they can be skewed by loaded questions, or swayed by one particularly boisterous participant. Evaluating them properly is a skill, and one which is convenient to ignore when you have an axe to grind.

This obsession with polling has a distorting effect on politics. It becomes self-sustaining, as politicians and commentators push an item into popular consciousness, then use the polls to continue to justify their talking about it. It also means a one-dimensional analysis of events and ideas – with popularity becoming the only metric, rather than whether something will work or not. Equally, it seems to deter politicians from making the case for something that fails to meet with approval in the polls.

All of this becomes heightened in election times. Polling in anticipation of the main result becomes the lens through which everything is filtered. This can in turn influence the result, introducing a sense of game theory – some argue Labour’s surge in 2017 was partly because people believed the Tories would initially win convincingly. We already ban early exit polls to combat this, while other jurisdictions go further, enforcing polling silence in the run up to election day. Ontario is considering a two-week polling purdah to boost turnout. 

Such action seems illiberal and hard to enforce. The media and the parties should perhaps first try to wean themselves off the daily polling habit. It tends to offer a lot of noise but little info, with time better spent focused on policy outcomes. If polling is junk food, we may be overdue a diet. "

[nokkiart]

As a long time httyd fan who has been heavily involved in the fandom since the first movie and who has spent years working in the animation industry, I’d like to share my thoughts on the new httyd movie. Keep in mind, this is just my personal opinion and it's completely fine if you disagree with me. I just want to say a little something about all this that really bothers me.

The core reason that Dreamworks and Universal made this film is that it’s a quick and easy cash grab for them. Thats it. They don’t care about telling a good story or making a “better” version of the original movie for fans or even having an accurate portrayal of the characters/story. It’s purely about money. They know that fans of the original film will go see this movie, whether it’s good or bad. And those guaranteed ticket sales are all that matter to the studios. And with Universal, it has the added bonus of being a cheap promotional and merchandising opportunity for the new HTTYD land in Orlando that opens around the same time that the film is premiering in theaters.

And to help the studios make even more money out of this, they are using non-unionized VFX companies around the world to make this film, so that they can get cheaper labor and push the artists to do more that would be against American union standards. The same thing has probably happened with the costuming and fabrication for the filming, hence why the costumes look un-weathered and the sets look cheap. They don’t want to pay for the extra time and effort that it would take to make the practical bits of the production look good.

On top of all this, Dreamworks has already announced that they’re shutting down all their in-house animation projects in favor of using AI and outsourcing projects to cheaper international non-union studios.

With all this in mind, I just can’t support this film and I will not be seeing it in theaters. And I hope that others will do the same.

The only way to stop all these horrible “live action” remakes (which are actually just realistically animated remakes) is to not buy tickets to see them. Money is all that matters to these studios, and if they don’t make any money off of it, then they will stop and try something different. Maybe they'll even go back to focusing on original stories!

That’s the power that we hold as audiences. Our wallets help drive the decisions that the executives make. So support unique storytelling and gorgeous cinematography in movies. Support indie films. Support animators as they're fighting for fair pay and better contracts. But don't support a mediocre shot-for-shot remake riding on the coattails of an already successful film.

And I just want to wrap all this up by saying I have absolutely no hate towards anyone that has worked on the new film. Toothless looks incredible and I know the artists and creatives involved in this project did the best they could with what they were given.

But I also know that those same artists have so many more brilliant ideas that they would’ve loved to be given the creative freedom to do. I just wish hollywood would be willing to take a chance and let them do it.

[waywardsamdean]

Love the fact that after Sam dies and reunites with Dean in heaven he doesn’t look the age he did when he died but instead looks the age he did when Dean died

[s-h-a-s-e]

a cup of Mabel Juice might just fix me

[icehearts]

-- welcome back.

[screamingwiththewolves]

So...does anyone else cut out the cool parts of the packaging on Monster High dolls and tape them into a junk journal, or am I just a real specific kind of weird?

[gobald]

Ulysses: *Takes ED-E away* Me, having to carry all the shit I gave him

[blenselche]

doodle for the boys anon

almost forgot

[mailb0xbunii]

some sketchbook/junk journal pages :3

[somegrumpynerd]

@wickjump you will never not be an absolute genius

[misc-obeyme]

nightbringer lesson 44

OH. OKAY. I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS.

I'm still gonna try to keep it brief but woooooooo here I go! Spoilers below!

Okay, so biggest thing I picked up from this lesson was that Solomon's soul is not in his body. Right? Right?? Everybody else got that, too, right!??! Tell me I'm not insane. More on this later.

So we spent the whole lesson in Babel, where apparently you get to have a "moment of bliss" where stuff happens that makes you incredibly happy.

It starts out with everybody telling Asmo how they really feel about him, which is of course that he's beautiful and kind.

Then everybody ends up in TSL cosplay and Levi info dumps for several speech bubbles. (It's pretty adorable aldksjf.)

Then a ton of cats show up and Satan loses his mind. (But the cats also cuddle with everybody else because Satan's happiest when he sees cats cuddling with his family, the two things he loves in one place~)

Then everybody disappears because Mammon's moment of bliss is to be alone with MC (he's so bbg I can't take it). (Oh but I do feel the need to mention that everybody else was still there, they were just invisible which is SUPER CREEPY. Like c'mon MC was having such a cute moment with their first man...)

And THEN a bunch of food shows up and we think it's Beel's moment of bliss, but it's actually Belphie's because the twins are so close that Belphie is happiest when Beel is happy.

And then it like reverses and we have Belphie napping and all the boys in angel outfits, but it's actually Beel's moment. And they talk about this time they remember Raphael unleashing his spears on Mammon in the CR. And like then they feel guilty 'cause Satan doesn't have those memories but then:

Satan saw everything from inside Lucifer? CONFIRMED. And Lucifer was aware of it, too.

And then everybody's like what was Lucifer's moment of bliss? And they're dumb about it, but MC is like Lucifer's moment of bliss was this entire experience because he's happiest when his family is happy. D'AWW very precious but also kinda meh, imo.

Then Raphael comes back, but it's really him this time yay!

And THAT is when we find out that only your SOUL is transported to Babel. Everybody's physical body was left behind.

And I was IMMEDIATELY like oh. So THAT is why Solomon couldn't go inside. His soul is elsewhere. I don't think he's soulless, I think he's immortal because his soul is being stored somewhere that isn't his body. THOUGH it would also be interesting if Nightbringer was like... Solomon's soul gone rogue al;kjdsfjdf. But I don't think that's the case.

I think they're using this as a way to explain why people so often say that Solomon is more like a demon. Even though we also got this:

Hmm. Indeed. Solomon is NOT a demon. They were mad at him for not mentioning the thing about only your soul going into Babel.

Anyway, that's my theory and it's the only thing that makes sense to me though I have no idea what it has to do with anything.

I also thought it was interesting that Raphael is now part of the Brothers No More chat group with Simeon and Lucifer. I hope this means we'll get more of him!

And then this from the hard lesson because wow I hope this isn't just No 2 exaggerating.

LOL. You want to return something? BURIED ALIVE. That's so Devildom it's amazing.

Anyway, there were plenty of cute family moments in this lesson, but the potential hint about Solomon was the biggest deal, imo. What does it mean? I could be misinterpreting and maybe that isn't the issue at all? Maybe it's like... there's something wrong with his soul and removing it from his body would either expose something about him that he doesn't want the others to know or would like harm it further and put his life in danger? I dunno. He is still immortal, so.

My first thought was soul is elsewhere, but I do think having it like... reveal something about him unexpectedly would be interesting, too, now that I'm thinking about it.

I dunno, what do you guys think?

masterlist | Thank you for reading!

[muffinlance]

Woo got Linux working! On a related note I have gotten over any fear of breaking things through the command line and also can now roll back to an earlier system backup. Yes those are related. In my defense, breaking things in interesting ways is a great way to figure out what's actually going wrong.

[temeyes]

was making wallpapers of kei again cuz i gotta feed myself these days...

[maudiemoods]

GUESS WHAT TEAM I'M ON!!

Felt like choosing stardust was too predictable SO! now I am a mermaid

[curioscurio]

not to be a freak but I think when Trump loses he will either kill himself or Putin will let loose the real assasins. it's just the smart move like he knows too much and he's losing all the power he used to have lol. like if I were putin I'd be worried about what kind of information a desperate man like Trump is willing to surrender once he's caught 👀

[dramalove247]

Let's be real, the plot is ridiculous. But Caged Again is entertaining and super adorbs. I can not handle how much this series makes me squee and giggle. Who knew I needed a penguin boy in my life?!?

#100% junk food watch #lacking in nutritional value, but makes you happy

Thanks for all the GIFS! Also, @heretherebedor apparently captured some of my faves ❤