#the uses of literacy

[alex51324]

Useful article from CNN on election-night misinformation.

Key takeaway is that pretty much whatever happens, Trump will claim it's evidence that the election is being rigged against him.

Some additional things to keep in mind--particularly if you haven't been through many of these before:

The winner may or may not be projected on election night. How long it takes depends on a bunch of factors, having to do with the logistics of ballot-counting and how the statistical analysis comes along. Getting a projected winner by midnight and the count taking several days are both well within the range of normal, and neither one suggests that anything nefarious is happening.

Counting of votes always continues for several days after the election, until every vote has been counted. This happens regardless of whether or not the media have "called" a winner, or a candidate has conceded.

Media outlets project election winners based on the data that has come in and their statistical models--they do not "declare" or "decide" who won. The major outlets are very motivated to avoid an incorrect projection*, so if they make a call, it's because they're really sure they have enough information to accurately predict the outcome of the final count.

Usually, when this happens, all of the major media outlets are making the same projection around the same time--within the same hour, at least, and often in the same 10 minutes or so. If there's an outlier, there's a good chance they're either guessing or propagandizing.

Candidates do not get to call the race in their own favor. There's a decent chance Trump will try, but also it's also normal and expected for both campaigns to talk like they're expecting to win; e.g. introducing their candidate as "the next President of the United States" when appearing before supporters at events. (My guess is that if he does try, the mainstream media outlets will simply sanewash it as typical election-night bravado, which is actually fine.)

The only thing that means anything, coming from a candidate/campaign, is a concession. This will often happen after the media has called the race for the other candidate; it usually isn't a surprise. A normal campaign will often go quiet--stop sending people to talk on TV, etc.--when they're getting ready to concede. (Trump arguably** still hasn't conceded 2020, so no one is particularly expecting him to concede any time this coming week.)

It's normal for the numbers to change a lot. There are always some surprises, but there are also standard patterns: results from the southeast usually come in a clump, and put a lot of electoral votes into the Republican column, early in the night. Democrats usually pick up the west coast states, which of course are the last to close their polls and start reporting results***. For the swing states, where we'll probably see a lot of reporting on very incomplete vote totals, results will start coming in first from the rural areas, which lean red; cities take longer to count their votes--because there are more of them--and lean blue.

The more uncertainty there is about the outcome, the more you'll hear about the evolving numbers--news networks have airtime to fill, and there's only so many ways you can say, "Still too close to call." Try not to obsess over these numbers; the news networks have people specially trained to analyze this exact kind of data, and if they can't say how it's going to turn out, you're not going to know, either.

If it ends up being too close to call for several days, there will probably be reporting on small, county-by-county vote dumps. It's important to realize that this is all still the original count of the votes, not a recount or "finding new votes." We only hear about it when the election is so close that these relatively small numbers of ballots are likely to affect the outcome, but it happens every single election. In 2020, Trump repeatedly claimed that ongoing counts were some how irregular, and sometimes demanded that counts be stopped when the current total showed him in the lead. This is, to be clear, nuts; the full & complete count of the votes always takes more than just the one day, and it's a bedrock principle of democracy that every valid ballot is counted.

(* Back in 2000, the Bush-Gore election with the whole Florida debacle, several major news outlets did project winners too soon, and then had to walk back their projections.

This definitely contributed to the chaos that night, and may have also contributed to the widespread perception that Bush was the "real" winner and Gore was dragging the country through multiple recounts, in those first few days when the initial count of wasn't even complete in some states.

As a result, responsible media outlets are much more cautious these days about election-night projections.)

(**On January 7, 2021 he made a statement that was taken as indicating his understanding that Biden had won, or at least that he knew he wouldn't be staying in office, but he never stopped saying he won.)

(***This often looks like the Republican being miles ahead, and then suddenly California reports in and they aren't anymore. Expect Trump to pretend that this is somehow shocking, even though the last time a Republican won California was 1988.

Similarly, he will also pretend to be surprised when, for instance, Philadelphia turns in their first big batch of results, and Harris's numbers jump up.)

[parasiticstars]

nooooo little chronically online leftist don’t fall for the media’s pervasive purity testing and villainizing that’s specifically made to divide us and keep us fighting amongst ourselves when we should be focusing on getting the boot off our throats

[wolveria]

"Certain ships should be illegal!" How does it feel to fall for the same fear-mongering, book-burning, pearl-clutching reactionary propaganda that your grandparents did.

"But it'll lead to pedophilia!" And the Satanic panic of the 80s and 90s gained momentum out of real fear for the safety of children. Didn't make it true. Strong emotions do not indicate factual accuracy.

Just because you're young and label yourself a progressive doesn't mean your critical thinking skills and media literacy are better than the generations before you. In fact, due to right-wing evangelical influence on school budgets and boards, they're probably worse.

[brujahinaskirt]

arthur is rude to that one sex worker because the guys are fucking around as they oughtn't be and he actively wants the source of their distraction to go away. that is how he operates through the entire game: deliberate, utilitarian intimidation and strategic unpleasantness to achieve a goal. it is an early game commentary on arthur meant to position him as a big dog that barks. it is not a commentary on his views about women which are clarified many times afterward. you guys realize that right

[starbylers]

Finn Wolfhard being #1 M*leven anti for the 9483716 time he’s so me

Listen to this man’s voice he sounds so bored when he mentions the letter and as soon as the girl’s like oh you mean the fake letter? where she’s pretending? he’s instantly going “yeah yeah yeah exactly yes yes yeah” verbatim and starts making fun of Mike’s disconnect with El 😭 I just know he was thinking thank god there are people who get the letters weren’t a cute romantic thing and he doesn’t have to go along with any fawning

[jstor]

Be all that you can be: read.

These timeless messages from Senator Claiborne Pell in 1968 resonate with us even today. His address on the importance of libraries and literacy programs highlights how these resources answer the millions of questions we have and why we should utilize them.

Explore the full video.

📽️ : Senator Claiborne Pell. Literacy and Libraries, 1968. University of Rhode Island.

[aangular]

I kinda hate when people act like Aang is this naive kid who doesn’t know what’s going on or what he’s doing, especially at the beginning of the series.

For example, in “The Southern Air Temple, " he shows Sokka and Katara around, acting excited and playing around. Do you think that he doesn’t know what’s going on? Do you think that Aang, someone who grew up in that temple doesn’t know what is supposed to look like?

In his timeline, he had been gone for at most one week. Do you really believe that he would think it is normal that the place that was filled with people a few days ago is now completely empty Do you think that he would find it normal that the entire place is run down and poorly kept?

I’m just confused. Since episode one, the narrative has made it obvious that Aang has avoidant coping mechanisms, where he outright ignores what’s happening around him because he cannot deal with it. It’s an integral aspect of his character (since it’s the reason he ran away after finding out he was the avatar, which quite literally sets off the plot). I get it if people don’t necessarily like that aspect of his personality (wrong opinion, btw), but understanding that it’s there and how it affects how he interacts with the world is important to getting ATLA.

Yes, he did know what the being avatar meant to an extent, and he knew he had to learn the three elements, but the reason he didn’t go to the North Pole straight away was because he didn’t want to. He wanted to put it off for as long as possible, going on adventures and “eventually getting to the NP”.

There was literally a 2 part episode (The Winter Solstice) to tell us that Aang couldn’t just mess around that entire season because it introduced a time limit to defeat the Fire Lord. Ever since then, the gaang pretty much beelined for the NP, plus some detours, but that’s the magic of worldbuilding.

I would talk about his reluctance to learn waterbending from Pakku, but that’s a different post altogether.

Obviously, he didn’t understand what it was like growing up in the middle of a war (because he didn’t). Still, no one understood what losing their entire people and being the last of their kind was. And no one calls other characters naive or stupid for their constant insensitivity throughout the series…

The bottom line is that he knew; he always knew. It was just easier to pretend he didn’t.

[ladycatashtrophe]

"Let people enjoy things", "It's not that deep", "Stop being a hater", No.

You are capable of criticizing something and still enjoying it. Criticism should add to your enjoyment of the thing. Contextualizing and analyzing media is the only true sign that you enjoy it instead of just consume it. Stop selling the straggling iotas of your final brain cell to a fascio-capitalist system that wants to gorge you til you burst. Not consuming anything is better than blindly inhaling whatever is put in front of you without discretion.

Be an intellectual and have respect for yourself so you can have some sugary Wattpad fanfic and a Netflix reality TV show for dessert.

[autisticrosewilson]

Just saw someone get pissy because "people in Gotham would have PTSD from Red Hood killing their family members just for being criminals".

Are you fucking stupid? I'm not joking do you have a brain eating parasite lodged in your skull?

When he's written correctly he's explicitly only targeting the people at the top. The crime lords, people who lace their drugs, traffickers, rogues. He isn't just breaking the necks of random crooks. We're talking about a kid who grew up stealing to survive, whose father died doing crimes to provide for them.

To call Jason being compassionate for small scale criminals and not a trigger happy psycho "fanon" or a "headcanon" puts your literacy into question at best and makes you look like an asshole at worst, especially when you put it in the main tag and don't bother to put it in the "Anti Jason Todd" or "Jason Todd critical" or "Jason Todd salt" or even "Jason Todd bashing". See that collection of easily blockable tags so I don't have to see your utter fucking nonsense on my dash?

They also said they don't think Jason cares about crime prevention at all and was just an angsty teen rebelling. Like tell me you didn't even fucking read Under the Red Hood without telling me.

[ideas-ideasideasideas]

Headcanon that instead of signing his threats Red Hood uses semicolons liberally (and correctly) because nobody up to their eyeballs in crime in his part of Gotham uses semicolons. ‘Don’t even try to run; I know all of your hideouts’ is a Certified Red Hood Threat. ‘I’m always watching; every minute every second’ is someone impersonating Red Hood.

[newtscamandersbf]

saw this ss on twt and im sorry but im starting to think some of yall actually like when characters are predators cause first it was accusing afo of p3dophilia / sa (despite the fact grooming can be non-sexual) and now its this shit 😭😭

like this is actually crazy yall we are told MULTIPLE times that toga feels safe with the league because they are the only ones who accepted her for who she was 😭😭 its not like she was the only woman or kid in the league either like at some point there were magne and mustard. the league lets anyone in regardless of background this is soo ..

[browncoatsareinthetardis]

So me and a friend were talking. And we were like why was Liam getting the most hate when 1D ended. And we came to this idea/ conclusion that Liam was the first to pull off the rose colored glasses of what we, the GP, thought of 1D. He was the first to say yeah “if we continued I would have died” and “yeah being in a boyband really f**ked me up” and that stung for directioners. People were mad that they weren’t living all the sunshine and rainbows that we were sold by their media team. We wanted the facade that it was all great. And Liam told us it wasn’t and people were mad.

[hephaestusshield]

man of the house (eldest daughter)

[leafatlaw]

Me watching parkour civilization for the 1st time: 'The book was written in parkour' thats so funny, sure this series is a little silly but its got alot of funny moments even with all the vine booms :)

Me, another watch through and two weeks later: See everybody gets the capitalism metaphor in prkciv but- what most people dont realize is that it goes beyond that: the prison industrial complex. See, the people in parkour prison are forced to parkour not only for food but constantly and in many difficult ways. AND because we know that parkour operates as a form of currency in this world, the prisoners are being forced to do something that should result in them being paid, for nothing ! Which bares resemblance to how in the real world, privately owned prisons are able to make a profit by---

[welcometogrouchland]

I understand that literature nerd Jason Todd is kind of overblown in fanon compared to it's actual presence in canon (a few issues during his pre (and post?)crisis Robin tenure that highlight it) BUT consider that I think it's hilarious if the unhinged gun toting criminal has strong opinions on poetry

[holyblanchett]

Besides everything that is wrong with this statement and this person missing the point. Imagine bringing twt drama to an update account the cast and crew follow like this is so embarrassing pls be normal