#flood the zone

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A media literacy handbook for Israel-Gaza

Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

Media explainers are a cheap way to become an instant expert on everything from billionaire submarine excursions to hellaciously complex geopolitical conflicts, but On The Media's "Breaking News Consumers' Handbooks" are explainers that help you understand other explainers:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-and-gaza-edition-on-the-media

The latest handbook is an Israel-Gaza edition. It doesn't aim to parse fine distinctions over the definition of "occupation" or identify the source of shell fragments. Rather, it offers seven bullet points' worth of advice on weighing all the other news you hear about the war:

https://media.wnyc.org/media/resources/2023/Oct/27/BNCH_ISRAEL_GAZA_EDITION_1.pdf

I. "Headlines are obscured by the fog of war"

Headline writers have a hard job under the best of circumstances – trying to snag your interest in a few words. Headlines can't encompass all the nuance of a story, and they are often written by editors, not the writers who produced the story. Between the imperatives for speed and brevity and the broken telephone between editors and writers, it's easy for headlines to go wrong, even when no one is attempting to mislead you. Even reliable outlets will screw up headlines sometimes – and that likelihood goes way up in times like these. You gotta read the story, not just the headline.

II. Know red flags for bullshit

The factually untrue information that spreads furthest tends to originate with a handful of superspreader accounts. Whether these people are Just Wrong or malicious disinfo peddlers, they share a few characteristics that should trip your BS meter and prompt extra scrutiny:

High-frequency posting

Emotionally charged framing

Posts that purport to be summaries or excerpts from news outlets, but do not include links to the original

The phrase "breaking news" (no one has that many scoops)

III. Don't trust screenshots

Screenshots of news stories, tweets, and other social media should come with links to the original. It's just too damned easy to fake a screenshot.

IV. "Know your platform"

It used to be that Twitter got a lot of first-person accounts from people in the thick of crises, while Facebook and Reddit contained commentary and reposts. Today, Twitter is just another aggregator. This time around, there's lots of first-person, real-time reporting coming off Telegram (it runs well on old phones and doesn't chew up batteries). Instagram is widely used in both Israel and the West Bank.

V. "Crisis actors" aren't a thing

People who attribute war images to "crisis actors" are either deluded or lying. There's plenty of ways to distort war news, but paying people to pretend to be grieving family members is essentially unheard of. Any explanation that involves crisis actors is a solid reason to permanently block that source.

VI. There's plenty of ways to verify stuff that smells fishy

TinEye, Yandex and Google Image Search are all good tools for checking "breaking" images and seeing if they're old copypasta ganked from earlier conflicts (or, you know, video-games). The fact that an image doesn't show up in one of these searches doesn't guarantee its authenticity, of course.

VII. Think before you post

Israel-Gaza is the most polluted media pool yet. Don't make it worse.

There's plenty more detail on this (especially on the use of verification tools) in Brooke Gladstone's radio segment:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-gaza-edition

The media environment sucks, and warrants skepticism and caution. But we also need to be skeptical of skepticism itself! As danah boyd started saying all the way back in 2018, weaponized media literacy leads to conspiratorialism:

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2018/03/09/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you.html

Remember, the biggest peddlers of "fake news" are also the most prolific users of the term. For a lot of these information warriors, the point isn't to get you to believe them – they'll settle for you believing nothing. "Flood the zone with bullshit" is Steve Bannon's go-to tactic, and it's one that his acolytes have picked up and multiplied.

It's important to be a critical thinker, but there's plenty of people who've figured out how to weaponize a critical viewpoint and turn it into nihilism. Remember, the guy who wrote How To Lie With Statistics was a tobacco industry shill who made his living obfuscating the link between smoking and cancer. It's absolutely possible to lie with statistics, but it's also possible to use statistics to know the truth, as Tim Harford explains in his 2021 must-read book The Data Detective:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

There's a world of difference between being misled and being brainwashed. A lot of today's worry about "disinformation" and "misinformation" has the whiff of a moral panic:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10/are-we-having-a-moral-panic-over-misinformation.html

It's possible to have a nuanced view of this subject – to take steps to enure you're not being tricked without equating crude tricks like sticking a fake BBC chyron on a 10-year-old image with unstoppable mind-control:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/28/fog-o-war/#breaking-news

#pluralistic #media literacy #fake news #disinformation #misinformation #israel gaza #gaza #israel #palestine #conspiratorialism #hoaxes #infowar #on the media #breaking news #npr #flood the zone

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

House Oversight Committee Impeachment hearing produces damning evidence—against Donald Trump.

It is difficult to describe how badly the House impeachment hearing went for Republicans on Wednesday. Republicans produced two witnesses who were supposed to damage President Biden. But the witnesses were jokes. The first—Tony Bobulinksi—famously met with Mark Meadows “under the bleachers” at a Trump rally while wearing a ski mask.  Who among us hasn’t done the same thing when chatting about innocent matters? The second witness testified from prison, where he is serving time for looting the retirement funds of a tribal entity of the Oglala Lakota Nation.

Both witnesses testified to brief meetings where Joe Biden talked about their families and backgrounds. Neither testified that Joe Biden—then a private citizen—was involved in any business dealings with Hunter Biden. And that was the highlight of the day for Republicans.  

Then Lev Parnas testified. If you don’t remember Lev Parnas, he is a Ukrainian American businessman tasked by Rudy Giuliani to “find dirt” on Joe Biden.

Parnas’s testimony was devastating. See CNN, Lev Parnas, ex-Giuliani associate, testified allegations against Bidens are false and 'spread by the Kremlin'

CNN described Parnas’s testimony as follows:

“The American people have been lied to, by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions. They created falsehoods to serve their own interests knowing it would undermine the strength of our nation." “Congressman Pete Sessions [and] Senator Ron Johnson and many others understood they were pushing a false narrative. The same goes for John Solomon, Sean Hannity and media personnel, particularly with Fox News, who use this narrative to manipulate the public ahead of the 2020 elections. Sadly, they are still doing this today as we approach the 2024 elections.” Parnas maintained during the hearing that there was no evidence of Biden family corruption involving Ukraine and that the baseless accusations against the president came from the Russian government.

"The only information ever pushed on the Bidens and Ukraine has come from one source and one source only: Russia and Russian agents.”

So, the guy who was hired to find dirt on Joe Biden anywhere in the world testified that there was none to be found—and that the false allegations came from Russian agents.

At this point, efforts by House Republicans to repeat the false allegations spread by Russian agents should be seen as promoting counter-intelligence and election interference efforts against the US.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#Robert B. Hubbell #Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #Russian propaganda #Russian election interference #Right wing undermining our country #flood the zone #right wing media #Mike Luckovich

[worldsewage]

Splatoon Au

#splatoon #splatoon oc #my art #erm. #Homerun Au #homerun is like. #an au where the great turf war ended due to the water line rising wayg #wayyyy too high for either side to win. so instead a more evolved salmonid species took over #and there is very few habitable zones for inklings / octolings that aren’t flooded

[duckytree]

whats the oldest you’ll date? im not kidding when i say mine is 61 and im 14. im sorry 😭😭

hello????? hello???????????????????

#that’s such a random ass number #do u have someone in mind???? #but yeah um #this is none of my business but pls don’t date someone that old #you’re so young and anyone who says yes is automatically foul and not worth ur time #i’m already married so i wouldn’t date anyone #but my wife and i are the exact same age #a few hours apart but my time zone was different so on paper we are a day apart #i’ve been mentioning her a lot recently my bad #but my inbox is flooded with questions about her #asks

[mystery-salad]

The world is safe now.

You tell yourself that as Zhaitan clings to a tower of decay, crumbling beneath its claws as the canons aim true. The shots hit, cheers raise as the dragon topples down. Falling from view through the miasma it created below. No one can hear it hit the ground over the relieved shouts of victory ringing across the airships. But everyone feels it in a resounding rumble that shouldn't have carried through the air like that. The celebrating falters, confusion rising but not fast enough to prepare for what follows. The shockwave hits like nothing you've ever felt. Everything goes dark as the screams begin.

The world is safe now, Orr is not.

You wake up in the rubble as survivors try to make sense of what happened. The dragon is dead, but no one accounted for where all the consumed magic had to go. No one planned for this despite generations of preparation. Perhaps there's a reason for the dragons, you hear murmurs through the tents. But you didn't come this far to call it quits, and one land riddled with a decaying radiation can't stop the mission. The contamination in your blood won't stop you.

The world is safe now. Orr is gone.

Mordremoth stares you down from within his mind. You're like a weed that won't die, small and foreign but resilient and ready to take everything. The odds are against you with the team sent away, you can't face the gaze of the dead like last time. They're safe at a distance, you have to hope they got far enough as you defy the odds and strike another dragon down.

The world is safe, but there's a catch.

Trahearne shudders as your mind returns to your body, as you look around in wonder that there isn't a shockwave like last time. He's so calm as he explains the truth of it, defying how terrified he is of dying, of asking a friend to do this and stand at ground zero once again. But you stand just as calm, picking up the blade and telling him to close his eyes. You hope he'll rest well, wherever his life takes him next. As the blade cuts through, you know it's real as the shockwave begins just like last time. You brace for impact as much as you can.

The world is safe now. The desert is gone.

It's almost tempting to let Balthazar handle the rest, let the god walk a path of destruction to each dragon, sparing yourself further damage. But his path leaves so much unnecessary devastation...so here you are alone with another dragon. Well, not completely alone now. You have Aurene, though you're still not sure if that's truly a blessing any more. The two of you corner Kralkatorrik, the perfect trap laid deep underground in old sunspear ruins.

The world is safe now, until the dragon takes a last stand.

Waking up in wreckage is becoming normal to you. When did that happen, when did the panic vanish? No time to think on it as new plans have to be laid out. You chase him down, you and your dragon, to kill her grandfather and save the world again. Setbacks are numerous. It's harder to work alone on this one, so many soldiers are ready to see it to the end with you. You tell them they don't know what they're asking for and send them away again. Aurene, still a child, fights the dragon's minions nearly overwhelmed as you get to his heart and strike. You've never seen the explosion from inside before. It's so bright.

The world is safe now. The island is gone.

Is it worth it all? It has to be, you tell yourself, as people celebrate your victories in a shrinking world. Refugees who have fled the fallout zones don't seem to agree, but at least they're alive right? And you know you're almost done. Jormag and Primordus, opposites and twins, rise together and somehow feel like childsplay after the last one. Perhaps it's because aurene is an equal to them now. You don't dare to think of the devastation that would be left if she were to die now. Thankfully you don't have to as the siblings tear each other apart.

The world is safe now. The mountains are gone.

No one has seen the final dragon in ages, hidden away deep underwater until you stumble into the truth while chasing a lesser threat. Soo Won was so gentle once, but the void ravages all. It feasts on the magic you released so willingly into the world, your devastations have paved the way for this chaos.

The world is safe now, for the void to reform.

You've survived so much despite the odds, held together by the very magic degrading your bones and poisoning your blood. The void pulls at those strings as it taunts you through the voice of the dragon who started it all. It's the hardest fight you've ever faced. As Aurene pumps you full of power to survive, you wonder if your death would bring destruction too in this moment. But it's left a mystery as Soo Won falls and the void fades. There's a moment of peacefulness you've never felt before, the grandmother hanging on long enough to comfort her granddaughter. But she can't prevent the state of her death. The jade sea shatters beneath your feet as she dies.

The world is safe now. But how much of it is left?

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #gw2 fan submission #quaille #hiiiiii this is specifically about quaille's au #where each dragon's death leaves a monumental magic explosion and essentially #a radiation zone that reflects their element #orr kills and revives and degrades everything in it like a recording played too many times over #maguuma strangles itself with too much growth choking out its own light #the desert crackles with an electricity that consumes anything that holds life #the mountains rage against themselves with deadly storms that tear apart anyone who gets caught in the middle #the jade sea has shattered and flooded cantha #quaille is a mess of these aftershocks from within #was it worth the mission?

[tomorrowusa]

« By overwhelming people with the sheer volume and vulgarity of his antics, Trump and his team are trying to burn out the part of our brains that can discern truth from fiction, right from wrong, good from evil. His campaign’s goal is to turn voters into moral zombies who can no longer tell the difference between Stormy and Hunter or classified documents and personal laptops, who cannot parse what a “bloodbath” means, who no longer have the ability to be shocked when a political leader calls other human beings “animals” and “vermin.”

Trump isn’t worried that all of this will cause voters to have a kind of mental meltdown: He’s counting on it. He needs ordinary citizens to become so mired in moral chaos and so cognitively paralyzed that they are unable to comprehend the disasters that would ensue if he returns to the White House. »

— Tom Nichols, journalist and academic, writing at The Atlantic.

We should consider Trump's toxic output as an incentive to vanquish him rather than as more reason to tune out.

Letting minor pro-Trump comments go unchallenged signals passive acceptance of those remarks to others. It's useful to develop a collection of funny, snarky, and dismissive interjections to shoot back with. Making the other side play defense prevents them from scoring points.

Don't count on winning serious debates with Trumpsters; they aren't interested in thoughtful exchanges of ideas. But you can put them in their place by demeaning their idol.

Trying to convert Trumpsters simply won't work with 98% of them. But making their praise of Trump look silly when there are Trump-curious onlookers can have a more successful outcome with that latter group.

ProTip: Don't worry about staying on topic in such encounters. Make Trumpsters play by your rules rather than the other way around. There's no shortage of Donald "Toad" Trump sleaze and failures to draw from. Rhetorically, kick below the belt with steel-tipped pointy shoes.

#donald trump #don't let trump wear you down #flood the zone with shit #make trumpsters play defense #election 2024 #vote blue no matter who #tom nichols

[kiose]

Maybe one day... and THAT day is TODAY

A little flashback for the Football League AU If ya dream big you too, like RD, can make it to the big leagues 💪 (Thank ya to all the peeps leaving nice comments and tags for the AU, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one having fun :P)

#Spitfire #Rainbow Dash #spitdash #firedash #Wonderbolts #MLP #My Little Pony #My Little Pony Friendship is Magic #Football League MLP AU #Art Zone #How long till I run outta steam? Who knows? But hey at least I'm having the time of my life drawing all of these ideas #I also have sketches for Fire Emblem and Shera I swear I'm not just flooding you with the ponies #my fav team made it to the finals of the tourney and that has been filling me with inspiration #I'm posting this one and running bc I have places to go...things to do away from internets

[danielnelsen]

it stopped raining about 10 hours ago so i wish i’d been awake to check the 24hr level then, but i think the fact that it’s dry for 3 days and even then it’s only gonna be 5mm is a pretty funny comparison

#not entirely funny. like the floods aren’t funny. we only got a few cm built up on the porch but it still needs work to clean up #we’re not in a major flood zone or in the area with severe flooding and it’s certainly not at all funny further south #but the speed with which it stopped is… like funny in a surprising way #looking at the hourly rain forecast from a few days ago was like. 100% chance of rain every hour for a few days then 50% at 6am today #and then none until tuesday. so specific and so fast to stop #and then today isn’t even cloudy. completely blue sky sunny day #personal

[simplyghosting]

“Waterfront property” is not a bonus in Florida, it is a warning.

#ghost posts #hurricane season comes say goodbye to your house #also NEVER get houses in flood zones bc they WILL flood #that’s not a chance thing it’s just a matter of time #friend had their house flood to the second floor #this is mainly me being livid over all the construction #and people moving in that don’t care about the state or land

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

it's unjustifiably stupid but man, I have always wanted a WWII or Vietnam era/style parachute rig.

#if anyone needs me I'll be drowning in some flooded Norman field because of a misdrop incident #you ever wonder how many Dick Winters or Ronald Speirs got just fucking taken out by a stupid accident and never even set foot on the dirt? #how many dudes of that caliber fell out of a glider that disintegrated or landed in the channel because a C-47 got lost #or had the stupid luck to be nailed by flak before they even hit their landing zone and got the green light to jump #anyway #T-5 parachute if anyone is wondering what I want for Christmas

[folimoli]

my bass....might be fine....

#i dont have my amp here #but im back at the flood zone to clean up #and my bass...looks fine

[mostlysignssomeportents]

General Mills and cheaply bought "dietitians" co-opted the anti-diet movement

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in NEXT THURSDAY (Apr 11) in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroehttps://cockeyed.com/lessons/viagra/viagra.html, then PROVIDENCE, RI (Apr 12), and beyond!

Steve Bannon isn't wrong: for his brand of nihilistic politics to win, all he has to do is "flood the zone with shit," demoralizing people to the point where they no longer even try to learn the truth.

This is really just a more refined, more potent version of the tactical doubt sown by Big Tobacco about whether smoking caused cancer, a playbook later adopted by the fossil fuel industry to sell climate denial. You know Darrell Huff's 1954 classic How To Lie With Statistics? Huff was a Big Tobacco shill (his next book, which wasn't ever published, was How To Lie With Cancer Statistics). His mission wasn't to help you spot statistical malpractice – an actual thing that is an actual problem that you should actually learn to spot. It was to turn you into a nihilist who didn't believe anything could be known:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

Corporations don't need you to believe that their products are beneficial or even non-harmful. They just need you to believe nothing. If you don't know what's true, then why not just do whatever feels good, man? #YOLO!

These bannonfloods of shit are a favored tactic of strongmen and dictators. Their grip on power doesn't depend on their citizens trusting them – it's enough that they trust no one:

http://jonathanstray.com/networked-propaganda-and-counter-propaganda

Bannonflooding is especially beloved of the food industry. Food is essential, monopolized, and incredibly complicated, and many of the most profitable strategies for growing, processing and preparing food are very bad for the people who eat that food. Rather than sacrificing profits, the food industry floods the zone with shit, making it impossible to know what's true, in hopes that we will just eat whatever they're serving:

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2003460

Now, the "nothing can be known" gambit only works if it's really hard to get at the truth. So it helps that nutrition and diet are very complex subjects, but it helps even more that the nutrition and diet industry are a cesspool of quacks and junk science. This is a "scientific discipline" whose prestigious annual meetings are sponsored (and catered) by McDonald's:

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/05/my-trip-mcdonalds-sponsored-nutritionist-convention/

It's a "science" whose most prominent pitchmen peddle quack nostrums and sue the critics who point out (correctly) that eating foods high in chlorophyll will not "oxygenate your blood" (hint, chlorophyll only makes oxygen in the presence of light, which is notably lacking in your colon):

https://www.badscience.net/2007/02/ms-gillian-mckeith-banned-from-calling-herself-a-doctor/

When the quack-heavy world of nutrition combines with the socially stigmatized world of weight-loss, you get a zone ripe for shitflooding. The majority of Americans are "overweight" (according to a definition that relies on the unscientific idea of BMI) and nearly half of Americans are "obese." These numbers have been climbing steadily since the 1970s, and every diet turns out to be basically bullshit:

https://headgum.com/factually-with-adam-conover/what-does-ozepmic-actually-do-with-dr-dhruv-khullar

Notwithstanding the new blockbuster post-Ozempic drugs, we're been through an unbroken 50-year run of more and more of us being fatter and fatter, even as fat stigma increased. Fat people are treated as weak-willed and fundamentally unhealthy, while the most prominent health-risks of being fat are roundly neglected: the mental health effects of being shamed, and the physical risks of having doctors ignore your health complaints, no matter how serious they sound, and blame them on your weight:

https://maintenancephase.buzzsprout.com/1411126/11968083-glorifying-obesity-and-other-myths-about-fat-people

Fat people and their allies have banded together to address these real, urgent harms. The "body acceptance" movement isn't merely about feeling good in your own skin: it's also about fighting discrimination, demanding medical care (beyond "lose some weight") and warning people away from getting on the diet treadmill, which can lead to dangerous eating disorders and permanent weight gain:

https://www.beacon.org/You-Just-Need-to-Lose-Weight-P1853.aspx

Fat stigma is real. The mental health risks of fat-shaming are real. Eating disorders are real. Discrimination against fat people is real. The fact that these things are real doesn't mean that the food industry can't flood the zone with shit, though. On the contrary: the urgency of these issues, combined with the poor regulation of dietitians, makes the "what should you eat" zone perfect for flooding with endless quantities of highly profitable shit.

Perhaps you've gotten some of this shit on you. Have you found yourself watching a video from a dietitian influencer like Cara Harbstreet, Colleen Christensen or Lauren Smith, promoting "health at any size" with hashtags like #DerailTheShame and #AntiDiet? These were paid campaigns sponsored by General Mills, Pepsi, and other multinational, multibillion-dollar corporations.

Writing for The Examination, Sasha Chavkin, Anjali Tsui, Caitlin Gilbert and Anahad O'Connor describe the way that some of the world's largest and most profitable corporations have hijacked a movement where fat people and their allies fight stigma and shame and used it to peddle the lie that their heavily processed, high-calorie food is good for you:

https://www.theexamination.org/articles/as-obesity-rises-big-food-and-dietitians-push-anti-diet-advice

It's a surreal tale. They describe a speech by Amy Cohn, General Mills’ senior manager for nutrition, to an audience at a dietitian's conference, where Cohn "denounced the media for 'pointing the finger at processed foods' and making consumers feel ashamed of their choices." This is some next-level nihilism: rather than railing against the harmful stigma against fat people, Cohn wants us to fight the stigma against Cocoa Puffs.

This message isn't confined to industry conferences. Dietitians with large Tiktok followings like Cara Harbstreet then carry the message out to the public. In Harbstreet's video promoting Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs and Trix, she says, "I will always advocate for fearlessly nourishing meals, including cereal…Because everyone deserves to enjoy food without judgment, especially kids":

https://www.tiktok.com/@streetsmart.rd/video/7298403730989436206

Dietitians, nutritionists and the food industry have always had an uncomfortably close relationship, but the industry's shitflooding kicked into high gear when the FDA proposed rules limiting which foods the industry can promote as "healthy." General Mills, Kelloggs and Post have threatened a First Amendment suit against such a regulation, arguing that they have a free speech right to describe manifestly unhealthy food as "healthy."

The anti-diet movement – again, a legitimate movement aimed at fighting the dangerous junk science behind dieting – has been co-opted by the food industry, who are paying dietitian influencers to say things like "all foods have value" while brandishing packages of Twix and Reese's. In their Examination article, the authors profile people who struggled with their weight, then, after encountering the food industry's paid disinformation, believed that "healthy at any size" meant that it would be unhealthy to avoid highly processed, high calorie food. These people gained large amounts of weight, and found their lives constrained and their health severely compromised.

I've been overweight all my life. I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting when I was 12. I come from a family of overweight people with the chronic illnesses often associated with being fat. This is a subject that's always on my mind. I even wrote a whole novel about the promise and peril of a weight-loss miracle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429969284/makers

I think the anti-diet movement, and its associated ideas like body acceptance and healthy at every size, are enormously positive developments and hugely important. It's because I value these ideas that I'm so disgusted with Big Food and its cynical decision to flood the zone with shit. It's also why I'm so furious with dietitians and nutritionists for failing to self-regulate and become a real profession, the kind that censures and denounces quacks and shills.

I have complicated feelings about Ozempic and its successors, but even if these prove to be effective and safe in the long term, and even if we rein in the rapacious pharma companies so that they no longer sell a $5 product for $1000, I would still want dietary science to clean up its act:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2816824

I'm not a nihilist. I think we can use science to discover truths – about ourselves and our world. I want to know those truths, and I think they can be known. The only people who benefit from convincing you that the truth is unknowable are the people who want to lie to you.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/05/corrupt-for-cocoa-puffs/#flood-the-zone-with-shit

#pluralistic #corruption #nutrition #food #diets #dieticians #nutritionists #junk science #junk food #astroturf #fat acceptance #fatphobia #health #nihilism #steve bannon #flood the zone with shit #general mills #dietitians

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 6, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) met in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, sparking speculation over the 2024 Republican presidential field. Hard-right figures like Donald Trump and his loyalists Mike Lindell, the MyPillow entrepreneur, and Kari Lake, who lost the 2022 race for Arizona governor, attended, along with House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and right-wing media figure Steve Bannon, but many of those testing the 2024 presidential waters gave it a miss. CPAC started in 1974, and since then it has been a telltale for the direction the Republican Party is going. This year was no exception. CPAC was smaller this year than in the past, and it showcased the Republican extremism that is far outside the mainstream of normal American politics. “Feels like MAGA country!” Donald Trump, Jr., told the crowd. The headliner was former president Trump, twice impeached, deeply involved in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and embroiled in a range of criminal investigations. In his speech, Trump embraced his leadership of those hardening around a violent mentality based in grievance that echoes that of fascist movements. “In 2016, I declared: I am your voice,” he said. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.” He claimed that he and his followers are “engaged in an epic struggle to rescue our country from the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it…. We are going to finish what we started. We started something that was a miracle. We’re going to complete the mission, we’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. We’re going to make America great again.” After listing all the “villains and scoundrels” he and his followers would “demolish,” “drive out,” “cast out,” “throw off,” “beat,” “rout,” and “evict,” he continued: “We have no choice. This is the final battle.” Other Republican hopefuls are waiting in the wings. Trump has, in fact, never won the popular vote, and his leadership has brought historic losses for the party, but his control over his voting base makes him the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Other candidates seem to be hoping that criminal indictments will knock Trump out of the race and open space for them without making them take a stand against Trump and thus alienate his followers. It seems likely that if such an indictment were forthcoming, they would blame Democrats for Trump’s downfall and hope to ride to office with his voting bloc behind them, without having to embrace that voting blocs’ ideology. That hope seems delusional, considering the increasing emphasis of the Trump Republicans and their imitators on violence. The Republicans are hitting on a constant refrain that crime is on the upswing in the U.S. Since crime does not, in fact, seem to be rising, it seems worth noting that an emphasis on crime justifies the use of state power to combat that crime and normalizes the idea of violence against “criminals,” a category the Republican Party is defining more and more broadly. This will be an extremely difficult genie to stuff back into a bottle, especially as leading Republican figures are increasingly talking in martial terms and referring to the U.S. Civil War. That emphasis on violence corresponds with something else on display at this year’s CPAC: how completely the Republican Party now depends on a false narrative constructed out of lies. CPAC fact checkers had their work cut out for them. Linda Qiu of the New York Times found Trump repeated a number of things previously identified as incorrect as well as adding some new ones. Politifact fact checked other speakers and found they, too, continued to develop the idea of a country run by those who hate it and are eager to undermine it. Various speakers said the Department of Justice is calling parents worried about their kids’ educations “terrorists” (false), fentanyl will kill you if any of it touches your skin, thus putting us all at deadly risk (false), cartels have “operational control” of the U.S.-Mexico border (false), and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has said he wants America’s “sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine” (again, false). Right-wing media amplifies this narrative. Depositions in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against the Fox News Corporation made it very clear that both Fox News executives and hosts work closely with Republican operatives to spread a Republican narrative, even when it is based on lies—in that case, in the lie that Trump won the election, which they privately agreed was ridiculous. So, when House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave to FNC personality Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 44,000 hours of video from the footage from the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he indicated the Republicans will continue to try to garner support with a false narrative. Carlson’s coverage of the videos started tonight, with him depicting the rioters as “sightseers” and claiming that other media outlets have lied about the violence on January 6. In reality, Carlson simply didn’t show the many hours of violent footage: more than 1,000 people have been arrested on charges relating to their actions surrounding January 6, more than half have pleaded guilty, and around one third of those charged were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding police officers. McCarthy’s desperation to maintain the party’s narrative shows in his unilateral decision to give Carlson exclusive access to that video. A wide range of media outlets are clamoring for equal access to the footage while congressional Democrats are demanding to know on what authority McCarthy gave Carlson that access. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol had arranged to transfer the films to the National Archives, but when the Republicans rewrote the rules in January, they instead transferred the video to the House Administration Committee. McCarthy did not consult the committee when he gave access to the films to Carlson. Nor did he consult House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who has noted that releasing the films without consultation with the Capitol Police is a security risk. Instead, McCarthy apparently coordinated with Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight. Loudermilk led a tour of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021. Representative Norma J. Torres (D-CA), ranking member of the Oversight Subcommittee, told Justin Papp of Roll Call that McCarthy “totally went around, not just the subcommittee, but the entire committee…. I hope Ethics will have something to say about this. I think it needs to be investigated on all different levels.” In contrast, House Administration Committee chair Bryan Steil (R-WI) appeared unconcerned with the end run around the responsible committee, saying that “the key is that we’re balancing the transparency that’s needed for the American people with the security interests of the House.” Republicans are planning to take this disinformation campaign across the nation. Despite their insistence that they want to slash government spending, Republican leaders are in fact urging their colleagues to engage in “field hearings” that will take their “message” straight to voters at a time when they are not managing to accomplish much of anything at all in Washington. Jordan’s Judiciary Committee has requested a travel budget of $262,000, more than 30 times what it spent on travel last year and 3 times what it spent before the pandemic, and it is not just the Judiciary Committee that is hitting the road. As Annie Karni and Catie Edmondson of the New York Times noted today, this also means that they speak at the plants of Republican donors, thus giving them free advertising. Congressional Democrats say they received almost no notice of these trips.

[MORE] 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From an American #Heather Cox Richardson #CPAC #False Narrative #flood the zone #corrupt Gop #criminal GOP #The Big Lie

[vulcannic]

so ian almost becoming a cat 5 huh?

#text #delete later #i am kinda slightly nervous haha #i live in eastern central florida so i’m still holding out that it won’t be too too bad #and mikes family isn’t freaking out so i’m using that as my guide #but i am definitely expecting to lose power for at least a day #i’m not in a flood zone either but idk i’m still nervous of flooding i feel like we should’ve stopped and grab sandbags just in case #idk i’ll be repeating the florida hurricane mantra of ‘eh it’ll be fine’

[samuraisharkie]

If you’re putting off loud ass firework tonight in the suburbs around other houses, let it be known I hate you. nearly kills my dog every year.

#first day of disability month is flooded with panic inducing noise. fuck America #could you losers drive out to open country that’s flat to let out fucking industrial level fireworks. #I don’t mean the small driveway ones or even just one or two smaller ones #I mean the ones that fucking send a shockwave through the whole house like a bomb is dropping. #nothing BUT those it sounds like a war zone out here #I hope you people set ur house on fire #killing birds bats and bugs and more #y’all aren’t even celebrating veterans like you think you are. every vet I’ve ever talked to or heard of HATES it. #putting people in danger to blow out ur eardrums setting off massive fireworks at close range. #y’all are fucking annoying #I wish there was like. etiquette for fireworks this time of year. #where you could put a sign out like ‘this neighborhood as a very anxious senior dog’ or ‘this house is sensitive to loud noises’ #’this house as someone w PTSD’ etc. but no everyone is supposed to get over it and shut the fuck up #and if we don’t like it we’re joyless funkillers #and if the sign is out then you have to find somewhere else away from that house to set off your fireworks. #and if you can’t find a spot without signs then you fucking get over it and have ur burger without ear shattering noise #or you know. go watch PROFESSIONALS set off fireworks instead of risking yourselves your neighbors and everything around you #I’m sorry if ur 4th of July is ruined bc you could set off industrial professional level fireworks then you genuinely need psychiatric help #if you set off a few. this isn’t about you. if you’re putting on a fucking show stopping finale this in fact is #every Fourth of July is a borderline extinction event for wildlife too. animals can die just from the sound. #they DO die. there’s a massive amount of dead animals found every year after nationwide firework events like this #y’all are killing the wildlife and then scratching ur dumbass heads going ‘huh I wonder where the fireflies went’ #you know what’s prettier than polluting the air with pyrotechnics? fireflies! where are they? you killed them! #i LIKE fireworks too. I just don’t like them in my neighborhood by my novice neighbors surrounding me on all sides. #not every single house needs to set off fireworks. fucking stop it

[soulinkpoetry]

When you’ve been keeping pain in for too long and someone gives you the permission to open the floodgates , it’s not easy to control the pain that comes out. Have some compassion and try to understand without judging. If you’ve never experienced something they went through don’t mock their pain. They just need someone to sit with them and wipe their tears.

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• Music by Glykeria

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#holding it in for too long #floods of tears #understanding #compassion #judgement free zone #soulinkpoetry #poetry #she writes #thoughts #feelings #tears #aman aman #poets on tumblr #that’s life