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Marc DuQuesne

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Posts posted by Marc DuQuesne

  1. I thought I had my anger issues under control and could come back here without it getting the best of me. I was wrong, I'm starting to get those old familiar feelings. I wasn't built for the internet. I'm going to hang it up before I become one of the people looking forward to a civil war (again). Enjoy the echo chamber. 

  2. Your opinion means jack to me. You know nothing about me other than your false assumptions. I'm just the Trump voting, climate denying bible thumper right? Doesn't matter if not one of those things is true. Doesn't matter if I've done thrice as much to fight climate change as you. I'm just the uncaring conservative. 

  3. 1 hour ago, Iceheart said:

    You have the same attitude toward this and every other bad thing on the horizon as my parents and grandparents. If it doesn’t directly affect me, fuck everyone else it does directly affect.

    Which is the attitude that got our country in the place it’s in, btw.

    Don't be dumb. I was talking about the prospect of violence in the form of a civil war or a near analog. Much better for everyone if the Mongols stay on the steppe and leave the mayhem to the ineffectual idiots.

    Also, not putting your big nose where it doesn't belong (politically) is called federalism. It's what allows people with dramatically different opinions and beliefs to live in the same country WITHOUT a civil war. You do Michigan.

  4. I'm actually a bit more optimistic than I was a few months ago. Mostly because things are going pretty well with coronavirus here in Idaho. The economy is strong, unemployment has ticked up slightly but it's still only 4.2%. The state has a $400 million budget surplus. The death rate is relatively low. We're too busy for a civil war.

     

    There is a decent chance we can eat popcorn and watch the mobs eat their parents from afar.

  5. This started long before 2016. Trump is the symptom, not the disease.

     

    Fozzie put the bullseye right around my fear. A common theme in history is that at a certain point people stop driving events and get caught up in the avalanche. The French revolution started with some fiscal reforms, then the dominoes started falling, then the heads started falling, then the countries started falling.

     

    It only takes one Gavrilo Princip, and we have a wannabe on every corner. 

  6. None of those examples come close to the horror a civil war would entail in the modern US. If you live in a big city like NY or LA you have a better than even chance of watching your children die of starvation/dehydration/dysentery/exposure. The enemy won't even bother shooting you, they'll just turn off the lights and shit in your water. 

  7. Straight shooter doesn't mean effective communicator, just that he spits out whatever stupid thing enters his mind. We used to have people who were paid to "mince" through the words for us, then accurately and fairly translate them for the masses. We called them journalists.

  8. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-charlottesville-transcript-20170815-story.html%3f_amp=true

     

    "And you had people, and Im not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. OK? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats."

  9. Also if half your family makes speeches for you during the first night are we moving into North Korean territory?

    That's one of those jokes I don't get right? Please tell me it's a joke.

  10. "Grab them by the *****" might have taken Trump out during the primaries, but NBC wasn't interested in helping Republican voters vet their candidate. They were sitting on it until it would have the maximum impact on the general election. It wouldn't have come out as early as it did if they hadn't been scooped. Don't call them the enemy of the people though, no matter how they walk and quack.

  11. When it comes to statues... we all cheered when it happened to Saddam's in Iraq. That's really my only opinion about the statues.

    Saddam's statue was torn down 8 months before he was captured, by people who lived under his rule. The statue was built by his regime as part of his cult of personality. He was judged by his subjects by the standards of his time. His statue was also probably destroyed as much out of fear of the Americans as hate for Saddam.

     

    There is a massive difference between that and tearing down a statue of Columbus because he doesn't stand up to the moral standards of today. How many people from 350 years ago do? Columbus doesn't need to be erased, he needs balance. Teach people about the atrocities he committed (making him no different than everyone else at the time), and about how he was the one with the wrong idea about the shape and size of our planet (he was a pear earther).

  12. Fauci, and the other experts that have to react before the science catches up, are in an impossible position. I know a lot of people who will never believe another word he says though, that whole lying to the public about the effectiveness of face masks so that there would be enough for the healthcare providers ruined his credibility.

  13. Wow, I wasn't very clear. What I meant was that, while they identified a breach to the network which they had high confidence was of Russian origin because of the tools and methods used, they found no direct evidence that it resulted in data being removed from the network. They also found evidence of intrusions which were NOT consistent with Russia.

     

    I think it's likely Russia was the source of the data that ended up on Wikileaks, but it is not the certainty it has been reported as.

     

    The whole Russia thing irritated the hell out of me. It's like having a book club, but when you show up to discuss it you find out everyone else read a different book than the one you agreed upon. Khrushchev bragged about meddling in the 1960 election to help JFK win, why doesn't anyone accuse him of being a Russian agent? Because that'd be dumb... But somehow it's a conspiracy theory to say that Russia meddling in 2016 doesn't mean Trump is a Russian agent.

  14. Public confidence in news outlets has been on a steady decline since the 70s. It took a major drop during and after the 2016 election cycle, but I think that has more to do with the media's reaction to Trump than anything Trump has done. They want to be respected like Cronkite, but they act like Limbaugh at his worst.

     

    Take the collusion hoax. Lots of us knew it was bogus from the beginning, including the people investigating it and reporting on it. Now we know (from hearing transcripts) that there was never any proof that anyone even hacked the DNC, let alone that Russia was responsible. The entire premise was fake news. News outlets, along with the intelligence and law enforcement agencies, that played that game earned the lack of trust their getting, and I think it's a very good thing that they are receiving it. A little skepticism is a good vaccine.

  15. The PPP turned into a major issue at the place I work this morning. When the Governor issued his shutdown order my employer decided we were an essential business because a small fraction of our work is for the food industry, we spent most of the time building aftermarket parts for snow machines. This morning a coworker passed around a news article showing that they received $300,000 from the program. We're about to have our own riot.

  16. Darth Ender- Thanks a lot, you put my fact into context and complicated the hell out of things. Reminds me of an Edward R. Murrow quote, "Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation." Wish he was still alive, he had a lot to say about the topic of this thread in his day.

     

    Monkeygirl- I certainly painted with too broad a brush, I've never been that good at coloring inside the lines, though I think any lawyer would disagree with "broadest brush anyone's ever painted with" considering the hate they get. I was referring to the national outlets primarily. I have a lot more trust and respect for local news outlets, and even the national ones can do some good reporting occasionally, on the few issues that haven't become politically polarized.

     

    But don't try to pretend this is a new issue that started when the Clown in Chief took his throne. You act like the press is an institution everyone respected until Trump came along, half the "news" today would have ended in a duel 200 years ago. Benjamin Franklin would be horrified by what his profession has devolved into, he wasn't that impressed with it by the time he died. He certainly would support Trump's right to use his verbal cudgel (or maybe even a real one) in reply to these "journalists".

     

    https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs16.html

  17. Throwing money at the problem doesn't seem to solve it. We spend the 2nd most per student of all countries for the piss poor results of our education system. We spend far more on healthcare than anyone else and have the most underperforming system in the developed world. We need higher expectations and accountability, whether we're talking about cable news or education. I don't have any interest in rewarding our worst performing industries with taller piles of public money.

  18.  

     

    The irony of a polemic on fake news from a website with a UFO and a dragon for its logo is amusing to me.

    I thought so too, but did you dig deeper than the logo? It really was an interesting discussion, and probably not what you think it is.

     

    My favorite quote from it,

     

    "The idea that there is such a thing as facts outside of context is a very dangerous one."

    That really stood out to me as well. I'd really like to hear more about that. Have you watched the videos? I'm not sure I have the time to commit to watching intentionally, but I might be willing to have them as "background noise" as I do my typical Netflix rewatches.

    I listened to them while I was working. I have to have something like that to keep my mind busy or the boredom of my job makes me a bit twitchy. I get in about 6 hrs of podcasts on the average day between work and the commute.

     

    Part 1 was my favorite of the three, it's more of a philosophical discussion, defining the problem, why it's a problem, and the many challenges in trying to solve it. Part 2 is an interview with a guy making a movie on the subject. Part 3 is a more technical discussion about ways to combat misinformation and disinformation.

     

    The amount of information available and our inability to process all of it was a major part of their conversation. We have information overload and are expected to have a strong opinion on every topic, even the ones we are not familiar with. Nobody can be an expert on everything, so we find ourselves trying to judge the veracity of information on the fly when we are ill equipped on the subject. This drives people into tribal bubbles where the information is filtered for us, we get the facts that support the narrative our side is pushing without inconvenient clutter, and surround ourselves with people who won't challenge our false interpretations and assumptions. This is leading to an existential threat to the premise of democracy, that 'we the people' can be informed citizens capable of responsibly participating in the process.

     

    A great deal of "fake news" is absolutely true facts presented in the wrong context. The ICU beds is a good example. They weren't exactly lying, but without information they didn't give you to put the occupancy rate in context it's impossible to reach the correct conclusion. Sometimes I think it's honest mistakes, far more often it's part of a shaped narrative.

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