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Stuff you just can't make up

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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Daryl   » Mon Dec 05, 2016 8:41 am

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In today's news,
"A MAN with an assault rifle walked into a Washington pizza store today to ‘self-investigate’ fake election campaign reports that Hillary Clinton had run a child sex ring there.

The gunman was arrested after firing at least one shot, causing panic and nearby businesses to go into lockdown."

A good example of combining everyone's god given right to have an assault rifle, and individual sovereignty. As expected it didn't go well, but the idiot is still alive.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by The E   » Mon Dec 05, 2016 8:58 am

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Daryl wrote:A good example of combining everyone's god given right to have an assault rifle, and individual sovereignty. As expected it didn't go well, but the idiot is still alive.


You forgot another crucial ingredient: A willingness to believe something because it fits the narrative of liberals being the worst criminals ever.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by dscott8   » Tue Dec 06, 2016 12:17 pm

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This thread may be titled "Stuff You Just Can't Make Up", but the problem we face is that you CAN make up just about anything these days, and if you're challenged, all you have to do is claim that the burden of disproof rests on the challenger (the Russell's Teapot fallacy). There is a concerted effort being made to discredit the profession of journalism so that agenda-driven false constructs can gain traction. Every effort to debunk such slanders is met with cries of "false flag", "corporate media bias", "crisis actors", and "conspiracy". The 1st Amendment freedom of the press is being invaded by termites.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Annachie   » Tue Dec 06, 2016 5:34 pm

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Nah E it's worse than that. For too many peoples news isn't news unless it fits their preconceived notions. If it doesn't then it's fake.

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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by gcomeau   » Tue Dec 06, 2016 6:02 pm

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Annachie wrote:Nah E it's worse than that. For too many peoples news isn't news unless it fits their preconceived notions. If it doesn't then it's fake.


This tends to happen more on one side of things than the other however...

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechcons ... he-suburbs


"During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. "It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they're about to get served," Coler says. "It caused an explosion in the number of sites. I mean, my gosh, the number of just fake accounts on Facebook exploded during the Trump election."

Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait."



And...

"When did you notice that fake news does best with Trump supporters?

Well, this isn't just a Trump-supporter problem. This is a right-wing issue. Sarah Palin's famous blasting of the lamestream media is kind of record and testament to the rise of these kinds of people. The post-fact era is what I would refer to it as. This isn't something that started with Trump. This is something that's been in the works for a while. His whole campaign was this thing of discrediting mainstream media sources, which is one of those dog whistles to his supporters. When we were coming up with headlines it's always kind of about the red meat. Trump really got into the red meat. He knew who his base was. He knew how to feed them a constant diet of this red meat.

We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out."
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by biochem   » Tue Dec 06, 2016 11:39 pm

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https://www.google.com/amp/nypost.com/2 ... ent=safari

For an opposition take on fake news
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by biochem   » Wed Dec 07, 2016 12:13 am

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Re fact checking

Just something I've noticed. Usually (usually) when I read a "fact" check article it seems as if the definition of the word fact is way too broad. Generally the ruling of "false" is not just used for verifiable past events such as I have a Ph.D. in xyz but also for disagreeing with the expert opinion or for future events (or more precisely the expert's opinion of what the future event is likely to be for example the cost of the border wall). Sorry to the fact checkers but the experts can be wrong disagreeing with them is anyone's option. It is OK to flag opinion statements as disagreeing with the experts but it is NOT OK to call those statements false.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by The E   » Wed Dec 07, 2016 4:53 am

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biochem wrote:https://www.google.com/amp/nypost.com/2016/12/04/the-war-on-fake-news-is-all-about-censoring-real-news/amp/?client=safari

For an opposition take on fake news


There are good points in there. No matter which political ideology we subscribe to, we are more likely to lend credence to news that fit our preconceptions; it is therefore vital that we check everything, especially the stuff that we agree with.

That being said, I think there are two categories of fake news (that sometimes can be separated quite clearly and sometimes become intermingled): On one hand, we have articles like the one cited in that NY Post article, feel-good stories about how someone converted to the other side (or was almost converted) that fit in with our notion of what media influence is like, but that ultimately have little to no relevance to the discussion because they're focussed on the experience of a single person or small group and that are therefore hard to fact-check (especially if they do not include anything that might involve parties that would have to take official notice and generate a record trail). On the other, we have blatantly false or misleading statements of fact about provable issues (Breitbart misusing reporting from the Weather Channel, to use a recent example, or Trump overexaggerating the number of jobs he saved at Carrier, or the whole sordid drama that is Pizzagate).

It is the latter that causes way more damage, as they are the articles that cause people to make wrong decisions (like, for example, clinging on to the delusion that climate change is natural or worse, nothing to worry about).
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by biochem   » Wed Dec 07, 2016 11:12 am

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Exaggerations are widely different that outright inaccuracies. For example with trump (and most other politicians) I always assume exaggeration. So when trump says I saved 1100 jobs, I auto-adjust it mentally to 500-750 jobs to adjust for his well known tendency to exaggerate. It was actually 800 jobs. But exaggeration is really easy to mentally correct for just adjust by 50-75%.

Outright nutty ideas like pizza gate aren't that difficult to spot either for those of us that aren't mental cases. With a nut like the pizza case guy if it was't that it would be something else. Perhaps he'd shoot a bunch of people to make Jodi foster love him. (For those outside the USA that is a reference to the nutcase who shot president Reagan).


The biggest fake news threat is plausible but false news. The kind of thing that sound like it could be true but isn't.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by RedBaron   » Wed Dec 07, 2016 8:10 pm

RedBaron

Michael Everett wrote:You want crazy?

The UK has a party known as The Monster Raving Loony Party who exist mainly to poke fun at politics and ensure that it isn't taken too seriously.

The mad part?

With the sole exception of "Introducing Crocodiles to the Thames", every single part of their first Manifesto has been put into law.

...wat


...when they stumbled out of Perth City Hall first, leaving Cunningham trapped inside while the OMRLP (and one defecting Scottish Liberal Democrat) conducted the crowd in choral renditions of both "Spot the Loony" and "Let's All Laugh at Labour"

--------

In the Interests of national security we will ban all Leeks from the Welsh Assembly canteen

To save money we will reduce the Welsh assembly from 60 seats to 5 and create the Welsh Ensemble

We will Legalise Broccoli

Anyone over 5 years old who can hold a crayon will be eligible to vote

We will Introduce Mermaids to Tiger Bay to increase tourism

Health & Safety: We propose to ban Self Responsibilty on the grounds that it may be dangerous to your health

Tax credits will be paid to nice people. There will be a “total bastard” tax for everyone else

Any cabinet minister found telling lies will be shot across the English Channel in a high velocity circus cannon to save time and first class travel expenses



:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Sounds like they're fans of Monty Python...
Or followers of the Goddess (see "Principia Discordia")
http://principiadiscordia.com/book/5.php
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