Thanks for the tip, I’ll give it a try the next time that the algorithm goes nuts.

I had been using YouTube for years without being presented rightwing propaganda in my suggestions. I mostly just watched strategy gaming, history, technology channels and some peculiar travelling blogs. And my suggested was just mostly those things.

Then one day I used my YouTube account to cast kid shows for my niece for the first time. After that I was suggested more kid shows which didn’t interest me personally, but I also started getting suggested cat videos, which I obviously clicked. And the week after that half my suggested feed was rightwing misogynist/racist/culture war misinformation, and it took a lot of “do not recommend channel” to clean it up again.

So now I believe that there is a concerted effort by some malicious actors to train Google’s algorithm to assume that if someone is interested in cat videos, that they would then also be open to becoming a misogynist racist prick.

I remember from an older article that it’s a very small college and the new republican dean/president/chairman (I forgot what he was) is being paid $ 700 000 per year, about $1000 per student. I’m certain that he isn’t the only person making bank from this. It seems to be a grift to funnel tax money into the pockets of friends and sycophants, and while the college board tries to make itself relevant in the eyes of their maga public, the future of the students appears to not be a consideration, because they’re not the ones paying for this circus.

Apparently fighting the republican culture war is very profitable for republican grifters.

According to the headline it’s 20% of those who voted for the mayor, not 20% of the population. So fe a drop from 60% to 48% voter participation.

If a system encourages people to not vote when they have no clue who they are voting for, then that might be considered a feature instead of an issue. Though one problem I can think off is that coaching of voters on how to vote becomes even more effective. I’m on the fence on this one.

Ps: is a 20% drop enough to say that something “cratered” or is this just another superlative clickbait title?

True, headlines matter.

Why “no”? You’re basically saying the same as the summary.

Here’s actual statistics: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303450/bilateral-aid-to-ukraine-in-a-percent-of-donor-gdp/

Apparently Denmark is leading the pack with 1.83%, closely followed by the 3 Baltic countries. Poland is 7th with 0.68%. The usa is “only” at 0.35%, which is still by far the most of any of the non european nations that have send help, and also significantly more than a bunch of eu nations.

This is all aid, so weapons, humanitarian and financial. With the different kinds split out: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-aid-to-ukraine/

Trump is happening because far right republicans realized after Watergate that if they wanted to get away with crimes in the future, that they needed to have news that presents “alternate” facts that are favorable to their narrative or that would at the least muddy the waters. Roger Ailes his plan worked basically.

Without censoring his appearances, Trump comes across as petulant/weak/selfish/stupid/hateful/… Without censoring his history, republican voters would have known that he was a serial scam artist, serial adulterer, … Basically without that alternate fact media supporting rightwing skullduggery, there would never have been a president Trump.

Imo it’s nonsense to claim that Trump getting elected, is happening because voters are angry because of mysterious reasons that no one can figure out, when those voters are so misinformed that they consistently vote against their own interests and believe stupid conspiracy theories that are being pushed to rile them up against the “other”. As long as that many people live in an alternate reality based on lies and hate, there is no helping them. So the challenge becomes: how do you bring them out of it and how do you prevent it from happening again in the future.

Maybe it’s because it was in the same language group as those others that polish got singled out. People who speak an Indo European language will expect to be lost when first trying to learn a language outside of the group, but might not expect to be so confuddled from a related language. Expectations basically.

The consequences of prolife politicians and their voters: “This corresponds with a 7% absolute increase in infant mortality overall ( ≈ 247 excess deaths; 95% CI, 73-421) and 10% in infant mortality with congenital anomalies ( ≈ 204 excess deaths; 95% CI, 60-348) in relevant months after Dobbs.”.

The excess deaths are still ongoing probably and i’m interested in extrapolating it to a per year statistic, but I can’t make out over how many months this data was, that part of the article reads like a convoluted mess for me and I have no desire to decipher it.

In the next paragraph: “by the time of the Daubert hearing, the printer that Cybercheck had identified in its report couldn’t be located.”. I suspect there never was a printer. If asked leading questions by the investigators, then the company probably fabricates evidence that corroborates the suspicions of the investigators. And the quality of fabricated evidence is probably poor because of how cheap they are. Quality takes time and skill, and skilled time costs money.

Parallel construction requires real evidence though. This company just seems to fabricate evidence to confirm police hypothesises. I think what happens is: Police ask “was this person there at that time on that day”, the company conjures up a report that the person’s mystical digital profile pinged a wireless printer at that place at roughly the right time, but also at a second other time for a tiny bit of credibility (but by only changing the date of the timestamp, which actually makes it more suspect). People go search for that printer, and then there never was a printer.

And given that the only thing that external parties saw, was less than a 1000 lines of code for automatic searches and none for interpretation, it might not even be automated, but just a human pasting together reports. A human pretending to be ai.

I’d call it outsourced fabrication of evidence.

I’m sorry if I come across as preachy in the below post, but I wanted to try and explain to you where the critique is coming from. And also that it’s not personal or any widespread resentment.

I (and many others) get what a thankless and also necessary job moderating is. It’s not easy to do it well, it’s frustrating, it’s thankless and without it the community would be dead. But being a moderator and sticking out your neck brings you exposure and you are guaranteed to meet more asshats than you ever thought existed. But the users are not one homogenous group, it’s not because one user has flung abuse at moderators, that all users are now suddenly resentful of moderators.

The person you are replying to, put a good bit of time in listing what comments were most up voted, which are probably the comments that found most support amongst the users in that thread. In the same way that we should not be dismissive of what you do or say, you shouldn’t be dismissive of what others do or say (or up vote). Mutual respect and all that.

Self reflection is also important, it’s important to realize and accept that it is possible to be wrong about something. Doing a mea culpa and moving on is far easier in the long term than doubling down and digging a deeper hole, yet it’s a lot rarer because it hurts our ego in the short term.

Their final point about a problem with handling feedback rings true to me:

• You (not you personally, but the team that did that feedback thread) have apparently treated up- and down votes on a thread as a poll and a popular mandate for action, but up- and down votes are not a poll and most (probably most) people don’t use them as such.

• Up- and down votes on comments are useful for finding which remarks resonated with or turned away other users. They are not a poll either, and most upvoted are not automatically most correct at all, but they give you a chance to read the room.

• You (now you personally) have thrown shade on the people that up voted comments against the bot, by insinuating that those people might have been bots themselves and that therefore their opinions are irrelevant. Yes it’s possible that there are some users using alts, but all those users? Not very likely.

• The best feedback I saw in that thread was not in the up or down votes, it was in the comments themselves. There were some very compelling arguments as to why using a biased site to display bias, was a bad idea. Those comments also had quite a bit of upvotes, so the way I read the room, that was a popular sentiment.

• The person you are replying to made a few arguments and one scathing critique which they probably hoped that you would improve on in the future. Imo a polite disagreement with your previous statements. You respond by being dismissive of his arguments and acting like it’s a personal attack. They were sticking to facts, you’re making it about you as a person. I really don’t think that was their intent.