nickie on 1/7/2019 at 19:00
Just a small thing but I don't understand what is meant by 'cement burns'. Is there something peculiar about US cement? I use cement all the time and generally get it all over me to no ill effect - so far.
Tony_Tarantula on 1/7/2019 at 19:37
Regular cement isn't special. The quick-dry cement causes chemical burns.
Quote:
Again you try to move the conversation on after you're shown to have forwarded a claim without any attempts at verification or even an ounce of skepticism. That's a habit for you, I know, but it's a habit you should quit.
Let's say that this turns out to never have happened.
In this case I"ll have done exactly the same thing you do regularly: cite the things that socially accepted figures of authority state as fact by just assuming they have things like "journalistic standards".
***
Saw an odd story: TMZ ran an article claiming that NBC added a fake zit to Tulsi's face during the debate: (
https://www.tmz.com/2019/06/27/tulsi-gabbard-disappearing-zit-blemish-debates/)
It's bizarre enough a story I don't know what to think yet. The weirdest thing about this already weird story is that the blemish follows her face but dissapears sometimes during the feed.
****
There's also another underreported story going on lately as anti-government protests are popping up across the globe:
[video=youtube;ibmUY23XOUM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibmUY23XOUM[/video]
I'm going to try to watch Subverse more. The reporting is extremely dry, but it's a kind of "just the facts" reporting that is almost extinct these days.
Trance on 1/7/2019 at 20:04
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
Let's say that this turns out to never have happened.
In this case I"ll have done exactly the same thing you do regularly: cite the things that socially accepted figures of authority state as fact by just assuming they have things like "journalistic standards".
It is your own damn responsibility to employ critical thinking skills, Tony. Distribute falsehoods and unsubstantiated rumors and you're going to be pulled up on it. You do it a lot, and it's not a healthy practice.
Starker on 1/7/2019 at 20:27
There's nothing special about quick-drying cement as far as burns are concerned. Any cement can cause burns if it's wet and gets into prolonged contact with the skin. It's because it's highly alkaline and lets chemicals seep into the skin more easily. Throwing it to try to cause burns, however, is highly impractical, to say the least.
Also, jumping on an unconfirmed report and using it for fearmongering is hardly the same thing as citing sources, respected or otherwise. As it was said in the very beginning: the police getting a report about something is not the same as the police confirming something took place.
Furthermore, it all turned out to be one police officer's mistaken assumption:
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(
https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/06/30/26731412/portland-police-offer-no-proof-that-protesters-had-milkshakes-with-quick-dry-cement)
In the midst of the Portland Police Bureau's (PPB) live-tweeting of yesterday's clash of left-wing and alt-right groups in downtown Portland, the bureau fired off an unusually alarming message:
“Police have received information that some of the milkshakes thrown today during the demonstration contained quick-drying cement,” read the PPB tweet.
It's since been determined this claim was based on one officer's assumption, rather than truth. However, this sweeping allegation has already been regurgitated as fact by mainstream news organizations and popular right-wing leaders, contributing to an already warped national perception of Portland politics, policing, and protest.
PPB's tweet is referencing the homemade vegan milkshakes that Popular Mobilization, one of the left-leaning groups, handed out to hundreds of attendees during the day's events. Several people ended up throwing their 12-ounce milkshakes at people associated with the alt-right and at PPB officers—but most people consumed the coconut milk-based treats.
PPB did not immediately offer proof to substantiate this claim.
Yet, PPB's tweet containing this rumor has gained nearly 13 thousand re-tweets and has been regurgitated by national media outlets like NBC News, CBS News, ABC News, and, of course, FOX News. Conservative leaders—like US Senator Ted Cruz, Ann Coulter, FOX's Laura Ingram, and former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch—also parroted the claim on their popular Twitter accounts.
More than 24 hours after posting this Tweet, PPB explained why they chose to publish it.
"A Lieutenant in the field broadcast information of his observation of a cup with appeared to have material on it consistent with quick drying cement," wrote PPB spokesperson Lt. Tina Jones in an email to the Mercury. "We put out the tweet to bring attention to this potential hazard and to encourage people to contact us if they were the victim of a crime."
It's unknown if anyone else provided actual proof that there were toxic chemicals blended into the vegan shakes. Meanwhile, many people who drank the milkshakes Saturday have shared their lack of symptoms on Twitter.
It appears that one officer's recognition that a coconut milkshake looks a little like wet cement convinced PPB to issue the worrisome tweet.
Only after PPB published this tweet did the bureau receive an anonymous email from someone sharing a "recipe" for a cement milkshake.
As of 9:30 pm Sunday, PPB had not clarified—let alone deleted—its inflammatory tweet.
Starker on 2/7/2019 at 05:05
If you think Princess Dampnut embarrassed herself at the G20, well, Lord Dampnut had her hold his beer as he embarrassed the whole US:
Quote:
(
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/on-trumps-bullshit/593062/)
President Donald Trump's penchant for out-and-out deception—lies, in common parlance, and as more and more observers are willing to label them—has meant that another of his tendencies has been eclipsed: the tendency to bluff blithely and obviously falsely. During his trip to Asia over the past few days, however, Trump has made that tendency unavoidable, offering blusteringly confident answers to questions on topics he clearly knows nothing about.
The philosopher Harry Frankfurt offers an earthy, useful description of this mode of Trump speech in his essay On Bullshit:
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He is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
Consider Trump's press conference in Osaka, Japan, on Saturday. A reporter asked Trump about a heated exchange between the Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at last week's debate on the topic of school integration: “Where do you stand on that issue of federally mandated busing?” Trump first graded the debate on style, then added, “And as far as that, I will tell you in about four weeks, because we're coming out with certain policy that's going to be very interesting and very surprising, I think, to a lot of people.”
That seemed highly unlikely, so another reporter followed up:
Quote:
Trump: Well, it has been something that they've done for a long period of time. I mean, you know, there aren't that many ways you're going to get people to schools. So this is something that's been done. In some cases, it's been done with a hammer instead of velvet glove. And, you know, that's part of it ... It is certainly a primary method of getting people to schools.
Reporter: And is it—does it relate to the policy that you're going to unveil that you just floated?
Trump: It relates to everything we're doing. And you'll be hearing about it in—over the next couple of months.
Two things are clear: First, Trump has no idea what he is talking about. Second, Trump will not have a plan for busing, whether in four weeks or in two months. It's not that he didn't watch the debate, and for a moment, the president seemed to come close to grasping the conflict over school integration (“In some cases, it's been done with a hammer instead of velvet glove”), but for the most part, he betrays no grasp of the complicated issue of busing. If he did, he wouldn't be promising a plan, because it's almost impossible to imagine any federal plan that would be in keeping with this political ideology.
Another similar moment occurred at the end of the press conference, when a reporter asked Trump about Russian President Vladimir Putin's judgment that “Western-style liberalism” is obsolete. Putin was, of course, referring to the idea of republican governance developed in Europe and America. This is language that would be familiar to Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon. Trump, however, apparently believed it referred to governments on the West Coast of the United States:
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Well, again, he may feel that way. I mean, he sees what's going on. And I guess, if you look at what's happening in Los Angeles, where it's so sad to look; and what's happening in San Francisco and a couple of other cities which are run by an extraordinary group of liberal people—I don't know what they're thinking.
It is not merely that Trump is ignorant of issues about which one expects the president of the United States to be at least somewhat literate—though that is clearly the case. By promising a plan in four weeks, or baiting Bay Area liberals, Trump is attempting to hide his ignorance in the face of questions he does not understand.
The bigger problem is that Trump's answer is obviously false, Trump knows that it's obviously false, and he doesn't care. (“It relates to everything we're doing,” is one of Trump's tells, a claim that is both so grandiose and so lazy as to reveal what's actually happening.) This is what makes it “bullshit,” in Frankfurt's sense, rather than simply lying. He is just making things up to suit his purpose. The proof is that he does this repeatedly.
[...]
Tony_Tarantula on 2/7/2019 at 18:32
Heard more on this one:
Apparently the source was that a Portland Officer thought he saw quick-dry cement being poured into a cup. Could be legit, could be a case of "this Chihuahua made me fear for my life!"
I also heard one interesting tidbit. Apparently when you take a HEAT class as a journalist (Hostile Environment Awareness Training) the statements given is that Trump supporters are mostly (but not always) harmless and will generally try to evangelize the message, but you're also told to expect physical violence when in the presence of black-bloc.
Meanwhile, Vox is trying to amp up the violence and escalate things: (
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/7/1/18744204/guns-gun-control-anarchism)
***
Anyway I ran across one interesting video where the speaker discusses the overall geopolitical situation and trends. I like his description of the last 20 years as a "parade of idiots". Not that the presidents themselves are low-IQ, but none of them effectively managed post-Soviet foreign policy and have collectively pissed away the stability that had been built prior.
TLDR: The US is in an interesting situation where the old order is more or less outdated because it was designed to contain a Soviet threat that had collapsed. Trump was correct that this alignment wasn't in the USA's economic interests, but he missed that it was never intended to be: the arrangement was that the US would buy allies against the Soviet Union. His current style is pure chaos and is dismantling that old order but it will probably work out much worse for the rest of the world than the US because the USA has the capacity to be resource independent.
[video=youtube;BclcpfVn2rg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BclcpfVn2rg&t=100s[/video]
Starker on 2/7/2019 at 19:42
Excellent segments like these are what I watch Rachel Maddow for -- how the US is throwing away its cutting-edge scientific research capabilities in the name of partisan politics:
[video=youtube;Qfl_aUsTcQQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfl_aUsTcQQ[/video]
For more on the topic, I still recommend the The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis. Chilling stuff.
Starker on 3/7/2019 at 16:01
After all the atrocities against asylum seekers, it seems that Lord Dampnut now also wants to ramp up his war against illegal immigrants:
Quote:
(
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/27/736362986/trump-wants-to-withdraw-deportation-protections-for-families-of-active-troops)
The Trump administration wants to scale back a program that protects undocumented family members of active-duty troops from being deported, according to attorneys familiar with those plans.
[...]
The program the Trump administration wants to curtail does not protect all immigrants facing removal proceedings from being deported.
It specifically allows military family members who have come to the country illegally — and can't adjust their immigration status — to stay in the U.S. temporarily. A spouse who overstayed a visa, for example, would not be protected under the program.
The original objective of the policy was to minimize disruption to the life of a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine whose family member might have been subject to deportation.
Parole in place enables a soldier serving in Afghanistan, for instance, not to worry that a spouse at home who entered the U.S. illegally might be thrown out of the country while the soldier is deployed.
[...]
Tony_Tarantula on 3/7/2019 at 20:51
Quote Posted by Starker
Excellent segments like these are what I watch Rachel Maddow for -- how the US is throwing away its cutting-edge scientific research capabilities in the name of partisan politics:
[video=youtube;Qfl_aUsTcQQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfl_aUsTcQQ[/video]
For more on the topic, I still recommend the
The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis. Chilling stuff.
And you were accusing ME of being too gullible?
Her being right is a coin-toss according to the (arguably left-biased) Politi-fact.
(
https://www.politifact.com/personalities/rachel-maddow/)
Can you find me corroboration elsewhere and a summary of what's happening from someone who isn't a scripted partisan hack?
Quote:
After all the atrocities against asylum seekers, it seems that Lord Dampnut now also wants to ramp up his war against illegal immigrants:
A much better alternative would be to shut down border enforcement entirely obviously, and just let them wander the desert until they find work on a Koch brothers farm.
I'm kind of flabbergasted by the way this is being handled. The government first spent months denying that there was no migrant crisis (claiming that idea was just a right wing conspiracy theory), now they refused to allocate any funding to fix the situation and their proposed solution (by Elizabeth Warren) is to just shut down border enforcement entirely.
I don't see any possible course of events following implementation of that policy that would lead to a good outcome. Most likely the result is to create an underclass living in absolute squalor, working in poverty in perpetuity.