Cefte posted:

I found the first sentence reminded me of something, and it was the LaCour fiasco, which for those who aren't glued to news of scientific retractions, was a faked social science study that claimed that transgender canvassers, but not straight canvassers, could effect a significant and maintained improvement in attitudes to transgenderism. What I hadn't followed was that a non-faked follow-up showed that a real effect of canvassing could be measured, but was independent of the status of the canvassers, which really double-underlines your argument. Anyone can do it! Get involved!

eke out posted:

Florida has the highest Venezuelan expat population of any state and my impression is that they are not on the left. They're still relatively small compared to other nationalities (something in the range of 100,000 as of 2010 census, probably somewhat larger now), but Cubans certainly aren't the only conservative hispanic demographic.

evilweasel posted:

I suspect that's going to start going away. Israel for a long time has benefited by being an area of bipartisan agreement (or more accurately, that support for Israel wasn't a partisan issue where Republicans were on one side and Democrats were on the other; there was substantially more dispute within the Democratic party/coalition regarding support for Israel). I think that was always going to start getting more polarized, but Netenyahu basically took a sledgehammer to that by explicitly and openly becoming a Republican partisan. That killed off a lot of the support for Israel within the Democratic party, but the full consequences of that haven't yet rippled all the way through the Democratic party system. It's going to though, and I think in a decade or so Israel's going to look back on it as one of their biggest geopolitical mistakes once that fully takes effect.

quote:

A small team of journalists from The New York Times went into Jaghori’s capital, Sang-e-Masha, on Sunday morning to report on the symbolic importance of what everyone expected to be a fierce stand against the insurgents.

Instead, we found bandaged commandos wandering the streets in apparent despair, and officials discussing how they could flee an area almost entirely surrounded by the Taliban. By the end of the day, we were on the run, too.

Officials told us that more than 30 of the commandos had been killed, and we could see, on the streets and in the hospitals, 10 other wounded commandos. An additional 50 police officers and militiamen were also killed in the previous 24 hours, according to the militia’s commander, Nazer Hussein, who arrived from the front line with his wounded to plead for reinforcements.

“This is genocide,” Commander Hussein said. “If they don’t do something soon, the whole district will be in the Taliban’s hands.”

evilweasel posted:

Obama's first diplomat to South Africa was definitely a major donor. The wikipedia page on the second one is less clear but doesn't seem to have been a career diplomat either. Countries like China, Russia, etc get real diplomats. I don't even know if European countries rate real diplomats, usually.

quote:

Some Obama backers have been posted to glamorous European countries. Britain's new US ambassador is Louis Susman, who raised more than $500,000 for Obama. The new ambassador to France is Charles Rivkin, a former TV executive who helped raise $800,000, while Germany is getting Philip Murphy, an ex-finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee who has donated $1.9m to the party since 1989.

eke out posted:

quoting because paywall:

Party Plane Jones posted:

Similarly from what I remember right post election there were a bunch of sites coming from Macedonia of all places where it was kids spreading bullshit and making bank because there were no opportunities for employment otherwise.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fake-news-how-partying-macedonian-teen-earns-thousands-publishing-lies-n692451

enraged_camel posted:

There's also this:

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-fake-news-20161122-story.html

(read the whole thing, it's incredible)

RasperFat posted:

So I wouldn’t worry too much about it because we have people actually knowledgeable on their fields that come in with sources to correct common misunderstandings.

VikingofRock posted:

NYTimes: Trump Wanted to Order Justice Dept. to Prosecute Comey and Clinton

quote:

Ms. Pirro told Mr. Trump in the Oval Office last November that the Justice Department should appoint a special counsel to investigate the Uranium One deal, two people briefed on the discussion have said. During that meeting, the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, told Ms. Pirro she was inflaming an already vexed president, the people said.

Shortly after, Mr. Sessions wrote to lawmakers, partly at the urging of the president’s allies in the House, to inform them that federal prosecutors in Utah were examining whether to appoint a special counsel to investigate Mrs. Clinton. A spokeswoman for the United States attorney for Utah declined to comment on Tuesday on the status of the investigation.

Ogmius815 posted:

What's wrong with that turkey?

marshmonkey posted:

https://twitter.com/KatzOnEarth/status/1066740608751030275?s=19

Lemming posted:

Who gives a poo poo, without gerrymandering it doesn't matter where you live.

Lemming posted:

Fine, it almost doesn't matter. Who cares. The point is that if gerrymandering is fixed, the problems more or less instantly go away. It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be good enough that a solid majority will win a majority of the seats. Since a majority of voters vote Democratic, that's all that matters.

Hellblazer187 posted:

Isn't "natural" gerrymandering worth about 3%? I'm having trouble finding a number but that's what I recall from looking at it before. Someone feel free to correct the actual number if you have it but basically that means even with machine drawn districts, Dems can win a slight majority and still lose.

What we need is proportional representation.

Megillah Gorilla posted:

I remember when the US first started with the whole 'torture is cool and good' after 9/11 and people brought up a book written by a US officer back in WWII on interrogating nazi prisoners of war.

The entire book was about treating them well and making a human connection with them - even the complete monsters like the gestapo- and how the success rate was insanely high for getting good information out of them.

We've known what works for the better part of a century, we just don't do it because the people in power are insatiable sadists.

Dapper_Swindler posted:

well the GOP would always do that. my view is it would be a rebellion against trump but also a push to keep the out and out racist poo poo underground and the return of the dog whistle. so its probaly gonna be romney or kasich since they can both pull that kinda bullshit. my guess is trump would run third party against them out of pure spite.

quote:

A multiyear investigation by NPR and the PBS program Frontline found that Smith and Kelly are part of a tragic and recently discovered outbreak of the advanced stage of black lung disease, known as complicated black lung or progressive massive fibrosis.

A federal monitoring program reported just 99 cases of advanced black lung disease nationwide from 2011-2016. But NPR identified more than 2,000 coal miners suffering from the disease in the same time frame, and in just five Appalachian states.

And now, an NPR/Frontline analysis of federal regulatory data — decades of information recorded by dust-collection monitors placed where coal miners work — has revealed a tragic failure to recognize and respond to clear signs of danger.

For decades, government regulators had evidence of excessive and toxic mine dust exposures, the kind that can cause PMF, as they were happening. They knew that miners like Kelly and Smith were likely to become sick and die. They were urged to take specific and direct action to stop it. But they didn't.

quote:

It's a familiar tale across Appalachia. Two hours north and east, beyond twisting mountain roads, Danny Smith revved up a lawn mower. He wore jeans, a T-shirt and a white face mask stretching from eyes to chin, and he pushed only about 15 feet before he suddenly shut off the mower, bent to his knees and started hacking uncontrollably.

"Oh God," he gasped, as he spit up a crusty black substance with gray streaks, and then stared at the dead lung tissue staining the grass. Still coughing and breathing hard, Smith settled into a chair on his porch and clipped an oxygen tube to his nose.

After spending just 12 years underground, his lungs are so bad he faces what coal miners decades older and with decades more in mining have endured. His lung tissue is dying so fast, his respiratory therapist says, it just peels away.

"I'm terrified," Smith said, as he remembered his father's suffering when he was struggling with the same coal miner's disease.

"I sure don't want to go through what he went through. I seen a lot of guys that died of black lung and they all suffered like that."

Dapper_Swindler posted:

yeah. its depressing gently caress. like i legit teared up listening/reading it. like we could genuinly help these people but they keep begging their abuser to come back over and over again because they think this time it will be different.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

I think these days the majority of Australian coal comes from open cut mines (it certainly does in NSW) where black lung rarely occurs.

It's absolutely a problem in the underground mines though.

quote:

The most surprising finding involved those miners who never worked underground.

"We identified coal workers' pneumoconiosis and severe pneumoconiosis in surface miners who reported no years of underground mining in their tenure," Halldin says.

Dust 'Comes Up Through The Floorboards'

Most of those with black lung are from the same region in Appalachia where the increase in the disease in underground miners is most pronounced. That suggests that a possible cause may be exposure to silica. Surface mines in the region include coal seams laced with silica-laden rock.

"These findings suggest that current federal permissible dust exposure limits might be insufficient to protect against disease or are not being adequately controlled to prevent excess dust exposure," the study says.

Miners who have worked on the surface describe clouds of dust around mining and drilling machines, around coal trucks and along mine roadways.

"You breathe a lot of dust when you drive a coal truck, even inside," says Jim Harper, who hauled coal for three years before his retirement in 2010. Harper suspects he may have black lung and was tested recently at a clinic in Beckley, W.Va.

Coal dust "comes up through the floorboards and ... through the windows," he says.

Discendo Vox posted:

Fwiw there is a throughline to the RT family of propaganda, a common unified goal which is to encourage democratic and civic disengagement. While they'll take virtually any route to get to that point, it's a strong unifying feature of all of their stories- make you hate what's going on, distrust or hate other people or feel helpless to do anything, so you stop caring or being involved or evaluating source information. Or drive you so far into the fringe that you can't (and don't) engage in discourse.

Peacoffee posted:

So the argument for posting RT is basically just whataboutism? Clearly exposure to it has caused some harm already....

Maybe the pool of material which deserves even healthy skepticism could do with straining out the literally intentional white noise that says all news is pointlessly corrupt and therefore we need to eat all of it to parse out the truth.

Lightning Knight posted:

This is an interesting response that I didn't consider but I will let the point go.

U.S. RAMPS UP BOMBING OF ISIS IN EASTERN SYRIA FOLLOWING TRUMP WITHDRAWAL ANNOUNCEMENT from The Intercept, in partnership with Al Jazeera, by Trevor Aaronson and Ali Younes.

awesmoe posted:

you're wrong about this and it's the difference between RT and news. the washington post publishing the snowden leaks is the biggest example I can think of from this decade.

EdithUpwards posted:

Puff pieces are the genre he describes.

quote:

Tell stories to build sources (but be willing to whack them)

The stories you report can help improve relationships with sources by building trust and credibility. But the correspondents add two qualifiers:

1) Always do rigorous journalism.
2) Set expectations early.

Doing a profile on a source, Tom and Mary Louise say, is a good way to expand your contact list as you seek out people who know the subject of the profile. Just be sure you’re doing strong reporting and telling valid stories.

Sources “know what a puff piece is, and they like it if they’re the subject of it,” Mary Louise says. “But it’s not going to get you a return engagement because they don’t respect you.”

You build respect, the correspondents say, by showing you’re willing to tell harsh truths about your sources.

Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:

https://twitter.com/propornot/status/1082471500077092864?s=19


thank god for this service

eke out posted:

quote:

a slow-motion coup is unfolding largely unnoticed in Guatemala. President Jimmy Morales, members of Congress, certain business people and powerful military officers are taking swift, dramatic steps to consolidate power before the presidential elections in June. Morales is not eligible for re-election and so once his successor takes power he will lose his immunity from possible prosecution for corruption.
. . .
These moves have paved the way for Congress to push for reforms to the 1996 National Reconciliation Law, developed as part of UN-brokered peace accords following Guatemala’s 36-year civil war. The law currently provides amnesty for political crimes committed during the war, but explicitly denies it for grave internationally recognised crimes including genocide, torture, and crimes against humanity. If Morales and certain members of Congress, widely known as the Pact of the Corrupt, succeed in reforming the National Reconciliation Law, it will provide blanket amnesty for serious human rights crimes.

The proposed changes would also annul the convictions of former soldiers and paramilitaries for crimes including torture, ‘disappearance’, execution and aggravated sexual violence. It would release anyone convicted in this way since 1996 – within 24 hours of the law’s promulgation. Those in jail awaiting trial would be released.

Human rights activists in Guatemala are profoundly concerned. The law could be amended within days or weeks, and perpetrators could be back on the streets shortly thereafter, free to retaliate against the activists, judges and prosecutors who worked so hard to secure justice for victims of the civil war, as well as target survivors and witnesses who bravely testified against them.

Oracle posted:

they're booties for sled dogs (well any dogs really) to help keep them from tearing up their feet/getting frostbite on their tootsies in extreme cold. It uh... takes awhile for the pups to get used to them, with the hilarious results seen.

Lightning Knight posted:

No. That post was made nearly a month ago, when there was no actual reason to surmise it was a hoax other than vague gut feelings. That he happened to guess right doesn’t change that the speculation was baseless at the time.

Silver2195 posted:

Not sure if this is the right thread for this, but I’m posting it here because I was pretty shocked by it: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomwarren/wwf-world-wide-fund-nature-parks-torture-death

Certainly not the first US-based organization to fund atrocities abroad, but if I had made a list of ones likely to do so, WWF would not have been on it.

PC LOAD LETTER posted:

Building more homes (or apartments) is necessary but it won't fix the prices.

They built homes like mad during the previous bubble (and this one) and prices did nothing but skyrocket nearly the whole time.