Posts by izogi
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Hard News: The Long, Strange Trip, in reply to Rob Stowell,
How does Trump even begin to satisfy the white working class voters who elected him?
I'm sure the reasons are as diverse as the US, but there's a really insightful web series posted by Van Jones in the last few days leading up to the election. He went to Gettysburg and talked to (mostly) Trump supporters to find out more about their real problems and why they were supporting him.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3: -
This morning I caught Stephen Colbert's singing off, which I thought was a nice summing up of the state of politics and people in the US.
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Hard News: The Long, Strange Trip, in reply to tussock,
Well. That was unfortunate. Apparently a near-plurality of USians would like their country to go die in a fire now, thanks, OK, bye.
It’s easy to just blame and joke about US voters or the media, which I’ve seen lots of over this already, but I’d worry that that’s also the attitude which resulted in this coming about.
For some time now, the ruling political establishment of the USA has been increasingly out of touch with real problems in its own country. It’s taken its privilege for granted by assuming that no matter how bad or neglectful you are to the masses, and no matter how few people are inspired to vote through lack of choice, there can’t be any significant change. One of two options must be elected. Most of the masses will vote tribally or be eliminated under the system by those who do, and the only requirement is to get to the top of either pack and to appear less bad than the only alternative in a few pockets of population where tribalism is less reliable.
I don’t see Trump as an answer to voters’ real problems, but it’s not as if Hillary Clinton was either. He’s different, though. Hopefully this is the extent of the revolution that the US people are looking for and destruction is minimised, and hopefully over time the establishment will wake up and change itself to actually consider people’s problems seriously. I guess we’ll see in coming months and years.
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Hard News: The Long, Strange Trip, in reply to BenWilson,
The TPPA has already survived so much doubt and Trump is so much of an actor that I’ll not believe it’s truly dead until I see it actually happen. Don’t be too surprised if he somehow comes back and tries to sell it as a way to control other countries that owe Americans. Probably after some token renegotiations.
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Hard News: The Long, Strange Trip, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
Scary, fivethirtyeight.com now say the chances are 50% Clinton vs 48% Trump.
As of right now it's on 58% Trump, 40% Clinton.
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Hard News: The Long, Strange Trip, in reply to simon g,
For the rest, enjoy what you have done (hint: you really won't)
Guess who's going to be blamed.
In unrelated news, I googled Randall County, Texas, where Trump's won a 43,000 to 8,000 victory over Hillary Clinton. Clicking through to the job opportunities page zat the top of their Quick Links, and then to the Randall County Sheriff's Office at the top in the list, I reckon that Office Recruiting video (on the page of the last link) is totally fascinating as a random insight.
And the NZ Police reckoned they had Better Work Stories.
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Speaker: Are we seeing the end of MSM,…, in reply to simon g,
I think I could potentially tolerate the replacement if it's actually modeled The Project, if only because comedians can often be more insightful than modern presenters. Their ability to satarise can be entertaining and also offer perspectives on any issue that any viewer mightn't have thought about.
It's hard to know, though, because apart from having a really strong comedy industry, Australia tends to have a much stronger news media than NZ, and maybe it's because it has people like Waleed Aly on staff alongside the more overt comedy. The comedians pushed into prime time actually get into real news and issues instead of sidestepping it with inconsequential light stories, so if the NZ edition's just going to be a flaky shadow of it then there's no point.
When I first heard about Seven Sharp I thought it was being modeled on The Project, but it turned out to just be a Hosking ego-fest. That's fine if you like and always agree with Hosking and his co-hosts, but a total bore if you don't.
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There's been lots of reporting on turnouts of various ethnic groups, like the latino vote, and drawing conclusions.
How is this measured in the US? Is it just people standing outside voting booths looking at voters' skin colour or listening to accents or languages or something?
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Envirologue: 1080, "eco-terrorism" and agendas, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Oh, but of course....this is anecdote...not real hard core science.
Just being able to provide good references is helpful, though. Anecdote provides nothing verifiable which can actually be talked about in a useful way, and so trying to make strong arguments with just anecdote is really only going to build frustration on all sides.
I've seen plenty of people claiming they reckon "there used to be lots of bird-song and then 1080 came and now there isn't" and concluding it must be 1080's fault. What I haven't seen is anyone who believes this making any significant effort to run a proper and verifiable study which actually shows it. At the very least, find somewhere where there'll be a drop, spend some time there beforehand, measure the fauna (listen to birdsong or whatever), write it all down clearly, record everything that might be relevant such as weather events, times of day, people doing the measuring and noting how, exact data values. Then return afterwards and do it all again, compare and apply statistical methodology. Be prepared to have the results criticised in the usual way, and be prepared to have to do it again with adjustments to address those criticisms, and if it shows something unexpected then be prepared for someone to try and replicate the study. It's not necessary to be a qualified scientist to actually do useful science, and verifiable measurement is something that's sorely needed in support of most anti-1080 claims I've seen.
I don't mind listening to anti-1080 concerns, and I appreciate there are totally valid ones. But when I hover around a community like the 1080 Eyewitness Facebook group, where many of these protests are rallied, it's really depressing. It's standard for people to post pictures of dead animals and scream that 1080 killed them, with no info on what, where or when let alone how the cause of death was determined. It's standard for people make claims about 1080 based on how it was used 30+ years ago, as if concentrations and application methods haven't radically changed in that time. It's standard for people make statements about what scientific studies said, which often turn out to be incorrect or opposite if the study is actually checked. It's standard for all this stuff [old links, photos, everything] to be identically re-posted every 3 months even if someone thoroughly debunked it the time before. Plus a small handful of people really do just make stuff up in ways that can't really be anything other than malicious, maybe because they see it as serving a greater good, and they get believed even when it's easy to disprove.
I'm not intending to paint this as a picture of everyone who's wary of 1080 and I hope it's not taken that way, but it's a very messy movement. There's no clear agreement on what anyone wants, whether it's some kind of alternative means for a pest free NZ, or to let the pests win while the native fauna and industry lose because of some kind of worshipping of darwinism, or something in the middle, or merely to be able to take their dogs out into the bush without having to watch what goes in their mouths. As well as that, though, there's no obvious acknowledgement that there's a disagreement. It's just entirely 1080=BAD ... for some reason ... and that's what unites it.
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Do editorial cartoons often get shared via social media?
I used to see them lots when I read paper newspapers, but almost never now that I get most of my news online. Possibly because I do more drilling into headlines than browsing of pages, but I cannot even recall anything from Garrick Tremain or Tom Scott or the like ever showing up on my Facebook feed. Maybe it's just the friends I keep, but if social media's where so many people get their news from these days, it'd be a shame if more people are being cut off from this form of commentary.