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You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I love you guys!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
You all talk a good talk about partisan news outlets and their partisan bias but you can't see beyond your own noses where the real problem is to the point that you need to believe that your own newspapers that are considered respectable news sources in every other country in the world are as bad as the rags the world laughs at.
You guys are beyond help and it's sad to watch.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
That's not the job of politicians. The job of politicians is to do things, not just talk about it. Pass this good bill or kill that bad one. The job of politicians is to be our representatives and vote about the way that we want them to.
I'll vote for a lying demagogue who will mostly vote the way I want once elected. It's not that I like lying demagogues. It's that the options are the lying demagogue who will mostly vote how I want versus the lying demagogue who will mostly vote against the way I want.
I have no illusions that the politicians on my side of the political spectrum are wonderful people. They generally aren't, and I think Alan Greenspan had it right when he jokingly proposed a constitutional amendment that anyone willing to do what it takes to become President should be constitutionally barred from the office.
But I don't expect virtue of politicians the way that I do of, say, a church pastor. Virtue would be nice, and I do expect them to at least avoid outright criminal conduct and especially blatant bribery, as that's going to result in them voting against what nearly everyone wants in some cases. But I vote for politicians to represent my political views, not to demonstrate that they're wonderful people.
Even six or seven years ago, you'd assume that something published in the New York Times was mostly factually correct. It was likely to be biased, taken out of context, or disregard exculpatory facts, but it wasn't likely to be outright lies.
It has been shocking to me to watch how many formerly reputable media sources over the last several years have simply given up on caring whether what they report is true anymore. If they report something scandalous sourced exclusively to anonymous sources, then the default assumption is that the whole thing is complete lies--because that's usually how it turns out once the facts come out later.
I mentioned the 60 Minutes report about the vaccines in Florida earlier. That's a good example because it's so recent. Basically, they reported that the governor of Florida gave Publix supermarkets an exclusive deal to distribute the vaccines in Palm Beach county in exchange for campaign contributions. You can see their own Twitter thread about it here, which links to a longer report. They also have an exchange with the governor in the third tweet in the thread:
Looks damning, right? Well look at the entire exchange that was edited down in the above clip:
That first shows the minute that 60 Minutes ran in their program, and then the rest of the clip shows the entire, unedited exchange.
That's the sort of thing that a serious media source would not do. At all. Ever. They quite clearly knew that their report was complete lies before they went on the air, and they published it anyway. If a serious news source did somehow accidentally do that, they'd immediately fire everyone involved and issue a profuse apology to the public.
But of course, 60 Minutes stands by their story. As I said, if they're willing to do things like that, they're fake news, and no one should ever believe another word they say.
Since they ignored everything that the governor told them and ran the report that they knew was all lies, the governor has come out fighting and offered extensive evidence that it was all lies. Multiple Democrats who were involved in the vaccine distribution have come out to denounce the 60 Minutes report as complete lies, too. This news conference details literally dozens of other places that had the vaccine before Publix:
https://wflanews.iheart.com/featured/florida-news/content/2021-04-07-watch-governor-desantis-blasts-60-minutes-in-30-minute-press-conference/
That's long, so you probably won't want to watch it. But 60 Minutes decided to ignore that evidence because they wanted to push the narrative that Publix had exclusive access to the vaccine in exchange for campaign contributions.
If you don't have the intellectual honesty to agree with this, ok... I call a spade a spade of any side.
Now THAT is really scary.
Also... there's a big difference between "gotten a story wrong" and "proven to be liars."
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
You, yourself (I know not your motivations), clip what you want... but leave off the meat? Here's what I went on to say:
Iselin, I'm assuming you are not from the USA (could be wrong). But dissent and partisanship are literally the foundations of the country (and since then). If I see the people of this country, government, and media ... 100% locking arms agreeing... either an asteroid is about to hit or something worse.
I'm not for a groupthink country... hard pass. Give me liberty and individual thought, but of course here in the USA we can try to reach compromises and work together. They say it has never been so bad... LIE. This country literally had a civil war (for extreme comparison), we are nowhere near that now
Maybe I misunderstand you, apologies if I do.
I'm Canadian. We have 5 major political parties here with elected MPs in Ottawa. A lot of European democracies have many more than 5.
I find it hilarious that you hold up your system with a measly 2 parties as a way to avoid "groupthink" when all you have is two versions of it.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Media is not a News reporting, and this idea has come under debate, more than once, that what we know of as the mainstream media does not classify as News or Press, and should not be treated as such, because they are more an entertainment industry that pontificates on current events, this is what has led to some landmark cases that have ruled that the Media has no obligation to tell the truth. While they can still be charged with slander and liable, like anyone else, they are still free to make up stuff, fudge facts, and even tell flat out lies.
This of course, might be a shock to some to learn that while they knew the idea that Media is Lying has been around for a long time, they might now know that is has been brought to count, and settled that the media is legally able to flat out lie to and about you, and this as been court approved.
Please keep that in mind when you want to place your Trust in the media.
Now, of course the idea that the Media is lying to you, is common knowledge, this is something that has been known, I wager before any of us have been born, so knowing that it is court approved, while no doubt might really get to some people on that trust level, I mean there is the belief the media is lying, and then there is knowing that they have brought this point to court, and the courts have declared that the Media is allowed to flat out lie, as if that was not sad enough, it gets better, not only can the Media Lie to you, they can use direct unabashed Propaganda on you as well, which has been illegal in the united states until Obama decided to change that.
So if anyone wants to trust the media at this point, keep in mind that they have been given the legal green light to brainwash you with lies and propaganda. Just something I thought people would enjoy knowing as they watched the evening news, or you know, went to their website, which unironically, major news agencies have covered those points. That's some audacity right there, to tell you that they can lie and use propaganda on you, and knowing you will just accept it.
and I bet some of you thought this could not get worse.. Enjoy!
Canada like America, has two major well funded political parties like America you have The Liberal Party, and The Conservative Party, and a few others that are small, and have very little clout, but are basically provincial (Equal to States in America) based parties that might get a few people into parliament.
To grasp this, for Americans, Imagen if there was a Political Party that was beloved by California, and they would vote people from that party into Congress, almost akin to a state pride thing, I wager like how Bernie Saunders of the Liberty Union Party was endlessly voted into Congress by the people of Vermont.
In that vein, America does in fact have several parties outside the typical Republican and Democrat, like the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, Etc and again, they might get a few people in Congress from time to time, and make a sad spectacle of themselves tossing up some people to run for President.
We have something here called "official party status" that requires at least 12 seats in the legislature and confers some extra privileges to those parties. Liberals, Conservative, PQ and NDP have has that status for decades.
Greens are the only party with elected MLAs (3) that don't have that status.
Historically Canada has had many other parties that came and went but it has never been a 2 party system even though two of the parties tend to be dominant. It's the same with politics in EU countries where a couple of parties dominate the landscape but there are so many other parties that it's actually extremely rare to not need coalition governments.
But that's beside the point, which is that voters here have more than just two competing points of view to align themselves with. And politicians of all 5 of the parties do get elected federally.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
But the other problem with dismissing fake news stories as merely "getting a story wrong" is when some media sources don't seem to care if they got a story wrong. The Russiagate fiasco was a rather shocking example of this, and a major reason why a large fraction of Americans don't trust most American media sources anymore.
Basically, the thesis of a bunch of media sources was that the 2016 Trump campaign somehow illegally colluded with the government of Russia to do something or other. They found anonymous sources to make scandalous claims and published the claims. When it turns out that the claims were false, do they out their lying sources? No, they just move on to the next scandalous claim to push the same narrative, also attributed exclusively to anonymous sources. And they did that so many times in a row that people lost count.
It's understandable that they get a story wrong now and then. But to have a long list of stories pushing the same narrative and getting nearly all of them wrong is not "getting a story wrong". That's getting most of your stories wrong, and if you don't care if you're doing that, then you are fake news. They pushed a variety of supposed scandals in service of the Russiagate narrative for about 2 1/2 years, and in that whole time, the only story that panned out was that some high-ups in the Trump campaign met with a Russian lawyer who promised them dirt on Hillary that she didn't actually have.
The United States uses a first past the post system in which there are a bunch of individual districts, whoever gets the most votes in that district wins the seat, and everyone else gets nothing. That tends to lead to a two-party system, or at least, if there are more than two parties, it usually isn't more than two parties that contest all seats everywhere.
While I'm a lot less familiar with Canadian politics than I am American politics, my understanding is that the Bloc Quebecois is a regional party that only contests seats in Quebec. So that doesn't lead to four major parties all contesting seats in Saskatchewan. Still, I'm not sure how you end up with three major parties outside of Quebec, as at least under the rules of the American political system, that probably wouldn't be stable. It might just be due to some way that Canadian election or parliamentary rules are different from American rules.
In American history, there have been other parties, but generally two major parties at a time. After the Federalist party collapsed, they were replaced by the Whigs. After the Whigs collapsed, they were replaced by the Republicans. Republicans and Democrats have been the two major parties since the 1850s.
The NDP party runs candidates in every riding in the country. They are the 3rd biggest and have been so for more than 60 years. They have formed the government in 6 of the provinces including the largest, Ontario, several times.
They used to be a clear socialist party and were responsible for things such as universal health care but federally at least they've become more centrist recently. kind of like the Labour party in Britain did under Tony Blair.
The PQ runs in Quebec only but not just provincially - they have been the dominant party there federally also for a number of years... at the expense of the Liberals mostly.
But that is neither here nor there since the federal Conservative party has its power base in Alberta and the NDP in BC. Regional preferences is nothing new nor unusual here.
Edit: Shouldn't forget my daughter's favorite party, the Greens
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
For anyone in the sates, I want to make this clear, there is a lot of stuff Americans do not know about our northern neighbor, of which the funniest thing is that California has more people in it then the entire Country of Canada, and near 50% of the entire country resides in 3 major cities, so.. Canada is a HUGE massive.. Open Nowhere place, that makes states like Montana, where gas stations can be 100 miles apart, look quite populated. yes, I have quite a few Canadian friends, I went to college in Up State New York State, and spend many years right on the border between America and Canada, I have also worked in Wisconsin for the better part of a Decade, and this also would visit Canada. There is so many misconceptions that Americans have about your country, it's rather funny really.
Anyway fun facts aside.
One of the things is that, The Liberal Party, in Canada pretty much owns the Prime Minister (President) position of the Country, and is by and large the single oldest and most powerful political party in Canada by a large margin.
Unlike America, which has maintained a rather even split of power between the two major parties.
Just going to put that out, so people are not confused about their options for political representation in Canada. It has been, and will continue to be ruled by the Liberal Party, no matter who anyone in Canada votes for regarding their local political hero that will go to bat in parliament.