social media

Scattershooting 230128

January 28, 2023 by tornado Leave a Comment

Happy new year! Several topics have cropped up of late, not demanding a full-form entry, so I’ll resurrect an old category for a 2023 kickoff encore. As usual, topics are highlighted, so you can skip what doesn’t interest you.

Scattershooting while wondering why so many otherwise intelligent ignoranti fall for obvious, textbook conformist cult tactics employed by purveyors of the secular “social justice” ideology…

AMAZING DALLAS FIREWORKS SHOW on NEW YEAR’S NIGHT: Several times, when not setting them off myself, I’d go up Reunion Tower to watch Trinity River fireworks shows and assorted pyros doing their thing around town on July 4 & New Year’s. Now they’re launched from the tower, with lighted drones in formation as accompaniment. Spectacular! I ought to go see and shoot this sometime.

‘TWITTER FILES” REPERCUSSIONS and SO-CALLED PANDEMIC “MISINFORMATION”: Over the past couple months, several independent journalists, with the full cooperation of current Twitter owner Elon Musk, have exposed a hardline left-wing censorship agenda of Twitter users and linked content, by the corporation, in collusion with high-level government bureaucracy (mainly but not entirely FBI). This includes labeling pandemic content, by licensed medical doctors and scientists, as “misinformation”. This also includes information from peer-reviewed studies that was flagged or relegated to sight unseen. Yesterday’s ”conspiracy theories” sometimes do become today’s news. They affirm comments I made to some folks many months ago about non-expert bots and poorly educated basement dwellers—censoring posts from real-life scientists and physicians in fields such as immunology, epidemiology, virology, and general medical practice. Some low-wage tech contractor in the Philippines, nor high-level company executives without medical degrees, have no business censoring degreed, licensed physicians on medical topics! Yet these were the tactics social media employed to limit what you were being told about a crisis situation to Big Brother’s official Party line—even when the line clearly was flawed then or turned very wrong later. Thank God for watchdogs, gadflies and leakers — even if it’s the new owner dishing it out on prior management at great cost to himself.

MATURITY, SELF-RESTRAINT AND DISCIPLINE ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Speaking of Twitter, a libertarian I follow there, Curtis Scoon, posted these wise words: “I don’t want to be the person on social media who has something controversial to say about every headline just for attention. It’s definitely close to being an ambulance chasing personal injury attorney.” (My words now) …or virtue signaling to either spectral extreme. I have huge respect for such self-discipline & maturity. I aim the same. Not every topic needs instant opinion from every person. I’ve expressed my extended thoughts on this before, in this space, with, “Silence is Not Complicity nor Agreement.” I’ll comment on the issues of my choosing, at the time and place of my choice (and nobody else’s). The context was “hot takes” on the Tyre Nichols incident in Memphis. There’s more to it, but next is what I’ll say for now, in this medium of my choice:

DISTILLING the TYRE NICHOLS KILLING to the SIMPLE PLAIN TRUTH: Often, videos like the Tyre Nichols police-brutality footage from Memphis (which I won’t post here) miss crucial “before” context. In this specific case, I don’t think such context matters. I’m having a hard time imagining what “context” would justify treating any handcuffed man with such relentless, 5-on-1 savagery — basically 5 strong dudes tossing the guy back and forth between each other like a medicine ball and taking turns slugging him full force. No excuse for that, whatsoever. Even if he had violently resisted before being restrained (and that info wasn’t available from the video I saw)…once handcuffed, that’s that. His wrists are locked together with steel, behind his back, and he can’t use his arms. That was basically a gang-beating of a helpless man, in this case the gang being cops. These now ex-cops have been charged with murder and official abuse. The justice system is working as it should here. Unfortunately, this incident is being spun every which way and twisted like taffy by people with bigger social agendas. What it is, plain and simple, is homicide, and any and all who commit homicide (including cops on duty, regardless of how they look) must be held responsible.

COMMON GOTCHA AGAINST ECONOMIC LIBERTARIANISM ISN’T a GOTCHA AFTER ALL: I had to laugh recently at a stupid meme some airheaded male celebrity sent out, thinking it was a “gotcha”. The meme implied libertarians are hypocrites because Ayn Rand accepted her Social Security checks. Clearly this wasn’t the product of a critical thinker, or much of a thinker at all. You see, those checks were her money anyway, extorted from her for years before in taxes. So she had no reason (and neither do you) to feel at all guilty about getting some of it back. Too bad she, and you, couldn’t have just kept it in the first place, instead of being forced to process it through a massive, inefficient, distant, detached bureaucracy that skims so much off. And I’m still waiting in futility for anyone, anywhere, to show me where personal entitlement spending of any sort is an enumerated Federal power in the literal, black-and-white words of our Constitution.

DO YOU HAVE STUDENT LOANS? PAY THEM. This entry is brought to you by tough love from a fellow (former) debt holder. And not just any ex-student, but one from poverty: first-generation college graduate here, raised inner-city poor in Dallas with no air conditioning, who remembers with razor-sharp clarity the sounds of wailing sirens and the feel of roaches crawling up sweaty legs many summer nights. There’s not a college student anywhere in this land who has a thing new to say to me about being “economically disadvantaged”. I arrived at university with assets valued in two digits, not counting a beater car that was worth maybe $200, no parental aid whatsoever, and scholarships for which I had busted my tail, but were still woefully insufficient. I left grad school with even less: $16 to my name, and five figures in student loans. Inflation-adjusted, they match magnitudes from many sob stories I hear today. I paid off every last one in under 10 years by working rotating shifts, in a real career, for which my major of choice was chosen specifically to prepare me, using something called foresight and something else called sacrifice. Hint: my major wasn’t “gender studies” or similar useless bullshit. Unless one was targeted by illegally predatory lending, which I do oppose, I have a very hard time feeling sorry for anyone who demands that government (in other words, all of us but not him or her self) pay off debts he/she voluntarily chose to accrue. There’s a word for that, and it’s “freeloading”. My message, therefore, is clear: Yes, it is a loan. Pay it back. I’ve been there. I did, and I’m nothing special. So can you. Make better choices.

THE FED, BRETTON WOODS, GOLD STANDARD, and the RISE of CHINA: Finally, here’s a provocative, yet deeply historically informed, long-form essay by the aforementioned Curtis Scoon on how the Federal Reserve came to be, and its relationship with both American decline and the rise of Red Commie China as an economic and military power. I don’t necessarily buy into every detail he posits, but there’s a lot of basic truth here. This is well worth 15 minutes of time to read carefully and consider critically.

Wartime in the Era of Social Media: Watch What You Share!

February 24, 2022 by tornado Leave a Comment

As you’ve likely heard by now, Russian forces have entered Ukraine. One nation’s invading a much smaller, less-powerful neighbor is nothing new historically; it’s happened countless many times. But it is new to the cell-phones/social-media/fake-image era.

Real and bogus images and videos will abound, flooding the internet from true reporters, propaganda bots, and well-meaning but ignorant Uncle Bubbas. Without first-hand knowledge of the situation, you are unlikely to know, with absolute certainty, which is which. You also are likely to overestimate your own ability to judge what is authentic.

This message below is nonpartisan, wise advice right now for all: self-discipline and restraint.

Don’t share emotionally manipulative war images and stories without independent verification — preferably from multiple credible media sources. [Mainline media has been caught sharing fake images hastily before.] Even then, choose prudence over impulse, and wait awhile.

It’s easier for most humans to react with reflexive emotion than self-discipline, restraint, analysis, logic, and reason. We meteorologists have seen this ad nauseam with frequent sharing of old, misdated, manipulated and/or outright fake storm images. Far more is at stake here than some old or fake storm image passed off as yesterday’s event!

War images (real, fake or old) will be shared widely without verifying authenticity — sometimes even by “credible” but duped media. For the sake of all, don’t be the fooled fool.

And for those thirsting for some formally published science on the issue of sharing fake, manipulated and/or misleading imagery, here you go. It really does cause social and psychological damage!

Election Day(s): A Useful Litmus Test of Character

November 3, 2020 by tornado Leave a Comment

As I write this, many polls around the country still are open or just now closing; results are unknown and unknowable for at least a few more hours. As such, this is provably an evenhanded and nonpartisan statement, as intended.

More than any other in my lifetime, more than any other likely since the Taft/Roosevelt split that backdoored Woodrow Wilson’s ascension to office, and perhaps even that, the electorate is sharply divided and sharply at odds, albeit in an intensely binary way (unlike 1912). Social strife comparable to the ’60s meshes with political division unlike any since the Bull Moose era, and maybe the Civil War.

Polarization and demonization are the norms. “Woke” and MAGA factions alike often are seen on social media regurgitating steel-hard political and/or social rigidities from their unbending, unforgiving, absolutist echo chambers. You’re either for us or against us, you’re evil and we’re good, my side will save us and your side will destroy us, no middle ground nor third-way alternative is tolerated. Any third way is falsely and illogically perceived as “siding with the other guy”.

I don’t offer a short-term solution because in this toxic climate, there is none. The “victor” will claim the spoils, figuratively raping, pillaging, and running roughshod over the “loser”, especially if the Presidency and both Congressional chambers become dominated by a single party. The other side will backlash socially, a collective “sore loser” mentality. “Divide and conquer” will have won as a time-honored tactic of both Satan and our nominally representative duopoly.

That’s the background. Now to take it down to the personal level of you and me. Regardless of how this night turns out, all is not lost! You can’t control most of what happens in society, nor online. Yet there is one thing you can control: yourself.

You have the opportunity for self-improvement, laid at your doorstep on a shining silver platter. Regardless of the strife sure to come, each of us can take this night, and days to come, as a wonderful opportunity to get to know the true character of people, and filter social-media toxicity from our lives.
Other people’s social-media behavior in light of tonight’s results is your litmus test of their character. Take advantage of the test, to improve your own situation. How?

Calmly take measure of how your “friends”, relatives and acquaintances respond to whatever happens. Then use that measure to apply distance or closeness to those people, accordingly, to improve and detoxify your relationships.

Draw closer to those, on either side, who treat the results with humility, forgiveness, levelheaded rationality, and calm, measured reason in either their support or opposition. Stay true to those who advocate their positions with facts, logic, reason, and, for us Christians, time-honored Biblical morals (all of them, not just cherry-picked).

Withdraw from those “winners” (even if on your side) who gloat, brag, taunt, and/or cuss out the “losers”, and pray they’ll grow up someday. Withdraw from the sore “losers” who deal in melodrama, and/or spew numerous ad hominems hither and yon. Withdraw from he or she who reacts in ways driven by emotion instead of reason, who insults others with personal attacks, lashes out in anger, or uses gratuitous and frequent profanity. Withdraw far from anyone on either side who advocates non-defensive violence or destruction of others’ property.

What does “withdraw” mean? It can be unfriending, unfollowing or just ignoring; regardless, their character is revealed in their response, and the litmus test of character has been applied by circumstances. “Withdraw” also can mean remove your stake in those people personally, but keep close, vigilant watch on them (manifesting concepts of Sun Tzu and the fictional Michael Corleone).

I don’t claim perfection in these regards (who honestly can?), yet will seek ways to improve–one of which is to notice and remove online poison clouding the worldview and dragging on growth.

The next few days on social media offer uncommonly acute circumstances that vividly will reveal the character of many who use it. Make use of that opportunity to assess, tactically and pragmatically, who you want as influences in your life. Observe closely. They will provide that answer for you!