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The question that should be on our minds is: how are my household’s buffers holding up?

Lists of predictions for the new year are reliably popular. Here’s 10 predictions, there’s 17 predictions, over here we have 23 and a half… let’s strip it all down to one prediction: everyone’s predictions will be wrong because 2023 isn’t going to follow anyone’s script.

There are several reasons for this. One is that the vast majority of predictions are based on historical comparisons to previous eras. If the current era is unique in its combination of dynamics and instability, previous pathways are not going to accurately predict what happens next.

Recency bias leads us astray. The past 50 years of relatively mild weather, the past 40 years of Bull Markets, the past 30 years of financialization and the supremacy of monetary policy–all of these offer a warm and fuzzy confidence that the future will be comfortingly similar to the recent past. This assumption works pretty well in stable eras but fails dismally in destabilizing, transitional eras.

Stability and instability are not evenly distributed, so every cherry-picked bias can be supported. You predict slow sales? Here’s an empty shopping mall. See, I’m right! You predict a return to the good old days? Here’s a crowded street fair. See, I’m right!

Those who happen to be living inside an island of coherence are inside a bubble that they mistakenly think encompasses the entire world. This is especially prevalent in the top 5% who shape the narratives that influence the rest of us. If real estate is sinking in their little corner of the world, they predict real estate will crash everywhere.

If everything’s rosy in their protected enclave, they predict a mild recession and steady growth, blah blah blah.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

33 Problems With Media In One Chart

July 3, 2022

33 Problems With Media In One Chart

One of the hallmarks of democratic society is a healthy, free-flowing media ecosystem.

In times past, that media ecosystem would include various mass media outlets, from newspapers to cable TV networks. Today, the internet and social media platforms have greatly expanded the scope and reach of communication within society.

Of course, journalism plays a key role within that ecosystem. High quality journalism and the unprecedented transparency of social media keeps power structures in check—and sometimes, these forces can drive genuine societal change. Reporters bring us news from the front lines of conflict, and uncover hard truths through investigative journalism.

That said, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley and Carmen Ang detail below, these positive impacts are sometimes overshadowed by harmful practices and negative externalities occurring in the media ecosystem.

The graphic above is an attempt to catalog problems within the media ecosystem as a basis for discussion. Many of the problems are easy to understand once they’re identified. However, in some cases, there is an interplay between these issues that is worth digging into. Below are a few of those instances.

Explicit Bias vs. Implicit Bias

Broadly speaking, bias in media breaks down into two types: explicit and implicit.

Publishers with explicit biases will overtly dictate the types of stories that are covered in their publications and control the framing of those stories. They usually have a political or ideological leaning, and these outlets will use narrative fallacies or false balance in an effort to push their own agenda.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Corporate Media and Big Tech aligned against #FreedomConvoy

January 30, 2022

Corporate Media and Big Tech aligned against #FreedomConvoy

Bias, power and gaslighting on raw display

As the pandemic’s grip on society is clearly waning, governments at various levels and locales seem to be sorting themselves into two buckets:

End all emergency measures and learn to live with an endemic COVID
Cling to emergency powers and up the ante

Canada is vast country that is run primarily by left-wing liberals who select their PMs from political dynasties in Quebec and who couldn’t pull it off without the support of urban Toronto (the 416).

The corporate media in Canada is largely homogenous, liberal and unabashedly globalist. To them, anything outside of Toronto or Ottawa is “flyover country”. Anything that happens there doesn’t matter unless it’s some issue that can wrapped within a narrative of victimhood to shame the populace into believing their country is a structurally racist, carbon spewing abomination.

In Canada, a pitched ideological battle between the Liberals and Conservatives would be whether the top marginal tax rate should be 53% (where it is now) or 45%. If things got really wild and bare knuckled, maybe Trudeau would come out with a “double-mask” mandate and Erin O’Toole, a third-rate non-entity who has lost two fat-pitch elections, would say “1.5 masks!” Even then he would waffle as soon as some polling data came out.

That’s the political spectrum in Canada, unless you count the NDPs who are even further left than the Liberals. Federally, the NDPs are led by a millionaire socialist.

The Libertarians here are a joke (sorry, but it’s true. I ran for the Libertarian Party federally in 2015 so I get to say that).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Othering Unvaccinated Persons

January 11, 2022

Othering Unvaccinated Persons

In my teaching, I prepare undergraduate students to become high school history teachers. In one course, teacher candidates prepare and deliver mock lessons. Their peers play the role of high school students, and I observe and give feedback following these practice lessons. Whether coincidence or a reflection of the times, this fall a good number of mock lessons covered the rise of totalitarianism. In one excellent lesson, a teacher candidate had his students examine the contexts that gave rise to totalitarianism. He accompanied this lesson with an excerpt from a world history textbook listing characteristics of totalitarianism.

This lesson hit on the true purpose for including totalitarianism in high school curricula. That purpose is not to honor the likes of Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini. Nor is that purpose to provide the methods of totalitarianism as an instructional manual to follow. Rather, the purpose of teaching on totalitarianism is to deliver a warning: heed well the conditions that yielded totalitarianism, so you can recognize and avoid them. As I observed this teacher candidate’s lesson, I could not help but think about that purpose in the context of our present time.

One passage from the lesson’s textbook concerned me the most: “Totalitarian leaders often create ‘enemies of the state’ to blame for things that go wrong. Frequently these enemies are members of religious or ethnic groups. Often these groups are easily identified and are subjected to campaigns of terror and violence. They may be forced to live in certain areas or are subjected to rules that apply only to them” (pg. 876).

Creating an enemy of the state requires othering: a process of dehumanizing through marginalizing a group of humans as something different, less than, and other. Such othered groups become an easy target to scapegoat, unfairly bearing the blame for a society’s ills.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Former New York Times Editor: “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”

July 10, 2021

Former New York Times Editor: “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”

We have been discussing the movement in journalism to discard out-dated notions of objectivity and define journalism as a form of advocacy. Now, Lauren Wolfe, the recently fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.” It is a full-throated endorsement of the new journalistic model of open bias and advocacy. Indeed, Wolfe may have only been undone by her expressly declaring bias as opposed to reflecting bias in her writings.

Wolfe was fired by the Times after she expressed the joy of watching the arrival of then-President-elect Joe Biden at Joint Base Andrews ahead of his inauguration by writing “I have chills.”

Now, in her column in the Washington Monthly, Wolfe insists that the is nothing incompatible with being biased and being a journalist. Indeed, she noted ever since she began as a journalist “angry people come out of their hidey-holes to yell at me.” It is certainly true that writers today are constantly barraged by trolls and critics. However, Wolfe then proceeded to fulfill that very stereotype by embracing bias as right and good in journalism. She attacks the very notion of objectivity that was once the touchstone of modern journalism.

“I’ve always believed it is better to be open about my views on the issues I cover, which for a long time have been war and international human rights. And yes, I often do write with an agenda—with an eye toward creating change. So yes, I am biased, and consciously so when it comes to certain subjects—especially when I’m reporting on criminality. But I don’t see that as a bad thing.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever

July 5, 2021

Block 3...Chapter 10 - Mr. Ribeiro's 8th Grade Language ... — Some animals are more equal than others.

“All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia,” declares a policy page, “must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV).” This is essential policy, believe it or not. Maybe that will be hard to believe, if you have read many Wikipedia articles on controversial topics lately. But it is true: neutrality is the second of the “Five Pillars” policies that define Wikipedia’s approach to the craft of encyclopedia-writing. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales made a statement that Wikipedia now regards as definitive. “Doing The Right Thing takes many forms,” he wrote, “but perhaps most central is the preservation of our shared vision for the NPOV and for a culture of thoughtful diplomatic honesty.”

Yes, Wikipedia is very earnest about its neutrality.

But what does “neutral” mean? This is easy to misunderstand; many people think it means the same as “objective.” But neutrality is not the same as objectivity. If an encyclopedia is neutral about political, scientific, and religious controversies—the issues that define the ongoing culture war—then you will find competing sides represented carefully and respectfully, even if one side is “objectively” wrong. From a truly neutral article, you would learn why, on a whole variety of issues, conservatives believe one thing, while progressives believe another thing. And then you would be able to make up your own mind.

Is that what Wikipedia offers? As we will see, the answer is No.

What Is “Neutrality,” Anyway?

“Now wait a second,” I can already hear some people saying. “I reject this distinction between objectivity and neutrality. Neutrality does not mean giving equal weight to all opinions. Neutrality means approaching issues without emotion, following standards of logic and science. The neutral approach seeks hard facts and assembles hard-won truths for a critical audience.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Orwell & Huxley’s Warnings to the World

June 10, 2020

ORWELL & HUXLEY’S WARNINGS TO THE WORLD

As George Orwell neared his death, he made one final warning to planet Earth and every human on it. Scarily, we are seeing human beings demand their own enslavement and that of others which was exactly what Orwell said would happen.

The woman interviewing Orwell from his death bed asked if he demonstrated that he had the ability to face some of these unpleasant facts. Orwell replied:

“I think that allowing for the book being after all a parody, something like 1984 could, actually happen. This is the direction the world is going in at the present time. In our world, there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self basement. The sex instinct will be irradiated. We shall abolish the orgasm. There will be no loyalty except loyalty to the party (the government/ruling class) but always there will be the intoxication of power.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot, stamping on a human face. Forever.”

As David Icke said, “Stop acquiescing to power.”

Orwell’s eerie warning is coming to fruition right before our eyes and even “freedom-loving” Americans are allowing it, even cheering for it to happen. “The moral to be drawn from this dangerous situation is a simple one. Don’t let it happen. It depends on YOU,” Orwell said.

Yet we have people in the “land of the free” calling for martial law and the use of violence to put down dissent. We have violent people stealing, looting, and rioting to protest police violence. We see people defend the military for firing on innocent people on their own porch. We have people demanding free speech be eliminated because they don’t like what’s being said. We have people get outraged the second they read something that disagrees with the brainwashed bias in their mind (cognitive dissonance.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Civil War inside Mainstream Newspapers

June 8, 2020

Civil War inside Mainstream Newspapers

There is a civil war inside the New York Times as is the case in just about every major newspaper. This war is emerging between the young journalists and the 40+ old-wing liberals who have lost their way and surrendered all ethics of what was once journalism. What has changed is that the classically liberal process has transformed from investigative objectivity to always criticizing in public any opposition which in itself requires that one holds certain opposite convictions which means any objectivity has been surrendered. The capacity of reason to determine right from wrong has become biased to one’s own side to prevail and what has been rejected is debate. The substance is never addressed, simply they attack the messenger. There is no evolution of thought or advancement for society through the historical give and take of argument.

Journalism has lost any degree of modesty about the likelihood of any comprehensive moral and political view triumphing so decisively that competing views vanish or shrink to the furthest margins of a free society. Indeed, journalism has become just personal propaganda. Once upon a time, journalism was a noble cause for it was about a practical and functional form of truth that may not be even absolute or philosophical, but it was the pursuit of the truths that impacted our society. It was once perhaps a lofty goal that began with the professional discipline of assembling and verifying facts as was the case with the legal and political professions.

But journalists, have succumbed to bias and no longer try to convey a fair and reliable account of their events. FAKE NEWS has simply become a platform for personal bias warranting no further investigation. Journalism has digressed to nothing more than standing on a soap-box at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, London. Journalists are no longer transparent about sources or methods so audiences can make their own assessment of the information.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s official: the collapse of the mainstream media’s credibility is now complete

April 19, 2019

It’s official: the collapse of the mainstream media’s credibility is now complete

(Natural News) Attorney General William Barr held a press conference this morning to address the contents of the Mueller report, just as he promised to do. Not long after, Barr delivered the full Mueller report to the public with necessary redactions, also as promised. And yet the mainstream media, which demanded all of these things and has now received them, still isn’t happy.

In fact, most fake news media pundits are now foaming at the mouth, questioning Barr’s loyalties and accusing him of colluding with President Donald Trump to convey the “spun” message that he’s innocent – which it would seem as though no amount of evidence will ever convince those with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is actually true.

In a nutshell, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whom Leftist Democrats have been hailing for the past two years as their savior and hero who was going to take down Trump, didn’t end up procuring what these Trump haters were wishfully thinking he would. And in response, Trump haters everywhere are reeling with more anger than ever, demanding that Mueller be burned at the stake for failing to prove their deranged conspiracy theories.

CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta about had a coronary in response to Barr’s press conference, accusing Barr of “clearly laying out a sympathetic presentation” of what’s supposedly in the Mueller report. Twenty-twenty presidential hopeful and Leftist Democrat Cory Booker similarly accused Barr of “undermining the independence of this entire process” for his speaking publicly about the Mueller report prior to releasing it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Orwellian Hate Crime Database to Be Set Up For Thought Criminals in Michigan

April 9, 2019

Orwellian Hate Crime Database to Be Set Up For Thought Criminals in Michigan

Only in a world where the novel 1984 has become the evening news can we get a state’s Attorney General working with the Department of Civil Rights to create a database for people committing “hate and bias incidents that don’t rise to the level of a crime or civil infraction.”

This “hate crimes unit” apparently comes on the advice of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which issued a report about a rise of extremism and hatred within the state of Michigan. This itself is more than ironic, since it was reported last year that the organization had to pay $3 million for falsely labeling the Quilliam Foundation as an example of “anti-Muslim extremism. ”

Nevertheless, the SPLC still seems to be the go-to group for databasing the speech of the public at large; they’ve previously been linked to Google, currently the largest such de facto database in existence.

Predictably, then, there has been pushback right out of the gate for those who have received the label of hate-monger from the SPLC and, by extension, the government of Michigan. As The Detroit Newsreports:

Church Militant/St. Michael’s Media in Ferndale is listed by the law center as an “anti-LGBT” hate group. The group’s editor-in-chief, Christine Niles, rejected the label and said, to her knowledge, the group’s presence on the list is a first.
“We’re not entirely sure what that means,” Niles said, noting that the group and its work is faithful to the Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage being between a man and a woman. “We have a right to believe that without being called a hate group.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Media To Trump: We’re Calling The Shots Here

January 17, 2019

Media To Trump: We’re Calling The Shots Here

Won’t they ever figure out that their own bias is what makes them ineffective?

A New York Times columnist has made a bit of a splash in the elites’ fetid swimming pool by proclaiming that his media brethren will not make the same mistakes with President Trump that they made in 2016. This open declaration of political bias is, of course, yet another major mistake, but these people are so far gone in their delusions that there is no point even trying to explain that simple fact to them.

…press is angry because their coverage of a major presidential candidate turned out to help him rather than harm him.

Frank Bruni wrote a defiant piece in which he vowed that the media won’t “let him set the terms of the 2020 presidential campaign.” We all know who “him” is. This sounds like the remark of a petulant child unhappy that he doesn’t get to run a playground game. But there is even more to be revealed by Bruni’s sour grapes than just a determination to spite a president. He is indeed displaying the foremost media trait that turns off so many Americans: The assumption that they get to set the agenda – that they get to decide what is and isn’t news. Instead of merely reporting as per their alleged job responsibilities, this elitist demands to be a player himself, and, it would seem, the starting quarterback.

Fooling Themselves

Bruni is so warped by his own vitriol that he finds it offensive that major press outlets were forced to cover an Oval Office address to the nation given by a sitting president. “We had to weigh a request in line with precedent against a president out of line when it comes to truth,” he obtusely writes.

Frank Bruni

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Enemy Of The People

January 16, 2019

Enemy Of The People

There has never been a time when normal people did not know the media was biased and biased in a predictable direction. For every non-liberal in the media, there were at least ten liberals. The ratio was probably higher, but then, as now, some lefties liked to pretend they were independents or some third option. The media used to invest a lot of time denying they had a bias and an agenda, but the only people who believed them were on the Left, which had the odd effect of confirming they had a bias and an agenda.

The thing is though, the media seemed like it was biased in a predictable way. In the 1980’s, for example, the newspapers featured stories about the so-called homeless crisis on a weekly basis. That’s when we went from calling them bums to pretending their only problem was a lack of shelter. Once Clinton assumed power, the homeless stories disappeared. It was a running joke for a long time, because it was so obvious, but also because it was so predictable. Everyone got the joke, except Lefty.

As many have observed, the mask began to drop during the Clinton years when so many media members quit their jobs and went to work in the administration. It’s hard to maintain the illusion of independence when there is a revolving door between the media and left-wing political operations. That’s when CNN became known as the Clinton News Network, because they were so hilariously in the tank for them. Some tried to maintain the ruse, but any pretense of objectivity ended in the 1990’s.

Again, there was still a sense that it was just bias and that it was predictable and therefore you could adjust for it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wag the Dog… British Media Watchdog Accuses Russia of Bias

December 27, 2018

Wag the Dog… British Media Watchdog Accuses Russia of Bias

Irony is dead when British state media controllers accuse Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik of “imbalance” over their reporting on the Skripal alleged poisoning affair.

In the past week, Ofcom, the British media watchdog, condemned seven programs aired during March and April this year following the apparent poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. The Russian outlets may be fined or denied future broadcasting rights in Britain. The latter suggests what the real, ulterior agenda is all about.

It remains a mystery as to what happened exactly to Skripal and his daughter when they reportedly fell ill on March 4 in the famous south of England cathedral town. Neither Sergei nor Julia have been seen in public since, apart from a brief and carefully controlled interview given by Julia to Reuters a few months ago, apparently having recovered from her stricken condition. Russian consular services have been denied access to Julia by the British authorities, despite her being a Russian citizen.

The murkiness of the affair, the flagrant obfuscation by the British authorities and their violation of diplomatic norms speaks of a British state intrigue aimed at provoking international recriminations against Russia. Such is the outrageous apparent skullduggery by the British state, it is arguably very appropriate therefore for critical media coverage of the incident and the subsequent prevarication by London.

However, in a staggering inversion of reality, British media regulators complain that Russian news outlets have broken “impartiality rules” in their reporting on what is a bizarre de facto disappearance of a Russian citizen and her father while in the custody of British authorities. The protagonists are off-limits from criticism; their ropey claims must be treated as the sane version of events.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trump Derangement International

December 23, 2018

Trump Derangement International

Diego Velázquez The Spinners 1655-60

Dirk Kurbjuweit, deputy editor-in-chief of Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine for the past 4 years, unwittingly put his foot a mile deep in his mouth this week when he reacted to a letter written by US Ambassador to Berlin Richard Grenell. His reaction presents perhaps the most perfect example of the downfall of news, journalism, the media in general, that we’ve seen so far. Most perfect among very stiff competition.

After Der Spiegel itself this week ‘outed’ its award-winning star reporter, Claas Relotius, as someone who had made up many of his lauded articles from scratch, Grenell suggested the magazine, and especially its editorial staff, shouldn’t think they can get away with putting all the blame on just this one guy. He tweeted:

We value policy criticism. We love a free press. But @Spiegel literally fabricated stories saying people (Americans) were racist & xenophobic. They made up events, details, & lies – and no editor checked the stories. Every real journalist should be outraged by this.

And he wrote a letter to Der Spiegel, albeit addressed at the ‘wrong’ editor, Steffen Klussman, who won’t be in the post until after Jan. 1:

The recent revelations of completely fabricated stories, completely fictional people and fraudulent details in Spiegel over the last seven years are very troubling to the US Embassy. These fake news stories largely focused on US policies and certain segments of the American people. It is clear we were targeted by institutional bias and we are troubled by the atmosphere that encouraged this recklessness.

While Spiegel’s anti-American narratives have expanded over the last years, the anti-American bias at the magazine has exploded since the election of President Trump. We are concerned that these narratives are pushed by Spiegel’s senior leadership and reporters are responding to what the leadership wants.

This is where Dirk Kurbjuweit’s foot enters his mouth, stage left, and starts its long journey down:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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