Not The News

[Cipheron]

Now this is not something you expect to read on a mainstream news site

https://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...c37d45a38a3c5d

Adult entertainment icon Logan Long, who racked up more than 1000 credits in only six years, has died at a Los Angeles hospital after a battle with pneumonia. He was 34 years old.

Among many other tributes from industry colleagues, this one stood out:

Fellow porn performer Buttplug Betty tweeted, “I’ve watched the video of Logan Long peeing on me 5 times today. I’m so f**king sad he was such a great guy.”

[Starker]

An write-up on the whole Amber Heard/Johnny Depp domestic abuse thing that was suggested to me by someone:

https://www.readthepresentage.com/p/...pp-amber-heard

It's a bit long, but well worth the read IMO. It doesn't so much go into the specifics or focus on the more headline grabbing aspects, but talks more about patterns of behaviour in general.

I kept hearing about it here and there, but didn't pay much attention to it at the time, cause I had it pegged as a typical Hollywood scandal and as such quite worthless in the backdrop to what's happening in Ukraine and US politics and in world in general. Looks like it has some pretty serious implications, though, as a continuation of the post-Gamergate cultural milieu we're in.

[lowenz]

Now this is not something you expect to read on a mainstream news site

https://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...c37d45a38a3c5d



Among many other tributes from industry colleagues, this one stood out:

You know, porn is that kind of circus where people to survive start to take it seriously and passioANALy. Like politics, it works because fantasy is forced on reality so deep that it changes your perception.

[Cipheron]

This on CNN, today

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/02/u...age/index.html

A workgroup developing a second-grade social studies curriculum for the Texas State Board of Education last month suggested using the term "involuntary relocation" to describe people who were sold into slavery, the board's chair said, amid national debates on the role of critical race theory in classrooms.

The proposed phrase was part of the initial draft outlining the second-grade standards from a review committee that included a section titled "Enslaved Peoples in America."
"The board -- with unanimous consent -- directed the work group to revisit that specific language," Keven Ellis, chair of the Texas State Board of Education, said in a statement.

In the meantime, the board will continue working on the curriculum later in the summer, according to Aicha Davis, a member of the State Board of Education who represents parts of Dallas and Tarrant counties.

"I have a hard time seeing how it is acceptable to substitute the phrase 'slave trade' for the phrase 'involuntary relocation,'" Davis told CNN.

They're backpedaling already, but it's definitely a bad looking move. Apparently this is the first time they were going to introduce slavery as a topic at 2nd-grade level, and they decided the word "slavery" needed to be censored.

The head of the committee has tried to downplay the situation by saying that the committee rejected the term "involuntary relocation" already after the backlash, but the fact is that they want to whitewash the word "slavery" from the discussion while also introducing it to younger students. That really does smack of trying to indoctrinate the students.

[lowenz]

"If the libtards can play with words to create their own neolanguage why can't we?????"

It's just political trolling.

[Starker]

Twitter megathread on scientific literacy, critical thinking, memes, cognitive biases, woke brands, polarization, conspiracy theories, and so on:

https://twitter.com/steak_umm/status...48473713680385

Some of it is pretty basic info, but nevertheless good stuff to remind yourself every now and again.

[Starker]

In other olds, Republicans in the US really want to their veterans to suffer, apparently:

[Dia]

I was appalled when that bill was shot down. I did some research and found an article that names the 41 assholes who voted against providing this special healthcare to our veterans. I was surprised that I was not surprised to find that one of those assholes is from my state; Ron Johnson (R-WI), who never even tries to disguise the fact that he's an asshole. Guess who I'll try to vote the hell out of office this year. Johnson and Vos and their cronies have got to go.

https://www.newsweek.com/41-senate-r...h-care-1728613

[Starker]

If you're interested about topics like the nature of consciousness, Decoding the Gurus just had an episode as part of their "right to reply" policy with one of the gurus they had dissected. First part of the show is more about things they talked about in the original dissection episode, such as consciousness and the purpose of evolution, and the latter part of the show is about Ukraine and geopolitics between US and Russia.

https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate...-robert-wright

Decoding the Gurus is a podcast where two liberal centrist scientists discuss various personalities who have guru-like tendencies or characteristics. These are often people like Bret Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Ibram Kendi, Joe Rogan, etc, but also some outright cult leaders. The hosts are an Australian psychologist, Matthew Browne, and and Irish anthropologist, Chris Kavanagh and since neither of them is from the US, they frequently talk about things from the point of view of countries like Australia, Ireland, Japan, etc. It's generally quite good natured and science oriented and a bit tongue-in-cheek, though it frequently delves into controversial topics like religion and politics and cultural issues, due to the nature of the subject.

[Cipheron]

Climate-related, with the UK heatwave really hitting hard, people uncovered this TV host mocking a meteorologist who was trying to get people to take the hot weather seriously:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...sons-dont-look

An exchange between BBC meteorologist John Hammond and a news broadcaster went viral Wednesday
...
In the July 14 interview on GB News, Hammond spoke with news anchor Bev Turner about the forecasted extreme heat in the U.K. and other parts of Europe, which ended up breaking previous temperature records by huge margins, sparking dozens of fires across London, and killing more than 1,900 people in Spain and Portugal.

Turner immediately pushed Hammond for a sunny weather report, asking, "It's not too hot, is it?"

At the time of the interview Hammond was enjoying mild weather in Buckinghamshire, but emphasized that Britons must prepare for temperatures that could top 104°F (40°C).

Turner's insistence that Hammond be "happy about the weather" seemed ripped from the screenplay of Don't Look Up ...
[...]
Hammond warned that as temperatures reach into the hundreds, the U.K. could see "hundreds, if not thousands, of excess deaths."

"This will be potentially lethal weather for a couple of days," he added. "It will be brief but it will be brutal."

Turner quickly tried to tamp down Hammond's warning, asking if "something's happened to meteorologists to make you all a little fatalistic and harbingers of doom."

"I want us to be happy about the weather... [every time I’ve turned on, anyone’s talking about the weather, they’re saying that there’s going to be tons of fatalities, but] Haven't we always had hot weather?" she asked, mentioning the summer of 1976 in the U.K., when temperatures reached nearly 90°F for more than two weeks.

Hammond explained that while the 1976 heatwave was an outlier event, the extreme heat seen across Europe in recent days was part of an established pattern in recent years.

This interview was about 3 days before the news hit about the 2000 heath deaths in Spain

Here's the actual video. Her tone makes it even more infuriating

[faetal]

That's GB News, it's basically kids TV for adults (hence the popular nickname Gbeebies, after UK Kids TV program Cbeebies) not to be taken seriously at all.
The viewing figures are very low, as the nation is not (yet) collectively stupid enough to have its Fox News.

[Cipheron]

That's GB News, it's basically kids TV for adults (hence the popular nickname Gbeebies, after UK Kids TV program Cbeebies) not to be taken seriously at all.

The viewing figures are very low, as the nation is not (yet) collectively stupid enough to have its Fox News.

Ok got that then.

That sounds similar to Sky News Australia then. EDIT: "The CEO of GB News is Angelos Frangopoulos who formerly ran Sky News Australia."

As I mentioned in the other thread, Sky News Australia is Murdoch-owned and available on his FoxTel pay TV subscription. They only get 50,000 viewers across cable, broadcast and internet. So it's clearly propped up purely by Murdoch Dollars and wishful thinking that Australia needs it's own Fox News. A die-hard 0.2% of Australians tune into Sky News every night for their news.

Compare that to 1.4 million viewers for the most popular nightly news show on normal TV.

EDIT: I read that the main rival to GB News is "TalkTV" (also created by Murdoch) which provided us with this gem:



Btw "Since [TalkTV] launch ratings have been very low with some shows, especially those broadcast in the evening, recording few viewers, if any."

"if any". i.e. some of their shows literally get zero viewers