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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
"The Florida Congressman may one day be indicted and convicted. For now, this episode highlights the dangers and abuses of trying a person through media leaks."
I plead guilty to thinking Gaetz was all but convicted of child sex trafficking and drug use. The New York Times said so! I scoffed at Gaetz's claims that it was all part of an extortion scheme aimed at him and his parents.
Did you know this?
"A Florida developer and convicted felon “was arrested on a charge that he tried to extort $25 million from the father of Rep. Matt Gaetz in exchange for a presidential pardon that would shut down a high-profile, criminal sex-trafficking investigation into the Republican congressman.” In November, that developer, Stephen Alford, pled guilty to trying to extort $25 million from Rep. Gaetz and his family.In other words, the only component of this story that has thus far been confirmed — a full year after the NYT first trumpeted it — is the part of Gaetz's denial where he insisted that all this arose from an extortion attempt." (Glenn Greenwald)
Yes, "The Right" does it too...
Hunter Biden has not been charged with anything. Rightwing outlets dishing catty church lady gossip about his drug addiction and sad behavior--complete with cringy, voyeuristic pictures--are no less guilty than the mainstream Democrat sewage geysers.
Feeding the Addiction...
It's all purposely provocative and salacious, delivering a giddy limbic sugar high combo of sin and political ideology, today's sick version of snuff porn.
So, we have a humongous media double-standard in the handling of Gaetz and Biden. On both sides. The left has the upper hand only because they own the institutional flagships like the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc.
Please read the entire article. Greenwald--one of the few remaining real American journalists--thoroughly and concisely explains the issue, and the reader is much better informed at the end of this short read. A rarity in today's Infotainment Media Complex
Who's to blame for the debased condition of the media today?
We are. We are addicted to this crap. The Infotainment Media smut peddlers are just giving us what we crave.
SF,
ReplyDeleteI, too, thought Gaetz was all but convicted of child sex trafficking and drug use....I scoffed at Gaetz's claims that it was all part of an extortion scheme aimed at him and his parents.
I did the same. At first. I should have known better!
AOW,
DeleteThat is what is lost on this nation, "INNOCENT until PROVEN guilty."
We are all guilty of this and we need to step back and wait because 9 times out of 10 it is not what the media is purporting. It is very sad. How many innocents have been convicted wrongly?
Layla
PS: I am addicted to your blog ... (LOL :), but I am seriously here 4-3 times daily.
Nothing works as well as guilt by insinuation. So, Congressman, when did you stop beating your wife? Silverfiddle and Greenwald are doing the Republic an important service by underscoring this travesty.
DeleteMustang,
DeleteThank you for the compliment, but I don't belong in the same class as Glenn Greenwald. His honesty has cost him dearly. The worst cut of all to him, I am sure, is totalitarian progs calling him a rightwinger.
I like how greenwald simply sticks to the fact. The legacy media could learn something from that. How many times have the East Coast flagships rushed out breathlessly with some story only to have the whole thing fall apart later.
ReplyDeleteo/t - I was researching another topic today and I discovered something about what FreeThinke had always adamantly railed against, popular music. I never understood exactly why he so disdained modern music, but I think it gets explained in the following (FT would have HATED the source):
ReplyDeleteAdorno’s theory of standardization. This theory maintains that, in capitalist society, popular culture (and, by extension, popular music) is standardized, using the same formula to appeal to the masses. Adorno noted that all popular music contained a verse, chorus and bridge, and that these elements were interchangeable without damaging the song. However, this formula did not apply to “serious music”, saying that “every detail derives its musical sense from the concrete totality of the piece“, and arguing that even if one detail is omitted “all is lost”.
Adorno maintained that the music industry promoted “pseudo-individualism” as a way to keep society unaware of this formulaic approach to music. Pseudo-Individualism basically translates to “the illusion of choice“. As advertisers use different images and slogans, different meanings are assumed for different products, despite the product essentially being the same. Writing about his studies on popular music, Adorno explained his theory;
“By pseudo-individuation we mean endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or open market [sic] on the basis of standardization itself. Standardization of song hits keeps the customers in line doing their thinking for them, as it were. Pseudo-individuation, for its part, keeps them in line by making them forget that what they listen to is wholly intended for them or predigested.“
However, due to the separation Adorno makes between “serious music” and “popular music”, it could be argued that the theory is elitist. Adorno’s definition of “serious music” extended to include classical and avant-garde pieces, noting that such music plays to the imagination and naturally fulfils the emotional human need, whereas popular music cannot.
...and somehow, albeit ironically, I believe that FT would have been in complete agreement on this subject with this thinker and school that he absolutely hated.
I miss you FT. Sure wish you had been here today.
DeleteSorry. Please delete these posts.
DeleteI think your comments are quite touching. I would like to leave them, and respond.
DeleteFT and I often discussed this topic, the difference between serious music, which he played, and popular music, which I play.
He was fascinated by the phenomenon of jamming, where people just get together and play and you improvise on the fly and nobody has sheet music. He expressed a real admiration for that, and he had seen some videos of me playing and singing, so he wasn't a total snob.
And I miss freethinke too. He could be petulant and insufferable in the threads, but such a wonderful person in a normal conversation.
DeleteI know that he wasn't a total music snob. He did enjoy the popular music of the pre-rock era (his youth). But I didn't quite understand his aversion to 60's+ popular music until now. I suppose to him, it was all a but "derivative". I hate to admit now that I posted a lot of music just to annoy him, and then listen to him vent (trying to gain some insight into what it was that annoyed him).
DeleteSorry Joe,
DeleteUnless you insist they're going to stay up. :^)
I communicated with him by Email because of my hearing, but on a few occasions I talked to him on the phone.
Music was his life and it was slowly taken from him due to his ill health although he did manage to record a couple of YouTube videos before his demise.
I guess it's inevitable that you tend to think of the terms of that which you know best. After the first time he heard my voice, he called AOW. He seemed totally surprised that, "He's a Tenor!" My first thought was, "He's not as crotchety as he seems on the Internet." :)
He was saddened by my hearing loss and I was saddened by his failing health.
I miss him very much.
Sorry Warren... I feel guilty watching you all struggle to keep posters on topic and then going o/t like this.
DeleteI just ran serendipitously across this explanation of a major difference between a type of music he loved (classical) and another (rock), which he generally despised, and felt an urgent need to share it with some people he knew, in case they had been as curious perhaps as to "why" as I had been.
So I won't insist that you take this thread down, but understand if you do. Rule 2. And my apologies for violating it.
ps - FT and I also e-mailed occasionally, and I followed his musical YouTubes My son had attended the Peabody Preparatory and gotten a pre-conservatory certificate in vocal performance (lyrical baritone), so we had a lot to talk about. :)
I don't think that sections of popular songs are as interchangable (imagine swapping the sections between some of your favourite songs, do they survive unscathed?), nor classical music as irreducible (advertisers regularly find very short extracts from the classical repertoire which are at least somewhat satisfying, don't they?) as Adorno claims, although I've no doubt Freethinke would have been delighted by any argument that flattered his preconceptions (as long as you concealed its source).
DeleteAdorno's mass production theory doesn't explain the phenomenon of people getting together to play it without commercial motivation.
I think the real reason Freethinke hated popular music is because he literally heard it differently from us. His ear was attuned to many aspects of music at which pop music is relatively weak (counterpoint, thematic development etc), but deaf to others at which it excels such as groove. I remember on one occassion he compared son cubano with mariachi, which is the kind of clumsy comparison I would make if I tried to contribute to conversation about Indian raga, or any similarly exotic (to me) music -- serves to illustrate the extent to which he simply didn't hear groove. To his ears, it must be hard to understand the appeal of Superstition or Lucille, but it's only like me not understanding the appeal of specific ragas.
I prefer to remember him fondly too, but let's not forget his attitude to music and culture fit into his wider worldview, aspects of which were IMO rather unfortunate. Adam Neely's video on music theory and the white racial frame is truly fascinating, and IMO does a much better job of explaning Freethinke's anti-pop attitude than Adorno. https://youtu.be/Kr3quGh7pJA
FreeThinke was a young man well-prepared for life and culture in America in the late 50's, and then it all changed. For the worse. That is how he described it.
DeleteHe was purposely and artfully provocative in blogging and comment forums, but very much the opposite in real life. He was quite a gentle soul, actually, although he did hold strong opinions. Funny, the first time we talked, his voice and speaking pattern reminded me of Mark Steyn, but more US. He was a very articulate and well spoken man with excellent pronunciation, even as he reassured me my backwoods twang was not as horrible as I portray it.
Jez, He always spoke fondly of you when we talked. I gave him some insight based on our facebook friendship, and it made him happy to know you were a good family man with a professional career.
DeleteHis irritation and lashing out at you came from his selfish disappointment that you were not sufficiently "right thinking." He really did think well of you. I could go on to add "in spite of..." characteristics, etc, but you know what I mean. The man did not have a hateful bone in his body.
I believe you, and I spoke pleasantly with him myself occassionally. But he was explicitly racist, and I know no-one likes to recognise that overt racism can exist in an otherwise gentle disposition, but it certainly can and here is an example.
DeleteI would have loved to hear his reaction to the Neely video (he'd hated on Neely entertainingly over on farmer's blog). I think he would have found it too academically engaging to reject the argument without considering it, as he often did (and which drove *my* irritation and lashings out at *him*!).
FJ,
DeleteI haven't minded tangents. It's the hijacking of posts that I can't tolerate.
BTW, FreeThinke would have been 81 years old this week. He's been on my mind, too. I especially miss his poetry. A book of his poems should have been published!
AOW,
DeleteHis poetry was trapped in an old word processor format, but I was confident I could extract them. I had done another project for him, recovering some video of his musical mentor and digitizing it so he could post it online for posterity.
He didn't want to burden me with recovering all his poetry, but I almost had him convinced. I wanted to extract it all and create a blogspot just for posting all the poems, so they would all be there forever. As you know, he was very fussy, and he didn't like the idea of just posting it all, he would have had to format it all properly (in blogger! Ugh!) and annotate each poem, and I don't think he was up to such a gargantuan task.
I wonder where those files are now? Long gone, probably...
@jez.
DeleteThere's a problem with your music theory = white racism theory, ergo FT was a racist. It's the "multi-culturalism" is a better and more objective perspective because it comes from a more "universal", and therefore un-biased perspective problem. This is an attempt to gain "moral" superiority in the argument, nothing more (since "racism is bad, mkay?". It adds nothing to the technical debate.
For the terms of that "racist" music theory can be used to define and describe (and faithfully reproduce) all elements of the music of all those other cultures.
FT wasn't a racist, and you will never be "morally superior" to him by pretending that by denying yours, yours is the universalist/ objective, ergo "superior" position.
Actually, I'm claiming that traditional western music theory does a poor job of describing music other than was practiced in 18th century Europe. You should really watch the video, it's more interesting than you imagine.
DeleteIt's pointless to argue that FT wasn't a racist - no need to analyze his academic background to reach that conclusion, a casual review of his posting record would suffice. But I'm not claiming moral superiority to anybody, I'm sure I do all sorts of things that are far worse.
Well, it's kinda hard to describe anything without a reference point. Are you familiar with the term choreography? I wonder where THAT art would have been without a starting point (the kore). It's like pretending you can have a philosophy w/o a philosopher's stone.
DeleteBeing resentful of a particular starting point sounds a bit childish, doesn't it? Perhaps since Galton was such a racist, we should all stop using probability theory altogether..
DeleteAnd if your system is so much better at describing all the world's many musical forms, then stop using those terms you've borrowed from the classical western musicians, and apply your new terms to them.
ps - but don't adopt Rousseau's musical notation methods. He was, I am sure, far too "white" for your tastes.
Delete...and while we're at it, perhaps we should throw the Turkish elements out of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. They're such misogynists.
DeleteOh wait. According to your "moral theory of music," it's the ONLY part we should be allowed to keep.
DeleteI full-throatedly recommend that you watch the video. I think you'd get a lot out of it.
DeleteJoe,
DeleteSpeaking of "Ode to Joy." LOL!
I full-throatedly acknowledged having watched the entire video and simply point out that universalism still doesn't confer moral or even technical superiority upon a music theory. You can study Indian music theory, Chinese music theory, Russian music theory. Feminist music theory, African music theory, or any other music theory that you want. But having studied ALL of them isn't necessarily going to confer you with the knowledge of a "superior" general theory useful in every culture.
DeleteThey're at present just different flavours for similar classes of ice cream desserts, some of which contain ingredients that don't blend well. And to call one particular of those flavours "racist" is merely an appeal to ethos and pathos, not logos. And theory, even of a field that deals largely in expression of pathos, is primarily the "field" of logos. And whether a "racist" came up with the logos employed, or a virtuous virgin, makes no difference. For ultimately every "theory" believes itself superior, or no one would study it.
And so every "theorist" wishing to "educate others" rhetorically (using ethos, pathos and logos) extols the virtues and superiority of his system, or "blended system", be it of music, mathematics, sport, art, etc. And this is not a "fault" uniquely applicable and/ or worthy of condemnation to Western culture. For I know of no teacher of "ragas" who extols the virtues of western methods in the production of regional Hindustani music unless she blended it herself. And as someone who will listen to very few ragas during my remaining lifetime, I wish her all the best in doing so. For it was only after the Indians gave the Greek and Roman numbers the "zero", and Arabs simplified the numerals, that mathematics became as useful as it eventually became.
Yes, a synthesis of elements of several music theories may potentially produce some "better" general music theory, but it's' a little early to throw out the Schenkerians, even if Heinrich Schenker was the vilest racist on the planet. Especially if I want to compose for a western, and not an Indian, audience.
Many western liberals today still peddle Western liberal values as "universal" values and wish to enshrine them in international treaties as universal human rights. Should we condemn them for doing so, for thinking these cultural values "superior" and therefore "universal"? Sounds like they are "racists" and deserve, in your mind, to be cancelled, much like some might wish to cancel Henirich Schenker.
ps - Ever wonder why "World Music" is generally for sh*t music? Some of the great goods simply can't live together. We are forced to choose. And such is the tragic nature of choice.
Maybe Ode to Joy should be sung in Esperanto in the future... for its' culturally universalized symbolic structure must allow it to express its' pathos, logos, and ethos better than any singular culturally biased language... right?
DeleteOh wait, they already have...
DeleteThe Ode to Joy became the anthem of the Council of Europe in 1972. In 1985 it became the official anthem of the European Community, and then the EU. It was adopted without lyrics so as not to give preference to one language. There are several unofficial adaptations including Latin and Esperanto.
But then again, language is symbolic, and music, more explicitly metaphoric. Perhaps this is what makes transcribing music into symbolic notations and theory so difficult and complex.
Ok, I thought you hadn't watched it because neither the video nor myself has posited the universalism you're arguing against.
Delete"Different flavours of similar classes of ice-cream" is pretty close to (one of) Neely's points. Are you arguing that musicians are better off restricting themselves to just one flavour if ice-cream? As an American, shouldn't you appreciate the ideal of the melting pot (pun intended, but also the serious point about blending highly divergent traditions as arguably the primary driver of American music and wider culture). But I don't agree that theorists necessarily have to exaggerate the virtues of the system they teach, I much prefer it when the limits of applicability of a theory are front and center.
Neely's point about Schenker is not to merely point out his racism, but to point out that he developed his musical theory in order to make a racist point about the superior genius of Germanic composers, as the original purpose of his theory. And if you want to make or analyze music for a western audience, Schenker's framework isn't a great choice anyway, especially if you want to work in some impressionistic or atonal elements, or even lawd-have-mercy a little blues.
(I'm getting much more practical use and analytical insight these days from the diminished 6th scale taught by Barry Harris. It's more applicable to the music I actually play, and applies somewhat to classical music too, infinitely more so than Schenker when applied to jazz [NB I haven't studied Schenker; I know a decent amount of theory but it's not what I went to school for]).
I don't think Neely wants to cancel Schenker, but why should we conceal Schenker's racist intentions? If that were better known, would it maybe make people less keen to dismiss musical forms which do not conform to his (or any) particular theoretical standard? It doesn't feel right for "genius" to be reserved for works which happen to bear a large degree of similarity to what white Germans were getting up to in the last few centuries, does it?
Except Feethinke didn't mind that that sort of thing at all. I don't know whether he felt that way already as a young student discovering Schenker (I'm confident that he *did* study that form of analysis), or whethetr it was the persistent messaging about what was and wasn't worthy of being considered "genius" and look, here's some impressive theory that "proves" it (actually, was invented to justify the conclusion) that persuaded him, but either way I think freethinke's musical taste was inseparable from his other expressed beliefs about race. And class - how often did he use musical taste as a class signifier?
I feel sure universalism is not possible in music. IDK about those other areas such as international treaties. I don't feel paternalist in the least about setting out standards for safety, quality and sure, why not human rights, as a condition for international trade, for example. I understand that the point of the question was to challenge what you probably call "wokism" (complete with scare quotes), but what do you think about international treaties? Useful, or no place for 'em?
(Shall we move this conversation elsewhere?)
Universalism is the argument, whether you acknowledge it or not. And that's where the charges of "racism" get injected into the argument for purely "rhetorical" effect. Because Schenker was "German" and believed in the superiority of German music. And so his "system" of theory emphasizes Western classical's particular brilliance, which wasn't "jazz" or impromptu improvisation. For there may be better systemic "theories" for explaining and refining those particular music genre's and techniques.
DeleteBut lets be clear. The people who extoll "African" or Hindustani systems believe THEM superior in regard to their particular genres. They are just as biased and racist and limited in other aspects as Schenker's. They are also possibly so limitting as to prevent further developments and improvements in the field of western classical music. So to even speak of "racism" in music theory or the universal superiority of systems more conducive to producing particular varieties, is MOOT. It doesn't belong in the discussion. For Jung believes his system superior to Freud's and Freud, to Jung's. There's no point in mentioning it. It only enters into the conversation when one seeks to compare, combine and/or "universalize" the practice of psychiatry to achieve specific "goods" or results across systems.
Nothing pisses me off quicker than someone injecting "racism" and ethos/pathos into an argument where it doesn't belong to score rhetorical points. For the point should have been that Schenker's musical theories BEST apply to eighteenth century European music, and there would have been NO controversy. But no, the argument is made that this is precisely the "quality" that makes it "inferior" in a universal sense to other systems. But every theory has its' limits, and there's no shame in revealing them. It may not have been "universal" enough to also explain and lead to improvements in the playing of jazz. Its' scope was "limited". That is an argument easily granted.
I believe that FreeThinke was a bit of an elitist "classicist". His background led him to pursue and venerate the "high" arts. And yes, there were very few African Americans in his social class at the time. And these "distinctions" between high and low arts have been largely pooh-poohed and eliminated BY THE LOWER CLASSES and society "democratized" with an injected overt disdain for hierarchies and class distinctions emphasizing one's inherent and relative inferiority/ superiority, equality being the new social standard. No privileged white university student at Yale or Princeton today would seek to identify himself as part of an "elite" or welcome a charge of elitism. The Revolt of the Masses, Ortega y Gassett. This is ITS' bias. This is "modernism". And I am a Classical liberal, not at neo-liberal.
I believe that leaders and followers belong to two different classes, whose values will always, by necessity, be "different" and unique to their classes. I also believe that the "arts" should reflect these classes, and that the "high arts" should remain the aspiration of every worker.
DeleteNot, as is currently, visa-versa.
DeleteAs for genius, I find it in the "quality" of epiphany reached. I find it at the highest level in Homer and the lowest in Joyce. In music, I reach my highest in western classical and lowest in Rock. That doesn't mean I don't love rock. I do. Again, it's the Battle of the Books (Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope). The Modern's just don't reach the highest heights.
DeleteThey're spiders with cobwebs in the Library of Knowledge, not bees in an open field pausing and drinking at every flower.
DeleteThen, however, something happened which made every mouth mute and every eye fixed. In the meantime, of course, the rope-dancer had commenced his performance: he had come out at a little door, and was going along the rope which was stretched between two towers, so that it hung above the market-place and the people. When he was just midway across, the little door opened once more, and a gaudily-dressed fellow like a buffoon sprang out, and went rapidly after the first one. “Go on, halt-foot,” cried his frightful voice, “go on, lazy-bones, interloper, sallow-face!—lest I tickle thee with my heel! What dost thou here between the towers? In the tower is the place for thee, thou shouldst be locked up; to one better than thyself thou blockest the way!”—And with every word he came nearer and nearer the first one. When, however, he was but a step behind, there happened the frightful thing which made every mouth mute and every eye fixed—he uttered a yell like a devil, and jumped over the other who was in his way. The latter, however, when he thus saw his rival triumph, lost at the same time his head and his footing on the rope; he threw his pole away, and shot downwards faster than it, like an eddy of arms and legs, into the depth. The market-place and the people were like the sea when the storm cometh on: they all flew apart and in disorder, especially where the body was about to fall.
DeleteZarathustra, however, remained standing, and just beside him fell the body, badly injured and disfigured, but not yet dead. After a while consciousness returned to the shattered man, and he saw Zarathustra kneeling beside him. “What art thou doing there?” said he at last, “I knew long ago that the devil would trip me up. Now he draggeth me to hell: wilt thou prevent him?”
“On mine honour, my friend,” answered Zarathustra, “there is nothing of all that whereof thou speakest: there is no devil and no hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body: fear, therefore, nothing any more!”
Nietzsche, "This poke Zarathustra"
DeleteBoth men on the rope between towers were genius'... but I believe it was the "modern" who fell. Logic v. intuition. Choose.
:P
DeleteHere also, a "progression of genius'... from highest to lowest:
DeleteAeschylus ->Sophocles -> Euripedes from most intuitive "leaper" to most "cautious rope-walker"
Aeschylus as highest?
DeleteThat's a tragedy.
(Sorry, couldn't resist. ;)
...right, Aristophanes. ;p
DeleteOK, Jez and Joe, you guys made me go look up Schenker.
DeleteI love this line in the wiki, so redolent of the time and place:
"When Schenker was planning a diatribe against Paul Bekker whose monograph on Beethoven was very popular at the time, Hertzka refused to consider publishing it, noting that Bekker and he were close friends."
Monographs, triptychs, and formally published diatribes! Sounds like something out of a Wes Anderson movie.
FreeThinke would have been so happy and full of himself in that olde world, competing fiercely with fellow pianists and composers, delivering long-winded symposia on how proper grammar relates to classical music, dashing off fiery dispatches and condemnations, the never-ending spats, sly sabotage and professional jealousy...
@ FJ,
DeleteWell played, didn't see that one coming!
LOL!
More on Adorno's original point and the death of that world of which FreeThinke so lamented.
DeleteThanks, but I was already in over my head. You and Warren exchanging jokes on Aeschylus made me realize I'm not qualified to be in this thread...
DeleteI'm always in over my head, sf. Never let that stop you. Ducky always threw out subjects for my future research. That's what makes the conversations "fun".
DeleteThere's always an element of risk in applying one's "intuitions". Sometimes you need to figure out where you're going to land after you're already committed and way in the air...
Delete...the point is to have fun learning. And I learned most from mr. ducky asking me what I thought about a painting like Dali's "Javanese Man"
Delete...er-r-r-r. Mannequin. Bit of a "Freudian" slip, there.
DeleteToo much coffee on the brain. ;)
Delete...but the fun part is deciding what YOU see in it.
Delete...in developing and expanding YOUR own personal social capital.
DeleteI don't know whom you're arguing with. Who here is claiming that western music theory is inferior to any other theoretical system?
Delete"Universalism is the argument"
If it be, then you, Neely and I are all in complete agreement that neither Schenker nor any other musical tradition is universal. It is only the classicist elitists who disagree with us.
I don't know how much of this happens, but if you're right that African and Indian music professors are dismissing foreign works as trivial because they don't satisfy their local aesthetic criteria, then they are making the exact same error.
In my life and at my age the epiphanies are rare. Precious little art touches me on a profound level. I assume it is the same for you, although of course we find our epiphanies in different places. I say, find them wherever you can. They are too few and far between to risk missing any due to petty considerations such as high vs low, class signalling etc.
Well, you're not going to find any "epiphanies" consuming the modern cultural products of the past 60 years. They've been "designed out" to keep you consuming the same old same-oh.
Delete...and keep your "pathos" satisfied by slaying the same dead demons of racism that were dealt with and eliminated a hundred years ago.
DeleteThe Joker as a Batman villain gets rebooted every decade or so. Democrats so love the white racist/ supremacist villain that they reboot him every two years...
DeleteNo good records since 1962, and no racism since 1922? You're full of shizzle.
Delete...and you're so run out of racism reboot materials that there's a 50-50 chance that every real incident is a hoax.
Delete...and another 49% chance on top of that that the original charge is wholly the result of prosecutorial bias and malfeasance.
DeleteSorry, FJ
ReplyDeleteOur Blog, our rules!
It stays up! ;)
Warren, I remember freethinke from before I stopped blogging 10 years. I suppose a lot happened between then and now. I am sorry to hear freethinke passed. I actually enjoyed his comments.
DeleteR.I.P. freethinke
Does anyone know what happened to Texas Fred? He has not posted since 2016.
ReplyDeleteLayla,
DeleteI'm not sure. He was in poor health.
Who's to blame? The debased viewers.
ReplyDeleteBAYSIDER
I am very often reminded of Scott Alexander's fictional (I assume it's fictional!!) story "sort by controversial". It's a critique of social media, but increasingly applies to the mainstream...
ReplyDeletehttps://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
It's a piece of fiction constructed along the lines of short story's, relatively common, in the horror and SF genres.
DeleteThe ending is usually some version of; 'I'm writing this all down in the hope that the word gets out before they come to get me. / before it's too late.
That aside, there 'is' a lot of intractability on the Internet but most people don't visit the comment sections of Blogs let alone spend time arguing on them.
Some of us are news and political junkies, most are not.
But there are so many articles now that explicitly reference social media, and reporters are active on twitter etc. and I think those conversations inform their journalism even when they aren't explicitly referenced. It was happening before 2016, but of course Trump did more than his share in making twitter the platform for political discourse that it is today. So I think social media is "leaking" into the real world (yuch!).
Delete@ jez:
Delete"so many articles now that explicitly reference social media,..."
And whether you realize it or not, you are guided to them by a "key words" algorithm which was first written to guide you to items which you have shown interest. --first as advertisement-- Imagine the possibilities! Do you need a left-handed whatever? How about a left/right wing politician? You might even make a donation. 1M hits/views, 10K might show genuine interest, 0.5K might make a contribution. Shine up your message, focus group, hire professional copy writers, show images that appeal or repulse according to the prejudices of your targeted group. Increase the number of hits... wash, rinse, repeat. What does it cost you? Very little compared to the possible gain. Practically nothing compared to real world efforts to propagandize through dead tree methods. Postage, paper, printing... Forget about it!
Big Brother is watching you! But you are only a grain of sand on the beach and big brother might be the equivalent of the NSA, CCP or just some mercantile trust that's only interested in making money by manipulating you.
Again, imagine the possibilities.
Tip: perform searches in "in cognito" mode if you want neutral results, not tailored to your "profile".
DeleteJez,
DeleteTip: perform searches in "in cognito" mode if you want neutral results, not tailored to your "profile".
That really works? And with all browsers?
I think so. Google applies your profile by matching against a cookie; private browsing mode starts each session fresh with no cookies. Only other way Google could guess who you are is based on IP address, which is not a reliable method.
DeleteI take issue with the comparison of unfounded allegations against Gaetz and the results of the disclosure of the actual laptop From Hell whose suppression led to the theft of an election.
ReplyDeleteThe laptop is very real. I only take issue with the ad nauseum prurient reporting of the unseemly aspects of Hunter Biden's personal life. The man is an addict and it must be weighing heavily on his father.
DeleteThe Left denies and hides their eyes. They're "Down for the Struggle!" Donca know.
DeleteI am normally not an insensitive soul, but I have little concern for the feelings of his criminal traitorous father at the moment. I had more compassion for Don Corleone.
DeleteHis father's activity threatens the well-being of my family and generations to come.
Delighting in the spilling of all kinds of personal details and pictures of an addicted person who has gone off the rails is not charitable. It is an unfortunate human trait that revels in this when it's someone they don't like. As Christians, we should guard against that.
DeleteBy all means, if he and the big guy were involved in corrupt deals with overseas governments and businesses let the investigations roll, but leave his personal life out of it. I'm sure, somewhere deep in your soul, you can find some sympathy and some charity for Joe Biden and what he and his wife must be going through because of his son.
I actually feel sorry for Hunter.
DeleteNot being Beau sent him to drugs.
There but for the grace of God...
DeleteEd,
DeleteI actually feel sorry for Hunter.
I do, too -- to the extent that kicking "the devil's pipe" is an addiction nearly impossible to break. I've seen plenty of that problem in my own family. All too often, hearing angel's wings will not frighten a hardcore addict enough to make that addict get help to stop.
Not being Beau sent him to drugs.
Usually, drug use is more complicated than one cause. And I've seen cases where the only draw to drugs is the high itself.
I could go on and on about this. What happened in my extended family broke my heart.
@FJ,
ReplyDeleteIt's a theory. (shrugs)
I can't speak for or understand consumerist attitudes. I've never felt the need or desire to be in with the in crowd. ;)