The Guardian had a quiz this week on the current UK lockdown rules, and I got most of the questions wrong. I'd imagine that the average person* has ... no chance.
* as in person who has better things to do with their life than follow news blogs, multiple newspapers, and watch government press conferences.
And this coming at a time that has been awful for local news outlets. Especially print.
Case in point https://twitter.com/foxreports/status/1290283846001459201?s=21
That's what I'm worried about. I feel like there's a new group of people who are currently imprinting on a news choice, and the reasonable, accessible sources have all dried up, and that Fox News has positioned itself to field the void.
I'm thinking of all the local news stations, and how they were bought up by Sinclair, and its rightwing predilections.
What is theoretically the local daily paper in Oakland is os puny it barely affects conversations even among the plugged-in set. The alt-weekly fired all its full-time reporters and is a shell of its former self. We do have a cool new outlet, but it started up with grant funding so who knows how long it's going to last.
3: The problem is real, but Wyoming was already particularly poorly suited to support a daily paper: less than half the population of Wake County (Raleigh) spread over >100x the geographic area.
6: That is to say, Wyoming doesn't deserve two whole senators and a representative.
I know there are lots of people who don't generally follow the news. One change is that many of those people now *do* use social media, so they've gone from being unexposed to being exposed to what Facebook wants to show them, which seems troublesome.
Even fairly honest news outlets are spreading misinformation, because they are spreading information put out by politicians. As the OP acknowledges, it's not enough to follow the news. I'd argue it's not even enough to follow the reputable news. It's a relatively recent realization on my part that people who follow the real news aren't being well-informed about the spectacular US failure on the pandemic.
If the media felt they could be straight with people on that topic, some version of Kevin Drum's chart would be running on the front page every day. Instead, we hear that many states are having a tough time with Covid, and there is a resurgence in many European countries. Both true statements -- as one would expect from reputable news outlets -- but wildly misleading without context.
It's very difficult for normal people to stay usefully informed.
Maybe this is a dumb question, but I kind of wonder what "everyone who does not follow the news" even means these days. Like, I've never made it a part of my routine to sit down and focus on the newspaper or news Web site, even when I wrote for one. But between the feeds on Google News, Facebook, and Reddit, news comedy shows (10 years ago, The Daily Show; now, more likely to be Last Week Tonight), and chatter on places like this, I think I'm reasonably well up to date. Cassandane will often tell me about some recent horrifying story and I've already got the basics from one of those sources. I think I keep up with the news well enough despite neither reading nor watching it. (Of course, how would I know?)
I can say that I've been reading the news (or rather, skimming Google News and following links) more often, but it hasn't been about concrete, short-term things. It's either been trying to read tea leaves and divine whether I'll be asked to go back to the office before the school year starts, or indulging paranoia and doomsaying. A frog trying to find a thermometer, so to speak.
I think "doing things to cultivate an awareness of news events". So for me, when I'm busy, that amounts to skimming the headlines that people share on FB, because I've cultivated a feed a smart people I trust. Other times I seek out actual news websites. I don't listen to news radio anymore, but I think news podcasts or NPR would be a large delivery method. For that matter, I think John Oliver or Trevor Noah counts, too.
I fear that Ted Nugent's facebook page is the face of local news to come.
I like twitter a lot, allows me to function as my own editor basically. Google reader also did years ago. I don't know if that's an economically viable model; it's certainly one susceptible to staying within a set of strongly reinforced antivax or racist information sources.
I don't have an answer-- the Sinclair fear Heebie mentions confirmed I guess, with counterweights being that Bloomberg has purchased CityLab and fired a bunch of the staff, or Laurene Jobs buying the Atlantic. Aside from immediate financial and logistical issues associated with who owns various outlets and how to usefully browse them, in my mind there is a real question about the aggregated fates of individual journalists-- Jamal Khashoggi and the statistics on the danger of working on crime journalism in Mexico or any nonaligned journalism in Russia eg.
Personally I like weeklies and having a few reliable foreign sources to complement local reading.
They're not ideal, but I like a lot of what appears in Animal Politico, they do a few special sets of fucused articles every year, this one was nice:
https://www.animalpolitico.com/justicia-cotidiana-conflictos-mexico/
I blame movies. Most of them are all about how some person without expertise beats all the experts because they have heart and love and believe in themselves. But it's not the kids who took to heart the lesson that they need only believe in themselves. It's the 60-somethings with riding mowers and red hats.
I used a search engine! High quality curated content, won't answer all OP questions but may provide a bit more data.
Pew Research articles about news audience trends and attitudes
Pew Research articles about news media trends generally
Market research on "U.S. Time Spent with Media 2020" (brief summary, full report for $$)
More market research from Deloitte on digital media consumption
I've been trying to read more (online versions of) print media directly, rather than using aggregators. I subscribed to the SF Chronicle to get local news, and was rewarded for my trouble with at least one completely ridiculous bullshit article about how immunity to COVID-19 is impossible. (Other articles have been good and useful.) I "follow" various journalists on Twitter, but I don't have a systematic way of getting international news and generally have to limit what I get sucked into reading. Oh and a million charities and activist networks email me regularly about catastrophes.
I stopped using Google News in particular a while ago, because the signals were really drowned out by the noise.
Even though I'm in the Bay, the only California newspaper I subscribe to is the LA Times. Its coverage seems worlds better than the Chron.
Yeah, the LA Times is an unusually good newspaper, but this was a coronavirus-specific decision and, um, the LAT is more generous about offering articles for free.
We have two local papers, one which I won't give any money to even if it means I can't read it and one which I don't like enough to give money to when I can read for free.
We get the local paper delivered on Saturday and Sunday. It used to be a conservative family-owned paper known for playing favorites among local politicians. Since the family sold out, the political bias is less evident, but it's also laid off a lot of staff so there's not much local reporting at all.
I did give a donation to a guy starting a new free paper after he got fired from the regular free paper for pointing out that a total shit in the Pennsylvania State House was a total shit.
21: Thanks for the links! Interesting. One of the questions they asked people was "does the media understand people like you?" Not surprisingly most people answer no. What kind of person answers yes to this? I'm picturing Woody from Cheers.
Or SpongeBob - but I guess they are basically the same person.
Ironically, the NYT and Washington Post probably do understand me pretty well.
I subscribe to my local paper (Sundays physical, electronic daily) a few years ago. It's amazing how poor the "keep track of money" side of the paper is -- at one point I was getting calls about two different cancellation dates, reading a subscriber notice on their website that my subscription had ended a year ago, and received an email confirming that they had my autopay information and would bill on schedule.
I usually read the Daily Wake Up email with 5 or so headlines, and will often read one or two of the highlighted articles. Yesterday I read the whole paper... which is a lot less impressive these days, given the smaller page count and skinnier pages. The paper's now printed a few hours out of town and the local staff has been slashed, so what's left of the paper's still is largely national rather than local. (Though they did have a almost 3 pages devoted to an interview with our new mayor elect about BLM and race relations, which was impressive.)
My wife reads the Washington Post, skimming the headlines at the top of her day; she'll mention articles or send me links if there's something interesting or relevant.
I agree that its very difficult for normal people to be usefully informed. I still read Kevin Drum although for Covid-19 I think checking in once a day with https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0bzEj1gHBVH3HuH-EQeGdj3Z9RbLDe_pL11IWMhzAVEKikMQoHj5Fy82s#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 ,the tracker at John Hopkins is better.
Speaking of K-Drum, this is good news: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/08/portland-moms-1-federal-agitators-0/
Newsletters are the new newspapers. Anyone reading Heather Cox Richardson's? I know folks for whom that's their primary source of news (which is not a bad thing). I subscribe to Judd Legum's and Matt Stoller's.
I'm not really clear what these newsletters are.
Maybe you should subscribe to my newsletter.
I believe they're the modern equivalent of eclectic web magazines.
Anyone reading Heather Cox Richardson's?
No, but I disliked her new book and was vindicated in my opinion earlier this summer. I know "new newspapers" was a bit tongue in cheek, but do people do investigative reporting for these things? Or are they blogs-by-mail?
Oh man https://twitter.com/samarsaeed/status/1290675360460414979?s=21
Yikes. I hope your mechanic is O.K.
Speaking of news, I read that NYC health commissioner resigned over conflicts with DeBlasio, specifically related to the decision to put the public hospitals rather than the health commission. Does anyone have any insight into why he would have done that? I mean the hospital system does not have expertise in that and the health commission does.
31: That's a hell of a thing. I wonder what was burning before the big explosion.
These things aren't invitation-only, people. Richardson's, Legum's, Stoller's.
33 He doesn't live in Beirut. OTOH I have 4 good friends who do.
35 It's at the port. Read that it's a grain silo storage facility. Could also be chemical. It was burning before the explosion.
The early news reports are discussing motives for terrorism, but, speaking purely ex recto, it looks like an industrial accident to me. You can't truck explosives to a place to create that kind of blast unless you're blowing up something that's already explosive. That's quite a video. Hope your friends are safe.
Ok Two have checked in and they're well, one was in place where the glass shattered from the overpressure but he's ok. Holy fuck.
39 Yeah, also speaking ex recto it looks industrial to me.
In some of the videos, you can see what look like the fireworks going off before the big blast. Of course, everyone who reads newsletters knew this was inevitable.
Third has now checked in and said all well, still waiting to hear from another.
The "two explosions" reports don't look like they are being confirmed.
The reflection of the emergency lights on the smoke before the explosion? The first responders are going to have very heavy casualties.
Some of the pictures of neighborhood damage I've seen are crazy.
I guess 43 survived if he posted the video?
Some verified idiot on twitter is claiming it must be an atomic bomb because the cloud was mushroom shaped.
If he tries to blame Israeli, Seth Rogan's mom will yell at him.
I guess 43 survived if he posted the video?
That is a frightening video.
The Lebanese government is saying "confiscated munitions" including a large amount of sodium nitrate seized from a ship some months earlier. Which could be an accident, or a very inviting target if you wanted to blow something up with maximum effect.
I realise, rather shamefully, that I have no idea what the current regulations are in detail despite reading/looking at two English and two US papers a day, subscribing to three or four newsletters, and spending far too much time on Twitter.
This really dates from Cummings' defiance of lockdown, after which it was obvious that the rules would not be obeyed much, whatever they were, once the lockdown was even partially lifted. This has proved true.
I don't, on principle, listen to radio news (except sometimes Swedish radio news, for a pleasant distancing effect) or ever watch television news programmes. I wish I could say that my evenings were full of improving culture instead, but my early morning routine is certainly far healthier for never listening to the Today programme.
The main rule I remember is that if you have doubts about your vision, you must only check vision in a way the endangers your children.
Report of 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the site of the explosion, comparable to Texas City 1947. Equivalent TNT force of several hundred tons which is comparable to a so-called suitcase nuke.
57: I used to listen to it some at 10pm in CA. I liked John Humphreys, but he's retired, so I feel no draw any more.
Got to talk to my sister about the port explosion in Beirut. She promised me that there are rules for American ports about what can be stored next to each other. But then she laughed and pointed out that the agricultural port closest to us has an entire terminal storing fertilizer and that there are industry jokes about how dangerous the tiny port of West Sac is. Oh. Today at least, I find myself newly strongly interested in port safety.
Did the fire mix the ammonium nitrate with a fuel by the heat? I thought to get an explosion, you had to mix it with fuel or similar.
I bet they are going to open the bars here soon. Bar owners are threatening "civil disobedience" and local politicians are pushing the governor. The bar owners are basically promising to spray around more hand sanitizer. They could probably safely open the old man bars, but I don't know any way to write a rule that does that.
People would be surprised if they realized the regularity of which munitions stockpiles explode. It has been said that they kill an average of a 747's worth of people every year. When they occur in places like Brazzaville or Sri Lanka they are overlooked by western media.
This one reminds me of one that happened in Cyprus a few years back, when confiscated munitions stored in the hot sun blew up and took out the islands primary power generation plant.
No links because I've lost power in the tropical storm.
Here's the wikipedia page for the cyprus explosion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelos_Florakis_Naval_Base_explosion
derasqued also mentioned it on the twitter.
If you mix it with a hydrocarbon fuel it's much easier to detonate since now you have an oxidizer (nitrate) and a fuel. But it can thermally decompose on its own to form nitrous oxide (the big red cloud seen) and water, especially if it has a catalyst like chloride. Fortunately large amounts are never stored near the ocean.
Oops nitrous N2O is colorless but other nitrogen oxides like NO2 account for the red color.
The shockwave was felt in Cyprus!
Bellingcat is very good on this https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/08/04/what-just-blew-up-in-beirut/
Last friend checked in with a mutual friend, she's ok but her father was injured. He's stable but she's scrambling trying to get him medical attention.
In Kansas I'm glad Kobach lost. I'm too nervous about the past to buy into the "the worse the Republican nominee is the more likely the Democrat is to win" strategy.
I am currently rewriting this app, but its current iteration should give you some idea of the blast radius, assuming an equivalent of 270 metric tons of TNT (which is a number I think I saw somewhere but now cannot locate).
If this were a Potential Explosive Site (PES) being considered for a license to store 270 tons of ammunition, inhabited military buildings would have to be outside the yellow line, and civilian buildings would have to be outside the purple line.
75 Which for some reason is not loading for me now.
This is a good reminder that Ghostbusters is actually a tragedy where the hero (the EPA guy) failed and a city was destroyed because reasonable rules on what you should store in a city with flouted.
Yeah, I may or may not have stolen the idea from NUKEMAP. Surely it was an idea that was in the air. But this one is strictly for conventional explosives!
The ghost-containment unit was unsafe, just like he said.
Spike, thanks for that. I used it to map out the blast radius on the ag port in the city just next to us.
Cool. I finally landed a contract to update the thing so there will be a new version out this fall with all sorts of bells and whistles, like letting you pick your explosive type and bunker design.
I want my bunker to have paneling and cheap carpet. That way it's like being sent to the basement to play during the 80s.
Sometimes the bag of marshmallows taunts you because it knows you're too tired to make Rice Krispy treats. Your only defense is to eat them right then.
If you don't eat the first bag until I get back, you can have two bags of marshmallows.
I do all the grocery shopping since the pandemic started. We have exactly as many marshmallows as I want.
So do we. We have no marshmallows at all.
I would have aced the marshmallow test, so I wasn't surprised when it was debunked.
In the current pandemic many policymakers are looking toward Re to gauge whether their policies reduce viral transmission, notes biomathematician Robert Smith? (the question mark is part of his name) of the University of Ottawa.
link">link">https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.the-scientist.com/features/why-r0-is-problematic-for-predicting-covid-19-spread-67690/amp">link
goddamnit I reformatted that and previewed it like five times, and now I think "preview" breaks link formatting.
He seems like quite a character. His website's list of diseases he's published on includes "Zombies" and "Bieber Fever."
Governor of Ohio tests positive for Covid.
In other news, we found out today that my daughter's primary caregiver (the house manager) that has been out sick for a over a week has Covid.
No, Moby, the Governor is not moonlighting as my stepdaughter's caregiver.
Thank you for making that explicit.
Did he get Covid to avoid being photographed with Trump? I just read that he was tested because he was supposed to greet Trump when Trump visits Ohio.
Also, failing the test let him leave Cleveland. I think he infected himself.
So, Gov. Bullock has announced that counties get to choose whether to have an all-mail election. Let's see if the RW nutjobs are willing to put their political future on the line. Or if they decide that our years of experience with mail in ballots is a better indicator than the ravings of the Orange Menace.
99: Yes, unlike LeBron, DeWine can't just leave Cleveland whenever he gets tired of it.
I've spent an entire afternoon in Cleveland. I think it might have been O.K. if I hadn't gone with people determined to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
They said airborne exposure is riskier than surfaces but I guess if you wear enough hats you might catch it.
So, a couple hours after Trump leaves, DeWine takes another test and is clean.
There's probably somewhere on the web where you can buy nose swabs guaranteed to be positive. Or maybe just snot to put on the swab.
104: That surprised me. I thought the risk Of antigen testing was false negatives (largely in patients who weren't transmitting virus) but that the positives were accurate.
i have a question about money and maybe someone here can explain it to me. If we want, we can pretend that the proposed billionaires tax is the hook.
Bezos is supposed to have sixfinity billion dollars, right? I don't understand if that is something real, or an accounting we all agreed on. Could he functionally change that from an abstract number into something real? I get that he could purchase a few yachts made of gold and maybe translate the first billion dollars into something. But if he wanted to climb to the moon on a staircase made of thousand dollar bills, could he change hall his money into cash?
Maybe if he's working in the world where all money is abstract, he could do things. Pay all student debt? Buy every building in New York? But would there be problems? Can he write checks out of his bank account up to sixfinity billion? Can the bank actually produce his sixfinity billion if he writes a check?
The thing I don't understand is if it really means anything that Bezos' fortune went from $650B to $700B this year. Does he really have an additional $50B of purchasing power? If he's already bought $650B of hookers and blow, are there another $50B of hookers and blow left in the world to purchase? Can he turn that number into money? If he can't spend it, is it money? Or is it a score?
Yes, yes, no, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, yes but it's going to be bad blow, no, yes, yes.
Does he really have an additional $50B of purchasing power?
Not exactly. With gajillionaires, what they are really measuring is the value of stock, and $50 billion of Amazon stock isn't that liquid. You have to sell it off in pieces if you want cash money.
I saw a meme once that took advantage of folks' ignorance of this. The meme said sure, Trump lost a billion dollars operating casinos one year, but Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have lost more than that in a day. Trump lost actual cash money. Gates and Buffett saw the value of their companies' shares go down. It ain't the same thing.
In some real sense, if the value of your house goes down, you are less wealthy, but it doesn't have an impact on your ability to buy groceries this week.
So the extremely wealthy are basically always operating out of their first billion dollars?
Not when they want to buy another company.
At the risk of oversimplifying, yeah. If they don't want to sell assets and they need liquidity -- say there's a senator they want to buy, and they don't have the cash on them -- banks are happy to help them out. Don't worry about that check from Bill Gates for $1.5 billion that you're holding. He'll make good on it.
The main problem as I understand it is that when you're that rich due to owning most of a major company the mere act of trying to sell all your shares would greatly reduce the share price, both for supply/demand reasons and market psychology reasons (oh no Bezos is bailing on his company!). I wonder who's the richest person whose money isn't primarily stock in one company. Maybe Buffett because Berkshire is a conglomerate of other companies?
114: The math is tricky, but with Gaddafi out of the running a plausible case could be made for Putin.
114: If you own enough stock, there are rules about announcing that you are planning to sell.
But you can still buy on inside information, right?
I wonder if Putin can depreciate Trump for his 2020 taxes?
The cost of laundering peed-on bedding is definitely deductible.
My understanding is that exchanges of stock in companies that are mostly closely held, exchanges of other illiquid entities like mining rights, stolen art, or real estate, are genuine transactions that are hard to value.
Putin got a lot of his wealth from extorting others and forcing them to sell at very low prices-- he didn't pay much. What was the "real" value of those transactions?
Basically when something that's hard to value (say Amazon without the special genuis of Bezos as great helmsman) gets sold, there's ambiguity, and most very large or very complex entities are like that.
Maybe instead of taxing Bezos directly, he can just turn over some of his Amazon stock to the UBI fund.