I watched the B-Boys and B-Girls finals last night out of curiosity, and it was actually pretty cool and fun to watch. Still not sure how it’s scored though, seems like they get a lot of points from judges for originality and not repeating moves.
I mean look at this dumpster fire of a comment section… I don’t think we as a community are really making a good case.
Personally I think the bot is a bad idea because I always hated that kind of shit on Reddit. I’d rather have discussion with real people than just have a bot that always comments.
But the people attacking MBFC are really coming out of left field in my view. If I was a mod, I don’t know if I’d want to listen to feedback either.
Look, honestly I don’t really know who Ryan Grim is, but I googled “Ryan Grim” and “The Gray Zone” and apparently “the grayzone crowd comes after [him] all the time”.
https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1696331666980053126
I also don’t know enough to really get into a discussion about Israel / Palestine, and I don’t know anything about the drama with WaPo in the article you linked so I can’t say whether or not it’s 100% factual as you say.
Maybe in this specific instance, The Gray Zone is correct, and in agreement with Ryan Grim. I don’t know. But the thing is, you are I are in a discussion about bias and source quality. And I’m saying to you that, in my view, The Gray Zone doesn’t pass the smell test.
That’s the whole point of MBFC: to get a smell test of whether a source is worth considering or not.
What I am saying is, I’m not going to spend hours of my life going through your source to check it out, and possibly verify it, or refute it point by point. Especially when the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on it is:
Coverage of The Grayzone has focused on its misleading[25][26] and false reporting,[27] its criticism of American foreign policy,[1][4] and its sympathetic coverage of the Russian, Chinese and Syrian governments.[4][21][28][29] The Grayzone has downplayed or denied the persecution of Uyghurs in China,[33] and been accused of publishing conspiracy theories about Xinjiang, Syria and other regions,[34][35][36] and publishing disinformation about Ukraine during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which some have described as pro-Russian propaganda.[32][36]
The article about Xinjiang that I linked to you was just from a random source I clicked from Wikipedia.
I realize that I am probably coming across in a rather dismissive way, but honestly I think that’s the point – if I can convince myself this quickly that a source looks suspicious, it’s in my interest to dismiss it just as quickly. In the past I’ve spent dozens of hours doing deep dives on random sources that friends have sent me, and in every case it’s been a waste of time because I ended up coming to the same conclusion that I did in 5 seconds of reading Wikipedia.
I know some people love doing these deep dives, but I’ve realized for myself – like back in 2010 when one particular person was sending me crap from Natural News – that unless I truly get “this needs the benefit of the doubt” vibes, all that time I spend just makes me feel bitter and angry at the world, and I end up having gained nothing and learned nothing from the experience.
So again, I’m sorry. Your source may be correct. But it looks seriously suspicious. Personally, I’m not willing to look any deeper than that.
I don’t know if I would take thegrayzone.com as a good source, personally:
https://www.axios.com/2020/08/11/grayzone-max-blumenthal-china-xinjiang
Yeah I mean look what instance this was posted on.
Probably they will ban me just for saying that.
Don’t know a lot about Mondoweiss, but I found this article that cites Weiss saying some pretty out there stuff:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/04/mondoweiss-is-a-hate-site/
I don’t know that I like it if MBFC is just taking pro-Israel advocate at their word, but another commentator said they rated other pro-Israel sources as questionable as well. Example:
Another commentator brought up Mondoweiss, which is interesting. I don’t know that I disagree with MBFC’s rating, as Weiss has previously said some pretty out there stuff:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/04/mondoweiss-is-a-hate-site/
But I mean I’m far from an expert in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and in fact I’m pretty ignorant to be honest.
The comments in here feel pretty weird. At best, people are following a trend that I hate, where we are on a link-aggregator platform, but someone assumes that you already have all the context and refuses to post a link. At worst? Well there’s that guy threatening the mods that he’ll spam the community if the mods don’t let him have his way.
You are making a lot of claims, but without any examples or anything to back those claims I am unconvinced.
Apparently they call her “momala”.
They also made fun of AOC for dancing like a normal human being.
It’s worse than that, IIRC she came this close to saying that the power of positive thinking would drive away covid. She is too far around the horseshoe imo. I’ve known people into the kind of magical thinking she’s into, and it’s really not a good thing.
Badge of honor.
U.S. has been complete shit for the last 8 years, but somehow we haven’t collapsed and life goes on as usual. So I’m usually pretty skeptical of specific predictions (though the trends are worth paying attention to).
Absolutely. As far as solar goes, one statistic I like to point out is that China added more solar panels last year than the U.S. has in its entire history.
I mean, scandals like this and “chabuduo” attitude putting health & safety at risk is really nothing new in China. I agree with you in general that certain parts of China are in decline / potential to collapse. Especially economy & environment. But speaking from a U.S. perspective, other aspects are enviable, like public transit.
I’m just saying that I wouldn’t necessarily hold this specific incident up as an example of collapse.
It is good and reasonable to be continually skeptical of the people and organizations we get involved with, and I appreciate your warning and looking out for bad organizations.
On the other hand, my experience in politics leads me to believe that if you sit around waiting for the perfect allies, you will usually be waiting alone for a very long time.
Looking at this group, it looks like in my state (Utah) they have been key support for a couple of well respected local nonprofits that have done great work on RCV and anti gerrymandering. That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me.
I think it’s a mistake generally to view Republicans as the enemy. Even if they are in a leadership role like in the RNC. For example, in Utah, nothing gets done without Republican approval. So saying “I won’t work with you because you’re Republican” here is a losing strategy to make changes. And we now have the beginnings of progress on RCV.
So I think we should continue to be vigilant and watch out for the first signs that people are acting in bad faith. But if we want our ideas to be popular, we are going to need to learn to (without compromising our own values) build a bigger tent.
Strawbs!!!
LineageOS has been doing this for a year or so already.
Even with a free forum host, it’s difficult to keep things running for a long time.
Awhile back I was unsatisfied with how quickly my (new) furniture was degrading, and found a furniture forum run by a guy in the biz. So much knowledge on there about different furniture and how to actually find quality stuff that will last decades.
The owner retired this week, and he had been paying for an IT contract to do basic maintenance / upgrades on the forum (I think he started on a free host, but as it got bigger he eventually had to move it). He needed IT help basically to apply security patches and do upgrades. He’s stated that he no longer plans to pay for the maintenance contract. I’m guessing the forum will disappear soon.