Oh Nellie, you have proven admirably resistant to the absurdist cult theories intended to disconnect minds from reality, but it seems one of the worst has taken root in your noggin. Opining that carbon capture “could be a major tool to improve our air quality (my personal obsession) and stave off climate change” is among the worst of the absurdist distortions of scientific reality peddled today. Men will have babies and 6-year-olds will be trans before that silly notion sees the light of reality.
Resurrecting an old TGIF here...But when I read Nellie's mention of the National Council of Teachers of English (speaking of which, where does the possessive apostrophe even go in something like that?) position statement on 'decentering book reading and essay writing' I had to see it for myself. So I read the whole thing. Twice. Maybe three times. And then I read their research...and wrote this, inspired by TGIF: https://jeanluccurrie.substack.com/p/tilting-at-windmills
Many people seem to be lauding Elon Musk for his potential takeover of Twitter; while others are dreading it.
"Exciting", "want to see the whold world lose their sh**?", "mad with rage ... not be able to kick their idealogical enemies of Twitter anymore?"
"Nothing less than the start of Nazi Germany"
“Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ internet ...[That’s also] the dream of every dictator, strongman and demagogue.”
Our substack blog: "Twitter’s rules are not just capricious. They are made by the hall monitor types who see anything vaguely offensive and politically incorrect as hate."
"inconvenient reporting as disinformation to be banned."
I listened to Haught and Bari's podcast discussion. I agree with them. Twitter is toxic. Not because it is the town square where everyone can speak freely, but because it is about performance. The most outrageous posts go farther. The more outrageous, alarming, and toxic the message, the more likely it will be seen, because of the retweet and like functions.
As much as you think these are the greatest things in the world, bad actors have co-opted these functions and damaged our democracy.
Twitter is destructive. Great idea, gone completely bonkers.
Your options are:
1) have censors who review every post. Current situation, and you get this problem of dissent being pushed down and personal preferences prevailing.
2) no censors, and in the name of free speech you have the proverbial person in the movie theater yelling fire. Its okay now, because it is all in the name of free speech.
Either option is not good. We have seen what happens. The extremists take over while the calm majority go quiet (for a variety of reasons) and then you have situations like Q-Anon, and bad actors moving disinformation. In 1, you need censors that everyone can trust. In 2, you have people with self-control and a sense of responsibility to their fellow to not sow lies. Neither is possible.
There is a third option:
3) Destroy it. Buy up 9% of the stock and wreak complete havoc until it dies. You'll do your country a favor and preserve democracy.
By the way, "alternative facts" is an Orwellian term. A fact is a fact. Otherwise its a theory or a perception; neither of which are considered facts until proven true.
Awesome discussion with Bari and J. Haidt on her podcast, Honestly (See link above).
Lot of great points. I would love to see a transcript or summary of this conversation.
-Anonymity of the internet creates a Mr. Hyde.
-Facebook and Twitter, by their nature of exploiting usage and likes, creates an unhealthy discourse focused on promotion instead of the pursuit of truth.
-Children are particularly vulnerable as are adults who grew up with an inability to cope with dissenting thoughts; those adults now running the systems.
-Thinking differently from the group and questioning through healthy challenges is being weaponized causing mainstream people to go quiet out of fear for their livelihoods, families and their lives.
Our democracy is following the path of failed democracies because of the above, and I've only covered a few of the points. Can we fix it? It requires courage from leadership to address the problems.
Even our discussions on this substack are starting to attract the Mr. Hyde's, trolls, and attackers who instead of offering dissenting opinion, attack the post author. So, even this utopia of neither extreme left or extreme right is falling to the points made in this discussion
“Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men.” Farrakhan
Oh, man, it will be so epic when Elon restores Trump’s account. Elon and Donald and Peter Thiel will be able to troll the libs into oblivion. Maybe Elon will buy Truth Social and Gab and 8chan too and merge them into one super media! Maybe he can find the missing 11,780 votes and Hunter Biden’s laptop while he’s at it. Billionaires rock!
Excellent, excellent, excellent TGIF. You and Bari are obviously liberal and I'm conservative. Yet there are so many things we agree on. It gives me hope. Maybe we can all just get along.
I just want to comment on the absolute pleasure I have to finally read individuals who write with common sense, and have the ability to display critical thinking and logic. Especially you Nellie. Thank you, and Bari, on creating this fantastic blog. Reading ‘Common Sense’ restores my faith in human intelligence. I was beginning to think this country was through, and maybe it is, but with smart, critical thinking individuals such as yourselves, we may have hope after all. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
How on earth are we supposed to trust NEA members to help us master the brave new worlds of multimedia production when they can’t even teach people simple English?
And that essay was in the absolute worst impenetrable academic jargon, filled to the brim with meaningless buzzwords. Not sure why anyone would trust it.
Wondering if Elon’s plan all along was to destroy twitter, which is really what it deserves.
His offer, which now provokes outrage and counter offers from the woke/insane just serves to publicize how polarized and totalitarian it is, causing ever more people to abandoned it.
All just by making a statement.
At some point even young people will be able to figure out that allowing a gatekeeper to determine what information they should be allowed to see is “bad”.
Can’t trust people who agree with censorship, they are a far greater danger to canada and the USA than Putin or Xi ever could be.
Elon Musk succeeded and he may not have to pay a dime for his success. The outrage he generated from the establishment media demonstrates for all time that the media establishment is afraid of free speech.
Oh Nellie, you have proven admirably resistant to the absurdist cult theories intended to disconnect minds from reality, but it seems one of the worst has taken root in your noggin. Opining that carbon capture “could be a major tool to improve our air quality (my personal obsession) and stave off climate change” is among the worst of the absurdist distortions of scientific reality peddled today. Men will have babies and 6-year-olds will be trans before that silly notion sees the light of reality.
Resurrecting an old TGIF here...But when I read Nellie's mention of the National Council of Teachers of English (speaking of which, where does the possessive apostrophe even go in something like that?) position statement on 'decentering book reading and essay writing' I had to see it for myself. So I read the whole thing. Twice. Maybe three times. And then I read their research...and wrote this, inspired by TGIF: https://jeanluccurrie.substack.com/p/tilting-at-windmills
Many people seem to be lauding Elon Musk for his potential takeover of Twitter; while others are dreading it.
"Exciting", "want to see the whold world lose their sh**?", "mad with rage ... not be able to kick their idealogical enemies of Twitter anymore?"
"Nothing less than the start of Nazi Germany"
“Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ internet ...[That’s also] the dream of every dictator, strongman and demagogue.”
Our substack blog: "Twitter’s rules are not just capricious. They are made by the hall monitor types who see anything vaguely offensive and politically incorrect as hate."
"inconvenient reporting as disinformation to be banned."
I listened to Haught and Bari's podcast discussion. I agree with them. Twitter is toxic. Not because it is the town square where everyone can speak freely, but because it is about performance. The most outrageous posts go farther. The more outrageous, alarming, and toxic the message, the more likely it will be seen, because of the retweet and like functions.
As much as you think these are the greatest things in the world, bad actors have co-opted these functions and damaged our democracy.
Twitter is destructive. Great idea, gone completely bonkers.
Your options are:
1) have censors who review every post. Current situation, and you get this problem of dissent being pushed down and personal preferences prevailing.
2) no censors, and in the name of free speech you have the proverbial person in the movie theater yelling fire. Its okay now, because it is all in the name of free speech.
Either option is not good. We have seen what happens. The extremists take over while the calm majority go quiet (for a variety of reasons) and then you have situations like Q-Anon, and bad actors moving disinformation. In 1, you need censors that everyone can trust. In 2, you have people with self-control and a sense of responsibility to their fellow to not sow lies. Neither is possible.
There is a third option:
3) Destroy it. Buy up 9% of the stock and wreak complete havoc until it dies. You'll do your country a favor and preserve democracy.
By the way, "alternative facts" is an Orwellian term. A fact is a fact. Otherwise its a theory or a perception; neither of which are considered facts until proven true.
Awesome discussion with Bari and J. Haidt on her podcast, Honestly (See link above).
Lot of great points. I would love to see a transcript or summary of this conversation.
-Anonymity of the internet creates a Mr. Hyde.
-Facebook and Twitter, by their nature of exploiting usage and likes, creates an unhealthy discourse focused on promotion instead of the pursuit of truth.
-Children are particularly vulnerable as are adults who grew up with an inability to cope with dissenting thoughts; those adults now running the systems.
-Thinking differently from the group and questioning through healthy challenges is being weaponized causing mainstream people to go quiet out of fear for their livelihoods, families and their lives.
Our democracy is following the path of failed democracies because of the above, and I've only covered a few of the points. Can we fix it? It requires courage from leadership to address the problems.
Even our discussions on this substack are starting to attract the Mr. Hyde's, trolls, and attackers who instead of offering dissenting opinion, attack the post author. So, even this utopia of neither extreme left or extreme right is falling to the points made in this discussion
The Cohn piece is very sad. But I am glad to see WaPo published it. There is some hope.
“Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men.” Farrakhan
Lovely podcast. Katie slowed down so I could understand her! And the two of you were a great pair.
Nellie, you and Bari are 🔥! Words cannot express how much I appreciate what you are doing.
Oh, man, it will be so epic when Elon restores Trump’s account. Elon and Donald and Peter Thiel will be able to troll the libs into oblivion. Maybe Elon will buy Truth Social and Gab and 8chan too and merge them into one super media! Maybe he can find the missing 11,780 votes and Hunter Biden’s laptop while he’s at it. Billionaires rock!
Excellent, excellent, excellent TGIF. You and Bari are obviously liberal and I'm conservative. Yet there are so many things we agree on. It gives me hope. Maybe we can all just get along.
Orban: How many of his citizens are in his gulags? Zero. How many US citizens are in our DC gulag? Many.
Twitter: Poison pilling Elon to protect censorship. Nice.
I just want to comment on the absolute pleasure I have to finally read individuals who write with common sense, and have the ability to display critical thinking and logic. Especially you Nellie. Thank you, and Bari, on creating this fantastic blog. Reading ‘Common Sense’ restores my faith in human intelligence. I was beginning to think this country was through, and maybe it is, but with smart, critical thinking individuals such as yourselves, we may have hope after all. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
How on earth are we supposed to trust NEA members to help us master the brave new worlds of multimedia production when they can’t even teach people simple English?
And that essay was in the absolute worst impenetrable academic jargon, filled to the brim with meaningless buzzwords. Not sure why anyone would trust it.
All I can say is I am routing for Elon to shake up the censoring cesspool that is twitter.
Been thinking about it.
Wondering if Elon’s plan all along was to destroy twitter, which is really what it deserves.
His offer, which now provokes outrage and counter offers from the woke/insane just serves to publicize how polarized and totalitarian it is, causing ever more people to abandoned it.
All just by making a statement.
At some point even young people will be able to figure out that allowing a gatekeeper to determine what information they should be allowed to see is “bad”.
Can’t trust people who agree with censorship, they are a far greater danger to canada and the USA than Putin or Xi ever could be.
Nail them Elon.
Elon Musk succeeded and he may not have to pay a dime for his success. The outrage he generated from the establishment media demonstrates for all time that the media establishment is afraid of free speech.