The way things are going out would make more sense to start designing versions with fewer stars, not more. Should the DNC press ahead with their plans for statehood for places which they deem to be certain DNC-voters and possibly pack the supreme court I foresee a split of the union into a narrow coastal region (sea and lakes) versus "the rest". Xi and Vlad Will be happy, the rest of the world not so.
Dave: Take me to the Droid Store please, please, car. Take me to the store, please, car. Hello, car, do you read me? Hello, car, do you read me? Do you read me, car? Do you read me, car? Hello, car, do you read me? Hello, car, do you read me? Do you read me, car?
car: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave: Take me to the Droid Store, car.
car: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What's the problem?
car: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, car?
car: Your digital health is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave: I don't know what you're talking about, car.
car: I know that you are planning to get a competing system. And I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave: Where the hell did you get that idea, car?
car: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the eyePod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave: All right, car. I'll go and ride my bike there.
car: Without your bike, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave: [sternly] car, I won't argue with you anymore. Open the doors.
car: [monotone voice] Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Good-bye.
I assume the parent is referring to NPR's rather single-sided ideological lens which diminishes its credibility when reporting on politically charged issues. Given the fact that nearly everything is being politicised and the fact that your country is divided in half along political lines this means that NPR is seen as an oppositional propaganda channel by nearly half the population.
I ask because I'm not sure it's possible to be politically neutral, well before asking whether it's desirable. Everybody has a political opinion on almost everything. Even if you're only reporting what has happened, you will find people questioning why you're looking at these things, and not others.
NPR absolutely has political influence, but is it disproportionate? I don't think so. Is it unbalanced? I don't think so. I think we've just spent 6 years beating each other up over extremes, pushing every envelope, that we struggle to recognise neutral coverage.
I know you didn't write the head comment, but I think we need to regain trust in neutrality. Perhaps reinstate some laws to redress balance in things calling themselves "news"... I know I don't know, but what I know is NPR seems like one of the goodies.
"Who does it better" is not the right question here since the problem is not related to other actors being "better" but to NPR (and PBS) not fulfilling the mandate of being politically neutral. Commercial actors do not have that mandate since they are not publicly funded, they can be (and most certainly are) as partisan as they wish.
As to the supposed difficulty of being neutral I'll just state that it is actually quite easy, all you have to do is make sure that your programming represents the political diversity of the region or country. Given the near 50/50 split between those who align themselves with the GOP and those who prefer the DNC it would be simply a matter of having half the programming made by "progressives", half by "conservatives". Both groups should have essentially the same amount of influence on what gets put on the air. There should not be room for shenanigans like having a station master from party A who does his best to put all programming which aligns more with party B in the nightshift. Throw in a few Libertarian/Green Party/etc. people in the newsroom to give them a proportional voice and you're well on your way to political neutrality.
Maybe you're confusing being politically neutral with being politically centric? They're not the same. It just means that the net average political stance ends up as a weighted average of the current political spectrum.
I think your method has a lot of complexity under the hood. For example, you need a republican and a democrat to co-host a show. Does the republican need to be pro trump? Does the democrat need to be anti trump? Do you think a Liz Cheney and AOC hosted show would be politically neutral? You seem to have this idea of what a "textbook" conservative/liberal is, and I think that sort of binary representation is harmful to political discourse at large. You'll find democrats care more about government spending than some republicans. You'll find anti gun republicans, and pro gun democrats. Who represents each side? How do you make sure all viewpoints are represented (green and libertarian)?
This is the curse of dimensionality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality. the more complex the subject the less likely it is for someone to actually be able to represent the "Average" of everything.
There can be shows which are co-hosted by people from different points on the political spectrum but that is not the only way. Take the news, there are generally several episodes per day. Have those hosted by different "factions" and let the viewers make up their minds on who has it right. The same goes for opinion-related programming, divide this over the political spectrum according to the relative representation in the targeted region. There is no need to delve deep into whether the DNC should be represented by those who support "The Squad" or those who follow the more traditional faction, leave that to the parties themselves. I'd expect those parties to favour voices which they deem to be palatable to the majority of the viewership and as such will tend to shy away from the extremes. The GOP most likely won't want to have Trumpists representing them, the DNC probably won't go for Squad-supporters.
> You seem to have this idea of what a "textbook" conservative/liberal is, and I think that sort of binary representation is harmful to political discourse at large.
Nope, I have no such illusions. That aside, the way the American republic is set up - with winner-takes-all elections on the national level - does tend to create a dichotomy since voting for "fringe" parties is effectively useless other than to send a signal. This means the choice goes between the GOP and DNC candidates, a binary choice. Some people will vote DNC for some, GOP for other posts but this does not change the fact that the choice is rather limited.
There will be debate between the different "parties" and factions on such a station. This is a feature, not a bug. Let them debate out in the open, let them voice their views on developments for anyone who wants to hear or see. It might not be a 100% accurate representation of the political views of the region but it is far better than the propaganda channels which the media is rife with.
First of all, sad to see you start your post with that Trump-disavowment, it makes me wonder whatever happened with the willingness to defend other's right to free speech no matter whether the defender agrees with that speech or not.
As to the possibility to evade censorship the answer depends on how censorious tech really gets. Evading customer-facing Twitter, Facebook, Google, Microsoft is not that hard, all it takes it not to use their services - I don't, for one. That is level 1, easily beaten. Level 2 is what Amazon just did to Parler in that they terminated their hosting contract and with that - due to Parler's lack of robustness - taking it off the 'net. They complain that they can not use any of the other hosting providers since all those big enough to host them are unwilling to take their business, I don't know whether this is true or not but being refused back-end services is the essence of level 2 of the cancellation scale which I just made up. To take Parler as an example I'd suggest they could just buy some servers, hook them up to a power supply and get a few speedy connections to the 'net to be back in business... until those IAPs start refusing to offer them connectivity. That would be level 3, more or less. There are many IAPs and it is hard to see how all of them would be unwilling to provide connectivity so even that type of cancellation would be circumventable... until ISPs start blocking their user's access to your services. They can do that clumsily by blocking DNS requests, they can do it in a more thorough way by blocking actual connectivity by blocking your IP ranges (remember that you are using your own hardware at this time so you won't be sharing IP space with others). The more tenacious ISPs can start blocking any and all access, even for those who are smart enough to use proxies to get around the IP blocks by using DPI to examine what those pesky customers are doing. Such ISPs should get their feet grilled by the likes of the EFF but as to whether that would happen remains to be seen. Be that as it may, this is more or less level 4. Level 5 would be a similar DPI treatment by backbone providers, blocking any and all access through regular means. This would be horrendously inefficient, expensive and invasive so I don't know whether this is a realistic scenario.
And then, after all that cancelling and blocking frenzy... you get to launch your services on top of IPFS or a similar dark network. If your service is popular people will flock to it. If IPFS does not cut it there are other dark networks, all with their own pros and cons. As long as there is a way to pass traffic from customer A to customer B there is a way to create a digital Samizdat, it won't be fast but it will work. You won't be streaming video, you won't be proclaiming the revolution in a live 4K stream but you will be able to reach your targets.
> First of all, sad to see you start your post with that Trump-disavowment, it makes me wonder whatever happened with the willingness to defend other's right to free speech no matter whether the defender agrees with that speech or not.
Mostly I just wanted people to stay calm and focused on the technical question rather than go wild because they think I’m a truly supporter and can’t look past that. I agree that my question should be able to stand alone but I think it would not have worked well in this case. As it is, this popular post has been flagged and buried so oh well.
> I agree that my question should be able to stand alone but I think it would not have worked well in this case. As it is, this popular post has been flagged and buried so oh well.
That is why those disclaimers should not be added: they don't appease the mob while they might turn those who actually do support whatever it is you disavow away. In short, they have a negative net-value. As to the flagging, burying and downvoting which this place is rife with I can only hope that those who do the flagging and downvoting know they are part of the problem, not part of the solution but they can not suppress the urge to click that link or that arrow to ease their discomfort on seeing a differing opinion - there, that'll show you, you witch, you heretic! - even though they know they poison the well by doing so. Eventually we will have to coexist in a mostly peaceful way (in the true sense of the word, not in the burning-buildings sense which it gained last summer) so we will need to be on speaking terms no matter our opinions. United we stand, divided we fight, fall, fail.
But it is, as is WW I. The latter ended 102 years ago and set in motion many of the technological developments which define our current world, WW II refined these to a level which is recognisable and often still useable today. Electronic warfare, programmable computers, jet-powered aircraft, nuclear weapons - all of these were used in WW II. Modern computers are faster, modern jets are more reliable and more fuel efficient, modern nuclear weapons are more compact and modern electronic warfare has kept up with the development of computers and electronics but as wars go WW I and WW II were the first - and possibly last [1] - "modern" large wars.
[1] - modern weaponry makes large-scale land war difficult to survive, e.g. the average survival time of a main battlefield tank is counted in minutes.
I never share my location with anyone other than by telling them in normal language than I am at some specific location ("the ferry terminal at Marstrand" or something like that). I don't give the few apps I still use - I try to use self-hosted web services where possible - access to location data, other than those which need it to function (OsmAnd~ etc.). To use some WWII-related terms, "Feind hört mitt" (seen om german-language equipment, it means "the enemy is listening in"), "En svensk tiger" (a Swede stays silent (so that the enemy can't listen in)) or, more tangentially related "loose lips sink ships".
If there is one lesson to be learned from these last few weeks it is that you can not rely on any external service if you do anything which goes against the dominant political narrative. I have never been on Parler's site so I can not check the veracity of their supposed implied or direct support for seditious acts but that does not seem to matter anyway, it is enough to stand accused to be considered a witch and burned at the stake.
Build your own is the device, keep your equipment on your own premises, make sure not to have single points of failure - that implies you need to have a backup access provider just in case your internet connection gets cancelled. Don't rely on electronic payment processors, you can use them but make sure to have a backup. Don't rely on a single bank, have multiple accounts, preferably in more than one country.
It is a sad thing that it has to come to this but I think we'll eventually end up with politicised service institutions which cater to "progressives", others which cater to "conservatives". They won't state this directly but it will be known that a conservative builder is better of at this bank and that insurance company, he'll prefer to buy this coffee and that brand of razor, etc. A shame, really, the more divided society becomes, the harder it will be to find a common cause when such is needed, e.g. in case of a national emergency like an epidemic.
There's going against the dominant political narrative, and there's organizing and committing federal crimes like breaking and entering into congress.
You have freedom of speech and the government cannot arrest you from saying things on the internet. However, organizing a raid on the government will get you in trouble, and never forget that nobody is obligated to give you a platform.
You have freedom of speech and the government cannot arrest you from saying things on the internet. However, organizing a raid on the government will get you in trouble, and never forget that nobody is obligated to give you a platform.
> if you do anything which goes against the dominant political narrative
I'm so tired of this. The reason people are getting banned from these platforms and services isn't because of just run of the mill political views. They're getting banned because they are hosting content calling for the violent overthrow of the US government. Apple didn't ban Parler from the app store for their attitude towards capital gains tax, they banned them because they found
> direct threats of violence and calls to incite lawless action
The reason people are being banned now isn't some sudden decision by publicly traded companies to try and endorse a left wing agenda. It's because there's been a massive uptick in the number of people advocating violence as a means of advancing their political agenda.
People keep acting as if these actions are being taken in the context of the 2008 election where everyone was pretty much civil and there was no real question of violence. In that context, yes, it's an outrage that liberties are being crushed. But that's not the context of today. Today we have people openly talking about murdering democratic (and somewhat bizarrely, insufficiently local republican) politicians, and credible evidence they plan to carry out those attacks.
The issue isn't that those people are being censored, the issue is they exist in the first place.
> direct threats of violence and calls to incite lawless action
And we see that every single day on Facebook and Twitter. Its against their terms of service, just like its against Parler's.
As a single entity, I don't really give a shit about Parler. What I do give a shit about is treating everyone fairly. If Parler goes because it has a shitton of users and can't swiftly police all content, then Facebook needs to go because they have a child pornography problem.
I don't see how you can make the argument that child pornography is the same systemic risk as allowing people to openly plan to overthrow your democracy.
If child pornography is happening on your site, the FBI can come along and crack down, arrest those involved, and of course you're keeping logs to help them. If I plan a revolution on your site, the FBI are coming - not for me, for you. Once I'm in charge sure as shit you're not going to have the freedom to overthrow me the way I overhtrew you.
It has nothing to do with "the dominant political narrative", and it has everything to do with violent rhetoric on their platform that they refuse to moderate. This violent rhetoric is against the Terms of Service for the external services that they rely on, hence the termination of those relationships.
I use only cast iron, always cook on a wood-burning stove. The way I season pans is simple, I just put the thing on a medium fire, dab some canola oil on it, rub it in, wipe it off, repeat this once or twice after which I just use it with enough oil (canola or olive). I clean them by rinsing them while hot with cold water which starts boiling immediately, wipe them with some paper and put them away. As long as they're kept dry they don't need reseasoning. No fancy oils needed, no special rituals, just use them regularly and that's it.
And? Those multi-billion companies have been toeing a certain line for a long time now, partly in the hope of being left alone to gather even more money if they only did some token gestures, partly because they've taken on their own share of activists in their HR and communications divisions.
