— Imagine this for second, considering our day and age: Two journalists with a spine and real conviction, unravel scandal in a government’s highest office, and follow the story for weeks until it is completely and truthfully told and the responsible people are held accountable. All this with their editor’s support, who do not think to that the other side needs to be heard or succumb to the pressure of the twenty-four hour news cycle.
Imagine that. Functioning journalism.
(1976) Director: Alan J. Pakula. Screenplay: William Goldman. Cast: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards.
— “Schönrechnen” is a German word I love. It means to interpret some inherently bad numbers to put a positive spin on the results. Start-ups do that to improve the looks of their accounts. And it does a lot of work for non-republicans in the US right now.
It’s fine for Trump to crow about his massive election win, but everyone else should realize how historically small his victory actually was. And how he might not have won at all if not for the pressure the Republicans have put on our systems of voting over the past decades (all manner of voter suppression), the billionaires propping up his campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars when he couldn’t keep pace with his opponent in non-PAC fundraising, and the will of post-pandemic voters worldwide who wanted the incumbents out no matter what. Mandate schmandate.
Note: You wouldn’t even need all of those “cumulative 237,000 votes” to go the other way — all you’d need is half + 1. So we’re talking about ~118,500 voters out of ~155 million. That’s razor thin.
Obama’s win in 2008 (365-173) was far larger than Trump’s win this year (312-226), measured either by Electoral College results or the popular vote. Obama’s 2012 reelection against Mitt Romney (332-206) was a larger win than Trump’s now.
[…]
But my god, look at the results Thompson was writing about in 1972. Richard Nixon won the Electoral College 520-17 and the popular vote by 23 percent. He won 49 of 50 states. “Jesus!” indeed. This now is not that. This is bad and dangerous and dark, but while Trump’s win was brutally clear, it was still a very close, deeply divided election.
It’s like they’ve been served a hot pile of shit to eat—which, kids, you must not ever eat—but the chef put some basil and balsamic on top and now look just like in Italy.
The fact is, the US elected an autocratic regime into almost unmitigated power. It doesn’t matter how close the margins were. This is as black and white as it gets. There are no grey areas here. A pile of shit is a pile of shit. The quicker one realises that the better for the country and world.
The Nazis only needed a couple of months to turn the whole of Germany around. Twelve years later, at least 70 million people had died. In 1945, no-one was talking about how the NSDAP didn’t even have a majority in 1933.
Saturday, 16 November 2024
— Some headlines, currently, in the New York Times opinion section:
I don’t know, man, I’m not a journalist or anything, but in the light of Trump’s nomination frenzy this week, isn’t there enough to dig in journalistically? Is defending this shit show really a good use of their time?
They all have to be punished in a way they can understand. American men need to fix their fellow men. Let them suck the poison out of each other. We have the power to shun them.
Men, of course. Gotta have a scapegoat; sometimes it’s immigrants, sometimes costal elites, sometimes social media, sometimes Joe Biden, and in this case it’s men in general.
Yes, 55% of men voted for Trump, according to exit polls in key states. So did 46% of Hispanics/Latinos, and, brace yourself, 45% women. Had these groups collectively voted for Harris, it would have been a landslide victory for the Democrats. But they haven’t. The reasons are complex.
You can obviously choose to not engage—in any form— with men. But it won’t swing the next election, if there is one. Neither will scapegoating one group of the electorate.
A day later, 404 publishes a piece lamenting the loss of subscribers in the wake of the election, making a point why their work is still relevant and necessary under a second Trump regime. Not repeating any half-baked, dumb-founded opinion from Reddit would be a start.
I wonder how much it stings to be reminded that all the money in the world cannot buy dignity. I wonder too, what taste Cheetos-dusted 78-year-old testicles leave in one’s mouth. Whatever the flavor, I hope it lingers.
The fault is in our nation. We must come to the realization that America is deeply racist and sexist, incapable of electing a Black, Asian woman to its highest office because of our culture’s innate, widespread, and unreconciled bias and hatred. That is the root of it. That is the weed that will now grow unkempt no matter how much media wish to groom the nation to make us look as if it were not so. Its aims of oppression will grow daily.
That. This outcome isn’t an accident.
It’s not algorithmically-curated social media, or Fox News, or right-wing misogynist podcast hosts that swing elections. Each one is merely a symptom. None of these would exist if there wasn’t an audience big enough and receptive enough to these thoughts and opinions. That audience is made of real people, who keep these platforms going, by spending time on these platforms, consume and sometimes create that content. This isn’t a chicken-or-egg problem, the thoughts existed long before the internet and Fox News, they just manifest more publicly now.
What makes this piece so effective is its plain language and its information density. This density is a real strength of hypertext that is often overlooked and taken for granted. Only 110 words in that paragraph but it contains 27 links to other NYT opinion pieces published over the last several months that expand on each linked statement or argument. If you were inclined to follow these links, you could spend hours reading about how unfit Trump is for office.
A simple list of headlines would have done the same basic job, but by presenting it this way, the Times editorial board is simultaneously able to deliver a strong opinion; each of those links is like a fist pounding on the desk for emphasis. Lies, threat, corruption, cruel, autocrats — bam! bam! bam! bam! bam! Here! Are! The! Fucking! Receipts!
The simplest answer is that the national political environment just isn’t as conducive to a Democratic victory as many might imagine.
If by the “national political environment” you mean spineless journalists refusing to call Trump what he is: A senile Nazi, who is unfit to lead anything, country or businesses. In that case, yeah, spot on.
— Travelling the US is always an enriching experience. You get to enjoy Hotel TV showing programs like ESPN’s The Ocho, where they feature obscure emerging sports like OmegaBall.
OmegaBall is a version of football. OmegaBall inventor Anthony Dittmann says he came up with the idea because he didn’t like the slow speed of regular football and he “despises” the offside rule. So the obvious conclusion is not to start a 5-aside league or to watch Futsal instead. No, a new form must be invented that is played on a circular pitch, with three teams versing each other instead of two.
The casino where Mr. Thompson found psychedelics almost irrelevant now begs for anti-depressants. It’s the kind of place where room rates start at $25, the pit boss’s suit is three sizes too big, and the air this week carried a scent of cigarettes, perfume and despair.
A man named Daniel, with his wife and two children tucked away in their room, sat vacantly at a slot machine late one night on the Circus Circus casino floor nursing a beer and staring blankly across the room. He was down a couple hundred bucks, hoping his luck would turn.
Nearby, a woman named Hazel, with fake Chinchilla boots and an obscene T-shirt that was far too small, lamented seeing a homeless girl win $500 and then proceed to tap away on the same machine until she was down to 56 cents. “If you got lots of money, you enjoy yourself in Vegas,” she said. “If you’re like me, with a couple hundred bucks, you’re here.”
The European Commission expected that the GDPR would result in websites prioritizing the privacy of E.U. users — a better web in Europe than elsewhere. Instead, the result was increased user annoyance under a nonstop daily barrage of consent popovers — a worse web in Europe than elsewhere
So what’s the alternative? That we just get on with excessive data collection and user tracking practices from big tech? The Web was already in a bad state before GDPR. It’s not the European Union that ruin the Web, it is the practices by US American companies fuelled by insatiable greed. GDPR just surfaces how bad it is.
For more than a decade, smartphone users everywhere have faced a major problem in how we communicate: the “green versus blue bubble” disparity.
No Brian, not everywhere. Green bubble shaming is an entirely American thing. I’ve never met anyone in Europe who takes issue with the background colour of the text messages they’re receiving.
Have any Republican presidential candidates made a statement yet that this wouldn’t have happened if they were in charge, the Canadians blowing their smoky, poisonous air across the border?
New York is one of the places, big cities usually, where you need to know where to go. You either have good plan or someone to guide you around. If not, you naturally end up where everyone goes: The shopping districts that look the same everywhere, whether you’re in North America, Europe or Australia. The tourist traps with its gift shops, overpriced chain restaurants, and selfie opportunities. And the places that are made to look cool and exciting, like markets in industrial settings that sell overpriced street food and trinkets that collect dust at home. When I arrived in New York for a one-day visit, I stumbled around like an absolute tourist and ended up in precisely those places.
Large parts of Manhattan are devoid of any character now. I watched too many movies set in the New York of the 60s and 70s, and today’s New York—naturally—is very different. It’s now full bland modern buildings that have replaced the architecture I’ve come to know from these movies: Red bricks, art-deco features and fire escapes. Change is inevitable; I’m sure some people didn’t like the Empire State Building when it was completed in 1931, towering over Manhattan and dwarfing everything else.
If you’ve lived in a big city, you build a tolerance for these things; they are part of the city’s ever-changing nature. Still, when I go to New York, I want to feel like I’m in a Woody Allen movie.
