BC JOURNALISM
Saved by @Alex1Powell

Thread: When I started doing investigative journalism full time, I fully understood the responsibility I was taking on. In a sea of disinformation from all sides, I vowed to be a place people could come where they knew they were getting the truth, even if painful.

 As time went on and I looked at the landscape around me, I widened my goal. How could I start a new company that was FILLED with people who had the same commitment to honest journalism that I did? With the help of some amazing people, @UncoverDC was born.
We have a set of standards at @UncoverDC that I am honored to say are much different than elsewhere. Straight news, with NO partisan spin, investigative journalism, and opinion. This is what we do at @UncoverDC and we do it really well.
Since we “opened” a year and a half ago we have had some amazing accomplishments. I shared some of them in this post: “One year of Actual Journalism” https://t.co/PsnmV6quAN
We’ve come so far even since this article, and I think it’s because we value and respect all of you so much as our equal. UncoverDC is for everyone. You are all a part of this family. A lot of folks have told me that what I will say next has been to my detriment.
There are two things I vowed not to do at UDC. 1. Assault our reader with ads. I refuse to place advertising that insults our reader on the site. There currently are no ads being run and haven’t been - and if we ever do run ads, they will be in direct partnership with companies
I won’t run served ads and bombard you with toenail fungus and viagra megs and bags and whatever else while you are trying to get the news of the day. You deserve better. I intend to deliver it to you. And - 2. Content will NEVER be behind a paywall.
No, I won’t do it. We are reporting on crucial information of the day. I can’t in good conscience make you pay to read it. This model has always bothered me.
Many have told me I could be rolling in cash if I would just do these two things that are counter to everything I believe in. I won’t do them. So, we sat down to dream up a way to fund this business and I did something ELSE few do:
We’ve launched a completely voluntary monthly or one time subscription option at UncoverDC: https://t.co/6LrH9bwRXN
Here you can VOLUNTARILY subscribe for a monthly contribution - there are some inexpensive ones and some more expensive ones - to support UncoverDC and the work that we do. There are some really cool perks there and I hope that you enjoy reading through.
I suppose my leap of faith is that I am counting on the good people out there to want to help us keep going. I will never sacrifice our values for money, and I will never force anyone to pay us. We are reshaping media, and I want to prove that THIS is a viable option.
So, if you appreciate the work at UDC, consider a monthly support tier and join our family. We are a business and businesses need money. More than that, you’d be a part of revolutionizing media for a new age. Lots of love, and my humble respect to all of you.
https://t.co/CZCnU1mkiL

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HonestReporting
HonestReporting
@HonestReporting
Want to understand how pervasive media bias works? Read on.

Check out this awful headline from @AP. A gun was found on the scene, there are bullet casings and bullet holes on nearby walls.

This isn't simply an allegation. This was clearly was a gunman.


It would be bad enough if the Associated Press alone published this headline. But because @AP is a wire service, many other leading news outlets have republished this content, often verbatim.

Here's the article on the @WashingtonPost, for example.


And here's the same article, and same headline, on @YahooNews.


The article was republished in plenty more well-known media outlets. Here it is on the @ABC website.


Moving forward, the content of the article is deeply problematic. This is how an article about an attempted shooting attack begins: by focusing on the *response* of the security forces to being attacked.
JOURNALISM
Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
For the past 6 years, I & a few other journalists have been trying to get the mainstream press and political elites realize the major danger posed by the radical right. Unfortunately, moderate and liberal elites deluded themselves into thinking that conservatism wasn't a cult.

There is no secretly powerful "Republican establishment" that will fix things. There are thugs, deluded people, and there are quislings. There is no one else in the GOP. Instead of focusing on the radical right's danger, editors wanted stories about Trump tweets.

Instead of calling out the dangerous radicalism of the GOP, television debate shows and opinion pages invited the enablers of fascism to speak and write about how we all needed to give powerful insane people the benefit of the doubt.

Unlike Trump, who walled off the White House months ago into a fortress, Nancy Pelosi did not take the terrorist threat seriously enough to demand better security. She has the budget and the authority and did nothing similar. Now, fascists are on the floor of Congress.

Of course, it is Trump who bears the responsibility for this but the Capitol Police have totally disgraced themselves by not fortifying the building the way that the Secret Service did to the WH.

This is the view of numerous congressional staffers of both parties.
JOURNALISM
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Ruona J. Meyer
Ruona J. Meyer
@RGAMeyer
AUGUST WILL ALWAYS COME BEFORE DECEMBER

Journalism, for all its bells and whistles, shiny business models, is fundamentally built on honour. 
None of the big offices, fancy equipment will matter, if the humans are not humane.

That it was only in December you saw a call made since August, only because I amplified its contents, shows you exactly the problem, that a call has to exist, since August.

No one has to have to leave the system, and unwittingly seek a voice online, if the humans within the system had honour. 
 
Humans make the system. 
Where a system somehow leaves a person with no choice but to cry out online, only the humans indicted can make it right.

If humans who profess to be humane did just that, and insisted for more choices for each other, then there would have been no August. 
That I chose to point this out how and when I did, after several private efforts, is my prerogative, as Bobby Brown sang it.

That you choose to interpret it however assuages your bias and demigods, is your prerogative. What can never change, is that August came before December, and August brought December.
JOURNALISM
A.J. Delgado
A.J. Delgado
@AJDelgado13
THREAD:
Hey guys, fun thread on #AccessJournalism gone, er, wrong?
Miller's publicist-trio (wait, ahem "journalists") are at it, yet AGAIN helping Miller and propping him up. Of course, we're talking about @jdawsey1 @AshleyRParker @PhilipRucker.
cc: @PostBaron

First, a little 'explainer' on Trump World. One of the things unique to Trump World (and this was a thing during the 2016 Campaign, too) is you want 'helpers' in the media not just in general but for the audience of one: i.e., Mr. Trump.

Trump World people, more than any other ecosystem, uses journalists (who are happy to oblige, in exchange for leaks) to put out narratives they want out there... not just in general but narratives they want TRUMP to read.

This is because, a big thing in the WH, is to put an article in front of Trump. (Trump doesn't read books but he does voraciously read articles.) So you want a report that says how loyal you are to him and then, whoops, that article finds its way to his desk.

Recently, I'd heard (and this isn't any big intel I had -- everyone knows this) that Trump is fuming about how his people have sort of checked-out on defending him. (He's right about that, actually.)
JOURNALISM
Maajid \u0623\u0628\u0648 \u0639\u0645\u0651\u0627\u0631
Maajid أبو عمّار...
@MaajidNawaz
THREAD:
Instead of attacking those of us raising it, why aren’t mainstream “liberal” journalists on here as outraged as we are about how many senior Democratic Party figures seem to have been compromised by Chinese spies?

Genocide is non-negotiable

#TAGG 🧿

See examples:

1) Dem Senator Feinstein’s staffer for 20 years outed as a Chinese spy


2) Dem Eric Swallwell caught in a female Chinese spy’s snare:


3) Dem Senator Boxer registers as a foreign agent for Chinese surveillance firm:


3) Dem Hunter Biden allegedly invests in Megvii, a firm accused of helping to round up Uyghurs using A+++ facial recognition technology
JOURNALISM

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Suhas S. Hardutt
Suhas S. Hardutt
@HarduttSuhas
WHEN GH0RI TOOK TO HIS HEELS WHILST FIGHTING A HINDU QUEEN

THE BATTLE OF KASAHRADA (Kayadara)
1178 AD

Strategy! Bravado! Glory!

(Thread)


The narrative set by left historians about one of their favorite poster boys "Gh0ri" is that he went unchallenged upon entering the Indian subcontinent with one king falling after another.(1)

They conveniently deleted this event. Why? An agenda aimed at making us feel weak and inferior against the invaders in an attempt to glorify them. Simple strategy: To destroy a civilization tamper their history.(2)

Gh0ri defeated Prithviraj Chauhan at the 2nd Battle of Tarain in 1192 and laid the foundation of Delhi Sultanate. What is not well known is the fact that 14 years before he won this battle, he was defeated by the queen of Gujarat "Naiki Devi"!(3)

In 1173 Md Gh0ri had conquered the Ghaznavids in Afghanistan. A ruthless, persistent and deceptive Gh0ri was successful in conducting massive raids deep inside Indian territory.(4)
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christmas cheer liz bruenig
christmas cheer liz br...
@ebruenig
one of the things i like about Batman is that it's fundamentally about being orphaned, and being an orphan — how this guy stays tethered to the world in his own weird, abstract, extrajudicial way when he feels that his link to it has been violently severed

Batman does this by permanently recapitulating his own trauma: solving crimes for other people, protecting them. But that's actually just the beginning; he also recapitulates his own experience of orphanness by essentially raising several orphans

Dick is an orphan in the traditional sense: dead parents. Batman sees it happen. Jason, less so: missing dad, known mom who eventually dies. Tim, even less so: parents are around a while, and involved, before both dying. Carrie, even less than that: negligent parents.

Steph: evil father, who openly works against her. And then there's Damian, whose parents are both alive and yet both have identities that totally obliterate their role as his parents. He doesn't relate to them as a mother and father; he can't, and neither can they.

In all these different cases, Batman tries all these different ways of making orphanness for them not what it was for him: Either by trying to teach them the (arguably poor) coping skills early that he learned over a very long time, or by literally legally adopting them, etc.
CULTURE
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Yoruba History - by NNP
Yoruba History - by NN...
@YorubaHistory
The Ife Primary Education Research Project (1970-1983).

aka

The Ife 6-Year Primary Project.


In 1970, as the Director of the Institute of Education of the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife), later Dean Faculty of Education, Prof. Babs Fafunwa & his team embarked on one of the most groundbreaking research projects in education for Yorubaland.


The aim of the project was to test the hypothesis that the best instructional medium for good concept formation at a very tender age is the mother tongue.

This was bolstered by the observation that “of all the continents and peoples of the world, it is only in Africa…

…that formal education is offered in a language that is foreign to the child.”

So, Yoruba was to be used & tested as an exclusive medium of passing information or instructions to a set of pupils.

The project was based on the premise that:

(a). the child will benefit culturally, socially, linguistically & cognitively.

(b). the child’s command of English will be improved if he is taught English as an entirely separate subject by a specialist teacher through the 6 years.
ALL
EverythingOppresses
EverythingOppresses
@SoOppressed
The first area to focus on is diversity. This has become a dogma in the tech world, and despite the fact that tech is one of the most meritocratic industries in the world, there are constant efforts to promote diversity at the expense of fairness, merit and competency. Examples:

USC's Interactive Media & Games Division cancels all-star panel that included top-tier game developers who were invited to share their experiences with students. Why? Because there were no women on the

ElectronConf is a conf which chooses presenters based on blind auditions; the identity, gender, and race of the speaker is not known to the selection team. The results of that merit-based approach was an all-male panel. So they cancelled the conference.

Apple's head of diversity (a black woman) got in trouble for promoting a vision of diversity that is at odds with contemporary progressive dogma. (She left the company shortly after this

Also in the name of diversity, there is unabashed discrimination against men (especially white men) in tech, in both hiring policies and in other arenas. One such example is this, a developer workshop that specifically excluded men: https://t.co/N0SkH4hR35
TECH
Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
A thread on HN about bad code in legacy projects both makes me think how little we've learned as a discipline over the years and, honestly, how little credit we give ourselves for some pretty major

Fun going down this list and thinking: "Hmm, plausible at a well-run modern software shop", "Hmm, possible, but requires implausible tradeoffs", "Literally disallowed by languages", and "If you were to attempt doing that our test suite wouldn't let you merge."

I think we as an industry celebrate (not quite the right word) failure too much and don't celebrate success nearly enough. There is no DailyWTF for competent execution, word of which generally stays pretty local to the source while incompetence passes into legend.

Alrighty let me try to thread the needle on being the change I want to see in the world while not giving away anything that will get me in trouble:

Ruby has wonderful developer ergonomics. Typed languages are easier for machines to guarantee the correctness of. We built a type checker for Ruby (and I believe it is slated for OSS release sometime).

c.f.
TECH