This Parler user explains it quite well here. Because of yet more security flaws at Parler, it's now possible for all that "free speech" to be shared and archived with the world, even if the posters tried to erase their not-at-all innocent videos and GPS data.

As a former conservative activist and journalist, it has been so frustrating to see my former compatriots spreading wild and unchecked claims about "voter fraud." @jacknicas of the NYT took a deep look at claims of "dead" people in Michigan voting. Link in next tweet.

While examining claims made by right-wing activists who are not credible individuals is a thankless task which elite media editors despise, this is vital and important work in this age of fake news. Here's the link:

As the co-creator of NewsBusters, the most prominent anti-media website, I was part of a decades-long tradition of complaining about media elites being "unfair" to conservative views. There is still much to that argument, but eventually I saw that I was missing context.

What I did not realize until I began expanding my work into creating actual media and reporting institutions such as the Washington Examiner (I was the founding online editor) was that U.S. conservatives do not understand the purpose of journalism.

This became evident to me as I saw that conservative-dominated media outlets were MUCH more biased than outlets run by liberals. The latter had flaws that arose from a lack of diversities (note plural) but they operated mostly in good faith. That's not how the former operated.

Thread: Meaning and loss in American conservatism

I've written a lot about how Christian supremacism (expressed and implicit) is the underlying objective of most Trump supporters but the psychology of American conservatism is very important in its descent into madness.

We're seeing it manifested heavily in the present moment as Trump and his followers are forced to contemplate the loss of the presidency but it's important to realize that losing is the psychic core of the U.S. right.

Trump's repugnant demeanor and prior history of political moderation is what made him so reviled by conservative activists and donors in 2015 but his angry victim complex so deeply resonated with the GOP base that this is why he won the primary.

American conservatism has been obsessed with death and loss since it emerged in the 1940s. The utter humiliation of Herbert Hoover and the rapid growth of federal spending and regulation under FDR was an existential moment for the corporate barons who started the U.S. right.

The rise of explicitly atheist Marxist-Leninism was also immensely triggering of long-time fundamentalist fantasies of persecution and death before the return of Christ. Most Christians don't see John's Apocalypse as a literal text but fundamentalists do.

Thread: Rush Limbaugh and the conservative Id

On the day of his passing, it's worth doing a brief retrospective on how Rush Limbaugh's personal life almost perfectly paralleled American conservatism...

One thing that's not commonly known about Rush Limbaugh is that he began his career in sports, doing sales for the Kansas City Royals baseball team. That's significant because much of the tribalism and dumbed-down rhetoric in American TV news directly came from sports media.

Television journalism in its earliest days was a fantastic product with real investigative reporting, no filibustering live interviews, and no soundbites. This began changing in the 1970s when ABC Sports president Roone Arledge was put in charge of ABC News.

Limbaugh tried to be a conventional FM deejay but kept getting fired because his personality was too abrasive. After working with the Royals, he began a small political talk show for a Sacremento station. The Reagan repeal of the Fairness Doctrine made his show possible.

Rush Limbaugh's Sacramento show started in 1984 (he replaced Morton Downey Jr) and after 5 years, he was picked up by ABC Radio which was trying to copy some of the sensationalism that ABC News television had started. It was a perfect fit.

Conservatives love to complain that everyone is against them: professors, journalists, intelligence officers, social media companies, and so on.

I used to as well until I considered that maybe having problems with everyone else isn't their fault, it's yours.

I was reminded of that realization when I read this important NYT article about how Facebook keeps weakening news source quality controls because conservative content gets disproportionately effected by them.

Unfortunately, this great piece of reporting by @MikeIsaac, @sheeraf, & @kevinroose didn't mention the greatest challenge in AI news signal processing: Humans can barely separate conservative & far-right content. Which means computers can't either.

This techno-semiotic conundrum originates from the fact that in the US, because there is no moderate conservative tradition, the gravitational center of the right is far removed from the political center.

More plainly, this means that almost all the energy and organizing on the right exists on the far right.

This is not the case on the US left where there is a strong moderate tradition capable of organization and force projection. Ask Bernie Sanders if you disbelieve.

Thread: People love to rag on Nate Silver for his arrogance & they should, but he's merely an example of a larger issue that the web has made it easy to draw inferences from data without knowing the context in which it lives. 1/x

Alexander Pope's warning that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" has never been more true than an age in which we can obtain information about anything without being able to understand it.

Having data doesn't mean you can use it.

Western society has a very significant problem that expertise in one area is often conflated with expertise in others.

Men are the main culprit. We have been socialized to think we know more than we do. There are many studies showing this. Here's one:

Not only do men think we're smarter than we are, we also overestimate our own attractiveness:

Male overconfidence has lots of negative implications for society. The biggest is that too many men in media have amassed followings by speaking confidently about subjects they don't understand.

Nate Silver finds Donald Trump appalling, but his shtick isn't all that different.

For those traveling to DC on Jan. 6th, I'm a native to the area and I would like to share with you what I will be doing this time and what I have done for the last two rallies...1/

If you know me, you know I don't like broadcasting details about my personal life on this website, but I have been getting asked why I'm not doing Christmas this year so I just wanna put this whole mess to bed. First of all, I don't agree with gay marriage... (1 of 4,625)

... full of dog food and she said, "I'm pretending this is ice cream! Treat me like a baby!" and proceeded to hump her own arm and I thought, "something tells me this isn't the real Norah Jones"... (117 of 4,625)

...cost me $7,000. I had to put it on two separate credit cards! It wasn't 'til I got to my car that I realized "that's way too expensive for one onion." But I didn't have time. Amanda Seyfried was begging to change my diaper... (1,001 of 4,625)

...another Christmas miracle. Mistletoe, stockings, sleigh bells, snow! All these things I have put up my ass. The taste of coffee... (2,974 of 4,625)

...I felt a *very* cold finger on my cheek and I turned around and I said, "Grandma?" and she goes, "Surprise, I'm alive and I work at Sears!" I said, "okay"... (3,047 of 4,625)

COVID Masks: Mechanistic View: Part 2: Fine Aerosol Emissions:

Masks may increase fine aerosol emissions from: 1) nebulization of large droplets into fine aerosols, or 2) friability of certain mask materials creating "aerosolized fomites."

Please share:

Here are the studies:

The question is whether facemasks are actually a source for viral aerosols by:

1) Masks get saturated by large "respiratory droplets" containing viral molecules. Air turbulence against trapped droplets may create aerosols that eventually diffuse around edges. Continued...

Trapped droplets potentially get pushed through the filter media of the mask, getting nebulized into aerosols.

Particles don't always stay in the mask:

Study: Ha'eri 1980

Title: The efficacy of standard surgical face masks: an investigation using "tracer particles"

Albumin tracer particles put inside a surgical mask were dispersed into the room by breathing.

Viral molecules can get airborne from air turbulence.

Study: Liu 2020
Title: Aerodynamic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 in two Wuhan hospitals.
SARS-2-COV sub-micrometer aerosols not tightly bound to surfaces, get airborne when PPE is taken off.

Southerners wrote songs about Warrington, formed peace movements because of IRA violence - but I can’t point to any mainstream effort to oppose/understand who the glenane gang, or Shankill butchers were, care about Loughinisland, state violence, &collusion.
V selective interest

They were and are revolted by SF glorifying murder but dont know or care about the deaths of catholics here. As I’ve seen the apathy to the life my parents lived, and the fear I grew up with, I always make it understood I’m Irish but from the north. Because it’s important

Showing absolutely no interest in the murder of the people in the areas SF are elected to represent is really selectively deciding whose lives you think are worth anything. I doubt anyone south of Louth Monaghan or Cavan could tell you or care about the Reavey brothers

There was and is no hand wringing about children being shot in the fields by soldiers in front of their parents or hunted down in their own house and killed in front of their families- where were the marches, the songs, the movements?

“But Sinn Fein said this”- is of zero comfort to victims of state or loyalist violence and you are actually framing their loved ones murders in such a way that you’re almost making them partially culpable for their own fate or excusing it somehow when it’s nothing to do with SF