ForestBoard

Rivienland wrote:

Great meme.

Also, this is very left field, but am I the only one that thought the little icon on Forest's forum site was a penguin (Club Penguin style) wearing a leprechaun outfit? Because, I just noticed that it might actually be our coat of arms.

That never occurred to me, but I can see it now!

I don't know why everyone suddenly decided that a person is an expert in politics, the environment, etc by virtue of being a celebrity. Does it occur to anyone that a celebrity might occasionally not know what they're talking about? >_<

Brassica prime wrote:

I don't know why everyone suddenly decided that a person is an expert in politics, the environment, etc by virtue of being a celebrity. Does it occur to anyone that a celebrity might occasionally not know what they're talking about? >_<

The analasys isn't bad frankly.

I'd reckon the point where we're relying on Twitter personalities might have been reached around about the time when hegemonic control of mainstream media reached the point where 95% of the world's media outlets are owned by a small enough number of people that you could fit them in a bus.

Thing is, peaceful protests are seldom, if ever reported. Protests that turn violent are occasionally reported as violent riots. And that's before we get into the other stuff that's seldom picked up on. In the UK the governpent paid 2 million via the foreign office to an internet charity that had ex military strategists (among other things) defame the opposition leader. One Scottish paper picked up on it, and from what I can tell after some digging the outfit existed, so it's certainly plausible. A woman set herself on fire in a benefits office in protest. That was never reported on by any mainstream paper. Tens of thousands of people have either ended their own lives or had their lives cut short by benefit cuts and it's dealt with (if at all) as an accounting error. That's it. Without a genuine outlet and accounting that doesn't toe the line of the vested interests of a very small percentage of the population, we've effectively created a media basically indistinguishable from that of a totalitarian state. If you're only telling half the truth it's not true.

Trump may be wrong on a great deal of things, but he's right in some instances regarding the media. They lie, they cherrypick and they actively manipulate facts to fit an agenda. Now I don't think he's smart enough to really understand and analyse how that has come about (and to be fair neither am I, I'm borrowing heavily from people far smarter than me) Trump interprets it as a personal attack, it's not personal, It's just business.

Compare him to Marcon. Marcon who gave a gun and ammunition illegally to a member of his security force, whose government has turned away shoeless immigrant children to walk back through a valley that is so trecharous it claims dozens of lives a year, a colonial apologist and a man who has claimed his thoughts are 'too complex' to be understood by the rest of us. He has gotten a relatively free pass in the media because he hasn't threatened the vested interests of the wealthy in the same way that Trump's admittedly stupid trade policies have. He's the great white hope for neoliberalism so they suck it up and brush his stupidity under the carpet.

There's no smoky meeting rooms where media mangates gather to discuss how to rule the world, however they do all go to the same clubs, send their kids to the same schools and live in the same utterly removed communities. Just read any piece where a journalist steps outside their cozy metropolitan bubble and interact with how 90 per cent of us live and work. It reads like a 70's anthropologist reporting on a Central American tribe. And media representations of the working class are even worse. It's like watching a tragicaly hip teacher try to be down with the kids. They are all ridiculously detached from the reality most of us live in. When Antoinette did or did not state 'let them eat brioche' it wasn't a callous statement. It was the worldview of someone ludicrously disconnected from almost everyone else she shared a country with.

More hillarious than ever are reports of Russian influence, and not just because the hypocrysy of the US slagging off any country sticking its nose in another country's politics. (Seriously, get back to me when the evil Russians assassinate a president and fund death squads roving the US and you might have a point). They miss the blindingly obvious. If the US wasn't such a total corpse fire of a country, with affluent cities stapled on top of third world slums Russia would not have an increasingly desprate and disconnected population to work with.

The media is controlled by a very small group of very very rich people and the content we recieve is filtered through layers of personal self interest and sheer lack of connection with their audience.

So yeah, I'm going with anyone who is actually doing more than either condemning people as mindless thugs or patronizingly handwringing about how things got this bad and is actually doing what journalism is supposed to do. Asking why this has happened.

Anyways, happy Monday.

trump should be kissing the hand of corporate media instead of biting it.

they gave him the presidency as much as his russian mafia real estate backers, by giving him so much air time, that other then bernie and hillary, no one got a chance to hear more then a one liner or two, about anyone else. (and nothing remotely resembling equal time from them either)

how hard would it have been for them to have given him a little less and then letting lesser parties have enough more voice for people to even know they existed?

but corporate media isn't the only media, and the alt right isn't the only alternative.

we do have the internet. it hasn't been stolen from us entirely. though the corporate bate and switch of social media is working on it.

there is also still print. there are even still libraries, though of course the corporate propaganda machine would love to wipe out both.

there are other things of course, rocks are still rocks and trees are still trees, and the mixture of rock-dust and organic material that supports our tread still exhibits its nobility by continuing to do so.

and yes, whinning about russia giving u.s. a taste of our own medicine would be worth a chuckle or two if it wasn't such a real threat. but then again, i've noticed, with a considerable sense of relief, that the mid-terms fractured at least a little, and that visibly, the previously inviolable seeming monolith, of trumpian tyranny.

Sapnu puas wrote:

Can I ask which one of these is a better PC monitor?

https://photos.app.goo.gl/YGRjv2KemF9dJJyy9

NationStates is slowing down for me, as in less motivated to answer issues.

I'm trying to find time to answer issues through school, and it's not going too well. My people should be less problematic.

Sapnu puas wrote:

Can I ask which one of these is a better PC monitor?

https://photos.app.goo.gl/YGRjv2KemF9dJJyy9

NationStates is slowing down for me, as in less motivated to answer issues.

They're likely similar in performance, but check the cable inputs to make sure you have what you need. If you want HDMI, you need one of the latter two. If you want DVI, you'll need one of the first two. Take a look at your card outputs to be sure!

Sapnu puas wrote:

Can I ask which one of these is a better PC monitor?

https://photos.app.goo.gl/YGRjv2KemF9dJJyy9

NationStates is slowing down for me, as in less motivated to answer issues.

If you have an HDMI output, the Acer is probably a great option since it has a higher refresh rate. It also has LED backlighting, which should make it more ecologically sustainable than the ASUS monitors. Additionally, a 1 ms response time sounds good!

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:

Pamela Anderson:

When some protesters destroy cars and burn shops, they symbolically attack private property that is the basis of capitalism. When they attack police officers, they symbolically reject and challenge repressive state forces - forces that primarily protect the capital.

The Beatles:

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be
All right, all right, all right

Hey, I'm with John on this one.

Well yeah, if legitimate change can be bought about through nonviolence and that, absolutely fantastic. Please don't think I am actually calling for violence when there is ever an alternative.

Trouble is that pacifism doesn't seem to work. The french have been protesting low wages and taxes that hit the poorest hardest peacefully since Marcon started screwing them over. Those protests were routinely ignored. Now, after a few weekends rioting the government is signing minimum wage increases and has cancelled the tax.

People don't have any real recorse outside disruptive protests to change things after the ballots have been cast, and precious few options on the ballot papers themselves. When someone outside a very, very narrow spectrum of what is politically acceptable by the ruling classes stands on the ballot, the big guns get wheeled out and they are dragged through the mud. We know this happens, we've seen it happen and we have statistical analysis and content analysis that proves this true.

We should be asking why people are on the streets burning down one of the largest economic powers in the world. The answer is, I believe, that our democracies are failing. This seems more likely than evil russian hackers or I dunno, a spontaneous decision to f*** stuff up because there's nothing on telly.

Caracasus wrote:

We should be asking why people are on the streets burning down one of the largest economic powers in the world. The answer is, I believe, that our democracies are failing. This seems more likely than evil russian hackers or I dunno, a spontaneous decision to f*** stuff up because there's nothing on telly.

Return to your home, citizen. If the state should see fit to claim the exclusive right to force, trust that it is for your own good.

(The status of democracy is not really relevant, though, since even the legitimate vote is also, ultimately, backed by the violence of the state. The real heart of the issue is the expectation on the part of the state that it's claim to legitimate violence is exclusive. I don't think it's that hard to demonstrate that this claim is patently absurd, regardless of how the interests lie.

Hell, I'm writing this from inside a state whose Founding Father's wrote extensively on the individual right of every person to contest that claim. By violence, if necessary.

It's patently obvious that violence is bad, and should be avoided if possible,but the sociopolitical history of our species is the giant "BUT..." which follows that observation.)

The niceties of normal moral constraints wrote:

Return to your home, citizen. If the state should see fit to claim the exclusive right to force, trust that it is for your own good.

(The status of democracy is not really relevant, though, since even the legitimate vote is also, ultimately, backed by the violence of the state. The real heart of the issue is the expectation on the part of the state that it's claim to legitimate violence is exclusive. I don't think it's that hard to demonstrate that this claim is patently absurd, regardless of how the interests lie.

Hell, I'm writing this from inside a state whose Founding Father's wrote extensively on the individual right of every person to contest that claim. By violence, if necessary.

It's patently obvious that violence is bad, and should be avoided if possible,but the sociopolitical history of our species is the giant "BUT..." which follows that observation.)

Well yeah. If violence didn't work then we probably wouldn't have the world's largest economic superpower also being the one with the biggest number of aircraft carriers.

Opinions on Celebrity Opinions can be summed up with one headline: "KISS Front Man Gene Simmons: Celebrities Should Shut Their Pie Holes". (Fox Business)

Jeez, I don't think people'll know whether any individual celebrity opinion is genuine or virtue-signaling; after all, none of us are really in their heads. The deal is that if they say something in-line with a particular 'side'/'movement', that 'side'/'movement' will happily roll with it. The people who sneer at Hollywood sigh with relief at James Woods types, and those that snicker at past-their-prime voices turn to Alyssa Milano types, and the world goes on. Ownzone's right with the 'Famous' = 'Authority Figure' equivalence, and people looove having their opinions reinforced by Authority Figures.

I'm just not going to care about anyone's potential PC motives. We're already way past the "Celebrity Opinion We Agree with Says Celebrity Opinions Are Bad" hurdle; the part of the population that agrees an Authority opinion generally overlaps with the same population thinking the Authority is genuine in heart. We've already jumped the shark.

EDIT: Perhaps this came out more nihilistic than I intended. To summarize/reword: 1.) In an ideal world, Celebrities would not have a larger voice than others. 2.) We do not live in an ideal world. 3.) People criticize 'Celebrity Opinions', but too many also turn around and feel validated by individual Celebrity Opinions. 4.) Nobody but the celebrity lives in their heads, so any determination about the genuine nature of an opinion is mostly derived from whether someone agrees in the opinion.

The niceties of normal moral constraints wrote:

False distinction. The whole point of expressing an opinion is to communicate an idea or virtue. "Virtue-signaling" is impossible to avoid in any context featuring two or more people.

Fair point. It was an oversight of mine to play into that sort of rhetoric.

Cosona wrote:

I'm trying to find time to answer issues through school, and it's not going too well. My people should be less problematic.

I agree. My strategy is to have a twenty minute period where I do my Nation States (Issue answering, RMB reading etc...) It seems to work out for me and also serves as a good break when doing homework or a project.