U.S. and Texas: It is too Dangerous to Vacation in Mexico

Texas Travel Advisory regarding Mexico:. See also here for similar U.S. warnings.

The Texas Department of Public Safety warned Americans to skip spring break vacations in Mexico, noting that ongoing violence poses a significant safety threat.

The warning —which adds to State Department advisories not to travel to large swathes of the country — comes in the wake of the kidnapping of four Americans in Mexico earlier this month. There's a "Level 4: Do Not Travel" advisory for Tamaulipas, the Mexican state the Americans were in when they were kidnapped.

In the meantime, here are the numbers of murders over the past year in various American cities:

Portland Oregon: 93 Philadelphia: 516 San Antonio: 231 Saint Louis: 200 Memphis: 288 New Orleans: 280 Chicago: 697 Houston: 435 Washington DC: 203 Kansas City: 167

Continue ReadingU.S. and Texas: It is too Dangerous to Vacation in Mexico

Scott Nugent, Featured in “What is a Woman,” Challenges the News Media to Ask Real Questions on Transgender Issues

Scott Nugent, mother, lesbian and trans man, giving an impassioned scolding to a room filled with reporters. Scott is challenging them to ask real questions about the claims of profit-seekers to help struggling children instead of naively accepting the rhetoric of trans activists.

Continue ReadingScott Nugent, Featured in “What is a Woman,” Challenges the News Media to Ask Real Questions on Transgender Issues

Crickets . . . The Sound We Will Hear from Corporate Media Instead of Apologies

The Washington Post reported a story today without mentioning that until today, the paper has been engaging in reckless journalism for many months prior. Here's today's headline:

"‘Havana syndrome’ not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds: After a years-long assessment, five U.S. intelligence agencies conclude it is ‘very unlikely’ an enemy wielding a secret weapon was behind the mysterious ailment.

To be a modern corporate journalist, you don't need any evidence to publish a story. All you need is to know someone in the federal government who whispers something to you that furthers your employer's favorite narrative. Just look at these clowns go at it, convincing each other that the sounds made by crickets were caused by a Russian high tech weapon that was frying the brains of U.S personnel. WaPo published DOZENS of these xenophobic articles. How much of our Russia-hate these days is because of journalistic malpractice?

Glenn Greenwald adds (and I agree that this is an easy bet):

This is yet another hoax where any ethical and actual news organization would go on air and say: "for years we told you something that turned out to be false. Here's why we did it. We apologize and retract our stories."

That they don't tells you all you need to know about them.

I just checked (March 1, 2023 at 11pm CT): The corporate media refusing to mention that the story was a hoax include: NYT, Washington Post, NPR, MSNBC and CNN.

Continue ReadingCrickets . . . The Sound We Will Hear from Corporate Media Instead of Apologies

Anecdotes Get Headlines. Data? Not so Much.

Steven Pinker was asked to name one thing wrong with the world that he would change. His answer (excerpt):

Too many leaders and influencers, including politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and academics, surrender to the cognitive bias of assessing the world through anecdotes and images rather than data and facts.

Our president assumed office with a dystopian vision of American “carnage” in an era in which violent crime rates were close to historical lows. His Republican predecessor created a massive new federal department and launched two destructive wars to protect Americans against a hazard, terrorism, that most years kills fewer people than bee stings and lightning strikes. In the year after the 9/11 attacks, 1,500 Americans who were scared away from flying perished in car crashes, unaware that a Boston-LA air trip has the same risk as driving 12 miles.

One death from a self-driving Tesla makes worldwide headlines, but the 1.25 million deaths each year from human-driven vehicles don’t. Small children are traumatized by school drills that teach them how to hide from rampage shooters, who have an infinitesimal chance of killing them compared with car crashes, drownings, or, for that matter, non-rampage killers, who slay the equivalent of a Sandy Hook and a half every day. Several heavily publicized police shootings have persuaded activists that minorities are in mortal danger from racist cops, whereas three analyses (two by Harvard faculty, Sendhil Mullainathan and Roland Fryer) have shown no racial bias in police shootings...

People are terrified of nuclear power (the most scalable form of carbon-free energy) because of images of Three Mile Island (which killed no one), Fukushima (which killed no one; the deaths were caused by the tsunami and a panicked, unnecessary evacuation), and Chernobyl (which killed fewer people than are killed by coal every day).

Continue ReadingAnecdotes Get Headlines. Data? Not so Much.