“White Supremacy” and Concept Creep

Wilfred Reilly points out one of the many recent examples of concept creep. According to the laptop class, the meaning of "White Supremacy" barely resembles what it meant only a few years ago.

Here are other examples: Dangerous Conversion Therapy Woman. Man. Phobia Healthy Vaccine Science Freedom Pandemic Insurrection Vaccine Racism and Racist Gain of Function Public health expert Gender Misinformation Left Wing and Right Wing, Liberal and Conservative Peaceful Violence Fact-Checker Truth Equality Fascist Conspiracy Theory Safe & Safety Trusted Freedom Infrastructure Progressive Fact Anti-vaxxer Inclusion Diversity News Reporting Tolerance

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On the Importance of Computer Backups – My iMac Adventure Co-Starring Time Machine and Dropbox Professional

My iMac is now fully restored. Hundreds of files started disappearing in many folders. I restored a few missing files and they disappeared again in the next few hours. These spontaneous mass deletions were happening for 2 days before I noticed it. An anti-virus program said no viruses. An apple rep and a friend who repairs Apple computers said beware of problems stemming from the use of iCloud Drive. I am using auto-update on OS, but the latest (Ventura 13.2) hadn't kicked in yet..

Bottom line is that I am perfectly good now and the problem has stopped. I rotate 3 separate external drives for my backups. I also put all of my data into Dropbox Professional which has an excellent "rewind" feature that comes with diagnostic charts that let you see where and when activity is happening, also allowing selective or global restore. To make sure there were no remaining vestiges of the problem, I ended up tearing down my machine to bare metal and building it back with brand new OS, manually updating the most recent safe-seeming backup, then restoring 2.5TB of data. Then the tedious task of installing and configuring a dozen apps. I also disabled iCloud Drive. Take-aways: A) Big problems can occasionally happen even with an Apple computer. B) This was a major problem and I was prepared with ample backups, C) Dropbox Professional is worth every penny, and D) Constantly back up your computer with Time Machine, an incredibly sophisticated and easy to use program!

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Journalists Dissing Objectivity

Jonathan Turley is concerned many people in the news media business now consider it a bad thing to be "objective." His article is titled, “'Objectivity has got to go.': News Leaders Call for the End of Objective Journalism."

We previously discussed the movement in journalism schools to get rid of principles of objectivity in journalism. Advocacy journalism is the new touchstone in the media even as polls show that trust in the media is plummeting. Now, former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward have released the results of their interviews with over 75 media leaders and concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”

Notably, while Bob Woodward and others have finally admitted that the Russian collusion coverage lacked objectivity and resulted in false reporting, media figures are pushing even harder against objectivity as a core value in journalism.

Those who claim that objectivity is impossible often advocate the vague notion of "social justice" as the only alternative. Just because objectivity is difficult is not a reason for giving up on trying to find common ground on many facts. Giving up on trying to describe things objectively opens the door to mob rule based on feelings of what justice requires, feelings that are unanchored to a mutually-shared understanding of what is going on. Giving up on objectivity is giving up on the Rule of Law. Throwing the quest for objectivity overboard is one of many modern-day examples of violating the principle of Chesterson's Fence, explained here by Shane Parrish of Farnam Street:

Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place. Chesterton went on to explain why this principle holds true, writing that fences don’t grow out of the ground, nor do people build them in their sleep or during a fit of madness. He explained that fences are built by people who carefully planned them out and “had some reason for thinking [the fence] would be a good thing for somebody.” Until we establish that reason, we have no business taking an ax to it. The reason might not be a good or relevant one; we just need to be aware of what the reason is. Otherwise, we may end up with unintended consequences: second- and third-order effects we don’t want, spreading like ripples on a pond and causing damage for years . . . Many of the problems we face in life occur when we intervene with systems without an awareness of what the consequences could be.

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Measuring First Amendment Ignorance

New report by FIRE indicates that many Americans who are celebrating the Fourth of July with BBQ and fireworks don't appreciate the meaning of the holiday.

In a recent AmeriSpeak panel conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, FIRE asked 1,140 Americans if they could name any of the specific rights protected by the First Amendment. The results were dismal.

Almost a third of Americans could not name a single enumerated right protected by the First Amendment and another 40% could name only one — usually freedom of speech. Among Americans who named one or more enumerated rights, roughly two-thirds (65%) named freedom of speech, about a quarter (26%) named freedom of religion, 20% named the right to assemble, 15% named freedom of the press, and 8% named the right to petition. Only 3% of Americans could name all five and, on average, could name 1.33 First Amendment rights. In other words, Americans’ knowledge of the First Amendment remains poor.

he AmeriSpeak panel is funded and operated by NORC, and is a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. household population. Although knowledge of the First Amendment was low across the board, some notable differences did emerge. Generally, males were able to name significantly more rights than females, although they still averaged less than two (1.47 and 1.23, respectively). Males were also significantly more likely to name four-of-five First Amendment rights than females were:

69% of males named freedom of speech compared to 61% of females. 24% of males named the right to assemble compared to 16% of females. 18% of males named freedom of the press compared to 12% of females. 11% of males named a right to petition compared to 5% of females.

These findings may reflect greater interest in the First Amendment among males. Other surveys have found that, compared to females, males are more likely to adopt an absolutist stance on the First Amendment and are more willing to allow the expression of statements that are offensive or hateful. Scholarship has long documented that males are also more opposed to censorship in a number of different content domains.

Liberals were significantly more likely to name at least one right and significantly more likely to name at least two rights compared to moderates and conservatives. One-third of conservatives and 27% of moderates could not name a single right, compared to 15% of liberals. Liberals also named significantly more rights on average than moderates did, although, as with males above, liberals still named less than two rights on average (1.56 and 1.28, respectively).

Generational differences are also evident. Americans aged 18-29 were significantly less likely to name free speech (55%) than other Americans, particularly those aged 45-59 (67%) and those aged 60 and older (70%). Those aged 18-29 (19%) and those aged 45-59 (21%) were also significantly less likely to name freedom of religion as a right guaranteed by the First Amendment, compared to Americans aged 30-44 (30%) and those aged 60 and older (29%). Thus, older Americans appear to be the most knowledgeable about the First Amendment, suggesting that knowledge may decline further as they age and represent a smaller overall portion of the American population.

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Robust Findings that Masks Don’t Work are Ignored by News Media

Imagine that a newly published comprehensive review of mask-wearing by a prestigious medical publication concluded that mask wearing offered us significant protections from COVID. You'd see those findings echoed by most major news organizations. Biden's attorneys would trumpet those findings in Biden's attempt to reverse the 11th Circuit ruling, so that he could make better arguments requiring airline passengers to put their damned masks back on. Well, the opposite has happened.

I personally know Dr. Kristen Walsh. She is a dedicated pediatrician. She is one of the many practicing physicians who read the January 30, 2023 Cochrane Library review of evidence as to whether masks prevented the spread of COVID. Walsh's Feb 1, 2023 article is titled: "New meta-analysis should end discussion of mask mandates in schools." An excerpt:

From where I sit, as a primary care doctor practicing in an academic clinic setting, this review was big, huge science news. It gathered and studied 78 randomized controlled trials, both pre- and mid-COVID, and addressed COVID, flu, and other respiratory viral illnesses. I was surprised (and not in a pleasant way), therefore, to see almost complete media silence after the review was released. I didn’t see anything about it on cable news; no articles in well-known newspapers. The tweet from the Cochrane Database announcing the review only had 68 likes and 24 retweets after 24 hours. “How is this possible?” I thought. “Why does no one care whether masks work or not?” Probably because the answer was pretty much: not.
Upon reading Walsh's Substack article, I did my due diligence, searching the websites of the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC and NPR. As of today, you will not find a single word about the Cochrane Review declaring that there is no evidence supporting the use of masks to prevent COVID.

Why the silence? I would start my answer with the COVID edition of the Twitter files. I would add that we are looking squarely at a sad example of the sunk costs phenomenon: Most legacy news outlets (and their pals in the U.S. Government) are determined to keep riding their severely flawed COVID narrative because they fear the ridicule they would face if they did an about-face. They have shown themselves to be obedient servants to the stern dictates of the Trusted News Initiative, to the Biden Administration and to the U.S. Security State, which has dedicated at least eighty FBI agents to the task of making sure that highly decorated doctors and researchers (and ordinary people) stop thinking for themselves for safety's sake. We are being protected from facts regarding the failures of masks for the same reason that we are being protected from other COVID-related facts and opinions, including the recent shocking revelations of Jordon Walker, Pfizer's Worldwide Director of R&D Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning.

Walsh is not alone in recognizing the import of this comprehensive Cochrane review. Dr. Vinay Prasad's Feb 2 article is titled: "The Cochrane Review on Masks is Damning: Masks have no good data to support them: It is a religion, not a science." Here is an excerpt from Prasad's article:

Let me be clear: The science did not change. Public health experts started lying. We never had good data that mask mandates help, or that mask advice (a softer policy) improves outcomes. Yet it was widely pushed— most likely to distract from true federal failures. After vaccination, not only do we not have evidence. . . Here is the big summary finding. With 276,000 participants in RCTs or cluster RCTs, masking does nothing. No reduction in influenza like or Covid like illness and no reduction in confirmed flu or COVID. That’s stone cold negative. . . . This is why Fauci said what he said initially on 60 minutes. He wasn’t lying. The best evidence showed no benefit. That was before we saw a concerted campaign to promote cloth masking— a bizarre way to treat anxiety. People routinely wore cloth masks outside— something that was less 21st century and more 3rd century, akin to animal sacrifice, and dancing to make the rains come.

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