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Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

The Ledes

Thursday, May 16, 2024

CBS News: “A barge has collided with the Pelican Island Causeway in Galveston, Texas, damaging the bridge, closing the roadway to all vehicular traffic and causing an oil spill. The collision occurred at around 10 a.m. local time. Galveston officials said in a news release that there had been no reported injuries. Video footage obtained by CBS affiliate KHOU appears to show that part of the train trestle that runs along the bridge has collapsed. The ship broke loose from its tow and drifted into the bridge, according to Richard Freed, the vice president of Martin Midstream Partners L.P.'s marine division.”

The Wires
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Public Service Announcement

The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705

Marie: BTW, if you think our government sucks, I invite you to watch the PBS special "The Real story of Mr Bates vs the Post Office," about how the British post office falsely accused hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of subpostmasters of theft and fraud, succeeded in obtaining convictions and jail time, and essentially stole tens of thousands of pounds from some of them. Oh, and lied about it all. A dramatization of the story appeared as a four-part "Masterpiece Theater," which you still may be able to pick it up on your local PBS station. Otherwise, you can catch it here (for now). Just hope this does give our own Postmaster General Extraordinaire Louis DeJoy any ideas.

The Mysterious Roman Dodecahedron. Washington Post: A “group of amateur archaeologists sift[ing] through ... an ancient Roman pit in eastern England [found] ... a Roman dodecahedron, likely to have been placed there 1,700 years earlier.... Each of its pentagon-shaped faces is punctuated by a hole, varying in size, and each of its 20 corners is accented by a semi-spherical knob.” Archaeologists don't know what the Romans used these small dodecahedrons for but the best guess is that they have some religious significance.

"Countless studies have shown that people who spend less time in nature die younger and suffer higher rates of mental and physical ailments." So this Washington Post page allows you to check your own area to see how good your access to nature is.

Marie: If you don't like birthing stories, don't watch this video. But I thought it was pretty sweet -- and funny:

If you like Larry David, you may find this interview enjoyable:


Tracy Chapman & Luke Combs at the 2024 Grammy Awards. Allison Hope comments in a CNN opinion piece:

~~~ Here's Chapman singing "Fast Car" at the Oakland Coliseum in December 1988. ~~~

~~~ Here's the full 2024 Grammy winner's list, via CBS.

He Shot the Messenger. Washington Post: “The Messenger is shutting down immediately, the news site’s founder told employees in an email Wednesday, marking the abrupt demise of one of the stranger and more expensive recent experiments in digital media. In his email, Jimmy Finkelstein said he was 'personally devastated' to announce that he had failed in a last-ditch effort to raise more money for the site, saying that he had been fundraising as recently as the night before. Finkelstein said the site, which launched last year with outsize ambitions and a mammoth $50 million budget, would close 'effective immediately.' The New York Times first reported the site’s closure late Wednesday afternoon, appearing to catch many staffers off-guard, including editor in chief Dan Wakeford. As employees read the news story, the internal work chat service Slack erupted in what one employee called 'pandemonium.'... Minutes later, as staffers read Finkelstein’s email, its message was underscored as they were forcibly logged out of their Slack accounts. Former Messenger reporter Jim LaPorta posted on social media that employees would not receive health care or severance.”

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Page Links
Tuesday
Jun092015

To the Lighthouse

Defunct video removed.

 

I suppose it was appropriate that on a day Paul Krugman warned against succumbing to the “derp,” it appears that some Reality Chex contributors did just that.

 

 

So, a few notes:

 

When you link to a story (or video) that presents itself as true, if it is a joke or a hoax or satire, please be sure to let readers know.

 

If you think the story is true, consider your own biases. If the story is both outlandish and fits into your personal belief system, as Krugman suggests, be cautious.

 

If you still aren't sure, try to check out the story's veracity. If it's a widespread hoax, as was the one linked yesterday, it's easy to Google rebuttals. Both Snopes and Wikipedia have extensively debunked the lighthouse joke.

 

Facebook is not a news source.

 

Anybody can be fooled.

 

(a) I once linked to a fake news story, precisely because the story fit into my own preconceptions. Luckily, a reader caught my error pretty quickly.

 

(b) “In March 2008, Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence in the U.S., opened his remarks to The Johns Hopkins University's Foreign Affairs Symposium with the lighthouse story, claiming, 'Now this is ... true. I was in the signals intelligence business where you listen to the people talk and so on. This is true. It's an actual recording.'” Besides being DNI, McConnell is a former vice-admiral of the Navy. If anyone in the world should have known better, it was McConnell. And you wonder how we got the Iraq intelligence so wrong (McConnell was not DNI at the time, but you know, same administration).

 

If you know a story linked on Reality Chex isn't true, let us know, as contributor D. C. Clark did yesterday. I catch quite a few of them, & I certainly suspected the lighthouse story was a hoax, but I didn't have time during the day yesterday to Google it -- still tearing up that countertop, which is built like the roof of a bomb shelter.

 

BTW, Clark thought (or sought) this Berlitz ad was funnier:

 

 

... because what is funny about the lighthouse story is that it is true. Only it isn't. And that makes all the difference.

Comments Off

Reader Comments (4)

Great advice from Der Professor about not yielding common sense if a story fits too neatly into one's preconceptions. Not all that long ago, I linked a "news" item that originated as a bit of satire from Andy Borowitz. Hoo-boy! Vas I feeling schtupid, ven dis I find out.

But here's the problem. The raging dementia that has squished right-wing brains to the size of walnuts (and growing smaller by the day), is the source of so many outrageous and jaw dropping situations and statements that industrial strength satire would be hard pressed to keep up. It's not always easy to tell what's real from what's made up. Satirists like Borowitz must read the daily goings on from Right Wing World and think "Man, I wish I could write shit like that. That is some serious crazy right there."

But since the Right has such a derpendency problem, there's no end of actual stupidity. They manufacture it hand over fist.

(Does anyone else think "growing smaller" is an odd construction? I checked with my friend Ockzi Morons to see what he had to say. He liked it. He considered it a genuine imitation of something he had come up with years ago, so he wrote up his thoughts on the subject and sent me an original copy.)

June 9, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Well, ADM McC's specific story ("people who know told him"), and the general the sea-story about the lighthouse, are special categories of "war story."

Just don't forget - "All war stories are lies."

Really, I was there, man.

June 9, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterPatrick

@Patrick: I was too. The more outrageous the better. "Now this is no shit, but there was!"

I'm sure the troops in the Continental Army told versions of the same tales.

June 9, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa

There I was.

June 9, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa
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