Study suggests that Flat Eartherism spread via Youtube

from BoingBoing:

The rise in a belief that the Earth is flat is bizarre and somewhat frightening, a repudiation of one of the most basic elements of scientific consensus. Texas Tech University psych researcher Asheley R. Landrum attended a 2017 flat earth convention and interviewed 30 attendees to trace the origins of their belief in a flat earth, finding that Youtube videos were key to their journey into conspiracy theories; her findings were bolstered by a survey of more than 500 participants.

Landrum presented her research at an AAAS meeting a year ago, and it paints a compelling picture of the role Youtube plays in spreading conspiracy theories.

I think that a good model for understanding the spread of these theories needs to also take account of the breakdown of epistemological consensus about how we know things are true.

This breakdown has at least two contributing factors: the first is a decades-long, deliberate campaign to undermine the consensus about how we know things are true, from the denial of the link between cancer and smoking to climate denial. The denial playbook starts with undermining the idea that science produces reliable outcomes, or that a scientific consensus can be trusted.

But denialism is greatly augmented by a legitimate perception of corruption in both expert circles and regulators. The anti-vax movement, for example, relies on two true facts to suggest an untrue conclusion:

* the pharma industry is corrupt and willing to endanger people for profit; and

* regulators are captured by pharma and willing to let them get away with it; therefore

* vaccines can't be trusted.

In a democracy that values free expression, it's hard to imagine how we'll get people to stop saying untrue things (though of course we can tweak our suggestion algorithms to stop prioritizing "engagement," which ends up promoting untrue things).

But we can (and indeed, must) address the legitimate concerns of conspiracy theorists: the ability fo self-dealing, powerful companies to get away with bad acts, and the willingness of regulators to let them.

If you want to learn more about Flat Eartherism, I strongly recommend this interview with Mark Sargent, a notorious Flat Earther, who talked with the skeptical podcast Oh No Ross and Carrie in late 2017. Sargent's frank discussion of his conspiracy theory mindset provides really important insight into an extremely frightening breakdown in reason in our society.

“Believing the Earth is flat in of itself is not necessarily harmful, but it comes packaged with a distrust in institutions and authority more generally,” she added. “We want people to be critical consumers of the information they are given, but there is a balance to be had.”

Landrum called on scientists and others to create their own YouTube videos to combat the proliferation of conspiracy videos. “We don’t want YouTube to be full of videos saying here are all these reasons the Earth is flat. We need other videos saying here’s why those reasons aren’t real and here’s a bunch of ways you can research it for yourself.”

But she conceded that some Flat Earthers may not be swayed by a scientists’ words. When the US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explained how small sections of large curved surfaces will always appear flat to the little creatures that crawl upon it, his message was seen by some Flat Earthers as patronising and dismissive, Landrum said.

Believing in A Flat Earth [Asheley Landrum/AAAS] (slides)
Study blames YouTube for rise in number of Flat Earthers [Ian Sample/The Guardian]

US TV networks put ratings over principle by airing Trump speech

from The Guardian by Emily Bell

Broadcasters criticised for giving president access, as fact checking becomes a media event

[DUMP] Donald Trump’s speech on the Mexican “border crisis”, delivered live from the Oval Office last week, marked a milestone in his brief but historically chaotic presidency; it revealed serious errors of judgment that weren’t simply down to him. Unfortunately for commercial media outlets, it was their shortcomings that attracted almost as much attention and criticism as the scaremongering speech itself.

It is the hallmark of many non-Democratic countries that tinpot dictators appear, at the drop of a hat, on national broadcast outlets. Even in functioning democracies you can measure the importance of a national moment by whether the head of state or government pops up in prime time. For this reason appearances by US presidents on all TV networks were traditionally a relatively rare occurrence. When they do happen, the decision to run them is made on an ad hoc basis by the heads of those networks.

Until Trump, the establishment organisations of US public life – which include the president and the major television stations – were so closely aligned on the circumstances for accessing the airwaves that clear rules seemed unnecessary, at least in the age of media deference to the presidency; Richard Nixon managed nine live addresses to the nation.

The last time an American president requested airtime and was refused was when Barack Obama wanted to address the nation on immigration policy in 2014. The networks’ reasoning included the fact that Obama had been allowed Oval Office addresses before, and this seemed to not be as big a deal.

This time, the danger that Trump would use the platform to spread nonsense and untruth in a thinly veiled campaign for a personal policy was weighed carefully against the fact that Trump had not yet had an Oval Office address and that it would be “newsworthy”, on account of the ongoing impasse over funding the government.

In fact, Trump has already made 17 presidential addresses, but only the latest was given seated behind his desk in the White House. Obama only gave 20 such speeches in the whole of his eight-year tenure.

The policy background is the punishing government shutdown that threatens the wages of 800,000 workers over the insistence by Trump that Congress give him $5.7bn (£4.5bn) to build a border wall with Mexico. The centrepiece of his xenophobic campaign platform, his dream of building the wall, has been stymied by both cost concerns and the laws of physics (large stretches of the US-Mexican border are not wall friendly). His request that public funds be made available to erect a fence – a cheaper, if no less ridiculous, option – has met with Democratic opposition, and ultimately a failure to fund many government activities.

The inability of 11 separate network heads to say “no” to Trump caused frustration on a number of levels. It was yet another sign, said some commentators, of the networks not “getting it”, following the normal rules of engagement with a presidency that is abnormal to the point of dysfunction.

A more nuanced point is that journalists employed by the same networks are often subject to abuse and even physical danger because of Trump’s hostility to the press: CNN correspondent Jim Acosta had his press credentials withdrawn for upsetting the president, and Katy Tur of NBC had to be given secret service protection at Trump rallies during his campaign.

Allowing a president noted for his untruthfulness access to their networks arguably put protocol above national interest, or perhaps, more honestly, prioritised ratings over principle.

Brian Stelter, CNN’s media editor, told the New Yorker he thought the decision was driven by tradition: “It is not that television networks are unaware or uninterested in the president’s mendacity,” he said. “But I think that tradition, that custom, of broadcasting the president simply outweighs the concerns.”

Given the refusal to allow Obama airtime, this argument looks a trifle disingenuous, made more so by the attendant ratings. The speech and an accompanying rebuttal by Democrat leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were seen by more than 43 million viewers. Trump remains strong box office.

The viewing figures are, however, only one aspect of a series of coordinated events. There was the prelude to the speech, in which Trump invited network bosses to lunch and told them he didn’t, in fact, want to be on TV at all, but his advisers were making him. There was the Democratic rebuttal and the subsequent memes. There was the discussion about the speech (see above) and there was the fact checking which has now become a media event in itself.

The assumption that the speech might be false and misleading opened up the opportunity for a fact-checked meta-narrative to run alongside the event. The (non-profit) Associated Press won the prize for worst use of fact checking with a tweet that read: “AP fact check: Democrats put the blame for the shutdown on Trump. But it takes two to tango. Trump’s demand for $5.7bn for his border wall is one reason for the budget impasse. The Democrats’ refusal to approve the money is another.”

In a move that strayed beyond satire, AP then adjusted its own fact check to better conform to the facts.

The Trump Show is a live experiment in what happens when the complete fusion of politics, technology and public entertainment occurs. Journalists and politicians alike struggle to find a footing that keeps them simultaneously relevant and rational. As Trump was sniffing uncomfortably behind his desk on Tuesday, potential contenders for 2020 were popping up on Instagram using the platform’s fleeting Stories function, frolicking with their dogs or having their teeth cleaned.

Meanwhile, on the southern border, where the real policy story is playing out, there was scant coverage of fringe groups harassing asylum seekers sheltered by churches. And the wider story about the growing crisis in processing immigration cases was eclipsed.

This time next year we will be in full-on primary season as part of the run up to the 2020 election, and the era of Trump might be drawing to a close. The television networks and press corps might imagine there will then be a return to normality. But this heightened environment of mediated and unmediated communications is the new reality.

Interaction between politicians, the public and the press has been permanently altered. The fourth wall has come down far faster than the border wall could ever be constructed. As yet it is not entirely clear that the commercial media has decided what role it could – or should – play in this changed world.

Sunday Sermon: Visualizing the relative evasiveness of Kavanaugh and Ford

from Boing Boing:

Kavanaugh didn't just DARVO his way through yesterday's hearing: his bluster, tears, rage, and blame-shifting also allowed him to dodge a remarkable number of questions raised by the senators.

Ford, by contrast, answered virtually every question put to her.

Vox went through the transcript and painstakingly logged whether each question raised was addressed. They confirmed the impression that Kavanaugh was dodging the questions and Ford wasn't, and produced an excellent interactive graphic that allows us to visualize the both witnesses' forthrightness and drill down on each question and statement.

Barbara Kruger’s Supreme Performance

from the New Yorker "Culture Desk"

In 1927, back when fonts were still little metal glyphs in heavy wooden cases, the German company Bauer Type Foundry opened an office in New York City and launched a new typeface called Futura. The optimistic, sans-serif font was a hit, but the import tariffs of the Great Depression soon strained the available supply. To meet demand, American foundries launched their own faux Futuras, with names like Twentieth Century and Vogue. During the Second World War, Futura languished abroad as its ripoffs, the typographic equivalent of “freedom fries,” filled American pages. By the time the font was welcomed back, in the fifties, its fakes had secured a legacy in its image. Futura was a shorthand for modernity and hope, a staple in ads for the sleek consumer goods designed for the postwar suburban middle class.

A few years later, in the mid-nineteen-sixties, Barbara Kruger was losing her enthusiasm for art school, so she left and took a job at Condé Nast, designing mail-order ads for the back of Mademoiselle. She returned to making art in the seventies, weaving hangings from ribbon and bits of metallic yarn as an exploration of “women’s work,” but felt it was frivolous. In the fall of 1976, she went to teach at the University of California, Berkeley, and shortly thereafter turned to collage, reviving the skills that she’d honed as an ad designer. This work paired scenes from banal consumer life with text that reframed the implied motives of her subjects. In one black-and-white work, from 1979, a woman reading Marie Claire appears beside the headline “deluded.” In 1981, Kruger’s art appeared in a group show titled “Public Address,” alongside work by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jenny Holzer. There, she débuted her now iconic style: white Futura text in red boxes.

In 1990, Kruger made what would become her most well-known work, which features a model’s hand holding a red box that reads, “I Shop Therefore I Am.” Since then, her red-and-white Futura has filled the lower lobby of the Hirshhorn Museum, in Washington, and hovered over the breasts of a naked Kim Kardashian on the cover of W (“It’s all about me I mean you I mean me”). What began as a way of subverting the vernacular has become a part of the vernacular itself. Like the Absolut Vodka ads of the eighties, Kruger’s format is easily copied by anyone with a computer and a yearning for subversion. In 1994, the downtown streetwear brand Supreme cribbed Kruger’s red-and-white Futura for its logo—teasing the boundary between homage, parody, and theft. Supreme has earned international appeal by releasing weekly product “drops,” including T-shirts, sweatshirts, boxing gloves, bolt cutters, and, this past February, a limited-edition MetroCard, which draw long lines outside Supreme stores. (Original fans lambaste the non-skating arrivistes as “hypebeasts.”) In 2013, Supreme sued the clothing brand Married to the Mob for infringing on its red-and-white Futura logo. “What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers,” Kruger told Complex, when asked for her response to the lawsuit. “I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.”

Last week, Kruger, who is seventy-two, installed five new works in red-and-white Futura as part of this year’s Performa biennial. The commission includes a billboard in Chelsea, a roving yellow school bus, a limited-edition MetroCard, and an installation at the skatepark in Coleman Square Playground, which pose questions like “Who owns what?” on red vinyl decals wrapping the ramps. The installation seems to nod at Supreme in a way that is more than oblique or accidental, and yet Kruger was reluctant to confirm that the work was meant as a direct address to the brand. “The whole idea of streetwear being branded and corporatized is only something that’s emerged with this sort of power over the past fifteen to eighteen years,” she told me over the phone last week. “I think it’s sort of interesting, and it’s very complicated but compelling, that my work and ideas and visuality have been drawn into so many sites of communication.” Kruger has a savvy, forthright way of speaking. She brackets loaded words with “quote-unquote” to suggest a degree of eye-rolling distance. When I asked about the Supreme lawsuit, she said, “I thought it was so amusing. Here are these people, so cool—like, you know, totally rad, out of the bubble—and there they are suing each other on the most conventional, proprietary, monetary level.” She paused. “I really make my work about those kind of moments. I tried to reply on that level in three sentences,” she said, referring to her “clusterfuck” comment. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with Supreme quote ‘ripping me,’ unquote. They’ve been doing that forever. I don’t care!”

The centerpiece of the Performa commission is Kruger’s first live performance, a recurring event titled “Untitled (The Drop).” Last Thursday, outside a former American Apparel store in SoHo, a line of guests for the opening stretched around the block. Hired bouncers managed the crowds. A woman in Pucci sneakers asked to skip ahead, but was sent to the back like everyone else. Two teen skateboarders did ollies in the street; it was hard to tell if they were part of the performance.

One woman with bleached-blond hair told a friend, “Now I just feel like one of those teen-agers in line for Supreme. It’s making me feel really embarrassed.” Five minutes later, she got frustrated and left. The line continued its slow creep forward. Patrons left the storefront with brown shopping bags. Visitors would be allowed ten minutes in the space, and purchases were limited to only two items. “Maybe they’ll be selling skateboards,” one man hoped.

Inside the store, the set was arranged to look like a store. Everyone clumped at the door to take photos of the red-and-white Futura items for sale, including an embroidered beanie with the phrase “Want it Buy it Forget it” (forty dollars) and T-shirts that read “Whose hopes? Whose fears? Whose values? Whose justice?” (forty-five dollars). The man bought his skateboard deck (sixty-five dollars). A sign, in Futura, hanging by the register said that the proceeds would benefit Performa. Near the door, a woman took a selfie. Outside, the line had doubled in length. It was hard to tell exactly who was ripping whom.

Jamie Lauren Keiles is a freelance writer.

ALSO NOTE AT THE "BARBARA KRUGER DROP" on saturday:
Saturday at 1pm at 427 Broadway, New York City

As Performa 17 examines the sociopolitical context informing contemporary art today, with work examining immediate and critical concerns confronting our urban centers, the shifting political and cultural currents of our world today, and the role of the arts and of artists in supporting afflicted communities, Heavy Discussion v.3 examines skateboarding through a female perspective, reflecting on skateboarding as an art and women in skateboarding as the afflicted community. Due to major political and cultural shifts within that community, including the recent induction of skateboarding in the upcoming Tokyo 2020 Olympic games, increased normalization of skateboarding in popular culture increasing female participation, and expanding corporate interest, now is a perfect time to foster dialogue.

Panelists / Alexis Sablone / Kea Duarte / Sara Kay / Jaime Reyes / Elissa Steamer

Being Healthy Is Unprofitable

 from: Of Two Minds.com 
Charles Hugh Smith (June 3, 2015)
U.S. healthcare is unsustainable. That it will break in the next decade is predictable.

That good health is insanely unprofitable was highlighted by a staggering statistic in the recent research paper The Concentration of Health Care Spending (via B.C.):
Mean annual spending for the bottom half of (the American population) distribution was just $236 per person, totaling only $36 billion for the entire group of more than 150 million people.

We don't know why the 150 million people did not consume much in the way of "health services"-- they might have been healthy and had no need for healthcare beyond routine tests, or they might have needed care and been unable to afford it, despite the Orwellian-titled Affordable Care Act (ACA).

But let's assume that the 150 million people--roughly half of America's 317 million residents--were healthy and had no need for health services beyond minimal prevention and a few low-cost tests.
The total cost of their care was $36 billion--just over 1% of the nation's $3.2 trillion bill for healthcare and healthcare insurance. Let's assume that 90% of the populace was healthy, and the remaining 10% were very ill and needed 100 times as much care as the healthy.

The total cost of caring for the 285 million healthy people would be roughly $67 billion, or just over 2% of the $3 trillion we currently spend on healthcare. The very ill 32 million would need $23,600 each, or $755 billion.

The total cost for a largely healthy population and 32 million ill people who required 100 times more care than the healthy would be $822 billion, or roughly 25% of the $3.2 trillion we currently spend annually.

Here is an example of the insanity of U.S. healthcare costs. One of our European friends was doing post-doctorate research at a major U.S. university. His son suffered a minor burn in the kitchen, and on the doctor's recommendation, the parents took the toddler to a hospital a few days later to have the dressing--basically a piece of gauze taped over the burn--changed.

Naive to the absurdities and costs of U.S. healthcare, the parents followed these instructions rather than just changing the gauze themselves.

Their punishment for foolishly asking the medical establishment to spend 5 minutes changing a small piece of gauze: a bill for $875. The list of similar charges is equally absurd. Among those known to me first-hand: $120,000 for a few days in a hospital, no operation, not intensive care; $6,000 for 20 minutes sitting in an observation room after a minor outpatient surgery on the patient's big toe--the list is essentially endless.

Readers are quick to note that the charges may not be paid in full--but that is no defense of the system. So that makes it OK that Medicare is charged "only" $80,000 for a few days in a hospital bed, or "only" $5,000 for sitting in a room for 20 minutes?

Estimates of the cost of paper-shuffling and fraud in our healthcare system start at 40%. Outright fraud (billing for phantom services and patients) accounts for an astounding percentage of healthcare expenditures, as do needless/ineffective tests and procedures.

Prevention is cheap, intervention and care of chronic disease is costly.
Sadly, we know 90% of the American populace is not healthy. Rather, the 70% who are overweight are facing decades of ill-health and needlessly early deaths.Consider this report cited in America The Obese:
Published in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, a study comparing young men and women of healthy weights to young obese individuals found that those who were overweight lost about 8.4 years off of their lives if they were men and 6.1 years off of their lives if they were women.
Young obese men suffered 18.8 more years of poor health leading up to their early deaths compared to men of healthy weight, while young obese women suffered 19.1 years of poor health. Even when obesity emerged just in old age, both men and women were found to lose years off of their lives: for men, an average of 3.7 years and for women about 5.3 years.

Americans spend $60 billion annually on weight loss programs and products, yet we become more overweight every year. Note that this $60 billion is almost twice the amount spent on healthcare for 150 million Americans.

The weight gain may be linear in nature, but the adverse consequences of extra weight are geometric. As noted in New obesity guidelines help physicians and patients with weight loss treatments:
As our waistlines expand, so too do the number of medical problems caused by excess body weight. A 2012 report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “F as in Fat, How Obesity Threatens America’s Future,” found that if obesity rates continue on their current trajectories, the number of new cases of type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, hypertension, and arthritis could increase 10-fold between 2010 and 2020—and double again by 2030.

“As evidence unfolds, everyone is beginning to appreciate that obesity and excess body weight are driving medical conditions and costs. You cannot get medical costs under control as long as we have these rising rates of obesity,” says Donna Ryan, MD, professor emeritus at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University Health System, and previous past president of The Obesity Society.

That America's ill health has become a national security risk is obvious: America: Too fat to fight.

Excess body weight threatens not just the nation's healthbut its economy and social fabric: F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation).



Anyone who thinks the stagnant American economy that already spends twice as much per person on healthcare as our advanced 1st World competitors can support 10-fold increases in lifestyle-caused chronic diseases is living in Fantasyland. The pharmaceutical industry has a plan to "cure" diabesity--their fondest dream is a bunch of pills that cost $84,000 a year, just like the recent treatment for Hepatitis C. Patients Get Extreme to Obtain Hepatitis Drug That's 1% the Cost Outside U.S.

Here's what will happen as the wave of weight/lifestyle diseases swell into a tsunami:

1. Care will become scarce within our "somebody else pays for me" system as the system starts breaking down. 

2. Care will become cash only as payments to frontline providers dwindle.

The "cure" for excess body weight is well-known and well-documented. The vast majority of us can only change our lifestyle and thus our weight and health within a support group of others engaged in the same challenge. Supplements don't work, fad diets don't work, gym memberships (lacking a total transformation of lifestyle) don't work--nothing works but continual human support from those dealing with the same issues.

But operating support groups is not profitable, and so our healthcare system gives the only real cure lip-service. Prevention and support groups are cheap and effective, but they're terribly, horribly, unavoidably unprofitable, so they are given lip-service, while the healthcare industries gear up to provide $100,000 procedures and $84,000 per year medications, all paid by "somebody else." 


U.S. healthcare is unsustainable. That it will break in the next decade is predictable. We are collectively wandering the beach, picking up seashells, while a mighty tsunami wave is approaching that will wash everyone on the beach away. We can either deal with the lifestyle and cultural causes of our mounting ill health or be swept away when the system crashes. 

War on Christmas - S#@t's Getting Weird Edition

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Christopher Hitchens vs. Ken Blackwell of The Family Research Council

I haven't been a big fan of Hitchens since he flipped many years ago, but every once and a while it's certainly fun to see him argue on the side of the argument we agree with, (particularly when he's sober). I mean he has written some incredible titles: The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice where he takes down Mother Teresa! To his latest God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. No matter how you slice him, he's a bad ass, wether we agree with him or not.

Ken Blackwell of The Family Research Council (Self-described as a "Christian organization promoting the traditional family unit and the Judeo-Christian value system upon which it is built") goes up against Christopher Hitchens on the topic of Christianity in America. (thanks, BoingBoing)

"God knows what he's saying..." YEAH RIGHT, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.

Baby delivers emotional sermon from church stage.


This makes about as much sense as anything you'd ever hear in any fundamentalist place of worship as far as i'm concerned. Reminds me of an old Eddie Murphy skit... FUNNY AS HELL! (no pun intended)

Thanks to BoingBoing who got it from "Why That's Delightful!"