Wednesday: Hili dialogue

43 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

1. The article from the Intercept was published on January 20th. It’s more prescient than following on.

   1. The intercept is another connection to Glenn Greenwald, is it not? So what is their purpose, to list journalistic mistakes and then what? Make it look like some kind of conspiracy or something accomplished by the deep state. Very exciting.

      Would it not be more interesting to do some journalism on your own and actually inform the world on something new. Maybe something like, how the Russians did influence our elections in 2016 and all the good things Trump is doing to prevent it again. Oh, I forgot, he doesn’t think they did.

      1. So what is their purpose

         Maybe you should read the article (which was written by Glen Greenwald, not connected to him).

         Would it not be more interesting to do some journalism on your own and actually inform the world on something new.

         Do you not think it is important that the US media seems to have screwed up quite badly on the Mueller report and this fact should be reported?

         1. Most of these errors are already well know if you follow the subject closely so it is not news that someone regurgitates what is known. We also know who shot JFK. It only looks bad because you see 10 items listed as if they are some pattern of wrong doing. That is BS and you know it. Or maybe you don’t.

            Any good journalist makes errors. People who actually do things make errors. That is why we call it doing things. Greenwald is not doing anything. It’s like Trump, who today said the republicans will be known as the healthcare party. Cover that one.

            1. Greenwald is doing something — defending Russia and Putin. That was the point.

            2. “[D]efending Russia and Putin” by showing that the DNC and other Russophobic organizations, including western ‘news’ outfits, have repeatedly concocted lies and slanted reports to justify theirs and our own nefarious activities. I’d say Hillary Clinton [the elephant in the room] has, through her media friends, received multiple gunshot wounds to the foot and, in doing so, done much to put unspeakable Trump, the other real danger, into power. As bad as the government has been and continues to be, two-faced Hillary would, IMHO, have been worse, much worse.

            3. You should stop watching Russian television.

            4. If you had a thesis about some systematic problem with the press, how would you demonstrate the pattern except by listing examples?

               Any good journalist makes errors

               Yes they do, but as the article itself explains:

               It’s inevitable that media outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that’s being done in good faith, one would expect the errors would be roughly 50/50 in terms of the agenda served by the false stories. That is most definitely not the case here.

               You may disagree with the article’s conclusion but if you are going to criticise it, please read it first and make sure that your criticisms aren’t already answered in it.

               That is why we call it doing things. Greenwald is not doing anything.

               It looks like a pretty well researched and evidenced article. It probably took Greenwald quite a while to compile it. I think he was doing something.

               Anyway, I’m done with this now. I actually only highlighted it because it was incorrectly cited as adding to yesterday’s article when it was written two months ago.

            5. It is a one way bias story. And stop telling me to read it. How about something on FOX NEWS from this guy. He could do 50 pages in one week. Would not even need to get out of bed. We know what we know about this corrupt government of ours because of real journalism. Finding mistakes over time and then making a story of it is not impressive. If you would rather accept and praise the stuff coming out of this firm, then continue. I am sure there is a whole staff over at Fox who agrees with you.

            6. You are criticising an article without reading it and indulging in an ad hominem attack. I am disappointed more than anything.

            7. Is that the way it goes when you have run out of argument, you accuse the other person of attacking you when there is nothing there? And when my comments show quite clearly I have read the article you continue nauseatingly to say read the article. Nice finish.

   2. Glenn Greenwald is an odd bird with many scores to settle and axes to grind, and more than a few half-baked notions of his own. I think we ought wait and see what the Mueller report actually says before ascribing him much prescience on this matter.

      1. It is remarkable how the chattering class feels it is necessary to make broad conclusions from a biased Attorney General issuing a very brief summary that barely quoted the Mueller report. It may be setting itself up for another embarrassment. Congress and the general public need to see the entire report. Only then can there be a halfway reasonable discussion as to what it said and its implications.

         1. The furor over the Mueller Report does tell us one important and sad fact about the state of the nation. It continues to be bitterly divided over what this country should be like. Trump’s approval rating remains stagnant at about 42%. It has barely budged since he became president. He is a proxy for those who fear that the nation is changing in ways they don’t like, particularly culturally. Hence, immigration is an extremely important issue for them, to the extent that even if Trump is screwing them economically (including taking health care away from millions), they don’t care. Trump’s opponents believe in “diversity,” although how that word is defined depends on who you talk to. They also consider economic issues very important.

            The current situation cannot last forever. We have no idea how the crisis will be resolved.

            1. Well, maybe the current situation can last forever. At least for a long time. Gradually, however, the nations ethnic distribution will change, perhaps shifting toward a more immigration tolerant era. The conservatives will become proportionately fewer, but perhaps more desperate, fearful, and angry.

            2. See Jerry’s post on Islam today. Makes me want to support a ban on Muslims. Read for yourself.

            3. But will a ban on muslims achieve much?
               There is no doubt that Islam, especially fundamentalist Islam, is a ‘problem’ in the light of large scale migration to the ‘West’ and exacerbated by ignorance about what it stands for and particularly the ‘left’s’ smooching with it.

      2. Glenn Greenwald is the sort of “leftist” who regularly appears on Fox News to bash the left. To hell with him.

         We indeed should wait to hear what Mueller actually wrote, instead of trusting a summary written by a partisan hack like Barr.

2. Wolves are so neat. Started volunteering recently at a wolf sanctuary and one of the perks is that they share wolf videos with us frequently. Wolves frolicking in the snow? check. Wolves devouring their enrichment treats? check. Wolves being downright silly with each other? check. Win, win.

   1. Are there links to these wolf videos?

      1. They email some out, but there are a lot of good ones on their Facebook Page: Wolf Haven International.
         –
         Very cool organization – they have wolves and wolf-dogs that they rescue and will live the rest of their lives at the sanctuary, and they also participate in the species survival plan for Mexican and red wolves.

3. Undulus Asperatus – the weird clouds – looks like ocean surf viewed from underwater.

   1. My thoughts exactly.

      1. The Inuit say they can often navigate ice and snow patterns by looking at the sky as a sort of “map”. I have never seen it explored whether or not this is actually the case, but it seems plausible enough.

4. “If, however, they were willing to devote just a small fraction of that energy to examining their own conduct…”

   If Sam Harris read that he’d probably roll his eyes so hard they’d fall out.

   Glen Greenwald, hypocrite of the week.

   1. If the richness of one’s hypocrisy could actually make one wealthy just by how rich the hypocrisy is, Greenwald would be a billionaire. Greenwald chiding others for pumping out false/biased stories or reporting with an agenda is like Hillary chiding someone for losing an easy race, or Trump chiding someone for being bad at public speaking.

5. Do people actually pronounce .gif like that? I always pronounced it gee-eye-eff. The only one I ever pronounced like the peanut butter is the .jif. (IANAL)

   1. According to the person who created it, it’s supposed to be pronounced “jiff,” but the vast majority of people pronounce it “giff.” I’ve never heard anyone pronounce it as “jee-ahy-eff.”

      Spelling out all three letters of a file extension is usually reserved for certain extensions that are all consonants, like pdf filed. Still, many all-consonant extensions are pronounced differently (for example, jpg is pronounced “JAY-peg”).

      1. I say ‘H – T – M – L’ but I think ‘Htt-mll’ 😎

         cr

   2. I don’t give a fig about how to pronounce gif.

      1. Hey that’s a great mnemonic to remember the proper pronunciation. According to the Captain Kirk school of pronunciation that is. I still prefer spelling out all the letters. Gee (as in gee that’s a swell pronunciation), aye (as in aye aye captain), eff (as in eff you Spock you pointy eared Vulcan).

   3. It’s Graphical Interchange Format.

      Not Giraffe-ical Interchange Format.

      😎

      cr

6. It’s not enough that Bill Shatner once butchered “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” now he’s got to try his hand at inverting Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images”? 🙂

7. I scanned one of these articles on press malfeasance and found them pretty much as expected. You don’t have an investigation go on for two years and be covered by many news outlets, all looking for scoops, making a few mistakes.

   As far as bias is concerned, Trump and his campaign and administration are the ones being investigated. This alone biases the mistakes against them. What would a mistake going the other way look like? Initial report: “Trump didn’t take a meeting with the Russians.” Retraction: “We were wrong. In fact, Trump DID take a meeting with the Russians.”

   As to the general bias of the MSM, I’m sure there’s a little. However, much of the perceived bias can be explained:

   1) Trump and the GOP are in power. The news is biased toward reporting bad news. These combine into a bias toward bad news about Trump.

   2) The MSM intend to report the truth. This President lies with practically every breath. The need to counter the lies with truth leads naturally to a perceived bias against Trump.

   3) Trump is inciting the public to not trust the MSM. This causes the MSM to want to defend itself. That will naturally be seen as bias against Trump.

   1. MSM = Main Stream Media.

8. All those recent “gates” tend to mean different things to different people. I guess it depends on what “Russiagate” means, exactly. Unless I dreamed all of this, I am quite sure that it did put a couple of people behind bars, or added some criminal records.

   It’s probably good that outlets admit they were wrong somewhere, but it also skews the political landscape even more, in the usual right wing direction. It’s almosy comical how “but her emails” suddenly takes on the opposite character, reminding everyone of the investigation into Hillary Clinton that kept Fox and Friends busy for some years, and their blood pressure up. While the right wingers quietly move on (sort of) or pretend another reality, the Democrat or liberal side make their “error” a point of reference for years to come.

   What’s more, the report since is under the trustful and honest-to-god control of Republicans. According to Business Insider, before anyone else can read it, the “White House” will be allowed to redact its content. Not only is American journalism a joke, I also come away thinking the whole process is crooked (normally, someone independent can take a look, does the US even have meaningful checks and balances?).

   Journalism is as poor as usual, since the “White House” obviously doesn’t do anything but sit on the lawn. What they should report is who, exactly, is tampering with the report. If it’s somebody under Trump, then the correct metonymy is “Trump”, not “White House”.

   1. I’d love to see it pop up on Wikileaks…

      cr

9. I really like the dad reflexes. Shows that dads are at least good for something.

10. Can someone ‘splain me the Peanut Butter one?

    1. Yeah, it’s about GIF’s (like, maybe, that Russian one of the ‘Puma’)

       Stands for Graphical Interchange Format, a format for still pictures and short video clips. The file suffix is .gif, as in ‘puma.gif’

       Apparently some people pronounce it as ‘Jiff’

       Now mostly superseded for still pictures by JPEG or .jpg, pronounced ‘jaypeg’, which offers far better compression and picture quality. JPEG stands, monumentally incongruously, for Joint Photographic Experts Group, who developed it.

       cr

       1. Incidentally, Shatner’s piccy of a JIF jar appears to be a JPEG…

          cr

       2. No, GIF is most definitely not superseded by JPEG. GIF is a lossless image format which is good for line art (red type on a beige background, for example). JPEG, on the other hand, is a lossy format designed from day one for photographic content.

          GIF has mostly been superseded by PNG. PNG is also a lossless format that, AFAIK, is a 100% superset of GIF.

          One can represent a photo in GIF and PNG but it will generally result in a much larger file than JPEG. Going the other way, a JPEG of line art will generally be larger than the GIF or PNG and, more importantly, will be a bit fuzzy in places.

          https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/30941/whats-the-difference-between-jpg-png-and-gif/

       3. Ah, yes, I know GIFs, but I didn’t grok the reference to the pronunciation debate.

          Thanks!

          (And, I think I pronounce it “jif” in my head whenever I see that word).

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