I think David Van Zandt has a vendetta against Philip Weiss. Racists tend to be unfeeling or feel contempt for ‘lesser’ racial groups, and are merely indifferent to their suffering. The most intense ‘hate’ in hate groups comes from the intensity of feeling racists have toward other people of their own race they perceive as ‘race traitors’ - who demonstrate that people who share their culture and heritage can afford empathy for the ‘other’ whom racists believe are unworthy of concern.

Truthout is a reputable website, with good journalism and reporting. There’s a number of other websites that report favorably on Palestinians, and don’t toe Van Zandt’s line that criticism of Israel and antisemitism are the same thing. They have higher ‘Credibility’ and ‘Factual Reporting’ scores than Truthout. But Truthout occasionally rehosts reporting from Mondoweiss, a site that Van Zandt has labelled as ‘antisemitic,’ and therefore Truthout must be punished for giving support to the most notorious enemy of Israel – ‘self-hating’ Jews.

HuffPost was founded by four people, including Arianna Huffington, CEO of Thrive Global, and Andrew Breitbart, who also built the alt-right outlet Breitbart News. Breitbart was also instrumental in founding The Drudge Report, an early popular news site that promoted news and opinion favorable to the Republican Party, and was The Huffington Post’s direct inspiration, with the focus instead on the Democratic party and ‘progressive’ values.

Tom Nicholas is really great in this piece. SLRPNK link

People who get angry at Just Stop Oil tactics are just showing their ignorance of civil rights and protest history.

Alex de Vries predicted that current AI technology could be on track to annually consume as much electricity as the entire country of Ireland (29.3 terawatt-hours per year). For comparison, the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index suggests Bitcoin uses 141-160 terawatt-hours (TWhs) of electricity annually. That’s ~0.7% of the world’s consumed electricity in 2022. The process of minting cryptocurrency is a very public activity, so the numbers are difficult to fudge. The cost of bringing extremely expensive nuclear reactors back online and driving demand for environmentally destructive Uranium mining and processing suggests de Vries’ guess was conservative.

I’m reminded of Jevon’s Paradox as applied to energy generation. I hope the AI bubble pops before much more investment goes into nuclear energy.

CNN is part of the Warner Bros. Discovery advertising portfolio.

MBFC classifies pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, and anti-genocide bias in reporting as left-biased, but also classifies CNN as Left-Center biased. CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’.

Voice of America (VOA) is a state media network funded by the United States of America, whose purpose is to project soft power through journalism.

In 2005, the Washington Post reported that suspected Al-qaeda operatives were flown into Thailand to be detained and tortured. VOA’s remote relay radio station in Udon Thani province has been widely suspected to be the torture site.

Manufacturing Consent has this to say about PBS:

Globalization, along with deregulation and national budgetary pressures, has also helped reduce the importance of noncommercial media in country after country. This has been especially important in Europe and Asia, where public broadcasting systems were dominant (in contrast with the United States and Latin America). The financial pressures on public broadcasters has forced them to shrink or emulate the commercial systems in fund~raising and programming, and some have been fully commercialized by policy change or privatization. The global balance of power has shifted decisively toward commercial systems.

James Ledbetter points out that in the United States, under incessant right-wing political pressure and financial stringency, “the 90s have seen a tidal wave of commercialism overtake public broadcasting,” with public broadcasters" rushing as fast as they can to merge their services with those offered by commercial networks." And in the process of what Ledbetter calls the “mailing” of public broadcasting, its already modest differences from the commercial networks have almost disappeared. Most important, in their programming “they share either the avoidance or the defanging of contemporary political controversy, the kind that would bring trouble from powerful patrons.”

• Horrific scenes … an Israeli drone targeted 5 unarmed Palestinian civilians in Al Sikka area in Khan Younis city in the beginning of February 2024. (NSFL)
• Israel-Hamas war updates: Israeli strike hits Gaza medical convoy
• Israeli warplanes hit UNRWA schools in Gaza with white phosphorus
• The Protest Dispersed. Then an Israeli Sniper Shot a 9-year-old Palestinian Boy in the Head
• Israel attacked a UN-run school housing refugees in Gaza despite warnings that civilians were there, the UN has said.
• Initial IDF probe: Hostages were shirtless, waving white flag when soldiers opened fire
• Israel deliberately killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Aqla, Palestinian report says - BBC News
• Chef Jose Andres says Israel targeted his aid workers ‘systematically, car by car’

The Democrat’s still haven’t updated their party platform on climate change since before Joe Biden was elected. It sits, frozen in time, with nuggets like “We will take immediate action to reverse the Trump Administration’s dangerous and destructive rollbacks of critical climate and environmental protections.” and “We will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement” like those things are a step forward rather than a return to the catastrophic status quo.

Hopefully Camila Thorndike can change that.

Do you unironically believe Martin Luther King Jr. wanted Barry Goldwater to win when he increased his civil rights protest organizing in defiance of Lyndon B Johnson during the lead up to the 1964 presidential election?

[Image Description: Anakin Skywalker on Lava Planet, block-face text “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy”]

Fuck the Heritage Foundation.

Threads.net federation status on major Lemmy instances:

• Awful.systems - Blocked
• Beehaw.org - Blocked
• Blahaj.zone - Blocked
• DBZer0 - Blocked
• Dubvee.org - Blocked
• Eco.br - Blocked
• Feddit.org - Blocked
• Feddit.nl - Blocked
• Feddit.uk - Blocked
• Hexbear.net - Blocked
• JLai.lu - Blocked
• Leminal.space - Blocked
• Lemmy.best - Blocked
• Lemmy.ca - Blocked
• Lemm.ee - Blocked
• Lemmings.world - Blocked
• Lemmyf.uk - Blocked
• Lemmygrad.ml - Blocked
• Lemy.lol - Blocked
• Lemmy.ml - Blocked
• LemmyNSFW.com - Blocked
• Lemmy.one - Blocked
• Lemmy.zip - Blocked
• Literature.cafe - Blocked
• Mander.xyz - Blocked N
• Pawb.social - Blocked?
• Quokk.au - Blocked
• Reddthat - Blocked
• Sh.Itjust.works - Blocked
• SLRPNK.net - Blocked
• Szmer.info - Blocked
• Tchncs.de - Blocked
• Aggregatet.org - Not Found
• Aussie.zone - Not Found
• Feddit.cl - Not Found
• Feddit.it - Not Found
• Futurology.today - Not Found
• Infosec.pub - Not Found
• Lemmy.one - Not Found
• Lemmy.pt - Not Found
• Midwest.social - Not Found
• Monyet.cc - Not Found
• RBlind.com - Not Found
• SDF.org - Not Found
• Lemmy.world - Linked
• Sopuli.xyz - Linked

Also, in memoriam:

• Feddit.ch - Blocked

As stated elsewhere in the thread, my vote audit shows no participation from any of the 29 banned sock accounts the in the !news feedback thread, or this one for that matter. Please take the votes more seriously. If you’d like to spread FUD about the legitimacy of a vote, ask an admin to audit them first so you can state with evidence that a specific vote has been manipulated.

People trust the software to tell them what others are thinking, and if you successfully spread the false idea that votes that disagree with you are manipulated, you’re not just arguing in bad faith, you’re undermining the federated system we should all want to succeed.

Props to the LW admin who uncovered and banned the vote manipulation ring. Its existence is troubling.

I did a vote audit of the Soliciting Feedback from the Mods thread, and none of the sock accounts that were banned three days ago voted on the post or the most highly upvoted or downvoted comments. If you don’t believe me, I suggest asking an admin you trust to repeat the audit.

The outrage about the bot seems extremely organic, and any sockpuppetting going on is small compared to the overwhelming number of legitimate accounts casting votes that are apparent from the logs. The uniformity of the consensus does not appear to be artificial at all.

Rule 1 Ban Count: 5

• @LagrangePoint@lemmy.world (Permaban)
• @aniki@lemmings.world (15 day ban)
• @catloaf@lemm.ee (15 day ban)
• @DoctorButts@kbin.melroy.org (Permaban)
• @stormesp@lemm.ee (15 day ban)

Not a good look, mods.

I want the bot gone but didn’t downvote the post. I support the mods reaching out for feedback, and also downvoting could decrease the visibility of the bot’s overwhelming negative reception.

The news mod team has asked to no longer be a part of the project until we have a composite tool that polls multiple sources for a more balanced view.

Thank you. It is often difficult to change course once it is set. I appreciate the !news team reaching out to the community and acting on their concerns.