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US Politics: Georgia on Our Minds


Fragile Bird

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Really good article on the internet and Boomers.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/internet-baby-boomers-misinformation-social-media_n_5f998039c5b6a4a2dc813d3d

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The first and most obvious explanation for older internet users’ increased vulnerability to misinformation is the effect of aging on the brain. A huge body of research has demonstrated that the same factors that make older Americans susceptible to financial scams — lower impulse control, slower cognitive function, higher rates of social isolation — also make them vulnerable to misinformation. 

These deficits generally begin to appear around age 45, but recent research indicates that they could be appearing even sooner. A study published in July found that the baby boomer generation was showing signs of cognitive decline earlier than previous generations.

“There’s a sharpness that’s gone,” John said of his father. “He gets very animated in conversations and when you tell him you disagree with something, he’ll say, ‘I never said that.’ I can’t tell if it’s him really not remembering or if he just wants to win the argument.”

John attributes his father’s slowing mental faculties to his decades of alcohol and opioid use. In the July study, researchers found that baby boomers with lower wealth, worse cardiovascular health and higher levels of loneliness and depression had the most severe rates of cognitive decline. These findings add to a growing body of research indicating that baby boomers are in worse health than their parents’ generation at the same age, an effect generally attributed to higher stress, worse diets and the rising cost of health care. Older Americans falling prey to internet conspiracy theories, in other words, could be just another side effect of American inequality. 

But not so fast. Nadia Brashier, a cognitive scientist at Harvard University, points out that a strictly biological explanation for older Americans’ vulnerability to misinformation leaves a lot out. 

...

Where older adults do struggle, however, is with memory and digital literacy. If younger Americans are digital natives, older Americans are digital refugees, drifting onto social media platforms slowly and haphazardly. 

Older Americans are worse at distinguishing news from sponsored content, spotting manipulated images and separating factual information from opinion. They also lack basic information about the structures and incentives of social media — in a 2019 survey, just 18% of Facebook users over 65 knew that the site used an algorithm to organize their feeds and deliver recommendations. Around one-third thought Facebook staffers were hand-picking stories according to their relevance and credibility. 

David, a graduate student in California, watched his father drift down the internet rabbit hole shortly after retiring, cashing out his pension, and buying an RV.

“Suddenly my dad who had worked his whole life had nothing to do,” David said. “So this 52-year-old man who had never used a computer gets on YouTube. That’s when the algorithms got to work on him.”

Within months, David’s dad was posting conspiracy videos about Bigfoot and the moon landing. Soon political conspiracies started to show up: Hillary Clinton and her pedophile ring, George Soros and his global network of secret banks. 

“A lot of it was blatantly anti-Semitic,” David said. “We’re Jewish, but I don’t think my dad is knowledgeable enough to understand the dog whistles.”

 

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1 hour ago, Myshkin said:

I have never taken a dime from Raptor Jesus, aka Hillary Clinton

I have never been on FB.  Ever. Though it insisted on creating a fake account in my name.  From the gitgo it was obvious how eviLe it was.  I was too old to fall for that bs of "Well, whatever, but how will I stay in touch with the people I hated in high school if I'm not on FB?"

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2 hours ago, Zorral said:

I guess Susan Collins, the swollen hemorrhoid on the asshole of democracy, was right: he did learn his lesson.

 

2 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

It’s because he’s friends with his relatives. It’s like having a permanent Thanksgiving dinner and there’s at least two batty uncles.

I should count myself lucky. Even my dotty, over-privileged, hideously entitled, 700 Club-watching, 80 year old real estate developer uncle thinks Trump is a dangerous moron. I've seen his Facebook activity morph from posting pictures with Asian Evangelical dignitaries to trying to correct other Boomers in comments.

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6 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

I should count myself lucky. Even my dotty, over-privileged, hideously entitled, 700 Club-watching, 80 year old real estate developer uncle thinks Trump is a dangerous moron. I've seen his Facebook activity morph from posting pictures with Asian Evangelical dignitaries to trying to correct other Boomers in comments.

If he's 80 he's too old to be a Boomer.  He's schoolin dem youngins!

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1 minute ago, DMC said:

If he's 80 he's too old to be a Boomer.  He's schoolin dem youngins!

I guess he's got a few years on them just like I've got a few years on the first Millennials. But don't correct me, tenderfoot!

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2 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

I guess he's got a few years on them just like I've got a few years on the first Millennials. But don't correct me, tenderfoot!

Go back to your MTV and John Hughes movies you out of touch Gen Xer.

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So Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, was arrested this afternoon:

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The leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, was arrested by D.C. police Monday afternoon on a warrant charging him with burning a Black Lives Matter banner taken from a historic Black church during a demonstration last month, officials said.

Police stopped a vehicle Tarrio had been in shortly after it entered the District, said Dustin Sternbeck, a D.C. police spokesman. He said it is believed that Tarrio, who lives in Miami, was coming into the District from the airport.

Sternbeck said Tarrio is charged with one misdemeanor count of destruction of property in connection with the Dec. 12 burning of a banner stolen from Asbury United Methodist Church.

Tarrio had told The Washington Post last month that he was among those who burned the banner.

The best part?

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Police said Tarrio, who was in custody Monday evening, also was charged with two felony counts of possession of high-capacity ammunition feeding devices, which is a legal term for a firearms magazine that allows guns to hold additional bullets. The devices were found during the arrest, police said.

I hope he's prosecuted to the fullest extent on the weapons charges.

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Can we assume that, regardless of one or both Republicans losing in Georgia tomorrow, that fraud and rigged elections will be there wi be counts and recounts, etc. etc...

If the result is undecided, or says Kelly Loeffler lost and she is contesting the outcome of her own election results, can she contest the electoral college vote in the Senate as she's said she'd do? She isn't technically a Senator at the moment, I thought...

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9 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Can we assume that, regardless of one or both Republicans losing in Georgia tomorrow, that fraud and rigged elections will be there wi be counts and recounts, etc. etc...

If the result is undecided, or says Kelly Loeffler lost and she is contesting the outcome of her own election results, can she contest the electoral college vote in the Senate as she's said she'd do? She isn't technically a Senator at the moment, I thought...

I'm not sure about her case because of the Isaakson conundrum

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14 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Reminder that one of the people who made this all possible is the co-chair of Biden's transition team and Kamala Harris's brother in law.

You're really getting ridiculous with this guilt by association shit.  Tony West - who also had quite an impressive record as an assistant AG in the Obama administration btw - was also general counsel at Pepsi Co.  Are we concerned the Biden administration is going to go after soft drink bans?  These constant attacks are getting reminiscent of the Bill Ayers and Saul Alinsky horseshit in 2008, something I'd assume you don't want to be associated with.

16 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

If the result is undecided, or says Kelly Loeffler lost and she is contesting the outcome of her own election results, can she contest the electoral college vote in the Senate as she's said she'd do? She isn't technically a Senator at the moment, I thought...

While I'm not sure exactly when the winner of the special election will be seated, Loeffler will remain Senator until the results of certified, which certainly won't happen by Wednesday.

1 minute ago, DanteGabriel said:

I remember when it was mostly music videos!

Me too.  :crying:

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29 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Reminder that one of the people who made this all possible is the co-chair of Biden's transition team and Kamala Harris's brother in law.

 

Ya know Grim- when in a capitalist country, playing 7 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon capitalists is a pretty unrewarding game.  To run an administration competently, you are going to want to have folks with experience running large organizations, and your major sources for that are folks already in government, NGOs (who probably need donations from big money to survive) and, corporations. 

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13 minutes ago, DMC said:

You're really getting ridiculous with this guilt by association shit.  Tony West - who also had quite an impressive record as an assistant AG in the Obama administration btw - was also general counsel at Pepsi Co.  Are we concerned the Biden administration is going to go after soft drink bans?  These constant attacks are getting reminiscent of the Bill Ayers and Saul Alinsky horseshit in 2008, something I'd assume you don't want to be associated with.

Nah man, I'm sorry, Tony West was directly involved in crafting Prop 22, which they all knew was going to lead to this kind of shit. This goes beyond simply being a cog in the neo-liberal machine he was actively involved in steering it. Frankly, I don't care if he did some good things during the Obama administration, if you make the decision to go out and help exploit workers, you're fucking done. It's the same shit as Neal Katyal going in front of the Supreme Court to defend child slavery.

And of course we're not worried about soda bans, what a moronic attempt to equivocate the beverage industry to big tech. No one really cares about soda bans, but big tech is actively working to undermine workers rights and given the large number of people connected to the Obama administration and the Biden transition team who have close ties to those very companies.

1 minute ago, horangi said:

Ya know Grim- when in a capitalist country, playing 7 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon capitalists is a pretty unrewarding game.  To run an administration competently, you are going to want to have folks with experience running large organizations, and your major sources for that are folks already in government, NGOs (who probably need donations from big money to survive) and, corporations. 

So you think that it isn't insane that the co-chair of Biden's transition transition team just got done absolutely fucking over California workers? This isn't about purity, it has gone beyond a question of purity, it is about right and wrong, and if you're working in a role like Tony West  is with Uber and now Lyft, you're wrong.

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Seven degrees of separation? This one's an alien, for sure.

12 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Kelly Loeffler is still a sitting US Senator, David Perdue is not.

BUT - TOMORROW!!!!!!!! Praise Jesus, NO MORE MAILERS!!!! 

MO MORE PHONE CALLS!!!!!!

They're never going to stop, Chats. Never!

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4 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Nah man, I'm sorry, Tony West was directly involved in crafting Prop 22, which they all knew was going to lead to this kind of shit. This goes beyond simply being a cog in the neo-liberal machine he was actively involved in steering it. Frankly, I don't care if he did some good things during the Obama administration, if you make the decision to go out and help exploit workers, you're fucking done.

So him doing his job at Uber counts but him doing his job under the Obama administration doesn't?  Regardless, he's very unlikely to have any role in the Biden administration and I don't know where you're getting that he's a co-chair of the transition.  He was a co-chair of Harris' Senate transition team in 2016, but according to this he's not a co-chair, staff member, or even on Biden transition's advisory council.

Anyway, my sister and definitely brother-in-law have taken on unseemly clients in their legal careers, let alone the clients of the firms they've worked for.  It doesn't change their politics or even policy positions that directly adversely affect said clients one iota.  But by your standards, they are both evil people that I should never speak to again.

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28 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Kelly Loeffler is still a sitting US Senator, David Perdue is not.

BUT - TOMORROW!!!!!!!! Praise Jesus, NO MORE MAILERS!!!! 

MO MORE PHONE CALLS!!!!!!

You know who’s sitting up tonight, thinking about you, wanting maybe to reach out but kind of afraid to, because baring one’s soul is a scary thing to do? Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Ossoff and Warnock love you deeply (in a non-creepy way) and only want the best for you in life. They were there for you when you fell off your first bike and skinned your knee, they were there for you when your heart was broken for the first time, they were there for you when you moved across country and didn’t know how you were gonna make it on your own, and they will continue to be there for you through all of life’s ups and downs. They hope they’ve convinced you of their sincerity and their commitment to serve your interests as your representatives in the Senate, but will absolutely respect whatever decision you make at the ballot box. They just want you to be happy. And that’s why tomorrow, January 5th, I’ll be voting for Ossoff and Warnock. Ossoff and Warnock; good for Georgia, good for America, just plain old good.

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