Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts

Monday, April 10, 2023

Tik Tok


Foods like potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers, all members of the Solanaceae flowering plant family, contain small amounts of naturally occurring nicotine. Nicotine is highly addictive and is often cited as the reason why it's so difficult to quit smoking. However, studies have shown that the nicotine found in food might actually be beneficial. In 2013, CBS reported that eating food containing nicotine actually reduced the risk of developing Parkinson's disease.

***

The CEO of Constellation Brands says that people are looking for lower and no alcohol options in drinks.

***.

In a 2022 survey of A.I. researchers, nearly half of the respondents said that there was a 10 percent or greater chance that the long-run effect of advanced A.I. on humanity would be “extremely bad.” This year, an A.I. researcher argued that natural selection favors A.I. over humans.


Tik Tok

Is there another side to Tik Tok? Is a free nation hampered in how efficiently it can protect itself? Does freedom protect an organization even if it's planning the nation's overthrow?

In banning TikTok, the government is eliminating a forum used by millions of Americans to express themselves. Creators have used TikTok to entertain viewers, non-profits have highlighted their causes and work, and struggling small businesses have found new audiences that are interested in their products or services. Just as individuals choose to express themselves in different ways in an analog era, different social media platforms provide different opportunities for expression. So, while there are competing platforms like Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts, removing users’ access to TikTok as their chosen platform would be like the government banning the New York Times and arguing it was not a First Amendment violation because the Washington Post exists.

As currently drafted, the RESTRICT Act likely runs afoul of the First Amendment, erodes Americans’ privacy protections, and would open the door to not only more misguided protectionism, but also government investigations, fines, and even imprisonment of Americans who engage in common online activities deemed too “risky” by the executive branch alone. Regardless of whether the act becomes law, that it quickly garnered 25 Senate co-sponsors is a troubling indication that even the most egregiously bad legislation can attract a crowd these days if it’s sold as countering the “China threat.” And it shows that the risks to Americans’ wealth, safety, and security come not from China alone.--from Cato

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Evil Content


Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back. -Gore Vidal
 

***

China’s vaunted Belt and Road Initiative, where China was supposed to have taken the lead in influencing the developing world, as well as creating markets and sources of raw materials, is in trouble with rising rates and unstable economic circumstances.
 
***

Legendary former pro-surfer Chris Davidson is believed to be the victim of a lethal attack in a country bar in New South Wales, Australia. Davidson was reportedly punched in the face outside of South West Rocks Country Club in South West Rocks on Saturday around 11 p.m., causing Davidson to fall and hit his head on the pavement.

***

"That is how we see it. And why? Because that's what's happening. Madam President, I yield the floor but clearly, you know, this is, this is a literally (sic) call to arms in our country." What. To arms? What? What is?
An abortion bill.

***

Evil Content

The media has raised questions about Dr. Oz's TV program being used as a platform for questionable products and views. So the media sees itself as a questionable platform? The mind spins. But nothing said or promoted on the good doctor's show approaches the views of his senatorial opponent and their known results. His face cream might not help wrinkles but it won't steal your farm and deracinate your family.

Thursday, October 21, 2021

This Not Just In....

 


                                    This Not Just In.... 

The current joke is that Craig's Bond series meticulously avoids Chinese bad guys because the movie studio wants to remain on good terms with China and preserve access to their theater seats. Remember the terror that ensued after Cena mentioned Taiwan as an entity separate from China?

So, economic concerns influence content.

Now, all of the major news outlets but one are subsidiaries of major Hollywood studios. So.....

Monday, December 23, 2013

Liston, Christmas and the Media

A Christmas story about a Christmas icon:
For its December 1963 issue, Esquire Magazine's managing editor Harold Hayes let his cover designer George Lois pick the cover. The cover became a close-up of boxer Sonny Liston in a Santa Claus hat. Esquire's advertising director would eventually estimate that the magazine lost $750,000 due to the cover. According to Vanity Fair, "Hayes lit the fuse, and Sonny Liston exploded a ragged hole in the country's Norman Rockwell preconceptions of Christmas." An art-history professor at Hunter College proclaimed the cover "one of the greatest social statements of the plastic arts since Picasso's Guernica." For Hayes, Liston-as-Santa was "the perfect magazine cover," he wrote in a 1981 article in Adweek magazine, "a single, textless image that measured our lives and the time we lived them in quite precisely to the moment." Published in a national climate "thick with racial fear," he explained, "Lois' angry icon insisted on several things: the split in our culture was showing; the notion of racial equality was a bad joke; the felicitations of this season—goodwill to all men, etc.—carried irony more than sentiment."
"Norman Rockwell preconceptions?" "one of the greatest social statements..?" ".. image that measured our lives..?"
Wait a minute here. Race trumps everything in this culture but.....Liston was a criminal and was mob connected. He knocked out the extremely popular Floyd Patterson in 1962, a fight that was opposed by the NAACP because of damage they thought the fight would do to the Civil Rights Movement. And Liston threw a championship fight against Ali. Liston told a sports writer later, “That guy [Ali] was crazy. I didn’t want anything to do with him. And the Muslims were coming up. Who needed that? So I went down. I wasn’t hit.”
Liston was terribly unpopular for a lot of good reasons.
Can this race monster ever get sedated? And is it possible these media types might be taking themselves a little too seriously?

Friday, November 29, 2013

CBS

A fire starts in a house kitchen.
The owner of the house calls 911.
The 911 operator puts the caller on hold and goes on break.
There is no response to the fire and the house burns to the ground.
CBS does a big story on a neighbor's attempt to rescue a kitten from the burning porch only to find out later that, during the fire, the neighbor was vacationing 1000 miles away in Florida.
CBS is mortified.
Does this make any sense? Isn't there a bigger, more important story here?
(News report: CBS News correspondent Lara Logan and producer Max McClellan will take leave of absence from the network in the wake of a flawed “60 Minutes” report on last year’s attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
The suspension was a result of CBS News’internal review of the Oct. 27 segment about Benghazi, which the network found to be lacking in its efforts to substantiate the assertions of a key source, security officer Dylan Davies, a guy with a book to sell. The review was disclosed in an internal memo from CBS News chairman Jeff Fager issued Tuesday.
The “60 Minutes” Benghazi controversy has spiraled during the past month into a major black eye for CBS News.)
Does this make any sense?