A Sense of Doubt blog post #4113 - The FCC Wants to Rate LBGTQ as Obscene!

A Sense of Doubt blog post #4113 - The FCC Wants to Rate LBGTQ as Obscene!

Just this today.

Really, really awful crap just seems to keep happening or is proposed for action.

Let's hope this does not become new policy.


https://www.patreon.com/posts/158807062

The FCC Wants to Rate LGBTQ as Obscene

This is going to be shocking to anyone born in the past decade, but back in the 2010s, one of the rightwing’s favorite things to complain about was “trigger warnings”--simple statements at the top of a piece of media that warns people about upsetting topics within that might cause psychological harm to those with problems like post-traumatic stress disorder. As I pointed out in 2015, many of the same people who were furious about trigger warnings were equally furious at anyone who failed to use “spoiler warnings” before discussing the plot of popular television shows.

The right doesn’t discuss trigger warnings anymore, because ten years later, they’ve essentially won: they no longer need to try to police blog posts written by those who care about victims of violence and other disadvantaged people, because now they are happily, legally perpetrating violence upon disadvantaged people. Who cares if a YouTuber warns her audience that she’s going to discuss rape, when actual rapists are serving on the Supreme Court, running the Department of Defense (sorry, I mean “War”), and tottering around the Oval Office like an overgrown toddler? Trigger warning/spoiler alert: the worst fucking people on the planet won. For now.

The rightwing chuds have won so completely that not only do they no longer bother complaining about private individuals using trigger warnings, but they have moved on to demanding the federal government itself institute trigger warnings–not for depictions of graphic violence, but for depictions of trans and nonbinary people just, like, existing. I know. Terrifying.

This issue involves a committee called the TV Oversight Management Board, or TVOMB. Back in 1996, Congress decided that they needed to set up some regulations to try to control and censor “obscenity” on the newly emerging internet, as well as help parents protect kids from indecent things on network television. They made a deal with the major broadcasters, promising to not actually pass any regulations against them if they would form their own board to voluntarily label tv shows and movies with, well, trigger warnings: a rating that recommends content for all children, children over the age of 7, suitable for all ages, inappropriate for younger children, inappropriate for kids under 14, or mature audiences only. That rating is then further described with a sub-rating that indicates that the content contains “suggestive dialogue,” adult language, sexual situations, or violence/fantasy violence.

That system has been in place for the past three decades with no change or complaint. Parents who worry about what TV shows and movies their kids are watching have a quick and easy way to see what might be appropriate and the rest of us don’t give a shit and unlike rightwing pussies of the 2010s, we don’t complain about being forced to see a little warning before It’s Always Sunny comes on.

But Trump’s FCC has decided that this system is no longer working for them. Last month, they released a public notice announcing that they would like to force the TVOMB to change their ratings. Why?

“Recently, parents have raised concerns that controversial gender identity issues are being included or promoted in children’s programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents. Specifically, the industry guidelines that parents rely on are rating shows with transgender and gender non-binary programming as appropriate for children and young children, and doing so without providing this information to parents, thereby undermining the ability of parents to make informed choices for their families.”

That’s right: parents somewhere are scared of their children simply seeing TV shows with transgender and nonbinary people or characters, and so now the federal government is stepping in to protect them by forcing the industry to adopt trigger warnings.

Now, you may wonder, what’s the big deal? Didn’t I just finish saying that trigger warnings and content warnings are fine and people can just choose to ignore them? Yes, when they are being put on content by private companies and individuals who want to put them there. I have absolutely no problem with Fox News adding a warning on an interview with Caitlin Jenner so their braindead viewers can steel themselves before they are forced to gaze upon an actual transgender woman, even if she is “one of the good ones” who can maybe have a private cell in the concentration camp when next they come for her.

But this is the federal government pressuring those private companies for the first time in their existence to specifically label a PERSON EXISTING as being equally offensive as graphic violence. And as you already know by now, even if you don’t care about transgender and nonbinary people, it’s not going to stop there. They’ll move on to the other things extreme rightwing fascists find offensive, like gay people, immigrants, people who aren’t White, and women with opinions. NCs, for those who have read Bitch Planet. By the way, you can read the first issue of Bitch Planet for free on Image Comics’ website but first you have to see a warning that it contains “mature content” and say you’re 18 or over, or else you have to “go back to Bitch Planet.” I thought that was funny. Anyway.

The other issue with the federal government categorizing a human being as “obscene” is a little thing known as the V-chip. The same Congressional bill that led to the creation of the TVOMB also demanded that all televisions produced after January of the year 2000 have a chip installed that allows the user of the TV to block content based upon its rating system, with the primary intended use to be for parents to automatically filter out content rated as more mature than they’d like their kids to see.

So far, so not a big deal: broadcasters have a board that applies ratings to shows, and consumers can choose whether or not they want to filter out certain ratings.

But what Trump’s FCC is now doing is putting the government’s finger on the scale, which means that in the near future, people who do use V-chip may unwittingly prevent their kids from seeing shows and movies that happen to have transgender or nonbinary characters, and in the slightly more distant future, gay or otherwise diverse characters.

Right now, surveys suggest that most parents don’t use the V-chip, possibly because they don’t even know it exists, but the FCC notice indicates a desire to change that: “Is the general public aware of the ratings system and how to provide feedback to the TVOMB? Is the general public aware that the V-chip can be used with the ratings system to block unwanted video programming from reaching children? Do descriptions of the content provide a sufficient basis for parents to make informed decisions concerning viewing decisions for their family, including when gender identity themes are discussed or displayed?”

It’s yet another way that Republicans are attempting to erase LGBTQ people from public life–to declare them obscene, and to drive them back underground.

If you’re watching this video when it comes out, you can do something small to help. GLAAD is asking concerned Americans to submit comments to the FCC expressing their disapproval, and that form is open until May 22nd of 2026. Will they listen? Who knows, but it takes only a minute and will probably annoy them, so I suppose it’s worth doing. Just note that the FCC does retain the right to make the information you include in that form public, so please be cautious with what information you share. That’s something I would say regardless of who is in charge of the FCC, but with vicious transphobic fascist bigots in charge, it’s doubly important to take precautions. Stay safe, and be sure to keep fighting for our marginalized friends and family.

VIDEO








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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2605.22 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3977 days ago & DAD = 631 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #4040 - Did Alzheimer's Affect Terry Pratchett's Discworld?

A Sense of Doubt blog post #4040 - Did Alzheimer's Affect Terry Pratchett's Discworld?

This recent video from Rebecca Watson, whom I follow, caught my eye.

I needed a quick share as I am busy this week.

This video is worth your time, but if you'd rather not watch, the full transcript is reprinted below.

Even though I do not always agree with her, Watson is very worth following with a subscription on You Tube or even a Patreon subscription.  The links below will guide you to either or both.

Thanks for tuning in.

Watson video






https://www.patreon.com/posts/did-alzheimers-152181726
Did Alzheimer's Impact Terry Pratchett's Discworld?

Rebecca Watson

I have a variety of techniques I use to deal with the ongoing collapse of everything, most of them different kinds of drugs. But I also have healthy habits, like reading, and when it comes to reading purely for pleasure, I find myself turning back again and again to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.

If you aren’t familiar, “Discworld” is a sprawling collection of stories that blend fantasy, adventure, and satire, often with recurring characters popping up here and there. There are guides online to help people decide what order to read them in, with some focusing on starting with the best bangers and others that focus on following one character through the years. When I started reading them a few years ago, I took the completely insane tactic of reading them in the order that they were published and not really thinking too much about them. So far, I have enjoyed this approach and highly recommend it to others.

Because I’m pretty much always in the middle of a Discworld novel, I perked up to recently see an entire scientific study about that series: “Detecting Dementia Using Lexical Analysis: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Tells a More Personal Story,” published last month in Brain Sciences.

Now, this is going to get a little sad but it’s old news to most: Pratchett published 41 Discworld novels (and even more one-offs) between 1983 and 2015. In 2007 at the age of 59, he announced that he had been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He died in 2015 at the age of 66 from complications of that disease.

Alzheimer’s and other kinds of dementia can be difficult to diagnose before symptoms become very obvious and life-altering, which leads to worse outcomes for patients who don’t catch it early enough for interventions. And so, a lot of research has been done to figure out new ways to detect dementia as early as possible. One of these research avenues involves identifying very subtle changes in the way a person uses language, and so back in 2005 neuroscientists decided to examine the works of novelist Iris Murdoch to see if they could detect changes in her writing throughout the span of her 40-year career. Murdoch’s final novel was published in 1995 and received uncharacteristically negative reviews. Shortly thereafter, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and died in 1999 at the age of 79. The researchers compared that last novel to her first novel as well as one she wrote at the height of her career, and found that “Whilst there were few disparities at the levels of overall structure and syntax, measures of lexical diversity and the lexical characteristics of these three texts varied markedly and in a consistent fashion.” Her later work displayed a marked decrease in unique word choices relative to the overall word count.

Building on that, in 2011 linguists performed a more robust analysis of Murdoch’s novels and compared them to those of Agatha Christie, who was suspected of having Alzheimer’s, and PD James, who did not experience any cognitive decline over her 94 years. Their results supported the earlier study, and further they seemed to be able to detect a more “impoverished” vocabulary in Murdoch’s novels a full thirty years before her death. They also felt that they had convincing evidence Christie did, in fact, suffer from Alzheimer’s.

So now, it’s not surprising that some researchers would want to perform a similar examination of Terry Pratchett, considering how many novels he produced, especially in the same world, over many decades. They chose 33 out of the 41 Discworld novels, excluding those that were very short or written for young adults, and looked for patterns in the vocabulary used.

They found a “significant decrease in lexical diversity across all word classes” beginning after the publication of The Last Continent in 1998, the 22nd book in the series–9 and a half years before his diagnosis.

So there we go! Pretty good evidence that it may be possible to diagnose Alzheimer’s early using a careful examination of a history of the patient’s writings. Right? Well, no, it’s not quite that simple.

First, let me point out some criticisms I’ve seen a lot about this study, as articulated by Marc Burrows, who wrote a biography of Terry Pratchett:

“First,” Burrows writes on Facebook, “the point where this supposed “decline” begins is just before the strongest run of his entire career — a decade of book after book that includes Night Watch and Nation, two of the finest novels Sir Terry ever wrote. To argue that his writing was already deteriorating years before those books appeared just doesn’t stand up.”

Okay, that is not what this study or any of the previous studies have shown. Yes, Murdoch’s final novel was panned but these studies do not have anything to say about the quality of the authors’ work. In fact, they are specifically looking for very subtle changes in word choice that literally require an algorithm to identify. Pratchett could very well have been using less diverse language while continuing to knock it out of the park when it comes to character development, storyline, and humor.

Burrows goes on, “Second, there’s a far simpler explanation for a drop in adjective use: he was getting better. At this point Sir Terry was writing at an astonishing rate — often two or three novels a year. His prose was getting cleaner and more disciplined. He was learning, bit by bit, not to let vocabulary get in the way of character, narrative and theme. That's mastery, not decline. Unless the argument is that Alzheimer’s made him a better writer, which feels… off.”

That is absolutely true, and it actually negates his first point: you do not necessarily need a unique array of words in order to produce a great novel. Yes. Correct. And Pratchett very well may have made a conscious effort to change up his style. So why didn’t the researchers consider that? Simple: they did. In the discussion section of their paper, they include a lengthy list of reasons why this is not a slam dunk case of a decline in cognition: “Age-related changes in writing style are expected, and it is possible that some of the observed changes represent natural stylistic evolution rather than disease-related decline.”

They also point out that after his diagnosis, Pratchett’s language may have changed due to related factors like stress, or having less time to write.

Burrow’s third point is “the big one — Sir Terry had posterior cortical atrophy (PCA), a very rare form of Alzheimer’s that affects visual and spatial processing first. It isn’t a language-led illness in its early stages, and it often doesn’t touch memory or vocabulary for a long time. That’s one reason it’s so hard to diagnose. It doesn't work like other forms of dementia.

“When language problems do show up in PCA, they usually come via visual impairment — difficulty reading, scanning text, processing what’s on the page, that sort of thing. Many of you will have seen the heartbreaking footage of Terry trying to read from Nation onstage at the Discworld con and complaining of "shadows" on the page. It can slow access to words, but it doesn’t shrink vocabulary in this neat, statistical way. Terry himself talked about this a lot. He took great pride in being able to rattle off long lists of words when he was being tested, while being unable to copy simple pictures.

Even later on, when writing genuinely became a struggle, Rob Wilkins has been very clear that the issues were about keeping the shape of a story in his head and the character voices distinct— not about choosing words. And yet the articles making these claims don't mention PCA at all, which is extraordinary when you’re citing scientific research and talking about the effects of a disease. They lump all forms of alzheimers together.”

That’s also a great point: why did the authors lump all forms of Alzheimer’s together? Simple: they didn’t. I’ll give Burrows a break here and assume that he was ONLY reading some popular press about the study instead of reading the study itself (which is available in full for free), but if that’s the case it’s really better to actually point to those articles and criticize them and not the study itself. Because the authors do repeatedly point out that Pratchett had PCA: they cite research that found “that in addition to the well reported degradation of vision, literacy and numeracy, PCA is characterised by progressive oral language dysfunction with prominent word retrieval difficulties.”

And then we’re back to that discussion section, where the authors state plainly that “while PCA and Alzheimer’s disease share some common features and PCA is thought to be in most cases caused by Alzheimer’s disease, they are distinct conditions with different clinical presentations. It is possible that the linguistic markers of PCA may differ from those of Alzheimer’s disease. For example, PCA often causes severe reading impairments and “pure alexia,” which disrupts the writer’s ability to visually scan and review their own text. Writers unable to effectively read their drafts may struggle to detect unwanted lexical repetitions and potentially may contribute to the observed decline in lexical richness.”

So I’m not impressed by these quite common criticisms of the study, seeing as one is just wrong and the others are freely stated by the study authors as limitations. The authors also point out that they could only judge the books based upon their publishing date, with no way to know exactly when in his life Pratchett actually wrote the books. They also point out that unlike the 2011 study, they didn’t have a control author with no known problems with cognition.

Essentially, this was just another case study to add to the data.

That said, I will point out some critical thoughts I had about the idea that research like this will allow earlier detection of conditions like Alzheimer’s. While all of the writers discussed were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or strongly suspected by experts to have had it, these changes in vocabulary do not point to Alzheimer’s specifically: they point to cognitive decline, and that can mean about a zillion different diseases. Alzheimer’s, sure, but also Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s, dementia with Lewy bodies, depression, concussion, or medication side effects. Even if we had a nice little private algorithm running in our email outboxes that can detect declining cognition long before we notice it ourselves, that would be a real “well what the fuck now” situation. There would need to be a serious discussion about whether or not it makes sense to then run every test possible to try to narrow it down immediately, or whether you just have to wait and see what happens, terrified every time you walk into a room and forget what you were going there for.

I’ve talked in the past about the seemingly paradoxical problem of elective full body MRIs and gene sequencing: sometimes more information is actually worse for us, if it stresses us out and puts us through procedures that end up being useless. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

So, it’s an interesting study just for the sake of scientific inquiry, but I’m not sure it should give anyone a lot of hope for a way to easily detect early Alzheimer’s in the near future. And also, the takeaway absolutely is NOT “study pinpoints when Discworld fell off.” I haven’t even made it to the fan-favorite “golden age” yet but I’m fairly certain that Terry Pratchett could craft an entertaining story with a toddler’s vocabulary so I’m not worried about it.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2603.10 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3904 days ago & DAD = 558 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3889 - Russiagate: Not a Hoax, Not a Witch Hunt

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3889 - Russiagate: Not a Hoax, Not a Witch Hunt

Quick share because I am behind schedule.

Thanks for tuning in.






REBECCA WATSON
https://youtu.be/wtCKnQEBok8

Tulsi Gabbard is Lying. Russiagate is True

https://www.patreon.com/posts/tulsi-gabbard-is-134874547

Every now and then, whenever I talk about political conspiracies, a commenter will say something about “Russiagate.” I’ve never made a video about “Russiagate,” but there are some people who I think are just obsessed with the idea. And when I first noticed a lot of people mentioning it, I thought that maybe I should make a video about it. But the problem is that I had no idea what exactly people were talking about. Some people thought I “believe” in Russiagate, which is stupid. Others were alarmed that I clearly had no idea that Russiagate even happened. Most commenters, on the far-right and the far-left, seemed to agree that it was a dumb conspiracy that liberals believe in. And so, when I recently made a video listing off the conspiracy theories I’ve seen coming from the left, a lot of people were surprised I hadn’t included “Russiagate.” So okay, here’s a video about Russiagate.

As best as I can tell, “Russiagate” means different things to different people, though it all revolves around Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US Presidential election. Specifically, I have seen the word employed to mock liberals who refuse to accept that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats ran a terrible campaign in their first loss to Donald Trump, instead blaming the Russian government for somehow meddling and fixing the election in Trump’s favor. To those on the far right, this was dumb and bad because it dismissed the obvious will of the American people to elect the dumbest person to ever hold public office. To those on the far left, this was dumb and bad because it allowed Democrats to continue to believe that 2016 was just a fluke that they had no real control over, and that they could regain power without changing course or including progressives in their future agenda.

The problem, as I see it, is that everyone is wrong and also correct. You don’t have to choose one or the other: yes, Hillary Clinton ran a terrible campaign. And yes, Russia absolutely without a doubt meddled in the 2016 election and likely helped Trump to victory.

I’ll pause here to point out that to some people (on both the believer and nonbeliever sides), “Russiagate” means that the Russian government literally hacked our voting machines and changed votes from “Clinton” to “Trump.” If a person believes that, then yes, that person believes a conspiracy theory that most assuredly did not happen.

We know that it didn’t happen because we have access to loads of documents from our national intelligence services in which they worry about that happening. The US has been doing this sort of spy versus spy shit with various countries now for decades upon decades. WE would love to manipulate a few elections here and there, and have done so quite happily, so obviously other world superpowers would like to do it to us. So, the Obama administration wisely had people look into it, because they had heard reports from several states that had “recently seen scanning and probing of their election-related systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company.” 

So, the U.S. Intelligence Community and the Department of Homeland Security beefed up cybersecurity where needed, and came to the conclusion that “it would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion. This assessment is based on the decentralized nature of our election system in this country and the number of protections state and local election officials have in place. States ensure that voting machines are not connected to the Internet, and there are numerous checks and balances as well as extensive oversight at multiple levels built into our election process.”

After the election, they confirmed that no such Russian vote rigging happened.

But the reason why I’m talking about all of this today is because Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence and member of a weird homophobic cult, has just publicized the document I just mentioned in an attempt to convince the general public that it proves “Russiagate” is a myth. Which, yes, it IS a myth that Russia hacked the election, but as I said, many people think “Russiagate” includes Russia doing anything at all to affect our elections. And as I said, Russia absolutely, without a doubt, interfered in the 2016 elections. And probably the ones before that and the ones after, too, but their efforts in 2016 were distinctly obvious and successful.

Gabbard is using these documents to debunk the actually false “Russiagate” narrative in the hopes that the public will therefore also reject the intelligence report from January of 2017 that conclusively establishes that “Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

The declassified version of the highly classified document claimed that “We have high confidence in these judgments,” with “we” referring to the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA. They wrote that “When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency.” The campaign “followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls.”

They note that the interference represented a “significant escalation” in Russia’s attempts to manipulate the US elections and warned that their success would lead to similar attempts in the future, in the US and around the world. If you’re wondering why Russia thought it was such a great idea to throw millions of dollars at rightwing grifters like Tim Pool and Dave Rubin ahead of the 2024 election, this document explains it very well: because it works. Funding American morons to tell their large audience of American morons to vote for Donald Trump actually does get Donald Trump elected. No mass hacking of voting machines necessary.

So yes, “Russiagate” is real, depending on how you define “Russiagate.” Vladimir Putin has made many very obvious attempts to influence US elections, and probably a whole bunch of less obvious attempts, too. And it’s very, very important to understand this and to differentiate between “Russia hacking voting machines” and “Russia engaging in a disinformation campaign” to get Trump elected, because Trump and his little lackeys are now trying to cover up that distinction in order to possibly order the arrest of his political rivals.

That’s right: in her completely insane press release on the matter, Gabbard claims that the joint report from the CIA, FBI, and NSA that found clear evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election actually came about because “President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.” Gabbard directly calls the report “treasonous,” and an “egregious abuse of power and blatant rejection of our Constitution threatens the very foundation and integrity of our democratic republic.” Because, yes, every accusation is truly a confession.

As David Corn points out on Mother Jones, Gabbard’s announcement happened to come at the very same time that Trump is literally posting AI slop videos of Barack Obama being arrested by the FBI and put in prison, and obviously it is set to Trump’s baffling favorite song.

Will Trump actually use this idiotic ruse to send his political rivals to a work camp in El Salvador? Is this “just” a distraction from the fact that Trump refuses to release the Epstein documents? Who knows! Stay tuned to find out what happens next on “The US is Now a Fascist Hellhole, Please Someone Do Something.”

MORE INFORMATION

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/five-reasons-why-the-left-should-care-about-russiagate/

https://www.axios.com/2025/07/24/trump-russiagate-obama-epstein-files

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/18/redacted-mueller-report-released-1280960

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/all-of-the-mueller-reports-major-findings-in-less-than-30-minutes


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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2510.11 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3754 days ago & DAD = 408 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3861 - Taking a Break - SoD Reprint of #2025 - Hey Mom #1211

Me with Globe - 1968 - 6.25 years old

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3861 - Taking a Break - SoD Reprint of #2025 - Hey Mom #1211

Back in 2020, I made this post that I am reprinting here because as I explain below in the original post, I needed to take a break. The pandemic had been going for months, the George Floyd murder had also taken place months before, the election was ramping up and about two months away, and I needed a break. And so this post.

I need a break again, especially after the killing of Charlie Kirk that is casting fear for many of us for the consequences of free speech. As I wrote yesterday, I don't want to risk any repercussions for my speech, even though my blog is hardly well-trafficked.

So, a break.

Though this time it's not a full on break. I have new dedication to original posts on Wednesdays (about writing) and Thursdays (letter to Dad) along with Music Monday and Comic Book Sunday (these last two can be reprints), and so I am going into a kind of low-power mode for a couple of weeks with more reprints, simple shares, and simple posts, though the original posts I mentioned will continue on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

I need to catch my breath. So I have postponed longer posts, especially those with political content, and I am taking some time to think, reflect, and watch the government and what actions it takes against its citizens in retribution for rhetoric it perceives as counter to its ideological agenda.

And, so, this reprint.

Also, it's neat to just look at these older posts even if I do not reprint them. For instance, here I ordered the book An Unkindness of Magicians to read to feed my fantasy writing because the VE Schwab book I was going to listen to on audio is not yet available. I had forgotten all about An Unkindness of Magicians, so that alone makes reprinting this post worthwhile.

Also, notice the cosplay cool cat whose picture I took waiting in line for Rose City Comic con in 2018, two years before the pandemic, holding a mask to his face.

Prophetic?

Thanks for tuning in.


PHOTO CAPTION ERROR
There was an error with the photo caption so that it read 1966 - 6.25 years old. In 1966, I was four years old. I was six in 1968. I think the year is supposed to read 1968 as another link below where the photo originally appeared indicates.

The background is definitely Traverse City, and we did move to Schoolcraft in 1968 but probably some time in the summer. If I am really 6.25 years old in the picture, that's April, and we had not moved yet.


Link to the original post that I am reprinting below:

Thursday, September 3, 2020

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1211 (SoD #2025) - I Need to Take a Break

Me with Globe - 1968 - 6.25 years old

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1114 - Throwback Thursday on Friday 1809.14 - Me and the Earth 1968

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1211 (SoD #2025) - I Need to Take a Break

Hi Mom,

How are you?

You speak with heavenly beauty to me from the beyond. I hear you. Thank for staying by my side and yet not, and yet everywhere, and yet nowhere. It's as an aspect of Quantum Reality.

Was that too corny? Oh well. I don't care.



So, here's the thing.

I need to take a break.

I have been working a lot. I have been running hard. I have been making complicated and very time intensive posts with a lot of original writing, and I have been running this hard since the start of the pandemic quarantine.

And now it's time for a break, a little vacation.

I cannot really take a vacation during the pandemic. I can't really go anywhere safely, and even if I could, what about my dogs? I either take them with me, or I cannot go because I do not trust any place to properly and safely house them.

And doesn't Europe have a travel ban against people from the United States because our pandemic is so out of control?

I need some time off. I need to dial back the crazy train. I need a breather.



In my employment world, one of the two schools for which I work -- Lower Columbia College -- is on a break between quarters as we just finished summer quarter, and even though I had just one class, I put a lot of time into it. My other school is currently running, and I have two classes with it, so that's an issue. But my work load has dropped.

Further freeing occurred when the workshop I am taking ended Tuesday night, and we are about to start the Labor Day weekend, which prompted me to give all my current students extensions.

And so, I have more time free, and I would like to channel it elsewhere for a while.

Now what happens when a daily blogger takes a break?

After all, I could just stop posting for a while. No one is paying me, no one is holding a gun to my head, and unless you leave comments to disabuse me of this belief, I do not have that many avid and daily readers.

But, as I have always claimed, this blog is for me more than anything else. Sure, I think about audience a lot. I am often trying to reach my students. At other times, I have a broader view and hope by pushing the blog out there via social media with has tags that I will get more readers, at least for certain posts.

My numbers often support this "marketing."




A quick glance at my numbers shows that I reached a monthly high of 412 posts back on August 11th.  I am not sure if this is related to the posts on or around that day because they do not have numbers of views that would total 412.

I tend to hover in the 40-50 page views a day on average with spikes of 126 (8/18) and 116 (8/31). My WEEKLY HODGE PODGE posts seem to be the most popular event of my week, always accumulating 30+ views with some topping out higher, such as #1978 currently at 110 views and #1963 at 83 (links below).


A Sense of Doubt blog post #1978 - "You Don't Vote For Kings!" - Weekly Hodge Podge 2007.18


A Sense of Doubt blog post #1963 - A symbol of hate? Weekly Hodge Podge for July Third





Therefore, it makes sense that even in my time off, taking a break, vacation, I should continue to produce the WEEKLY HODGE PODGE, which I had considered also taking a break from. But the HODGE PODGE does not cost me a ton of time as I read and accumulate material every morning. Plus this week's is dedicated to one of Obama's best speeches ever: A MORE PERFECT UNION.

So, to go back to the question of how a daily blogger takes a break?

EASY POSTS.

For instance, I have features called LOW POWER MODE, One Photo, and THAT ONE THING that allow me to keep my blog simple and easy to produce on a daily basis, which was the original concept for my T-shirts blog. I can even produce these easy posts in advance.

LOTS OF SHARING. I share anyway, but I can feature posts that just share other content with very little commentary from me; after all, I have 584 draft posts currently saved in my account, subtracting 95 for the weekly comic lists I accumulate and probably will never share, that leaves approximately 490-some posts that are half-finished, many of which already contain copies of material I want to share.

RESIST THE URGE OF COMPLICATIONS. I have tendency to overdo, over-commit, over-write. If I can KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID, then I can survive my time off, which I am thinking may need to last about two weeks with a return to the NEW NORMAL about September 17th.

ALSO, in the "time off," I will still be writing. I have longer blog posts that I want to devote time to finishing, and I am working on fiction in a much more dedicated way and other work stuff: two presentations to prep, classes to prep, job search, outdoor fun as summer wanes, new writer's groups.

So, that's that.

Thanks for reading.

Here we go into the sort of time off, sort of vacation, sort of low power mode.




DREAMS

ARG!!!!!!!! Trump was in my dream and so was Rebecca Watson.

Trump was my college professor. After he said something offensive in the class room when I had tuned him out and could not answer his question about house electrical amperage accurately. I said "fuck this" and prepared to leave the room and drop the class.

There was a break, and I encountered Trump in the hallway. I thought to myself that I should kiss his ass and curry his favor rather than dropping the class. I could probably get an A if I just stroked his ego constantly. I apologized for my out burst and begged his forgiveness. He appreciated my candor and HUGGED ME... yuk!

Later, I encountered Rebecca Watson (often blogged about, like HERE SoD#1880), and  I was going to recommend a tacos place (in Portland?) and there was a lot of stress because I had to pick the place with the most amazing tacos AND a place where one could actually have the tacos in the pandemic (outdoor dining). Could I pick such a place?

Clearly, these dreams, especially TRUMP HUGGING ME (GAG) IS PROOF THAT I need a break.

rose city comic con 2018

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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you soon, Mom.

- Days ago = 1889 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2009.03 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27 and 1907.04) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. Dropped "Talk to you tomorrow, Mom" in the sign off on 1907.04. Should have done it sooner as this feature is no longer daily.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2509.13 - 10:19

- Days ago: MOM = 3726 days ago & DAD = 380 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3840 - We Must Teach Critical Thinking

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3840 - We Must Teach Critical Thinking

Or we're doomed.

Can we please teach people to think.

Though I care WHAT people think, I try not to teach them WHAT to think; however, this pledge does not mean I do not present both sides of various issues except issues without two legitimate sides.

There's not a valid argument in favor of genocide, slavery, or child abuse (really any abuse but feels worse with children).

See?

Sharing that those issues are really one-sided -- unless you are a soulless monster -- is an example of critical thinking.

Thanks for tuning in.

Study: We Can (and Must) Teach Kids to Think Critically

We quite clearly have a critical thinking problem these days. I mean, we’ve had a critical thinking problem for literally all of human history but as each year passes it becomes more and more disappointing to see people–particularly young people–rushing to embrace conspiracy theories and pseudoscience: particularly as it leads them into far right violence.

Take the recent events in the UK, for example. If you missed it, in late July someone went on a stabbing spree at a yoga and dance workshop, murdering three children and injuring eight more kids and two adults. The organizer of the event, Leanne Lucas, was one of the people injured as she helped save the lives of several of the kids.

As for the attacker, he was only 17 and so as a minor his identity wasn’t immediately revealed. That didn’t stop right wing agitators on social media from immediately blaming Muslim migrants because of course they did. It was honestly either going to be Muslim migrants or trans high schoolers, one or the other.

He was neither, of course–the attacker was a 17-year old British citizen. But despite that information eventually being released, the alt-right rioted anyway, throwing rocks, shouting racist epithets, and “pushing burning wheelie bins at police,” which…I mean, to the American ear “wheelie bins” makes that sound very funny but no it was pretty bad! They even tried to burn down a hotel where asylum seekers were staying, which is horrific.

Oh, but we did get this clip out of the whole incident, which is an instant classic.

These riots were the inevitable result of abject hatred and a complete lack of critical thinking, and that’s why I was happy to see that one immediate response on the part of UK government has been to overhaul the school curriculum in order to integrate more basic critical thinking skills. The Education Secretary told media that “she pledged to look at “embedding” critical thinking skills across lessons in many subjects, with a view to teaching children how to spot and reject extremist content.

“English classes might be used to scrutinise newspaper reports, comparing their style and language to fake news, while pupils may be taught how to identify fake news websites via their designs in computer lessons, and maths students could learn to analyse statistics in context.”

This is great news, and an idea that I’ve been pushing for several decades now. One of my old Skepchick sister sites was School of Doubt, where teachers from across many disciplines discussed ways to incorporate critical thinking into their own curriculums, whether that’s 2nd grade gym class or 10th grade music. Because the cool thing about critical thinking is that it IS relevant in pretty much every field, at pretty much every age.

Man, remember a time before three social media sites became the only sites people could visit, when someone could just set up and fully fund a popular educational blog that makes the world a better place, just for fun? Yeah. Well anyway

I know that science is considered the ideal place to learn basic rules of logic and separating fact from fiction, but personally always thought that my own critical thinking skills were best honed in English, Latin, and social studies classes, mostly thanks to the teachers I had in those classes: critically evaluating fiction to tease out various meanings, translating bawdy poetry and discovering fun new (but old) double entendres, or learning how to compare and contrast sources and put aside my own biases about what I’d previously thought I knew about history.

So yeah, I’m absolutely on board with the UK’s new curriculum and I do believe it will be a big help.

And it just so happens that a recent study from researchers in Spain supports this idea! A large-scale study and six-month follow-up of an intervention to reduce causal illusions in high school students was published this month in Royal Society Open Science, and yes, as you may be able to tell from the name of the journal, this study is available in full for free online and as with all my videos, the link is in the transcript, which is at patreon.com/rebecca and linked in the description below.

Open access is awesome, and even awesomer is that this study was pre-registered, which means the authors submitted all their plans for the study before they did it, which means they wouldn’t be able to massage the results to make sure they got something good.

This study was sort of a replication of a previous, much smaller study from 2013 that investigated whether or not a class on critical thinking can help stop adolescents from falling for “causal illusions.” That’s basically the classic problem of mistaking correlation for causation, which I’ve gone over many times on this channel. Basically, it’s assuming two events are related when they actually are not, or are not related in the way you assume. Like, the classic example of the number of pirates in the world decreasing at the same rate that global temperature has increased, which might suggest that piracy is the solution to global warming, an idea whose idea may have come, I think, thinking of how many streaming services have increased their rates and inserted ads recently.

Anyway, that previous study did find evidence that teaching adolescents about causal illusions works to protect them from falling for the fallacy, but it only included a “convenience” sample of 62 students, meaning they weren’t randomized as they were kids who had already signed up for a robotics class. The researchers also didn’t follow up to see how long the effects lasted. This new study was much more expansive: they started with about 300 students in a pilot study, and then moved on to test 1,668 students across 40 schools.

The researchers started by demonstrating to half the students how easy it is to fall for this fallacy. They had them wear special rings made of space age technology that was meant to improve them both mentally and physically. They pulled out the old Power Balance Bracelet trick, which was big in the early 2000s. They were rubbery bracelets with holographic stickers on them, and people in malls would demonstrate their power using old carny tricks that made it look like you, the mark, are much stronger when you’re wearing it. But you aren’t. It’s just a little rubbery bracelet.

So the researchers fooled the kids, and then revealed the tricks to them. They point out that some research suggests you maybe don’t need to do this step to de-bias someone against causal illusions, but they wanted to in part because it’s fun. Which I love! Because they’re totally right: this is EXACTLY the kind of mind blowing demonstration that would have captured my imagination when I was a kid, and so it’s likely that without it, fewer kids would be engaged in the rest of the lesson and fewer kids would really understand how the lesson might apply to their future selves. The researchers note that without this part, the lesson would just look like a regular science lesson, and that’s just not going to intrigue as many kids.

After this demonstration, the researchers taught the kids how proper controls would have allowed them to see that the rings really didn’t work. They got some more examples to demonstrate, like if you take a medicine and your cold goes away, how do you know it was the medicine and not just the natural cycle of the cold ending?

Meanwhile, the control half of the students just did general science learning on astronomy and nanotechnology.

Finally, all the participants were asked to play a little game to figure out if a made-up medicine was effective or not. They could choose whether or not to give the medicine to a made-up patient and observe if the patient got better. One medicine was basically a placebo, and another actually was effective.

In line with the previous research and their own hypothesis, the students who got the magic ring training (as opposed to the general science education) were FAR better able to correctly identify the placebo, while still being able to understand that the “real” medicine really worked. In other words, they were just the right amount of skeptical without tipping over into just assuming it’s all a scam.

The best part is that the researchers came back to the students in six months and found that the kids who got the training were still significantly more likely to be able to apply what they learned to new situations, though of course there was some drop off.

I love this study, and it reinforces for me the importance of our schools NOT just assuming science classes will handle basic logic and critical thinking. The ability to recognize our own biases and control for them spans all disciplines. It’s bad enough that many science classes that I took growing up were focused on rote memorization, but it gets even worse if the curriculum assumes that that’s where all critical thinking should be taught. We need to teach kids to read, write, watch, play, and think critically all the time, because if we don’t they’re just going to keep getting sucked into the pseudoscience alt-right bigot pipeline. We can put a stop to it now and I’m very glad that the UK government has gone on the record to say they’re taking action.

Now, I know I normally end with a clip of Indy but I’m sorry, I just can’t today. I have to see that nazi getting cranked in the nuts one more time. Remember kids, learn to think now or tomorrow this could be you.

WE MUST TEACH CRITICAL THINKING

Rebecca Watson


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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2508.23 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3705 days ago & DAD = 359 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.