It’s advertised as a healthier alternative to screen time

vaping and e-cigarettes were initially advertised as a way for cigarette smokers to quit.

I’m a fan of 4 or 5

for anyone else who likes it crispy-but-not-burnt, the best trick that I’ve found is to cook it relatively low and slow to start off with, to boil away most of the moisture, and then turning the heat up to get it to the level of golden-brown you want.

there’s two variables to play around with. one is the temperature reached by the cooking grease, especially how long it spends in the 140-160 C sweet spot for the Maillard reaction. the other is the final water content once it’s done cooking. the former controls level of brownness, the latter is chewy vs. crispy.

in theory, you could get #2 but crispy with an extended low & slow cook, or #5 but still chewy if you preheated leftover grease and then fried it quickly in that.

first - trust individual journalists, not news organizations.

this used to be something you could do on Twitter, now you’d want to use Bluesky.

find a journalist whose work you trust. if none come to mind, look at your local news outlets (especially your alt-weekly paper, if possible) and try to find someone doing shoe-leather reporting. going to city council meetings, sending FOIA requests to local government, etc.

look at who they follow. look at the articles they repost, and who they’re written by. follow those people. lather, rinse, repeat. build up a network of journalists you trust. the news organizations they work for will come and go.

that aren’t heavily biased

all journalism is biased.

people read that and think “yeah yeah everyone has political opinions”

but I mean it at a deeper level than that.

say you produce a 30-minute daily TV news show.

there are ~8 billion people in the world. each of them experiences 24 hours of existence, every day.

in order to produce your 30 minute news show, you need to make value judgements about which of those 8 billion people had newsworthy things happen to them.

you want “biased” journalism. because that “bias” is actually value judgements about what is and isn’t newsworthy. part of a journalist’s job is curating that for you, of saying “hey here’s something important that you should pay attention to”

look for journalists that are open about their bias. because doing that means they understand their job and are honest about it. journalists that claim to be objective or unbiased in some way don’t understand the assignment and/or are dishonest about their role in it.

nor full of shit

for this, tune your bullshit detector. because anything or anyone can be full of shit.

Seymour Hersh, famous for reporting on the My Lai massacre (among a lot of other excellent Vietnam-era journalism) took a pretty big downward slide in the past few decades.

so the thing I described above about finding trusted journalists isn’t enough. because you can trust a journalist and they can still produce bullshit.

people have this idea that you need a “balanced” news diet. if one outlet says it’s raining, and another says it’s not raining, you read both, and give yourself a gold star.

except…that doesn’t actually make you more informed about the world.

instead of “balance” you should seek out media criticism. this is how you sharpen your personal bullshit detector - read media criticism written by people who already have good bullshit detectors.

one outlet says it’s raining. another outlet publishes an article criticizing the first, and pointing out that the only source it cited was the journalist looking out their own window, and they didn’t say where their lived. meanwhile the article saying it’s not raining cited the official forecast from the National Weather Service.

NPR’s On The Media podcast is good for this. Knowledge Fight is specific to Alex Jones and similar idiots, but overall it’s a master class in how to dissect misleading information and break down why it’s misleading, and notice the patterns that repeat themselves when someone is trying to feed you bullshit.

Michael Hobbes on Bluesky is a good follow - he will take some thinkpiece/article, and highlight specifically how little of the article’s thesis is backed up by concrete, verifiable details.

I like Alec Karakatsanis as well, he wrote an excellent book called Copaganda that is specifically about noticing bullshit in journalism derived from police reporting.

a fun trick that I learned from Alec (it’s mentioned in his book, but I first heard of it years ago in a thread he wrote on Twitter) - skim through an article, and simply make a list of the sources they quote from or cite. frequently you will have what appears to be a long, detailed article…but ultimately it’s based on a single source. and in the context of reporting about crime, that single source is almost always “police say”.

look at how those sources are found, as well. sometimes it’ll be an official spokesperson for some group, that’s obvious. other times it’ll be “guy who owns a sandwich shop in the neighborhood” or something like that. and, how did that source get there? what was the value judgement that led to that guy being included in the article, instead of someone else? often you’ll have lazy journalists who’ll quote friends or friends-of-friends in articles, and launder the source to make it sound like they’re a representative “area citizen” or whatever.

Are you trying to say that there were not any people on Lemmy loudly saying that

…

I haven’t seen any of those people apply any of that vigor

…

I gave two concrete examples, one of which involved one guy, and the other of which involved multiple “guys.”

I think you may be right that our conversations aren’t productive. but I think you’re wrong about the reason why.

your entire political universe seems to be based around Lemmy comments. and I think that’s given you a staggeringly misleading view of the world.

it seems a little unlikely that you’re going to respond to a detailed factual reply with anything like “Oh yeah I see your point”

so when you’re talking about a “detailed factual reply” what I think you actually mean is “reply with lots of links to Lemmy comments”.

and like, yes, the existence of a Lemmy comment that you disagreed with is a “fact”. possibly even multiple Lemmy comments that you disagreed with. wow, look at all those detailed facts.

but you’re right that I’m not going to respond “yeah, you have a point” to that, because I fundamentally disagree about the premise of the point you’re trying to make. you could link to a million Lemmy comments you disagreed with and I’m not going to be convinced.

because you’re making sweeping generalizations about American politics in general, and the behavior of left-wing voters in particular. and when asked for evidence, all you ever have is “look at these Lemmy comments”.

you’re staring at the world through a paper-towel tube. Lemmy is a very small, non-representative sample of the population as a whole.

doesn’t come alongside making sure that Mamdani wins the election

I live in Seattle. you’re saying I’ve been slacking off about making sure Mamdani wins? OK, tell me what I should do.

do you have an answer to this? you quoted and responded to the rest of my post, but this was a weird omission.

because this sort of tracks with the overall point I’m making. this is a forward-looking question, it can’t be answered with “look at this Lemmy post from a year ago”.

in particular, whatever you think I should do to help get Mamdani elected - does it revolve around “post on Lemmy about it”?

the conspicuous lack of much corresponding effort by the same people to talk up Mamdani himself.

who are “the same people” that you’re referring to?

is “people” singular, or plural?

how many people, specifically?

because the last time I asked you for a concrete example to back up a sweeping claim like this, you brought up one guy who was a petty tyrant forum moderator you had a beef with. and you were still salty about the beef like a year later.

making sure Kamala Harris lost the election, to teach the Democrats a lesson about genocide

do you have any concrete evidence (preferably something more substantial than “Lemmy comment from a guy I got into an argument with a year ago”) that people not voting for Kamala because of Gaza actually changed the election outcome and caused Harris to lose?

because…ballots are secret, right? you can’t actually know who someone voted for. they can tell you, but they’re not obligated to tell you the truth, they could lie.

there are exit polls…but by the very nature of exit polls, you can’t capture people who stay home and don’t vote.

every time I hear this argument about “Democrats who stayed home because of Gaza” it seems like they’re Schrodinger’s voting bloc: so large that it swung the entire election. but also, so small that Democrats were correct to not try to appeal to them (Umberto Eco has a principle that fascism requires an enemy that is simultaneously strong and weak…but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence)

doesn’t come alongside making sure that Mamdani wins the election

I live in Seattle. you’re saying I’ve been slacking off about making sure Mamdani wins? OK, tell me what I should do.

I guess my writing style ends up looking a bit polished sometimes

uh-huh…“too polished” is not the thing that’s causing you to fail the Turing test. and your emdash count keeps rising, btw.

— just wanted to share some thoughts I’ve had for a while.

and what thoughts are those, exactly?

your original post followed the pattern of every AI slop “discussion prompt” post I’ve ever seen - 3 paragraph structure that ends with “in conclusion, it’s a land of contrasts — what do you think?”

and all your other comments in this thread are just variations on “yeah there are positives and negatives — we’ll need to think carefully about it”

humans who want to talk about a thing…usually have opinions about that thing. often strong opinions, and often based on specifics about the thing. do you have any?

“In other words, these conversations with a social robot gave caregivers something that they sorely lack – a space to talk about themselves”

so they’re doing a job that’s demanding, thankless, often unpaid (in the case of this study, entirely unpaid, because they exclusively recruited “informal” caregivers)

and…it turns out talking about it improves their mood?

yeah, that’s groundbreaking. no one could have foreseen it.

if you did this with actual humans it’d be “lol yeah that’s just therapy and/or having friends” and you wouldn’t get it published in a scientific paper.

it’s written up as a “robotics” story but I’m not sure how it being a “robot” changes anything compared to a chatbot. it seems like this is yet another “discovery” of “hey you can talk to an LLM chatbot and it kinda sorta looks like therapy, if you squint at it”.

(tapping the sign about why “AI therapy” is stupid and trying to address the wrong problem)

An insincere apology is not newsworthy

is there an article with better framing that you think I should have posted instead?

because I certainly agree the apology was forced and insincere…but the original comment about executing homeless people was definitely newsworthy, don’t you think?

and annoyingly, I didn’t see any major news outlets covering his comments, until he was forced to issue the apology.

so it’s kind of unclear if you’re just complaining for the sake of complaining, or if you have any constructive criticism to offer.

Jones was talking on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday about public money spent on trying to help homeless people and suggested that those who didn’t accept services offered to them should be jailed.

“Or involuntary lethal injection, or something,” Kilmeade said. “Just kill ‘em.”

hypocrisy from the right-wing with regards to advocating/endorsements of “political violence” has been on full display recently

…but this is just very lazy and heavy-handed from the writers of this season of Reality. come on, try to be a little bit subtle.

the excellent Knowledge Fight podcast, which does media criticism of Alex Jones (and other right-wing ding-dongs) has the concept that big news events like this have a period of “wet cement”

when the cement is still wet, you can write whatever you want in it, and it’ll harden with your message written in it.

if you wait until the cement dries, you can’t do that.

the entire right-wing has been desperate to carve “transgender” into the wet cement of Charlie Kirk’s shooting. the exact details don’t matter. the important part is getting there before the cement dries.

You need better mental health care.

you start off by saying you’ve always thought you’re on the left

but the moment you disagree with someone, you start shit like this, which is a very common pattern of argument from right-wingers.

“I think your opinion is so wrong that it’s a symptom of mental illness” is just fucking stupid. do better. or, if you refuse to do better, stop attempting the “I’ve always been on the left but…” shtick. it is absolutely see-through and does not fool anyone.

here is the official NASA press release. primary sources are always preferable, especially compared to this fuckass “digital trends” clickbait website.

“This finding by Perseverance, launched under President Trump in his first term, is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars. The identification of a potential biosignature on the Red Planet is a groundbreaking discovery, and one that will advance our understanding of Mars,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “NASA’s commitment to conducting Gold Standard Science will continue as we pursue our goal of putting American boots on Mars’ rocky soil.”

quick fact check: it was launched in 2020, but announced back in 2012. giving Trump credit here is idiotic, but it’s about what you’d expect from Sean Duffy, he’s a Trump crony through-and-through. before being the NASA administrator he was Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, and before that he was a Republican congressman, and reality TV contestant (on The Real World and the *checks notes* Lumberjack World Championship)

I think it’s important to remember that everything, even basic scientific research, is liable to be politicized if it suits their ends. so it’s totally possible this biosignature is legitimate, but it’s also totally possible that they’re hyping up questionable findings because they want to persuade Trump that funding a NASA mission to Mars would boost his TV ratings.

I haven’t. It was omitted from the article in question. I stand corrected.

keep standing…because here’s the 5th paragraph of the article:

Political analyst Matthew Dowd was fired from MSNBC on Wednesday after speaking about Kirk’s death on air. During a broadcast on Wednesday following the shooting, anchor Katy Tur asked Dowd about “the environment in which a shooting like this happens,” according to Variety. Dowd answered: “He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.”

a contributor who made an unacceptable and insensitive comment about this horrific event

have you read the actual statement that got him fired?

from wikipedia:

On September 10, 2025, commenting on the killing of Charlie Kirk, Dowd said on-air, “He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.” Dowd also speculated that the shooter may have been a supporter.

you can agree or disagree with the decision to fire him (I’m not shedding any tears, Dowd was the chief strategist for the 2004 Bush re-election campaign, it’s ludicrous that he was working for a supposedly “progressive” network like MSNBC in the first place)

but characterizing that statement as “celebrating murder” is just bullshit.

How the fuck does the government have this much control over the media?

wealthy oligarchs purchased the media, and purchased the government. so it’s not the government controlling the media directly, it’s just that they report to the same boss.

would you like to know more?

Newsom launched a podcast earlier this year.

if you were launching a podcast, you’d put a lot of thought into the first episode, right? it introduces the show to people, gives an example of what the rest of the episodes will be like.

Newsom’s guest on that first episode was Charlie Kirk.

and it was a very friendly interview. Newsom said he “completely aligns” with Kirk on trans issues:

He then later said that he “agreed” with Charlie Kirk that it was not right transgender athletes should play and that he was “completely aligned” with Charlie Kirk on this issue, blaming a law put in place before he became governor: “It turns out in 2014, years before I was governor, there was a law established that established the legal principles that allow trans athletes in women’s sports. The issue of fairness is completely legit. I completely align with you, we have to acknowledge it.”

…

When Newsom platforms someone like Charlie Kirk, he isn’t fostering a “discussion” on transgender people in sports—he is handing a known hate monger a microphone to denigrate an already vulnerable community. That’s the real objective. Newsom isn’t engaging in open dialogue or debate; he is recalibrating his political stance to make targeting transgender people seem palatable, selling that shift to his base as a strategic necessity. And he’s doing it by giving one of the most notorious anti-LGBTQ+ extremists a seat at the table.

Newsom praising Kirk like this wasn’t surprising at all, if you’ve followed any of the critical coverage about him. he’s been trying out his “post like Trump” shtick which had a bunch of MSNBC viewers clapping like trained seals, but it can’t cover up his fundamental character. he’s allegedly a Democrat, but he’s also a fucking vile excuse for a human being. he completely lacks any principles or morals and will do or say anything if he thinks it will help him get elected president.

There is nothing centrist about supporting his hate.

the only mention of “centrist” in the paragraph I quoted was “centrist columnist Ezra Klein”

so I’m not really sure what your point is. are you saying Ezra Klein isn’t a centrist, but instead farther to the right?

Yesterday, Gavin Newsom tweeted that we should “continue the work” of Charlie Kirk and honor his memory. This morning, centrist columnist Ezra Klein published a column titled “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics The Right Way.”

…

In one interview with Riley Gaines on Real America’s Voice, Kirk railed against “the decline of American men” and blamed it for transgender equality. Then he added that people should have “just took care of” transgender people “the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and 60s.”

the article has several other quotes from him, but that one is pretty much enough to tell you all you need to know.

my lawyer has advised me to state that I believe murder is bad. also, fuck Charlie Kirk, and fuck anyone who’s working to whitewash his image.

from a YouTube channel called “Combat Veteran News”? I haven’t heard of him before, looking at his channel it seems to be fairly generic “combat veteran reacts” shit, mostly to Ukraine war footage, but his 2nd most viewed video is “US Army Combat Veteran Reacts to Failed Cash-In-Transit Heist Because Driver Has Nerves Of Steel”

meh. pass. every single professional-opinion-haver in the world has an opinion on Kirk’s shooting, I’m not sure why this guy’s is particularly notable, and the clickbait title sure doesn’t give me any hints. if he wrote a blog post or something I might skim it, but I’m not wasting 20 minutes on a video.

all of them are meant as examples of the general trend of right-wing people celebrating political violence when it suits their goals.

but if you want an explicit Charlie Kirk connection, here you go. he tweeted “Daniel Penny is a hero”:

https://xcancel.com/charliekirk11/status/1866612931485634821