mostlysignssomeportents:

Time’s cover-story about Donald Trump features a long interview with the president, in which he insists, over and over again, that he is not a liar. It is full of lies.

Jezebel’s Ellie Shechet eliminated “everything that is not verifiably
true” from the article, posting a redacted version that reveals an awful
lot about the president’s speech patterns as well as his moral
turpitude. It’s a neat tutorial on truth by verbosity
(AKA the “Gish Gallop”), based on “drowning your opponent in a flood of
individually-weak arguments in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole
argument collection without great effort.”

We Redacted Everything That’s Not a Verifiably True Statement From Trump’s Time Interview About Truth
[Ellie Shechet/The Slot]

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

https://boingboing.net/2017/03/24/argument-by-verbosity.html

mostlysignssomeportents:

Fred Rogers is the subject of a documentary
and a biopic starring Tom Hanks, both out later this year. Though most
Americans assume he’s a national treasure, he’s widely loathed by
conservatives who center him in their myth of “participation trophy”
culture.

I remember one columnist describing him as a saccharine man whose
job was to help the education industry tell stupid children they were
special—one of the more enduring impressions I got of American
conservatives after moving here in the 2000s. (Another: turning on the
radio to hear someone muttering, barely in control of his rage, about
how much be hates bisexuals, intoning the word “hate” over and over. At
first I thought it was a theatrical performance, a character in a radio
play, but it turned out to be The Michael Reagan Show.)

Anyway, here’s Fox and Friends complaining that young people are
entitled and useless because Fred Rogers stressed the importance of love
and its absense in their lives. The veneer of mirth makes it seem
ironic, humorous even, but even that has a stone-cold purpose, as
explained here by a less moderate right-winger, Andrew Anglin:

https://boingboing.net/2018/03/24/fox-news-explains-why-mr-roge.html

wilwheaton:

“My advice to the students? When you finish marching on the mall, march into the specific congressional districts where you can actually make a difference. The midterm elections are in eight months. A vast majority of congressional districts have been gerrymandered bright blue or ruby red. In those deep-red districts, the only threat that far-right members of Congress face is a primary challenge from someone farther to the right. You may regard voting for universal background checks as a no-brainer, but they see it as a blemish on their N.R.A. rating — an open door to a primary challenge. That explains the unmovable fealty these representatives have to the gun lobby. But in this election there are more than 40 truly competitive districts, including many where you can make a real difference by helping replace an incumbent who consistently supports the gun lobby with a challenger who won’t. […] You can stage marches and school walkouts, but then walk into the swing congressional districts that matter. In the end it’s not about standing up to be heard. It’s about changing who sits in Congress”

— First, March. Then, Follow This Gun Reform Battle Plan.

angryfishtrap:

kisskissfuckshitup:

heliolisk:

heliolisk:

Yall i just got an email from tumblr saying I interacted with accounts made by the IRA …… is this even real????

The internet is wild

Im literally imagining some government worker in russia logging onto tumblr.edu and thinking to themselves “better change my url to ‘black-galaxy-magic’ to stay young n hip and relevant with the youth of america”

sooooo let’s break it down then because the fact that tumblr sent this email is mega important

if yall haven’t been living under a rock for the last year and a half, you may have heard that trump won the election. and you may have also heard that trump was helped out by russia in a ton of ways. one of those ways was by the russian troll farm, the internet research agency (IRA). there were 84 accounts on tumblr spreading anti-hillary propaganda and general discontent, mainly targeting POC and “socially aware” youth. some of those accounts were HUGELY influential, “4mysquad” being one of the top ones with tons of followers and popular posts.

a lot of them started with relatively innocent, pro-POC posts to gain a following, before moving on to anti-police, anti-hillary, and general anti-establishment to create distrust in the only major-party candidate against trump. like I said, many of the accounts were hugely influential so their posts spread FAR. all that visibility led to increased voter apathy, meaning less voter turnout and fewer people voting against trump. and tumblr was silent on this after the official indictment of the IRA, until literally just yesterday. 

so to sum up, the email you and a ton of other people got is saying that you were following and sharing posts from russian pro-trump propaganda blogs. i’d ask that you PLEASE reblog this, because it’s super important that everyone who got this email knows why they got it, knows what it means, and hopefully knows what they might be able to do better in the future

pay attention.