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b9n10nt.bsky.social
EquallyConfused
@b9n10nt.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1.5K following 6.2K posts
HS sci teacher in CA Bay Area.

politics, mostly replies,
attempts at humor.

music. On Spotify b9n10nt
Posts Replies Media Videos
b9n10nt.bsky.social
This is a wildly hyperbolic inflation of Nuzzi’s importance and a more subtle misread of the role of corporate media in abetting Reaction.
Shiv Ramdas Mens... @nameshiv.bsky.social every time a child dies of a preventable disease in the next few years, that's the payoff for Nuzzis horniness Laura Helmuth @la... • 2h Nuzzi's fawning coverage of the sociopathic conspiracy crank she was having an affair with aided his rise to political power, which he is using to perpetrate the worst intentional public health catastrophe of our
November 15, 2025 at 3:04 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
clereviewofbooks.com/nikki-usher-...
Cleveland Review of Book …Usher claims the more nefarious aspects of this relationship are often overlooked by scholars and media observers who are apt to call upon Alexis de Tocqueville's vision of civic life and the growth of investigative reporting in the post-Watergate era to create a romanticized notion of local journalism that was never there in the first place. News for the Rich, White, and Blue also shines a light on the fact that the economics of mainstream media outlets are currently set up to create a news product that is by and for white, upper middle-class, well-educated professionals. The journalists at large, legacy institutions have the financial stability to not only survive but thrive in a changing industry, while local reporters struggle to provide coverage to their communities amid continuous downsizing and the constant threat of closure.
November 2, 2025 at 5:18 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
Pew research table showing wealthier households receive far more news in print, news website, and cable tv than poorer ones
November 2, 2025 at 5:06 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
I was going to reply
but the comments were off,

& the QTs were locked I could not even scoff,

He might of thought he’d laid the matter to rest,

But I cooked up a spell. Can you guess what came next?
Paul F. Tompkins @pftompkins.bsky.so.. Hearing even a *reference* to The Monster Mash ANY time of the year is infuriating. The song absolutely sucks and modern civilization shouldn't even be aware of it. You should not and cannot and MUST NOT defend it. Let the worms of history finally have their feast. October 31, 2025 at 4:35 PM
October 31, 2025 at 11:48 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
This is my posting rig
Scene from Bull Durham with radio guy using acoustic tools to call a game by wire
October 28, 2025 at 6:31 AM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
I need a Ronnie…for the 16th
Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly from Requiem for a Dream staring up at the ceiling in a drugged out stare
October 28, 2025 at 5:57 AM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
“It’ll be in the New Yorker. What could it cost? Social opprobrium from the non-subscribers?”
“It’s a banana what could it cost?” meme from the mom on Arrested Development
October 27, 2025 at 9:27 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
Kirsten Dunst
October 22, 2025 at 12:30 AM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
Like…check this out. Jack Kemp was waaaaay more powerful than Duke ever hoped to be
Kemp championed several Chicago school and supply-side economics issues, including economic growth, free markets, free trade, tax simplification and lower tax rates on both employment and investment income. 88 He was a long-time proponent of the flat tax. 891 He also defended the use of anti-Communist contra forces in Central America, 190] supported the gold standard, spoke for civil rights legislation, opposed civil rights legislation, opposed abortion, and was the first lawmaker to popularize enterprise zones, 15 which he supported to foster entrepreneurship and job creation and expand homeownership among public housing tenants. 8811911 During his career, he sometimes sounded like a liberal Democrat; he supported affirmative action 921[931 and rights for illegal immigrants. 194) The New York Times described Kemp as the most proactive combatant in the war on poverty since Robert F. Kennedy. 195]
October 7, 2025 at 2:31 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
The fundamental rules and norms of American politics are no longer the unquestioned structure of politics, but themselves objects of political contestation. It is sometimes said that this means the end of normal politics. In the grand sweep of the liberal project, this is exactly backwards. Liberalism was born in revolution against an established order. The ground rules themselves are the most natural object of political struggle. We must regain a sense of what it means to fight for our preferred vision of a free and equal world in the full scope of political struggle, not the artificially straitened politics of the Long '90s.
October 3, 2025 at 1:17 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
This HAS to be disingenuous. Burr CANT be this ignorant.
When he flew into Saudi Arabia, Burr's nervousness crept back, but he was struck by the amount of local Western influence. "You think everybody's going to be screaming 'death to America and they're going to have like fucking machetes and want to like chop my head off, right?" Burr said. "Because this is what I've been fed about that part of the world. I thought this place was going to be really tense. And I'm thinking like: 'Is that a Starbucks next to a Pizza Hut next to a Burger King next to McDonald's ? They got a fucking Chili's over here!"
October 1, 2025 at 1:11 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
A system of govt in which one party controls all 3 branches but this is still a reasonable headline is a broken system
Republicans and Democrats are at a standstill as government barrels toward shut down 3 min • New Today
September 30, 2025 at 2:26 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
(Btw: see here

aneconomicsense.org/2024/10/03/r...
Chart from Federal data showing real wage gains from the pre-Covid height of 2020 through 2024 among the lowest quartile of individuals by income
September 25, 2025 at 7:03 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
Power Corrupts (37th ed: Reason)
Book jacket for “The Enigma of Reason” by Sperber & Mercier Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. If reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue with a compelling mix of real-life and experimental evidence, is not geared to solitary use, to arriving at better beliefs and decisions on our own. What reason does, rather, is help us justify our beliefs and actions to others, convince them through argumentation, and evaluate the justifications and arguments that others address to us. In other words, reason helps humans better exploit their uniquely rich social environment. This interactionist interpretation explains why reason may have evolved and how it fits with other cognitive mechanisms. It makes sense of strengths and weaknesses that have long puzzled philosophers and psychologists-why reason is biased in favor of what we already believe, why it may lead to terrible ideas and yet is indispensable to spreading good ones.
September 24, 2025 at 1:28 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
Practicing politics The Right Way?

Simple.

Advocate* 👏🏻for 👏🏻 Your 👏🏻Beliefs👏🏻Without👏🏻👏🏻Committing 👏🏻Violence** 👏🏻

(*get a RW sugar daddy & go on wingnut welfare)

(**directly. Promoting the violence subjugation of others is a clean hit, righty way-ee-wise)
organization to rival liberal groups such as MoveOn.org".!7] At the 2012 Republican National Convention, Kirk met Foster Friess, a prominent Republican donor, and persuaded him to finance the organization. 15117]
September 12, 2025 at 2:28 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
Arrested Development meme: I'M ALL FOR NORTH AMERICAN PANARABISM WELL DID IT WORK FOR THOSE PEOPLE? NO, IT NEVER DOES, O MEAN, THESE PEOPLE SOMEHOW DELUDE THEMSELVES INTO THINKING IT MIGHT, BUT... _BUT IT MIGHT WORK FOR US.
September 12, 2025 at 4:49 AM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
September 11, 2025 at 2:17 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
EquallyConfused @b9n10nt.bsky.social Rather than as democratic citizens, they identify as PR flacks: advertisers, political strategists, public relations firms, and infotainers ("journalists") bound to collectively neglect the ethical use of broadcasting with the imperatives of rhetorical mass manipulation. They doth protest too much.
September 11, 2025 at 12:46 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
Kirk’s project, as with so many political broadcasters’, was to replace dialogue in service of democratic reason with inflammatory speech in service of social violence all towards the aim of protecting & expanding white supremacy.

publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/charlies-n...
Alongside that partisan shift, Kirk's comments and activities have grown increasingly controversial. He irresponsibly peddled in voter fraud conspiracy theories before the 2020 election and then prominently worked to cast doubt on the outcome after Trump's loss. He has denied the basic science of climate change and promoted vaccine resistance during the pandemic. He even designed a recent speaking tour to highlight his racially-incendiary views.
September 11, 2025 at 6:11 AM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
our system has been cruel & corrup long before Trump

to prioritize retribution NOW when we need a positive, constructive break from the status quo does not augur a commitment to progress.
Mike X. Nichols @mikexnich... • 3h We all need to survive this because we're human and our lives matter, but we also need to get revenge. 1 58 © 211 企
August 29, 2025 at 10:13 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
Level 3 right here
Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social this is doing the thing i hate most in this moment aside from the authoritarianism itself. you are not being gavvy or clever when you do this. you are instead paving the way and making it easier for them. stop doing it. • DemocracyGirl @dellda.bsky.. • 2h She'll win at the lower court levels, then SCOTUS in a shadow docket will allow the firing to go forward without a hearing or formal ruling.
August 28, 2025 at 6:49 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
a public national option & a public local option as ubiquitous as public schools
In the final analysis, only a permanent and secure source of federal funding can shelter public broadcasting from political attacks and economic precarity-and empower it to become the truly democratic media system that we need. But conservatives wish to further subject public media to the discipline of market logics, internalizing the very commercial values the system was meant to oppose. The US public media system is a global outlier in how little federal funding it receives. Comparative research shows that the US is almost literally off the chart relative to most democratic nations. US federal expenditures of less than $1.60 per capita pale in comparison to countries such as Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, which devote nearly $100 or more per capita to fund strong public media systems such as the BBC. Why does this matter? Research shows that access to public media correlates with increased political knowledge and civic engagement and lower levels of extremist views. Public media are also more likely to provide diverse and critical media coverage of important social issues. Moreover, unlike commercial media that must privilege returns on investments, public media are more likely to cover stories and engage audiences that aren't profitable, thus reducing inequalities in news provision. Indeed, the collapse of local commercial journalism illustrates the desperate need for a public alternative. With commercial media markets failing, public media can serve as a ready-made infrastructure to provide information and communication services in areas that aren't only news deserts, but also often lack reliable broadband services. The local journalism crisis is an opportunity to redefine public media's democratic role in society to serve critical information needs, perhaps even combining local news gathering with municipal broadband services in multi-media hubs that I term "public media centers."
August 24, 2025 at 9:12 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10....
are also examined. This analysis provides valuable observational evidence on whether the Twitter algorithm favours the visibility of low-credibility content, with results indicating that, on aggregate, tweets containing low-credibility URL domains perform better than tweets that do not across both datasets. However, this effect is largely attributable to a difference in high-engagement, high-followers tweets, which are very impactful in terms of impressions generation, and are more likely receive amplified visibility when containing low-credibility content. Furthermore, high toxicity tweets and those with right-leaning bias see heightened amplification, as do low-credibility tweets from verified accounts. Ultimately, this suggests that Twitter's recommender system may have facilitated the diffusion of false content by amplifying the visibility of low-credibility content with high-engagement generated by very influential users.
August 23, 2025 at 2:56 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
The research found that in six out of seven countries, apart from Germany, tweets from rightwing politicians received more amplification from the algorithm than those from the left; right-leaning news organisations were more amplified than those on the left; and generally politicians' tweets were more amplified by an algorithmic timeline than by the chronological timeline. According to a 27-page research document, Twitter found a "statistically significant difference favouring the political right wing" in all the countries except Germany. Under the research, a value of 0% meant tweets reached the same number of users on the algorithm-tailored timeline as on its chronological counterpart, whereas a value of 100% meant tweets achieved double the reach. On this basis, the most powerful discrepancy between right and left was in Canada (Liberals 43%; Conservatives 167%), followed by the UK (Labour 112%; Conservatives 176%). Even excluding top government officials, the results were similar, the document said.
August 23, 2025 at 2:56 PM
b9n10nt.bsky.social
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
algorithms amplify their opponents' voices, or silence theirs. Policy makers and researchers have thus called for increased transparency on how algorithms influence exposure to political content on the platform. Based on a massive-scale experiment involving millions of Twitter users, a fine grained analysis of political parties in seven countries, and 6.2 million news articles shared in the United States, this study carries out the most comprehensive audit of an algorithmic recommender system and its effects on political content. Results unveil that the political right enjoys higher amplification compared to the political left.
August 23, 2025 at 2:56 PM