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THIS IS BYEONGKWAN’S WORLD

the way that the air nomad's lifestyle was so deeply communal and aang is the only one left. the way that he is so fundamentally alienated from the world to the extent that he is literally referred to as a living relic. the way that pragmatism and everyone around him are telling him that the only way to save the world is to betray his nearly extinct culture. the way that he befriends katara so quickly and deeply. the way he goes on to befriend everyone he meets and improve their lives by his very presence. the way he never fully gives up on his identity as the last airbender, even when his identity as the avatar threatens it. the way he saves the world through asserting his cultural values.

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So, I kinda wanted to hop in and subject this tumblr post to Peer Review, because while I definitely agree that there is a big problem in the US regarding poor media literacy, the study featured here is... not a good measurement, and these bullet points make the results seem worse than they are.

Another person in the notes linked an additional article that contained the full study, and these are the questions that were included in the study:

A couple of problems right off the bat. The first one that jumps out is #6: "The Earth is between 5,000 and 10,000 years old." In this study, the correct answer would be that this is a statement of fact, because it is, well, stated as a fact. And according to the paper in question:

That's lovely and all, but nowhere in this study does it say that the participants were informed that this is definition of "statement of fact" that the study was using. It's not exactly common knowledge that "statement of fact" and "fact" do not actually mean the same thing. A statement of fact is when someone says something that they believe is true. A fact is something that is true.

So, anyone who participated in this study who interpreted "statement of fact" to mean "fact" (and also wasn't a young-Earth conspiracy theorist) would have gotten this question wrong, because they know that Earth is much older than 10,000 years.

Another somewhat less obvious problem is in question 2, which the authors of the study address as such:

Yes, I agree that nobody could reasonably argue that a 95% loss isn't significant. However, unless the study specifically recruited participants who were extremely knowledgable about statistics relating to ISIS activity, the participants have no way of knowing that 95% is the amount in question. That "significant portion" could be anything!

Like, let's say that ISIS had lost 25% of its territory. That's a lot! That's over 10,000 square kilometers that were no longer under ISIS control. So one could argue that this is a significant portion. But also, that's only a fraction of their territory. ISIS still has control over the majority of the territory they'd had previously - three times as much as the amount they'd lost. So one could also argue that this is an insignifant portion.

If I had been a participant in this study, I would have marked this as a statement of opinion. And thus I would have become part of the 95% who apparently can't differentiate between fact and opinion.

But, I was not a study participant. So, who was? What does this study say about its participants?

Well, here's what the study says about it:

That's it. No information about how participants were recruited or invited to take the survey. Nothing about what quality assurance methods were used to make sure that participants were following instructions, or that computer error didn't interfere with the data.

Nothing about incentives given for the completion of the survey.

Oh, yes, that's something very important to note. You see, YouGov is not an academic research firm. It's a marketing research firm. It functions similarly to sites like Swagbucks or Survey Junkies. And this is how it markets itself to participants when you search for YouGov in Google:

That's exact marketing used by Swagbucks. I use Swagbucks. I'm a pretty active user, in fact. I answer surveys and play mobile games to collect points, then redeem them, usually for Wal-Mart gift cards so I can save on groceries. I know how sites like these work.

And I also know that when I just want to get a survey completed, I bullshit. I just click whichever multiple choice option is closest to my cursor until I'm done and can get the points.

Guess what else I do: I lie. Sometimes a survey is listed on the site that's worth a lot of points but is only looking for people of a certain demographic. And I take it anyway. I give them whatever info is needed to get my points and get those gift cards. I have had a grand total of one cup of coffee in my life and hated it. But whenever a survey asks me if I have ever bought a certain brand of coffee, I say yes, and I review it.

Oh yeah, that's another point: there is no demographic information given about this study's participants. We know that participants were at least asked for their age and political affiliation ("Multivariate models include controls for age and partisanship") but we, the readers, are never told what that spread turned out to be. We just have to take their word for it that YouGov's sampling methodology was sound.

If I had turned in this research paper for review, with this Methods section and this survey, my advisor would have slapped me.

So, what is my point? Why did I spend an hour writing this response to a tumblr post? Well, because the findings of this study may be bullshit, but this whole post brings to light another big problem in the world of media and journalism.

The University of Illinois published this sloppy-ass study that I would have been embarassed to hand in as a 10-point assignment. This survey made it through the internal review board, a process that I know from experience can take months and dozens of rounds of review. It was then peer reviewed by Harvard, the school that people point to as the epitome of academic prestige full of super geniuses, and added to their library. Then it was picked up by a Washington DC online newspaper and tweeted about by a member of the House of Representatives.

And finally, it was posted here on Tumblr, uncritically.

I don't know what percentage of Americans can't tell fact from opinion. And reading this study is not going to give me an accurate answer, because the study's design and conclusions the authors reached are a mess.

All I can tell you is that academic and journalistic instutions alike need to do a better job of reviewing and thinking critically about information they receive before they publish it to the world.

There’s something too on the nose about this… very often, if you’re presented with something that makes the vast majority of people seem incredibly, shockingly ignorant and stupid, there’s more going on with the “study”.

i think some of you dont like narratives or stories or characters i think you just like fanfiction tropes

protagonists can and will be sexist, racist, insensitive, cruel, stupid, etc, especially towards the beginning of a story. these are called character flaws and they are a surprise tool that will lead to narrative fulfillment later

once again thinking about this guy at the pigeon museum who was giving a little presentation about pigeon mating habits or something, and takes one look at me and my partner and immediately goes "oh and pigeons can be GAY, too!!!"

129 days and 75 years 💔

i cant get over the king charles portrait. they made that thing to age in his place. that painting hangs in the house of a too-friendly family you find in the post apocalyptic wasteland who inexplicably has a ready supply of fresh meat. if mario jumped into that painting he wouldn't find a charming platformer he would be flayed and hanged like a medieval criminal by an unseeable force in a droning red void. that painting is a color blindness test for people who work in IT but believe in the divine right of kings. that painting is going to weep the sequel to blood. after he dies charles is gonna crawl outta that thing like sadako.

this painting is what ultrakill speedrunners see when they close their eyes. if you showed this to the romans who flogged jesus theyd think this painting is excessive. this painting is the blood cavern from space funeral. it's the color out of space.

jegus tapdancing christ it is actually that bad

look. the nature of the artist (any kind) is to become inexplicably obsessed with certain themes and motifs for a few years and just milk that subject matter to death. when respected artists do this, art critics refer to it as a “period.” the only thing separating you from them is fame and accolades. to your haters you will be “that freak who’s fixated on drawing weird trains,” while to your admirers, you are simply in your “tiny trains made out of household appliances” period

the way people are taught programming today continues to drive me insane insane insane

unlimited abstraction. the ultimate sandbox. the lever with which the heavens were moved. the lifeblood of the gods who control us today. yet you're chained in plato's cave - no space to grow your own crops. no structure to build. no love. Solve My For Loop Puzzle Boy. Solve My Inheritance Puzzle Girl. you get to play with none of the divine spark. you don't get to play at all. there's no composition. there's no composition. you build fragments. you don't get to connect them. don't worry about how they link up into structures. don't look up into the churning monolith too long. just keep swinging that hammer.

if you're reading this: please. write programs that spark joy. build things that interest you - sloppy, first. you can always learn to scaffold later. step off the damned beaten path. build things. read manuals. frolic. find out about fucked-up ways to abuse the language you use. create something you love. there's whimsy to be found yet. take my hand - one day we'll be free to forge our own paths.

Trying to make stupid mad libs style generators on perchance dot com and fiddling around with scratch have both taught me way more about programming than my college class on the subject

im working on a thought here but i think a crucial component of supporting and advocating for liberal and progressive ideas is you have to trust people to muddle through mistakes. i see a lot of people that clearly want *safety* for marginalized people but their proposals amount to putting everyone in a padded room with their hands on a well lit table forever. we have to sanitize media, we have to protect people. we can't hurt anyone, we can't risk anyone-- but we can constantly constantly surveil each other and make new rules against ever doing the wrong things. you know, the bad things, the dirty things, the things that hurt you and make you sick and ruin everything for everyone forever. it's our moral duty, isn't it? to make the world cleaner and brighter and safer?

i think, probably, it would help a lot of us to take a deep breath and consider that you have to make mistakes in life. and so does everyone else. you learn things and you fuck up and you pull through. and you can warn people, if you think they're going to make a mistake, but i don't think you have a right to stop them from doing whatever damn fool thing they're up to.

i think that's what's really bothering me about current progressive discourse, and a lot of the proposed policies. a lot of kids are really scared right now that any single mistake is fatal, and while they're not totally wrong-- the economy sucks, there's still a plague going on, and america is a carceral panopticon--it's still not their *right* let alone their moral obligation to build a system where no one has the freedom to fuck up.

i don't know what the solution is here. a world with more resources would be great. a world with less deadly risk, too. but i'd settle for a world where we recognized and applauded everyone's human right to do weird stupid bullshit and learn better--or not--on their own time.

What the everliving hell?

Your not friendly reminder that cops stole more monetary value then all burglaries in 2020, and that is only dwarfed by time theft by American businesses.

I was talking to my roommate about this just tonight. In 2002 I had $34 stolen out of my suitcase by TSA.

Not much compared to $100k, you might say, and you’re correct. But you know what made this so fucking low, and why I’m still mad about it?

Also in that suitcase was my Girl Scout vest. And my stuff for summer camp, like kids’ sunscreen and kid-sized wading shoes. And a stuffed animal.

It would have been blatantly obvious they were stealing FROM A CHILD. I’d done extra chores for a month to earn that money so I could buy stuff from the camp store. It’s not much in whole amounts, but it was a lot when I was twelve, and that was MY life savings.

They literally do not care who you are. They’ll steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.

You should always assume that cops are also criminals. It's why they need to be given body cams and other surveillance measures.

Those things are good, but we should also be cleared on why they are insufficient. Which is that this is not a crime. Police unions lobbied the legislature to make this legal and now it is. Body cameras will not change this behavior because this behavior is not illegal.

And for body cameras to change illegal behavior we would need cops to suffer legal consequences for it. And the current Court doctrine in the United States is that a cop's behavior might be illegal, but there can only be consequences for it if you can prove they knew it was illegal and ALSO should have known it was a legal because it was (get this) already successfully prosecuted in a court of law against another cop. Who is protected by the same doctrine.

It is hypothetically possible for a plaintiff to bring a complaint against a cop to the courts and take it all the way through the appeals process to find the cop guilty, understanding the entire time that the money they are burning those two no direct purpose and the cop will not face consequences, and then after that for somebody else to bring another cop to trial for the same issue. But the case has to be identical.

A cop can get charged without punishment for kicking someone into a ditch and setting a police dog on them, and then another cop will still be immune from kicking someone down in their backyard and setting a police dog on them. Even if the second police officer has joked about how they know what they're doing is illegal. Because the two cases are too different.

On the job surveillance is important for its political ramifications, for how it can help us present cases of police abuse to the public. And sometimes, rarely, it helps people by catching cops who feel so immune to consequences that they plant drugs on suspects on camera. But it is fundamentally no form of solution so long as the law does not actually declare this behavior to be criminal in a meaningful sense.

This is Money Snake. She only appears every 312 years. 

If you reblog her picture within the next twenty-five seconds you will have good luck and fortune for the rest of your life. 

I reblogged her late last year and my 2024 has been very satisfying work-wise and (secure enough to not stress out) money-wise so far. Money Snake is wise and good.

I fell in love with this chicken on sight….and I knew I had to draw her. What an iconic, confused little lass.

lol i hate today’s era of absolutely zero nuance takes. a friend didn’t behave exactly as you’d wanted them to? cut them off. a guy didn’t text you back instantly bc he has his own life? he’s just giving you breadcrumbs. doing something makes you uncomfortable? don’t do it anymore. someone isn’t instantly available for you? disinterest. just absolutist statements that often don’t apply to the multilayer situations of everyday life. like. stop. literally just stop it

It's incredible how much pop psychology and therapyspeak boils down to treating individualism as the phenomenological norm for human beings and any form of human communication or relationship based on negotiation, compromise, self-sacrifice and trust as an act of violence against the individual