Philosoraptor

Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 2d ago

A few more:

These two emphasize Israel as attacking "Hamas," despite the fact that the strikes were totally indiscriminate and (as you know) mostly killed civilians. It also describes the talks as "stalling" as if this were some kind of natural disaster or unexplained event, despite the fact that it was due entirely to Israel continuing to massacre Palestinian civilians. This is pretty characteristic of most mainstream press coverage of Gaza:

This one talks about Israel's borders "shifting" as if it is just some kind of natural process that happens sometimes, instead of the result of aggressive imperial expansion.

This is from the (pretty excellent) twitter bot that tracks edits to the NYT's headlines and abstracts. Red is original text, green is the edit, and white is what stayed. You can see the wild shift in emphasis that the edit created. The locus of action shifts from Israeli police attacking Palestinian families to "militants" firing rockets and Israel being forced to respond. Police no longer attacked "families," but rather "protesters." This is a particularly egregious and obvious example of propaganda.

Standard operating procedure that we've seen a ton by now: when Israelis are killed, we use the active voice and directly name who killed them. When it's Palestinians, it's all passive voice and vagueness like it was an act of god.

ETA: Here's a new one from today!

Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 3d ago

Just bog-standard propaganda doing character assassination of a black person and buffing the image of a white conservative one. This image is called "angel vs. no-angel" in my file. This is important to both justify the police murder of Blake and also absolve Rittenhouse of any potential wrongdoing.

A classic case showing the difference in coverage (in the same publication!) of two extremely similar events a few years apart (though as the image notes, the USSR fired on a civilian plane illegally flying in their airspace, while the US fired on one legally flying in another country's airspace). When the USSR does it, it's just murder. When the US does it, we have to carefully examine how this accidental tragedy could have occurred.

A particularly egregious one from the AP. Both of these were in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in 2005. In both cases, they were civilians taking food from flooded grocery stores in order to survive after the government completely botched all levels of both the run-up to the hurricane and the relief efforts. When it's a Black person, taking food from an abandoned and flooded grocery store is "looting." When it's a white person, they just "found" the food.

There were lots of interesting contrasts between the press' coverage of the Gaza genocide vs. the war in Ukraine. Most mainstream media outlets will subtly (or not-so-subtly) bias readers toward their preferred actor in a conflict by using active, inflammatory language ("murder," "kill," etc.) to describe the actions of Palestinians or Russians, but using passive "natural disaster" language to describe the actions of Israelis or Ukrainians ("deaths," etc.). They will also usually directly name Russia or Palestine as the agent when they conduct strikes, but will avoid doing so with Israel or Ukraine. You can also see this same dynamic already playing out with Iran.

Rate limited for now; will add more later.

Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 3d ago

Runner up: Repo: The Genetic Opera

Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 3d ago

Replacing a human is far easier than replacing an AI model because there aren't as many of the latter. They afford similar levels of "smol bean whoopsy daisy" good faith to CEOs, and for similar reasons.

Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 3d ago

Yep, tons. I'll post some of the good ones when I get to work tomorrow.

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Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 4d ago

I keep a whole file of these for the rhetoric class I teach. This is gold.

Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 4d ago

“This is not a regime change war, but the regime sure did change,” Hegseth said.

Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 4d ago

Life comes at you immediately, and if it doesn't, then it never comes at all (as history has conclusively shown).

Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 4d ago

Why yes, I did steal this truck load of home theater equipment. But now that I have it, forcing me to give it back is just another kind of theft. Two wrongs don't make a right. Have you even considered that I've already got buyers lined up?

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Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 5d ago

My cat is just Nazism, only without the German nationalism, anti-Semitism, military ambitions, or geopolitical role and with fur and a tail. Still think cats are cool?

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Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 7d ago

Gasoline has about 11 kcal per gram, so it would actually probably be substantially more than 2600 kcal of fossil fuels per food calorie to grow them in Alaska.

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Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 7d ago

Yeah, that's pretty fucking obvious to anyone who isn't engaging in bad faith. You're doing great work, and we all appreciate you for it.

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Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 1w ago

To the extent that most people have a philosophy of science, it's just pure Baconian early Western enlightenment tripe, which is predicated on a strong division between experimenter and experiment, or between human and natural world. It's a foundational myth of western civilization.

Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 1w ago

Mr. Elysium is helping me build my game

Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 1w ago

lol

Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 1w ago

Having a bunch of kids throw snowballs at the mayor on camera would be a great move.